But because we were only telling all these things, and not also reading them, we assuredly seemed to you to accomplish less than you were expecting from our earnestness. When we perceived this, we did not delay to send for those things which we had promised were to be read. All of which, while we were making an excursion to the church of Geliza, intending to return thence to your town, arrived within the interval of not quite two days; and, as you know, so much as the time permitted, they were recited to you in a single day: first, where Secundus of Tigisis did not dare to remove the confessed traditors from his college, with whom he afterward dared to condemn the unconfessed and absent Caecilian and others of his colleagues; then the proconsular records, where Felix by a most diligent examination was proved innocent.
You remember that these things were read to you before noon; but after noon we recited their petitions to Constantine, and the ecclesiastical records, held in the city of Rome by the judges given by him, in which they were disapproved, but Caecilian was confirmed in episcopal honour; and lastly the letters of the emperor Constantine, by which all things were made clear, most abundantly attested by far. What more do you want, O men? What more do you want? It is not a matter of your gold and silver; not land, not estates, nor finally the safety of your body is called into peril: it is concerning the attaining of life eternal and the fleeing of death eternal that we appeal to your souls. Awake at last!
We are not engaged in some obscure question; we are not searching out hidden secrets, for the penetrating of which either no human hearts or but rare ones would suffice. The matter is in the open. What stands out more clearly? What is discerned more quickly? We say that by a rash council, however numerous, innocent and absent men were condemned. We prove this by the proconsular records, by which he was judged free from every crime of surrender (of the Scriptures), whom the council's records, produced by your side, most loudly proclaimed to be most criminal. We say that by confessed traditors sentences were pronounced against those who were called traditors.
We prove this by the ecclesiastical records, where they are declared by name, in which Secundus of Tigisis pardoned those things which he knew, as it were out of regard for peace, and, with those with whom he afterward would not acknowledge the truth, condemned them with the breach of peace. Whence it appeared that even at first he had not consulted for peace, but had feared for himself. For Purpurius of Limata had objected to him that he too, when he had been detained by the curator and council to hand over the Scriptures, was dismissed—assuredly not for nothing, unless because he handed over something, or ordered something to be handed over.
Fearing this fairly probable suspicion, having taken counsel from the younger Secundus, his kinsman, and having consulted the other bishops who were with him, he left the most manifest crimes to be judged by God, and thus seemed to have provided for peace—which was false, since he had provided for himself. For if the thought of peace had dwelt in his heart, he would not afterward at Carthage have condemned, on the charge of surrender, those absent men whom no one had convicted before him, while he had left to God the traditors who were present and had confessed. For he ought to have feared all the more lest the peace of unity be violated, inasmuch as Carthage was a city ample and illustrious, whence the evil that had there arisen might pour itself, as it were from the summit, through the whole body of Africa.
It was, moreover, close to lands across the sea, and renowned for a most celebrated reputation. For this reason it possessed a bishop of no ordinary authority, one who could disregard a conspiring throng of enemies, since he saw himself joined by letters of communion both to the Roman church, in which the primacy of the apostolic chair has ever flourished, and to the other lands from which the Gospel came to Africa itself, where he would be ready to plead his cause, should his adversaries attempt to alienate those churches from him.
Since therefore he was unwilling to come to the lodging of colleagues whom he perceived, or suspected, or (as they themselves assert) pretended to have been corrupted by his enemies against the truth of his cause, so much the more ought Secundus, if he had wished to be a guardian of true peace, to have taken care that men be not condemned in their absence—men who were altogether unwilling to be present at their judgment.
For the matter concerned not presbyters or deacons or clergy of lower rank, but colleagues—men who could reserve their cause intact for the judgment of other colleagues, especially of the apostolic churches, where sentences pronounced against them in their absence would in no way have any force, since it was not that they first approached that judgment and afterwards deserted it, but that, always holding it suspect, they never wished to approach it at all. This matter above all ought to have troubled Secundus, who was then primate, if he was presiding over the council for this end, that he might take counsel for peace; for easily, perhaps, he might have restrained and calmed or curbed the mouths raging against the absent man, if he had said:
'You see, brethren, that after so great a slaughter of persecution, peace has been granted by the princes of this world through the mercy of God; we Christians and bishops ought not to rend asunder the Christian unity which now the pagan enemy no longer pursues.'
