Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 39/118

『Rejoice, O barren one who bears not; break forth and cry out, you who travail not, for many are the children of the desolate more than of her who has a husband; for the Lord has said. Enlarge the place of your tent and fix your curtains; there is no reason to spare; stretch out the cords further and strengthen the strong stakes; extend them again and again to the right and to the left. For your seed shall inherit the nations, and the cities that were desolate you shall inhabit. There is no reason to fear, for you shall prevail, nor be ashamed that you were detestable; for you shall forget the confusion forever, you shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood.』

『For I am the Lord who made you; the Lord is His name; and He who delivers you, He is the God of Israel, and shall be called the God of the whole earth.』 We do not know what you say about traitors, whom you could never convict, never point out. I do not say that your own men are rather detected and confessed and made manifest in such a crime; what does it concern us about others' burdens, except that we correct whom we can, whether by rebuke or by whatever discipline in the spirit of gentleness and the diligence of charity; but those whom we are not strong enough to correct—even if necessity compels, for the sake of the salvation of the rest, that they share God's sacraments with us—we nonetheless do not share in their sins, which does not happen except by consenting and favoring?

For thus in this world—in which the Catholic Church is spread abroad through all nations, which the Lord calls His field—we tolerate them, as it were tares among the wheat, or in this threshing-floor of unity as chaff mixed with grain, or within the nets of the word and sacrament as bad fish enclosed with the good, until the time of harvest or of winnowing or of the shore, lest for their sake we uproot the wheat also, or purge the bare grains from the separated floor before the time, not to be put into the granary but to be cast out to be gathered by birds; or, with the nets broken through by schisms, while we beware, as it were, of bad fish, we go out into the sea of ruinous liberty.

For on account of this, by these and other similar likenesses, the Lord confirmed the tolerance of His servants, lest, while the good think themselves defiled by admixture with the bad, through human and rash dissensions they either destroy the little ones or the little ones perish. And this the heavenly Master so far forewarned must be guarded against, that He made the people secure even about wicked prelates, lest for their sake the chair of saving doctrine be deserted, in which even the wicked are compelled to say good things. For the things they say are not their own, but God's, who has placed in the chair of unity the doctrine of truth. Accordingly He, the truthful One and Truth itself, says concerning prelates who do their own evil deeds and speak God's good things: 「What they say, do; but what they do, refuse to do;」

for they say and do not do.」 He surely would not say: 「What they do, refuse to do,」 unless the things they do were manifestly evil. Let us not, then, perish in evil dissension on account of the wicked—although we could show, if you wish, that your forefathers were not detesters of the wicked but accusers of the innocent. But whoever and whatever sort those men were, let them bear their own burdens. Behold the Scriptures common to us, behold where we have known Christ, behold where we have known the Church. If you hold Christ Himself, why do you not hold the Church herself? If in Christ Himself, whom you read and do not see, you nevertheless believe on account of the truth of the Scriptures, why do you deny the Church, which you both read and see?

By saying these things to you and by urging you to this good of peace and unity and charity, we have been made your enemies, and you threaten us, because you will kill us who speak the truth to you and who, so far as we can, do not permit you to perish in error. May God avenge us upon you, so that He may kill that very error of yours within you, and you may rejoice with us in the truth. Amen. 106. TO HIS BELOVED LORD AND BROTHER MACROBIUS, AUGUSTINE. I have heard that you are planning to rebaptize a certain subdeacon of ours. Do not do it; so may you live to God, so may you please God, so may you not have the sacraments of Christ in vain, so may you not be separated forever from the body of Christ. Do not, I beg you, brother; for your own sake I rather beg you. At least attend a little to what I say.

Felicianus of Musti condemned Primianus of Carthage, and in turn was himself also condemned by him. For a long time Felicianus was in the sacrilegious schism of Maximianus, and there through his churches he baptized many—now, together with Primianus, he is your bishop, but you rebaptize no one baptized after him. By what license, then, do you think that those baptized after us must still be rebaptized? Solve this question for me, and rebaptize me; but if you cannot solve it, spare another's soul, spare your own. Or if you charge that I have spoken falsely about Felicianus, demand that I prove it; certainly, if I do not prove it, then do what you think. I add even this: if I do not prove it, let me not be a bishop of my own communion; but if I do prove it, do not be an enemy of your own salvation.

I pray, lord brother, that you may be at peace with us. CVII. TO THE MOST BLESSED AND VENERABLE FATHER AUGUSTINE, GREATLY TO BE LONGED FOR, MAXIMUS AND THEODORUS SEND GREETING TO THEIR LORD. In accordance with the command of your Holiness we went to bishop Macrobius. When we brought to him the letter of your Beatitude, at first he refused, lest it should be read to him. Then at last, moved by our urging, he was willing to have it read out to him; and when it had been read through he said: 'I cannot but receive those who come to me and grant to them the faith which they have asked for.' But when we asked him what he had to say concerning the case of Primianus, he said that, being but recently ordained, he could not be the judge of his own father, but must abide in that which he had received from his predecessors.

