Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 27/118

But this, as I said, is another question, to be undertaken and thrashed out when there is need. Now let the vigilance of your mind attend to this: that no one can be contaminated by unknown crimes of unknown persons. Whence it is manifest that you have been separated by sacrilegious schism from the communion of the world, to which the crimes—whether false or true—that you level against the Africans are utterly unknown and always have been unknown. Although this too must not be kept silent: that even known evil men do not harm the good in the Church, if either the power to prohibit them from communion is lacking, or some reason of preserving peace impedes it.

For who are they who, in the prophet Ezekiel, deserved to be sealed even before the devastation of the lost, and, when those were being devastated, to escape unharmed—except, as is there most manifestly shown, those who mourn and groan over the sins and iniquities of the people of God which are done in the midst of them? But who mourns and grieves over what he does not know? For the same reason too the apostle Paul tolerates false brethren; for it is not concerning unknown persons that he says: 'For all seek their own things, not those of Jesus Christ'—whom yet he shows to have been with him. But of what sort are those who chose to burn incense to idols or to hand over the divine codices rather than to die, except from among those who seek their own things, not those of Jesus Christ?

I pass over many testimonies of the Scriptures, lest I make my letter longer than necessary, and I leave the more to be considered by your erudition through yourself. But what is enough: see, I beseech you—if so many wicked men in the one people of God did not make those who bore witness against them such as they themselves were; if that multitude of false brethren did not make the apostle Paul, established in one church together with them, one who sought his own things, not those of Jesus Christ—it is manifest that a man is not made to be what any wicked person is with whom one approaches the altar of Christ, even if he be not unknown, provided only that he is not approved and, by displeasing a good conscience, is separated.

It is manifest therefore that to concur with a thief is nothing other than either to steal with him or to receive his theft by the consent of the heart. This we say, in order to remove those endless and superfluous questions about the deeds of men, which in no way hinder our reasoning. But you too, unless you hold this view, will all be such as Optatus was in your communion, with you not unaware of it—which be it far from the morals of Emeritus and of others of the same sort, whom I do not doubt to be among you, far removed from that man's deeds. For we charge you with nothing but the crime of schism, which you have made even a heresy by persevering wickedly. But at how great a price this crime is weighed by the divine judgment, read what I do not doubt you have read.

You will find that Dathan and Abiram were swallowed up by the gaping of the earth, and all the rest who had consented with them consumed by a fire that came forth from their midst. That crime, therefore, the Lord God marked out by a present punishment, as an example of a thing to be avoided, so that, when He most patiently spares such men, He might show for what a final judgment He reserves them.

For we do not reprehend your reasonings, if at that time in which Optatus, in his frenzied power, was boasting to rage—when his accuser was the groaning of all Africa, you groaning together with it (if indeed you are such as fame proclaims you, which God knows I both believe and wish)—we do not, therefore, reprehend you, if at that time, lest he should drag many excommunicated along with him and by the fury of schism cut off your communion, you were unwilling to excommunicate him.

But this very thing is what condemns you in the judgment of God, brother Emeritus: that although you saw the division of the party of Donatus to be so great an evil that you thought Optatus rather to be tolerated in communion than that such a schism should be allowed, yet you persist in that evil which was perpetrated by your forefathers in dividing the Church of Christ. Here perhaps, in the strait of having to answer, you will attempt to defend Optatus. Do not, brother, do not, I beseech you; it does not become you, and even if it might perchance become some other man — if indeed anything at all becomes wicked men — certainly it does not become Emeritus to defend Optatus. But perhaps neither to accuse him. So be it, then. Use a middle course of speech and say: 'Each man bears his own burden. Who are you that judge another man's servant?'

If, then, before the testimony of all Africa — nay rather, of all lands wherever the fame of Gildo was ablaze, for he too was well known — you never dared to pass judgment upon Optatus, lest you should judge rashly concerning matters unknown to you, can we, or ought we, concerning those who lived before us, upon your testimony alone to pronounce a rash sentence about unknown things — so that it is too little that you charge with crimes things unknown to you, unless we too should judge things unknown? For you do not defend Optatus, even if perchance he is imperilled by false ill-will, but you defend yourself when you say: 'I do not know what sort of man he was.' How much more, then, is the eastern world ignorant of what sort of men the Africans were, whom you accuse though they are even less known to it!

