And they themselves object against us either false crimes of dead men, or, even if true, yet the crimes of others—not understanding that in the things which we object against them, all those men are held bound, while in the things which they object against us, it is the chaff or the tares of the Lord's harvest that are reprehended, but the crime does not pertain to the wheat; nor considering that those to whom the wicked are pleasing within unity do themselves hold communion with the wicked, whereas those to whom they are displeasing and who cannot amend them, nor dare before the time of harvest to root out the tares lest they root up the wheat together with them, hold communion not with their deeds but with the altar of Christ—so that not only are they not defiled by them, but even deserve to be praised and proclaimed by the divine words, since, lest the name of Christ be blasphemed through horrible schisms, for the good of unity they tolerate what for the good of equity they hate.
If they have ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. For thus it is read in the Apocalypse of John: 'To the angel,' he says, 'of the church of Ephesus write: These things saith he who holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks: I know thy works and labour and thy patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men, and thou hast tried them who say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars; and thou hast patience, and hast borne them for my name's sake, and hast not fainted.' But if he wished it to be understood of an angel of the higher heavens and not of the prelates of the church, he would not consequently say: 'But I have against thee, that thou hast left thy first charity.'
'Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and do penance, and do the first works; but if not, I come to thee and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou do penance.' This cannot be said to the higher angels, who retain perpetual charity; whence those who have failed and fallen are the devil and his angels. He speaks therefore of the first charity, because he bore with the false apostles for the name of Christ—which charity he commands him to resume and to do his former works. And crimes of wicked men are objected against us, not our own but others', and those in part unknown.
And if we even saw these to be true and present, and sparing the tares for the sake of the wheat, tolerated them for the sake of unity, whoever heard the holy Scriptures not deaf in heart would call us worthy not only of no reproof but even of no small praise. Aaron tolerates the multitude demanding and fabricating and adoring an idol; Moses tolerates so many thousands murmuring against God and so often offending His holy name; David tolerates Saul his persecutor, forsaking heavenly things by his wicked ways, seeking the nether world by magic arts, avenges him when slain, and even calls him the Lord's anointed on account of the sacrament of the venerable anointing;
Samuel bore with the wicked sons of Eli and with his own perverse sons, whom the people, because they were unwilling to bear them, were accused by divine truth and rebuked by divine severity; Samuel bore, moreover, with that very proud people, the despiser of God; Isaiah bore with those against whom he hurled so many true accusations; Jeremiah bore with those from whom he endured so much; Zechariah bore with the Pharisees and scribes, such as Scripture testifies they were in that age. I know that I have passed over many.
Let those who wish, read; let those who are able, read the heavenly oracles: they will find that all the holy servants and friends of God ever had those in their own people whom they had to bear with, and yet, sharing with them the sacraments of that age, they were not only not defiled, but even praiseworthily upheld them, striving, as the Apostle says, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Let them consider also the time after the Lord's coming, where we should find far more examples of this forbearance throughout the whole world, if all of them could have been written down and set into authoritative record — yet even these very ones that we do have, mark well.
The Lord Himself bore with Judas, a devil, His own thief and betrayer; He allowed him to receive among the innocent disciples that which the faithful know to be our ransom-price. The apostles bore with false apostles who sought their own interests among his followers, not the things of Jesus Christ; while Paul, seeking not his own but the things of Jesus Christ, lived among them with most glorious forbearance. Finally, as I mentioned a little before, the one set over the church is praised by the divine voice under the name of an angel because, though he hated the wicked, he yet bore with those who were tried and found out for the Lord's name. In sum, let them question their own selves.
Are there not tolerated among them the slaughters and burnings of the Circumcellions, those venerators of the corpses of men who cast themselves down of their own accord, and the groanings of all Africa under the incredible evils of a single Optatus through so many years? I forbear now to speak of the tyrannical powers and public brigandage of individual regions and cities and estates throughout Africa. For you yourselves say these things better, whether in a whisper or openly, as it pleases you. For wherever you turn your eyes, there will meet you the very thing I say — or rather the thing I keep silent about. Nor on this account do we accuse those among them whom you love there. For they do not displease us because they bear with the wicked, but because they are themselves intolerably wicked on account of the schism.