'Let us therefore either commit all these cases, which the disaster of a most turbulent time has inflicted upon the Church, to God the Judge; or else, if there are any among you who so know for certain the crimes of these men that they can easily prove them and convict those who deny them, and who dread to hold communion with such persons, let them go to our brethren and colleagues, the bishops of the churches across the sea, and there first lodge complaint concerning the deeds and contumacy of these men, that they refused, ill aware in their own consciences, to come to the judgment of their African colleagues, so that from thence notice may be given to them to come and there answer to the charges laid against them.'
'But if they do not do this, then even there their depravity and perversity will become known, and a synodal letter concerning their name being sent throughout the whole world, wherever the Church of Christ is now spread abroad, their communion will be cut off by all the churches, lest any error arise in the chair of the church of Carthage.'
'Then at last, in security, we shall ordain another bishop for the people of Carthage, when these men have been separated from the whole Church; lest perchance, when another has just been ordained, he be denied communion by the church across the sea, because this one, deposed from his honour, will not appear so—the one whom, once ordained, reputation has already made famous and to whom it has caused letters of communion to travel—and lest thus a great scandal of schism arise within the unity of Christ in times now at peace, while we rashly wish to precipitate our sentences, and dare to raise up another altar not against Caecilianus but against the whole world, which through ignorance holds communion with him.' Whoever, unbridled, had refused to obey so sound and right a counsel—what would he have been going to do, or in what way was he going to condemn any of the absent colleagues, when he did not have the acts of the council in his power, the primate opposing him?
But if so great a sedition were to arise even against the primatial see, that some already wished to condemn those whom he wished to be deferred—how much better it were to dissent from such men, who were contriving restless and unpeaceful things, than from the communion of the whole world! But because there was nothing that could be proved against Caecilianus and his ordainers by a judgment across the sea, for that reason they were unwilling to defer, either before they pronounced their sentences against him, or after they had pronounced them—
to bring it perseveringly about that it be conveyed to the knowledge of the churches across the sea whose communion, as of traditors condemned in Africa, they ought to shun; because, if they had attempted to do this, Caecilianus and the rest would have been present to themselves and, before the ecclesiastical judges across the sea, would have cleared their cause against their deceitful accusers by a most diligent investigation.
And so that perverse and utterly wicked counsel was, as is believed, chiefly the work of traditors, to whom Secundus of Tigisis had granted pardon when they confessed; so that, since rumour of the surrender had spread abroad, by defaming others they might turn suspicion away from themselves, and, while throughout all Africa men, trusting the bishops, were speaking false things about the innocent—that the traditors had been condemned at Carthage—they themselves, who had truly surrendered, might lie hidden as it were in the mist of a most lying rumour. Hence you see, dearly beloved, that what some of you said could not be probable could yet have happened: namely that the very men who had confessed their own act of surrender and had obtained that their cause be committed to God, afterwards sat as judges and condemners, as if of absent traditors.
For they rather embraced the opportunity by which they could overwhelm others with a false accusation and thus turn aside from themselves the tongues of men that were directed against them by an inquiry into their own crimes. Otherwise, if it were not possible that anyone should judge in another the evils which he himself was committing, the Apostle Paul would not say to certain persons: 'Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.' Which these men did entirely, so that these apostolic words apply to them wholly and aptly. Not then, therefore, did Secundus, when he committed their crimes to God, take counsel for peace and unity;
otherwise he would rather have provided at Carthage that no schism should occur, where no one was present whom, upon confession, he was compelled to pardon of his crime; but—which was the easiest thing—the whole preservation of peace would have been to be unwilling to condemn the absent. And so they were doing injury to the innocent, even if they had wished to pardon men neither convicted nor confessed nor present at all. For he indeed receives pardon whose fault is most certain. How much more monstrous, then, and more blind were they who thought they could condemn those things which, being unknown, they could not even have pardoned! But there things known were remitted to God, that no other things might be sought out; here things unknown were condemned, that those others might be covered up. But someone will say:
'They did come to know them.' Even if I concede this, still even so the absent surely ought to have been spared. For they had not deserted the judgment where they had never at all appeared; nor did the Church consist in those African bishops alone, so that those who had refused to present themselves to their judgment should seem to have shunned every ecclesiastical judgment. For thousands of colleagues across the sea remained, where it was evident that those men could be judged, who seemed to hold their African or Numidian colleagues suspect. For where is that which Scripture cries out: 'Before thou inquire, blame not any man; and when thou hast inquired, reprove justly'?