Yet from those very churches, whose names you have in your books and recite, you are separated by an impious dissension. If your most notorious and most ill-famed bishop of Thamugadi was unknown — I do not say to the bishop of Caesarea, but even to his colleague of Sitifis, of his own time — how could the churches of the Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians, Antiochenes, of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, and of the other parts of the world, built up in Christ by the apostles, have known the African betrayers, whoever they may have been, or have deserved to be condemned by you, since they could not know them? And yet you do not commune with them, and you say they are not Christians, and you attempt to rebaptize them. What shall I say? What shall I lament? Or what shall I cry aloud?

If I am speaking with a man of sense, I share with you the stings of this indignation; for you surely see what I would say, if I were willing to say it. Or did your forefathers perhaps hold a council among themselves and condemn, besides themselves, the whole Christian world? Has the estimation of affairs come to this — that the council of the Maximianists, who were cut off from your own schism (since compared with you they are very few), is of no force against you, while your council prevails against the nations, the inheritance of Christ, and his possession, the ends of the earth? I marvel if there is blood in the body of one who does not blush over this matter. Write back to these things, I beg you; for from certain persons whom I could not but believe, I have heard that you would reply if I wrote to you.

Indeed I have already for some time sent one letter, though whether you have received it, or replied to it — and perhaps I have not received your reply — I do not know. Now meanwhile I ask that you not think it a burden to answer these things as seems good to you. But do not raise yourself up into other questions; for from this point is the head of the most orderly inquiry: why the schism was made. For even the earthly powers, when they persecute schismatics, defend themselves by that rule whereby the Apostle says: 'Whoever resists the power, resists the ordinance of God; and those who resist bring judgment upon themselves; for rulers are not a terror to good work but to evil. Would you then not fear the power? Do good, and you shall have praise from it; for it is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid;'

'for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him who does evil.' The whole question, therefore, is whether schism is no evil at all, or whether you have not committed schism — so that you would be resisting the powers for a good work, not for an evil one whereby you would bring judgment upon yourselves. For this reason the Lord most providently did not say: 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution' merely, but added: 'for righteousness' sake.' If, then, it is righteousness which you have wrought in that dissension in which you also persist, according to those things I have said above, I desire to know it from you;

but if it is iniquity to condemn the Christian world unheard — either because it did not hear what you have heard, or because that has not been proved to it which you have rashly believed or, without sure proof, have made your accusation about — and therefore to wish to rebaptize so many churches of the Lord himself (churches founded while he was yet here in the flesh, and by the preaching and labour of his apostles) is iniquity.

Since it is permitted to you either not to know your African colleagues who are wicked, though living together and handling the sacraments together, or even to know them yet to tolerate them, lest the party of Donatus be divided — while to those set in a most remote part of the world it is not permitted to be ignorant of what you either know, or believe, or have heard, or invent about the Africans — how great a perversity is it to embrace one's own iniquity and to accuse the severity of the powers? 'But it is not lawful even for Christians to persecute the wicked.' Be it so, let it not be lawful; yet is it right to cast this in the teeth of the powers who are ordained for this very purpose? Or shall we blot out the Apostle? Or do your codices not contain the things I mentioned a little before? 'But you,' you will say, 'ought not to commune with such men.' What then?

Did you not once commune with Flavianus the vicar, a man of your party, because in obedience to the laws he put to death the guilty whom he had found? 'But by you,' you will say, 'the Roman princes are provoked against us.' Nay rather, by yourselves against your own selves — you who have dared to tear with schism, and persist in your obstinacy to rebaptize, the Church whose members those very princes now are (as was foretold so long before) — for it was said of Christ: 'And all the kings of the earth shall adore him.'

But our people, against the unlawful and private acts of violence of your men — which even you there, who do not do such things, grieve and groan over — seek protection from the ordained powers, not that they may persecute you, but that they may defend themselves; just as the Apostle Paul, against the Jews who conspired to kill him, before the Roman Empire was Christian, acted so that even an armed escort might be given him for protection. But those princes, learning by whatever occasion the wickedness of your schism, decree against you, according to their own concern and power, what they will. For they do not bear the sword in vain; for they are God's ministers, avengers to execute wrath upon those who do evil.