On account of altar raised against altar, on account of separation from the inheritance of Christ that is spread abroad throughout the whole world — as was promised so long beforehand — we lament and mourn the violated peace, the torn unity, the repeated baptisms, the sacraments breathed upon as if to exorcise them, though these are holy even in wicked men. And if they make little of these things, let them look upon the examples by which it has been shown how greatly God has valued them. Those who made the idol were slain by the ordinary death of the sword; but those who wished to make a schism, the princes were swallowed by the gaping of the earth, and the consenting crowd was consumed by fire. By the diversity of punishments the diversity of merits is recognized. The sacred books are handed over in persecution; the traditors confess and are forgiven by God.
the innocent are condemned without being questioned by rash men; the man who among the absent condemned ones was far more vehemently accused than the rest is proved unblemished by sure judgments. There was a judgment of the bishops; appeal was made to the emperor; the emperor was chosen as judge; the judging emperor was despised. What was done then, you have read; what is being done now, you see. If you doubt in any respect about those former things, look now upon these present ones. Assuredly, let us not conduct the matter by old documents, nor by public archives, nor by acts of the forum or of the church. Our greater book is the whole world; in it I read fulfilled what in the book of God I read promised: The Lord, He says, said to me: Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee;
ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession. Whoever does not share in this inheritance, let him hold whatever books he pleases, let him know that he is disinherited; whoever assails this inheritance sufficiently proclaims that he is a stranger to the family of God. Assuredly, the question turns upon the handing over of the divine books — and it is precisely there that this inheritance is promised. Let him therefore be believed to have handed over the testament to the flames, who litigates against the will of the testator. What did the church of the Corinthians do to you, O party of Donatus, what did it do to you? And what I say of that church, I would have understood of all such churches, even those so far removed. What did they do to you — those who could not even at all know what you had done, nor whom you had defamed?
Is it that, because Caecilianus wronged Lucilla in Africa, the world lost the light of Christ? Let them at last perceive what they have done; deservedly, after a certain interval of years, their own deed has been turned back before their eyes. Inquire through what woman Maximianus, who is said to be a kinsman of Donatus, cut himself off from the communion of Primianus, and how, when a faction of bishops was gathered, he condemned Primianus in his absence and was ordained bishop against him — just as Maiorinus, through Lucilla, when a faction of bishops was gathered, condemned Caecilianus in his absence and was ordained bishop against him.
Or is it perhaps that, because Primianus was cleared by the rest of the African bishops of his communion against the faction of Maximianus, you wish this to be valid — but that Caecilianus was cleared by the bishops of the unity across the sea against the faction of Maiorinus, this you do not wish to be valid? I ask, my brethren, what great thing do I demand? What difficult thing do I desire to be understood by you? Great indeed is the difference, and beyond all comparison, whether in authority or in number, that separates the African church, if it be compared with the other parts of the world; and it is far smaller — even if unity were here — far smaller altogether when compared with all the other Christian nations, than the party of Maximianus compared with the party of Primianus.
Yet I ask, and I judge it just, that the council of Secundus of Tigisis — which Lucilla stirred up against the absent Caecilianus and against the apostolic sees and the whole world in communion with Caecilianus — should carry only as much weight as the council of the Maximianists carries, which some woman, I know not who, likewise stirred up against the absent Primianus and against the rest of the multitude throughout Africa in communion with Primianus. What is discerned more plainly? What is demanded more equitably? You see all these things and know them and groan;
and yet God sees also that no reason compels you to remain in so pestilent and sacrilegious a separation — if only, for the sake of gaining the spiritual kingdom, you would overcome carnal affection, and would not fear to offend the friendships of men, which will avail nothing in the judgment of God, for the sake of avoiding everlasting punishments. Behold, go, take counsel; learn what they can answer against these words of ours. If they produce documents, we produce documents; if they say ours are false, let them not take it amiss that we say the same of theirs. No one blots out God's ordinance from heaven; no one blots out the church of God from the earth. He promised the whole world; she has filled the whole world, and has both bad and good — but on earth she loses none save the bad, and into heaven she admits none save the good.