If therefore the Holy Spirit willed that no one be blamed or reproved unless first questioned, how much more wickedly were men condemned outright—not blamed or reproved, but utterly condemned—who could in no way be questioned in their absence about their crimes! Yet these men, who say that although of the absent (and by no means of men deserting judgment, since they were never present and always declared that faction to be suspect to them), they nevertheless condemned crimes that were known—I ask you, my brethren, in what way did they come to know them? You answer: 'We do not know, since indeed that knowledge is not set forth in those very acts.' But I will show you in what way they came to know. Attend to the case of Felix of Aptunga, and first read how much more vehement they were against him.
Thus therefore did they 'know' the case of the others, just as they knew this man's—who was afterwards proved most innocent by a diligent and dreadful inquiry. How much more justly, then, and more safely and more readily ought we to reckon those innocent whose crimes were more lightly accused by these men and condemned with a more sparing reproof, when the very man was found innocent against whom they raged far more monstrously! Or perhaps, as a certain man said—which indeed, though it displeased when it was said to you, ought nevertheless not to be passed over—for a certain man said: 'A bishop ought not to have been cleared by a proconsular judgment.' As though indeed he had procured this for himself, and it was not rather the emperor who ordered the matter to be so investigated, to whose charge—of which he was to render account to God—that affair chiefly pertained.
For they themselves had made him arbiter and judge of the cause of surrender and schism—they who had even sent petitions to him, to whom they afterwards appealed, and yet were unwilling to acquiesce in his judgment. And so, if he is to be blamed whom an earthly judge acquitted—when he had not himself sought this—how much more are they to be blamed who wished an earthly king to be the judge of their cause! But if it is no crime to appeal to the emperor, it is no crime to be heard by the emperor, and therefore neither by him to whom the emperor has delegated the cause. That friend of theirs even wished, in the case of Bishop Felix, to accuse a certain man who was hung upon the rack, so that someone should even be tormented with iron claws.
Could Felix protest that the case should not be investigated with such diligence or severity, when the examiner was pressing on to discover the truth of his cause? For what else was it to be unwilling to be thus investigated, than to confess one's crime? And yet that very proconsul, amid the terrible cries of heralds and the bloody hands of executioners, would never condemn an absent colleague who had refused to present himself to his judgment, when he had something else that could be heard; or, if he did condemn, he would certainly suffer just and due penalties even by the secular laws themselves. But if the proconsular acts displease you, yield to the ecclesiastical ones. All have been recited to you in order.
Or perhaps ought not Melchiades, bishop of the Roman church, together with his colleagues, the bishops from across the sea, to have arrogated to himself that judgment which had been decided by the seventy Africans, over whom the primate of Tigisis presided? What of the fact that he did not even arrogate it? For the emperor, being asked, sent bishops as judges to sit with him and to determine concerning that whole cause what should seem just. This we prove both from the petitions of the Donatists and from the words of the emperor himself; for you remember that both were read to you, and you now have leave to inspect and copy them. Read and consider all things.
See with how great a care for preserving or restoring peace and unity all things were examined; how the persons of the accusers were dealt with, and with what blemishes some of them were disapproved, and how it was clearly established by the voices of those present that they had nothing which they might say against Caecilianus, but had wished to transfer the whole cause onto the common people of Majorinus's party—that is, onto a seditious multitude estranged from the peace of the Church—so that Caecilianus might, forsooth, be accused by that mob, which they judged could, by tumultuous shouts alone, with no attestation of documents, with no examination of truth, twist the minds of the judges to their will; unless perchance a frenzied multitude, drunk with the cup of error and corruption, might speak true crimes against Caecilianus—there where seventy bishops, as was established in the case of Felix of Aptunga, condemned absent and innocent colleagues with such insane rashness.
For to what kind of mob had those bishops given their assent, in bringing sentences against innocent men who had not been questioned—by such a mob they now again wished Caecilianus to be accused. But plainly they had found such judges as they might persuade to that madness! For you can, according to your own prudence, attend there both to the perversity of those men and to the gravity of the judges: how in the end they could not persuade that Caecilianus be arraigned by the common people of Majorinus's party (which had no definite person), and there were demanded of them either accusers or witnesses or persons in any way necessary to the cause, who had come with them from Africa, and who were said to have been present and to have been withdrawn by Donatus.