Finally, even if some of our people do these things not with Christian moderation, it displeases us; yet we do not on their account abandon the Catholic Church, if we cannot cleanse it of its chaff before the last time of the winnowing. Just as you too, on account of Optatus, when you did not dare to expel him, did not abandon the party of Donatus. 'But why do you wish us to be joined to you, if we are wicked?' Because you still live and can be corrected, if you will. For when you are joined to us — that is, to the Church of God, to the inheritance of Christ, whose possession are the ends of the earth — you are corrected, so that you may live in the root. For concerning the broken branches the Apostle thus says: 'For God is able to graft them in again.'

You, therefore, are to be changed in that respect in which you were dissenting, although the sacraments which you had, since they are the same in all, are holy. Wherefore we wish you to be changed from your perversity — that is, that your cut-off branch be rooted anew. For the sacraments which you have not changed, we approve as you have them, lest perchance, when we wish to correct your depravity, we should do sacrilegious injury to those mysteries of Christ which have not been depraved in your depravity. For neither had Saul depraved the anointing which he had received — that anointing to which King David, the pious servant of God, showed such great honour.

Therefore we do not rebaptize you, we who desire to restore the root to you; yet the form of the cut-off shoot, if it has not been changed, we approve — a form which, however, though whole, is in no way fruitful without the root. It is another question about the persecutions which you say you suffer amid such great gentleness and mildness of our people, whereas in truth your men unlawfully and privately do graver things; and another about baptism, which we do not ask where it is, but where it profits. For wherever it is, it is itself; but he too who receives it, wherever he is, is not himself thereby the same.

And so we detest the private impiety of men in schism, but the baptism of Christ we everywhere venerate; because, if deserters carry over with them the emperor's standards, when those men are either punished with condemnation or corrected by pardon, the standards are received back unharmed, if they have remained unharmed. And if anything on this matter must be inquired more diligently, it is, as I said, another question. For this must be observed in these matters, which the Church of God observes. But the question is asked, whether yours or ours is the Church of God. Wherefore this must be inquired from the head: why you made the schism. If you do not write back, I have, before God — as far as I believe — an easy cause, because to a man whom I heard to be, apart from the schism, good and liberally educated, I sent a letter of peace.

You will see what you answer to him, whose patience is now to be praised, but whose sentence at the end is to be feared. But if you write back with that care with which you see it written to you, the mercy of God will be present, so that at some time the error which divides us may perish both through love of peace and through the reason of truth. Remember that I have said nothing about the Rogatists, who are said to call you Firmians, just as you call us Macarians; nor about your bishop of Rusicade, who is reported to have made a pact with Firmus for the safety of his own people, so that the gates might be opened to him and the Catholics given over to devastation. And countless other things. Cease, therefore, to exaggerate with commonplaces the deeds of men, whether heard or known.

For you see what things about your people I keep silent, so that the matter may be dealt with concerning the origin of the schism, where the whole cause lies. May the Lord God inspire in you a peaceable thought, longed-for and beloved brother. Amen. LXXXVIII. TO IANUARIUS, from the Catholic clergy of the region of the Hipponienses Regii. Your clergy and Circumcellions rage against us with a persecution of a new kind and of unheard-of cruelty. If they rendered evil for evil, even so they would act against the law of Christ; but now, all your deeds and ours being considered, we are found to suffer this which is written: 'They repaid me evil for good'; and in another psalm: 'With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they warred against me without cause.'

For since you are established in so great an age, we think that you know full well that the party of Donatus — which at first at Carthage was called the party of Majorinus — of its own accord accused Caecilianus, then bishop of the church of Carthage, before that ancient emperor Constantine. But lest perhaps either your gravity has forgotten this, or you feign not to know it, or even — which we do not think — perhaps you are ignorant of it, we have inserted into these our letters a copy of the report of Anulinus, then proconsul, whom the party of Majorinus then petitioned, that those crimes which it charged against Caecilianus might be sent by that same proconsul to the aforementioned emperor. A. GGG. NNN. ANULINUS, of most illustrious rank, Proconsul of Africa.

Having received and revered the heavenly writings of your Majesty concerning Caecilianus and those who act under him and are called clergy, my devotion took care to make it known in the acts of my humble self, and exhorted these same men that, unity having been made by the consent of all, since they seem to be freed by the whole bounty of the indulgence of your Majesty, they should serve divine matters with the due reverence, the sanctity of the Catholic law being preserved.