But this discourse — which He alone knows, out of the gift of God, with how great a love both of peace and of you we have delivered it — will be, if you are willing, a correction; but if you are unwilling, a witness. XLIV. TO HIS MOST BELOVED AND WORTHY-TO-BE-PROCLAIMED LORDS AND BRETHREN ELEUSIUS, GLORIUS, AND THE FELICES, AUGUSTINE. Fortunius, whom you have as bishop at Thubursicu, we experienced, while passing through that very city — though in the greatest haste, as we were journeying to the church of Cirta — to be entirely such as you are wont most kindly to promise concerning him. For when we reported to him that very conversation of yours about him, wishing to see him, he did not refuse. So we came to him, since it seemed to us that this was to be granted to his age rather than exacted of it — that he should come to us first.
We proceeded therefore, accompanied by not a few whom that occasion happened to have gathered to us. But when we had sat down with him, and the rumor had spread abroad, a crowd besides, no small one, flowed together. Yet in all that multitude very few appeared who desired that so great a cause should be handled usefully and wholesomely, and that a question of so great a matter should be discussed prudently and piously. The rest, however, had assembled rather for a spectacle, as it were, of our altercation, after an almost theatrical custom, than for the instruction of salvation by Christian devotion. Wherefore they could neither grant us silence nor confer with us attentively and at least modestly and in order — except, as I said, for a few, whose intent showed itself religious and sincere.
And so, by the uproar of those speaking without restraint, each according to the impulse of his own mind, everything was thrown into confusion; nor could we, or he himself, prevail by asking, and at times even by rebuking, to have modest silence granted to us. Nevertheless the matter began somehow to be conducted, and we drew out several hours in alternate discourse, as far as we were permitted, in the intervals when the voices of the variously tumultuous fell silent.
But at the very outset of the disputation, when we saw that the things being said were repeatedly slipping from the memory, whether our own or of those whose salvation we chiefly cared for — and that our treatment might be more careful and more modest, and at the same time that you and the other brethren who were absent might learn by reading what had been transacted between us — we requested that our words be taken down by shorthand-writers. For a long time it was resisted by him, or by those agreeing with him; yet afterward he himself consented. But the shorthand-writers who were present, and who could have done it briskly, for some reason I know not, were unwilling to take it down. We managed at least that the brethren who were with us — though in this matter they could do it more slowly — should take it down, promising that we would leave the same tablets there. It was agreed.
Our words began to be taken down, and some things were dictated to the tablets by each side in turn. Afterward, unable to endure the disorderly interruptions of those clamoring, and on that account also our own more turbulent disputation, the shorthand-writers gave up — while we, indeed, did not desist, and, as opportunity was given to each, kept saying many things. Out of all these our words, as much of the whole action of the case as I could recall, I was unwilling to defraud your charity. For you can read my letter to him, so that either he may approve that I have written the truth, or he himself, if he recalls anything better, may without hesitation inform you.
For first he deigned to praise our life, which he said he had learned of from those who reported it — more kindly, perhaps, than truly — adding that he had said to you that we could have done well in all the things you had made known about us, if we did them within the church. Then we began to ask what that church was, in which one ought so to live: whether that one which, as holy Scripture had foretold so long before, was spreading itself throughout the whole world, or that one which a small part either of the Africans or of Africa contained. Here at first he tried to assert that his own communion existed everywhere throughout the world.
I asked whether he could give letters of communion — which we call 'formatae' — to wherever I might wish; and I affirmed, what was manifest to all, that in this way that question could most easily be brought to an end. And I was preparing, that, if he agreed, such letters should be sent by us to those churches which we might likewise read in the apostolic authorities to have been founded already in that age. But since the matter was openly false, with his words all mingled together, he quickly withdrew from that point. Amid these words he cited that gospel warning of the Lord, in which He said: Beware of false prophets; many will come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves; by their fruits you shall know them.
When we said that these same words of the Lord could be recited by us against them, from there we came to an exaggeration of persecution, which he said his party had often endured — wishing hereby to show that his people were Christians because they suffered persecution. Amid these words, when I was preparing to answer from the Gospel, he first cited that very chapter where the Lord says: Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. At which passage I, rejoicing, at once added that this then was the thing to be inquired into — whether they had suffered persecution for justice' sake.