The same Donatus promised that he would produce them. But when he had promised this not once but repeatedly, he was afterwards unwilling to attend that judgment any further—where he had already confessed so much that by not attending he could henceforth seem to have wished nothing other than not to be condemned while present, since nevertheless those things which were to be condemned were made manifest in his presence and upon his being questioned. Something else was added: that by certain persons a libel of denunciation against Caecilianus was submitted. After which was done, in what way the inquiry was again pursued, and what persons submitted that libel, and in what way nothing could be proved against Caecilianus—why should I speak of it, when you have both heard all things and, as often as you wish, can read them?
But concerning the number of seventy bishops, when their authority was set forth as though most weighty, you remember what things were said. And yet those most weighty men chose rather to restrain their own judgment from countless questions binding themselves together in a kind of inextricable chain, by no means troubling themselves as to how many those bishops were or whence they had been assembled—men whom they saw blinded by such rashness that against absent and unquestioned colleagues they dared to bring sentences so headlong. And yet what a sentence was that final one pronounced by the blessed Melchiades himself! How innocent, how upright, how provident and peaceful!
By it he dared neither to remove from his college the colleagues in whom nothing had been established, and—Donatus alone, whom he had found the ringleader of the whole evil, being especially blamed—he left the rest free to choose the recovery of their soundness, being ready to send letters of communion even to those who were established to have been ordained by Majorinus; so that, in whatever places there were two bishops whom dissension had doubled, he wished him to be confirmed who had been ordained first, while for the other of them provision should be made of another congregation to be governed. O most excellent man! O son of Christian peace and father of the Christian people! Compare now that fewness with that multitude of bishops, and weigh not number against number but weight against weight:
on this side moderation, on that rashness; on this side vigilance, on that blindness. Here neither did gentleness corrupt integrity nor did integrity war against gentleness; but there both fear was cloaked by fury, and fury was incited by fear. For these had assembled, upon knowledge of true crimes, to reject false ones; those, by the condemnation of false ones, to conceal true ones. Should Caecilianus then commit himself at last to those men to be heard and judged, when he had such men before whom, if his cause were brought into question, he might most easily display his innocence?
He would by no means commit himself to those men; nor, had he been suddenly ordained bishop as a stranger to the church of Carthage and been ignorant of what a certain most wealthy woman, one Lucilla, might then be able to do for the corrupting of the minds either of the wicked or of the ignorant—whom, when he was still a deacon, that same man had offended by rebuking her for ecclesiastical discipline. For this evil too had been added to the completing of that iniquity. For in that council, where the absent and innocent were condemned by confessed traditors, there were certain few who desired to cover their own crimes by defaming others, so that men might be turned aside from the inquiry into truth, drawn off by false rumours.
Few, therefore, there were who chiefly busied themselves with this business, although among them there was greater authority on account of the fellowship of Secundus himself, who, terrified, had spared them. But the rest are reported to have been chiefly bought and instigated against Caecilianus by Lucilla's money. There exist the acts before Zenophilus of consular rank, where a certain deacon Nundinarius, having been degraded (as far as is understood from those very acts) by Silvanus, bishop of Cirta, when he had vainly attempted to make satisfaction with them through the letters of other bishops, disclosed many things in his anger and brought them forth into a public court. Among which this too is read to have been recorded: that by Lucilla's money, the bishops having been corrupted, in the Carthaginian church, in the capital of Africa, altar was raised against altar.
I know that we have not read these acts to you, but you remember that there was no time. There was also present some grief of soul arising from the swelling of pride, that they themselves had not ordained the bishop at Carthage. Since therefore, by all these matters, Caecilianus recognized that he had encountered not true judges but enemies, corrupt men—how could it come about that either he himself should wish, or the people over whom he presided should permit, that, leaving the church, he should go into a private house, to be examined not by the scrutiny of colleagues but to be butchered by a wedge of faction and by womanish hatreds—especially when he saw that at the church across the sea there remained an uncorrupted and unimpaired examination of his cause, free from private enmities and estranged from both sides of the dissension?