But after a few days there arose certain men who, having gathered with them a multitude of the people, thought that Caecilianus was to be contradicted; and they offered to my dedication a packet sealed in leather and a document without a seal, and urgently demanded that I should direct these to the sacred and venerable court of your Divinity — which, Caecilianus remaining in his position, with their acts subjoined, that your Majesty might be able to discern all things, my humble self took care to direct. Two documents were transmitted: one, superscribed on the leather thus: 'A document of the Catholic Church of the crimes of Caecilianus, delivered by the party of Majorinus'; likewise another without a seal attached to the same leather, given on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of May at Carthage, in the third consulship of our lord Constantine Augustus.

After this report was sent to him, the emperor ordered the parties to come to an episcopal judgment to be held in the city of Rome. There, in what manner the cause was pleaded and concluded, and how Caecilianus was judged innocent, the ecclesiastical records indicate. Now surely, after the peaceful management of the episcopal judgment, the obstinacy of all contention and animosity ought to have been extinguished. But your forefathers returned again to the emperor. They complained that it had not been rightly judged, nor the whole cause heard.

Whereupon he granted another episcopal judgment to be held in the city of Arles in Gaul, where many of your people, their vain and diabolical dissension being condemned, returned into concord with Caecilianus; but others, most obstinate and most contentious, appealed to the same emperor. Afterwards he too, being compelled, brought to a conclusion the episcopal cause examined between the parties, and was the first to establish a law against your party, that the places of your congregations should be confiscated to the treasury. If we wished to insert the documents of all these matters, we should make the letter far too long.

Yet this by no means must be passed over: in what manner the cause of Felix of Aptunga — whom your fathers said, in the council of Carthage held under Secundus of Tigisis the primate, to have been the fountain of all evils — was, at the pressing of your people before the emperor, discussed by public judgment and concluded. For the aforesaid emperor testifies, in his own letters, that in this very cause your people were his accusers and persistent petitioners — a copy of which letters we have written below. THE EMPERORS CAESARS FLAVII CONSTANTINE THE GREAT AND VALERIUS LICINIANUS LICINIUS, to PROBIANUS, Proconsul of Africa. Aelianus your predecessor rightly, while the most perfect man Verus, then vicar of the prefects throughout our Africa,

was detained by ill health, having discharged the duties of that same office, judged among other matters that this affair too, or the ill-will which seems to have been stirred up concerning Caecilianus, bishop of the Catholic Church, was to be recalled to his own examination and command.

For indeed, when he had already caused to be present Superius the centurion, and Caecilianus the magistrate of the Aptungitani, and Saturninus the ex-curator, and Calibius the younger, curator of the same city, and Solus the public slave of the above-written city, he afforded a competent hearing — so much so that, when it had been objected against Caecilianus that the episcopate seemed to have been conferred on him by Felix, against whom the betrayal and burning of the divine scriptures seemed to have been charged, it was established that Felix was innocent of it. Finally, when Maximus contended that Ingentius, a decurion of the city of the Ziquenses, had forged a letter of Caecilianus the ex-duumvir, we saw that same Ingentius suspended by the acts which were at hand, and therefore by no means tortured;

since he asserted that he was a decurion of the city of the Ziquenses. Wherefore we wish that you send that same Ingentius, under suitable escort, to the court of me, Constantine Augustus, so that, in the hearing and presence of those who are now acting and do not cease to make interpellation on the daily court-days, it may appear and be made known that they wished in vain to procure ill-will against bishop Caecilianus and violently to rise up against him. For so it will come about that, such contentions being laid aside as is fitting, the people, without any dissension, may serve their own religion with due veneration.

Since you see that these things are thus, what is it that you stir up ill-will against us concerning the emperors' commands, which are established against you, when you yourselves rather did all this beforehand? If the emperors ought to command nothing in these causes, if this concern ought not to pertain to Christian emperors, who was it that pressed your forefathers to send the cause of Caecilianus to the emperor through the proconsul, and to accuse before the emperor a second time a bishop against whom, in his absence, you had already in some fashion pronounced sentences — and, when he was pronounced innocent, to contrive other calumnies against his ordainer Felix before the same emperor?