In this question I wished it to be discussed — what indeed was clear to all — whether the times of Macarius had found them established in the unity of the church, or already divided by schism; so that those who wished to see whether they had suffered persecution for justice' sake might rather attend to this: whether they had rightly cut themselves off from the unity of the whole world. And if they were found to have done this unjustly, it would be manifest that they had suffered persecution for injustice rather than for justice, and therefore could not be joined to the number of the blessed, of whom it is said: Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice' sake. There was recalled that handing-over of the books, more notorious than certain.
But it was answered by our side that their own leaders had rather been the traditors; and that if in this matter they were unwilling to believe the documents of our people, neither ought we to be compelled to believe their documents. Yet nevertheless, setting aside that doubtful question, I asked how these men had justly separated themselves from the innocence of the rest of the Christians, who throughout the whole world, keeping the order of succession, established in the most ancient churches, were utterly ignorant who the traditors in Africa had been — men who certainly could not communicate save with those whom they heard to be seated in the episcopal sees.
He answered that the churches of the parts across the sea had remained innocent for as long — until they had consented to the blood of those whom he said had suffered the Macarian persecution. Here I could indeed have said that the innocence of the churches across the sea could not be contaminated even by the odium of the Macarian time, since it was in no way proved that those men had even done what he had done; but I preferred to inquire by a shorter route: if, from the savagery of Macarius — to which the churches across the sea were said to have consented — they had lost their innocence, whether it could at least be proved that up to those times the Donatists had remained in unity with the eastern churches and the rest of the parts of the world.
Then he produced a certain volume, in which he wished to show that the Council of Serdica had given letters to the African bishops who were of the communion of Donatus. When this was read, we heard the name of Donatus among the other bishops to whom they had written. And so we began to press that it be shown whether this was that same Donatus from whose party these men are named; for it could have happened that they wrote to some Donatus, a bishop of another heresy — especially since among those names not even a mention of Africa had been made. How, then, could he prove that the Donatus, bishop of the party of Donatus, was to be understood by that name, when he could not even prove whether those letters had been sent specifically to the bishops of the African churches?
For although the name of Donatus is commonly an African one, yet it would not be repugnant to the truth that either someone of those parts should be called by an African name, or that some African should be established as a bishop in those parts. For neither in them did we find either the day or the consul, so that at least, the times being considered, something certain might shine forth. Indeed, since we had heard I know not when that the Arians, when they had disagreed from the catholic communion, had tried to ally the Donatists in Africa to themselves, brother Alypius suggested this very thing to me in a whisper.
Then, having received that very volume of the same council, examining its decrees, I read that Athanasius, the catholic bishop of Alexandria — whose contest of most keen disputations against the Arians especially stood out — and Julius, no less catholic bishop of the Roman church, had been condemned in that Council of Serdica. Whence it was established among us that it had been a council of the Arians, whom these catholic bishops were most vehemently resisting. And so, for a still more careful discussion of the times, we wished to receive that very volume and carry it away with us. He was unwilling to give it, saying that we had it there, whenever we wished to examine anything in it.
I also asked that he permit me to mark it with my own hand — I confess, fearing lest perchance, when the cause should require it and it had to be sought, something else should be produced in its place. Neither did he wish this. Then he began to press me to answer his question briefly, asking me whom I thought just — the one who persecuted, or the one who suffered persecution. To whom I replied that the question was not rightly put thus; for it could happen that both were unjust, and it could also happen that the more just should persecute the more unjust: it did not therefore follow that anyone was more just because he suffered persecution, although that generally does happen.
Then, when I saw that he dwelt much upon this — wishing the justice of his party to be understood as certain from the fact that it had suffered persecution — I asked him whether he thought Ambrose, the bishop of the church of Milan, to be a just man and a Christian. He was of course compelled to deny that that man was a Christian and just; because, if he confessed it, we would at once object that he judged that he ought to be rebaptized. When, therefore, he was compelled to say those things by which that man was not to be held a Christian and just, I recalled how great a persecution he had endured, his church being surrounded even by armed soldiers. I also asked whether he thought Maximianus, who had made a schism from them at Carthage, to be both just and a Christian. He could only deny it.