There, if the adversaries wished to do nothing, they would cut themselves off from the most innocent communion of the whole world; but if there they attempted to accuse him, then he would be present to himself, then he would defend his innocence against their machinations—as you have learned was afterwards done, when nevertheless they, all too late, sought the judgment across the sea, being now guilty of schism, now stained by the horrendous crime of an altar raised up. For they would have done this first, if they had relied on truth;
but with false rumours strengthened by length of time, as though an ancient reputation were prejudging the case, they wished to come to judgment; or—what is rather to be believed—Caecilianus having first been condemned as they pleased, they seemed to themselves as it were secure, over-confident in their own number, and not daring to stir up so bad a cause elsewhere, where, with no corruption operating, the truth could be found out.
But after they had learned by the very facts that the communion of the whole world remained with Caecilianus, and that to him, not to that other whom they themselves had wickedly ordained, letters of communion were being sent from the churches across the sea, they were ashamed always to keep silent, because it could be objected against them: why did they permit the Church, unknowing throughout so many nations, to hold communion with condemned men, and why did they cut themselves off from the communion of the innocent world, when by keeping silent they suffered the bishop whom they had ordained for the Carthaginians to be denied communion by the whole world. They chose, as is said, to plead the cause against Caecilianus with a view to two outcomes before the churches across the sea, being prepared for either:
namely, that, if by any cunning of false accusation they could overcome him, they would most fully sate their own greed; but if they could not, they would indeed persist in the same perversity, yet as though they now had something to say—that they had endured bad judges (which is the cry of all wicked litigants when they have been defeated even by the most manifest truth)—as though it could not be said to them, and most justly said: 'Behold, let us suppose those bishops who judged at Rome were not good judges!' There still remained a plenary council of the universal Church, where the cause could be pursued even with those very judges, so that, if they were convicted of having judged ill, their sentences might be dissolved. Whether they did this, let them prove;
for we easily prove that it was not done, from the fact that the whole world does not hold communion with them; or, if it was done, there too they were defeated, which their very separation makes manifest. But nevertheless what they did afterwards is most sufficiently shown by the emperor's letters. For they dared to accuse the ecclesiastical judges, bishops of such great authority—by whose judgment both the innocence of Caecilianus and their own wickedness had been declared—not before other colleagues but before the emperor, of having judged ill. He granted another judgment, that of Arles, namely of other bishops—not because it was now necessary, but yielding to their perversities and desiring in every way to restrain such great impudence.
For the Christian emperor did not dare so to receive their tumultuous and deceitful complaints as himself to sit in judgment upon the judgment of the bishops who had sat at Rome; but he granted other bishops, as I said. From whom, however, those men chose rather to appeal again to the emperor himself. In which matter you have heard in what manner he detested them. And would that at least by his judgment they had put an end to their most insane animosities, and, as he himself yielded to them—that he should judge concerning that cause after the bishops, intending afterwards to beg pardon of the holy prelates—provided nevertheless that they should have nothing further to say if they did not obey the sentence of him to whom they themselves had appealed, so too they might at some time have yielded to the truth!
For he commanded that the parties should meet at Rome to plead the cause. And when Caecilianus, for some reason or other, had not appeared there, being interpellated by them he ordered that they should follow to Milan. Then some of them began to withdraw themselves, being perhaps indignant that Constantine had not imitated them, so as at once and swiftly to condemn the absent Caecilianus. When the provident emperor learned of this, he had the rest, guarded by his officials, brought to Milan. And when Caecilianus too had come thither, he produced him also, as he wrote; and, the cause being investigated with what diligence, what caution, what foresight—as his letters indicate—he judged Caecilianus most innocent and them most wicked.
And still they baptize outside the Church, and, if they could, they would rebaptize the Church; they sacrifice in dissension and schism, and salute the peoples with the name of peace, whom they banish from the peace of salvation. The unity of Christ is torn asunder, the inheritance of Christ is blasphemed, the baptism of Christ is blown upon; and they are unwilling to have these things in themselves corrected by ordinary human powers with temporal scourges, lest they be destined to eternal punishments for such great sacrileges. We charge them with the fury of schism, the madness of rebaptism, a wicked separation from the inheritance of Christ, which is diffused throughout all nations. Out of the codices not only of ourselves but even of themselves we recite the churches, whose names they read today and with whom today they do not hold communion.
quaecumrecitanturinconuenticuliseorum, lectoribussuisdicunt: Taxtecum,\' etcumipsisplebibus, quibusillaelitteraescriptaesunt, pacemnon. habent.
And when these are recited in their conventicles, they say to their readers: 'Peace be with thee'; and with those very peoples to whom those letters were written, they do not have peace.