And now what else but the very judgment of Constantine the Great himself lives on against your party — the judgment which your forefathers chose, which they extorted by persistent interpellations, which they preferred to the episcopal judgment? If imperial judgments displease you, who first compelled the emperors to be roused to them by you? For you now cry out against the Catholic Church in those things which are decreed against you by the emperors in just the same way as if they should wish to cry out against Daniel — those who, when he was delivered, were sent to be devoured by the very lions by which they had first wished him to be devoured; for it is written: 'There is no difference between the threats of a king and the wrath of a lion.' The slanderous enemies compelled Daniel to be cast into the den of lions;

his innocence conquered their malice; unharmed, he was lifted out thence; they themselves, sent thither, perished. In like manner your forefathers cast Caecilianus and his fellowship to be devoured by the royal wrath; but his innocence being delivered by the same kings, you suffer the same things which your people wished them to suffer, since it is written: 'He who prepares a pit for his neighbour shall himself fall into it.' Concerning us, therefore, what you should complain of, you have not; and yet the gentleness of the Church had wholly rested even from these commands of the emperors, had not your clergy and Circumcellions, by their most monstrous wickednesses and furious acts of violence disturbing and laying waste our quiet, compelled these things to be recalled and stirred up against you.

For before those more recent laws, of which you now complain, had come into Africa, they laid ambushes for our bishops on their journeys, they battered our fellow-clergy with most monstrous blows, they both inflicted most grievous blows on the laity and set fire to their buildings. A certain presbyter also — because of his own free and unconstrained will he chose the unity of our communion — they snatched from his house and monstrously beat at their pleasure, rolled him even in a filthy mire, clothed him in reeds, and after displaying him (a man to some to be pitied, to some to be laughed at) in the parade of their crime, led him away whither they would, and scarcely after twelve days released him.

Whereupon Proculianus, having been convened by municipal acts by our bishop, when they had feigned to shrink from investigating the cause, and when he was convened again immediately, declared in the acts that he would say nothing further. And today those who did this are still your presbyters, over and above terrifying us and, as far as they could, persecuting us. Nor yet did our bishop complain to the emperors about these injuries and persecutions which the Catholic Church in our region then endured. But a council having been held, it was decided that you should be peaceably approached, so that, if it could be done, you might have a conference among yourselves, and, error being removed, fraternal charity might rejoice in the bond of peace.

And in that very meeting, what Proculianus first answered — that you would hold a council and there see what you ought to answer — and then what afterwards, when on account of his own promise he was convened anew, he expressed in the acts, refusing the peaceful conference: the acts themselves will instruct your gravity. Then, when the notorious savagery of your clergy and Circumcellions did not cease, his cause was pleaded, and Crispinus was judged a heretic; nor, through Catholic gentleness, was he suffered to be smitten with the penalty of ten pounds of gold which had been established by the emperors against heretics — and yet he thought he should appeal to the emperors.

And that his appeal was answered as it was — did not the preceding wickedness of your people and that very appeal of his extort that it should come to pass? Nor yet, even after that rescript, when our bishops interceded before the emperor, was he mulcted with the same condemnation of gold. But by the counsel of our bishop they sent legates to the court, to obtain that not all the bishops and clergy of your party should be held liable to that same condemnation of ten pounds of gold which was established against all heretics, but only those in whose places the Catholic Church suffered some acts of violence from your people.

But when the legates had thus come to Rome, the horrible and most recent scars of the Catholic bishop of Bagai had already so moved the emperor, that such laws were sent as indeed were sent. When these had come into Africa, since you were being pressed assuredly not to evil but to good, what ought you to have done except also to send to our bishops, so that, in the manner in which they themselves had convened you, so they might be convened by you, and rather that the truth might appear by conference? But not only did you not do this, but your people now do us worse evils. Not only do they batter us with cudgels and cut us down with iron, but they even, with an incredible contrivance of crime, cast lime mixed with vinegar into our eyes to put them out.

Plundering our houses besides, they have fashioned for themselves huge and terrible weapons, armed with which they run about through various places, threatening and gasping for slaughter, plundering, burnings, blindings. Compelled by these things, we have complained to you first, that your gravity may consider how many of you — nay, all of you who say that you suffer persecution — sit secure under those seemingly terrible laws of the Catholic emperors, in your own possessions and in others', while we suffer such unheard-of evils from your people. You say you suffer persecution, and we are cut down by your armed men with cudgels and iron; you say you suffer persecution, and our houses are laid waste by your armed men through plundering;