I therefore recalled that this man too had suffered such a persecution that his church was demolished down to its foundations. By these examples, then, I was endeavoring, if I could, to persuade him that he should now cease to say that the suffering of persecution is the most certain proof of Christian justice. He also related that, in the very novelty of the schism, his elders, when they were pondering the fault of Caecilianus — lest a schism should occur — wished somehow to lay it to rest, and gave a certain interventor to the people of their communion established at Carthage, before Maiorinus was ordained against Caecilianus. This interventor, then, he said had been killed by our people in his own conventicle.
This, I confess, I had absolutely never heard before, though so many crimes objected by them were refuted and disproved by our people, and more and greater ones were cast back against them. But nevertheless, after he had related this, he again began insistently to ask me whom I thought just — the one who killed, or the one who had been killed — as if he had now proved to me that it had been committed just as he had related. I therefore said that it had first to be inquired whether it were true; for one ought not rashly to believe whatever is said; and that it could still have happened that either both were equally bad, or even that some bad man had killed a worse one. For in truth it can happen that a rebaptizer of the whole man is more wicked than the slayer of the body alone.
Whence also that which he afterward asked of me was already not to be asked. For he said that even an evil man ought not to have been killed by Christians and just men — as if we called those who do such things in the catholic church just. Yet these things are more easily said than proved to us by these men, since so many most violent slaughters and massacres do very many of their own — both bishops and presbyters and any clerics whatever — with mobs of most frenzied men gathered together, not cease to inflict, not upon catholics, but sometimes even upon their own, where they are able. Since this is so, dissembling nevertheless about the most wicked deeds of his own people, which he himself knows better, he pressed me to say which of the just had killed even some evil man.
Even though this no longer pertained to the case — for we confessed that these things, wherever they were done under the Christian name, were not done by good men — yet, that he might be admonished what was to be inquired, we answered, asking whether Elijah seemed to him to have been just, which he could not deny. Then we added how many false prophets he had slain with his own hand. Here in truth he saw what was to be seen: that other things had then been lawful for the just; for these things they did by the prophetic spirit, on the authority of God, who without doubt knows to whom it is even profitable to be killed. He demanded, therefore, that I should show that, in the times of the New Testament, someone of the just had killed even a wicked and impious man.
Then there was a return to the earlier treatment — namely, that we wished to show that neither ought we to object their people's crimes to them, nor they ours to us, if any such deeds of our people should be found. For from the New Testament it could indeed not be shown that any just man had killed anyone; yet it could nevertheless be proved, by the very example of the Lord, that the wicked had been tolerated by the innocent. For His own betrayer, who had already received his price, He endured to be among the innocent with Himself, right up to the last kiss of peace. To these He did not conceal that there was among them a man of so great a crime; and yet He first gave the sacrament of His body and blood in common to all, that man not yet being excluded.
By which example, when nearly all were moved, he attempted to say that before the Lord's passion that communion with the wicked man had not harmed the apostles, because they did not yet have the baptism of Christ but the baptism of John. And after he had said this, I began to ask him how, then, it was written that Jesus baptized more than John, though He Himself did not baptize but His disciples — that is, He baptized through His own disciples. How, then, did they give what they had not received, which these men themselves are especially wont to say? Or did Christ perhaps baptize with the baptism of John?
Then in this line of thought I was about to inquire into many things: how it was that John was then asked concerning the Lord's baptism, and answered that the one had the bride and the other was the bridegroom. Was it then lawful that the bridegroom should baptize with the baptism of John — that is, with the baptism of a friend or a servant? Then, how could they receive the Eucharist while not yet baptized? Or how did He answer Peter, who wished to be washed all over: He who is once washed needs not to be washed again, but is wholly clean? For the perfect cleansing is a baptism not in John's name but in the name of the Lord — if the one who receives it presents himself worthy of it; but if unworthy, the sacraments will nevertheless remain in him not unto salvation but unto destruction.
Since, then, I was about to inquire into these things, he himself too saw that concerning the baptism of the Lord's disciples he ought not to have raised the question. Thence it went off into another matter, both sides discoursing with many words, as they were able. Amid these things it was said that our people would yet persecute them; and he said to us that he wished to see what sort of men we would show ourselves to be in that persecution — whether we would consent to such savagery, or would lend it no consent. We said that God sees our hearts, which they could not; and that they rashly feared for themselves as yet things which, if they should come to pass, would come to pass from evil men, than whom they hold worse men among their own;