This we felt bound to make known to your Holiness by this letter. May the Lord preserve your Beatitude for us, lord father. CVIII. TO HIS BELOVED LORD AND BROTHER MACROBIUS, AUGUSTINE. When my dearest sons, honourable men, had brought to your Benevolence my letter, in which I admonished and entreated you not to rebaptize our subdeacon, they wrote back to me that you had answered: 'I cannot but receive those who come to me and grant to them the faith which they have asked for.'

And yet, if there comes to you one who was baptized in your communion, who had long been separated from you, and who through ignorance supposes that he must be baptized anew and requests it, when you have inquired and learned where he was baptized, you do indeed receive him as he comes, and yet you do not give him the faith he asks for, but rather teach the man that he already has what he seeks; nor do you heed the words of one who errs, but bring to bear the zeal of one who corrects him. His own error, therefore, accuses one who wrongly gives what ought no longer to be given and who violates the sacrament that has already been given; it does not excuse the one who asks. Tell me then, I beg you, how does he not possess, who has asked of you that which he had already received through me?

If it be on account of an alien water and an alien fount — as those are wont to say who do not understand why it is written: 'Keep thyself from strange water, and drink not of a strange fountain' — then when Felicianus was separated from you into the party of Maximianus, being dragged along as an 'adulterer of truth, a chain of sacrilege' (as the words of your own council declare), if he had carried off your fount with him, what was the fount in which, after he had separated himself, you baptized your own people? But if he had baptized in an alien fount, why did you not rebaptize after him? For even now your bishop sits together with Primianus, both condemned by him and his condemner.

But, as our people who saw you in this matter have informed me by their letter, when they asked what you had to say on this point, you answered that, being but recently ordained, you could not be the judge of your own father's deeds, but must abide in that which you had received from your predecessors. At this indeed I grieved for your predicament, since I judge you to be, as I hear, a young man of good disposition. For what compels you to this answer save the constraint of a bad cause? But if you would attend, my brother, if you would think rightly, if you would fear God, no constraint compels a man to persevere in a bad cause. For this answer of yours does not resolve the question I put to you, but rather absolves our cause from every calumny of your pleading.

For you say that, being but recently ordained, you cannot be the judge of your own father's deeds, but must abide in that which you received from your predecessors. Why then do we not rather abide in the Church, which — as Scripture bears witness — beginning from Jerusalem and bearing fruit and increasing through all nations, we have received from the Lord Christ through the apostles, and are not judged concerning the deeds of I know not what fathers, which are said to have been committed nearly a hundred years ago? For if you dare not judge concerning your own father, still set in this life, whom you can question, why is it said to me that I should judge concerning one long dead before ever I was born?

Why is it said to so many Christian nations that they should pass judgment on the deeds of certain African traditores who died so many years ago — men whom, even while they lived, so many Christians then living, set in the remotest lands, could neither hear of nor know? You who dare not judge Primianus, who remains and is known to you, why do you wish to lay upon me the burden of judging Caecilianus, ancient and unknown? If you do not judge your own fathers for their deeds, why do you judge your brothers for the deeds of others? Or do you perchance deny that we are brothers? But we do better to heed the Holy Spirit commanding through the prophet: 'Hear, ye that tremble at the word of the Lord:'

'Say ye to those who hate you and who detest you: You are our brethren, that the name of the Lord may be glorified and may appear to them in gladness, but they themselves shall be ashamed.' For truly, if the name of the Lord were dearer to men than the names of men, would Christ, who cries, 'My peace I give unto you,' be divided among His members through those who say, 'I indeed am of Paul, but I of Apollos, and I truly of Cephas,' and be torn asunder through the names of men? Would Christ be blown away in His own baptism — He of whom it is said, 'This is he that baptizeth,' He of whom it is said, 'Christ loved His Church and gave Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it by the washing of water in the word'?

Would He then be blown away in His very own washing, if the name of the Lord, whose baptism it is, were dearer than the name of men, concerning whom you say: 'It is holy which he gives, not because he gives it'? And yet your own colleagues, when they willed it, attended rather to the truth, and held that not only the baptism which Primianus gave in your communion, but also that which Felicianus gave in the sacrilegious schism of Maximianus, was holy for the sake of the gladness of the Lord's honour; and they did not dare, when he was restored, to violate the character — not only that which he himself had received among you, but also that which as a deserter he had stamped upon others outside you — because they recognized it as the King's mark.

Concerning this so good a deed of theirs you are unwilling to pass judgment, where you ought praiseworthily to imitate them; and you follow their judgment in that for which they deserve to be detested by all. You fear to judge concerning Primianus, lest you be forced to hear something to blame; nay rather, judge, and there you will be the more able to find something to praise. For it was not what Primianus did wrongly that we wished you to recall, but what he did excellently: he who, in receiving those whom his condemner had baptized in a most wicked separation, corrected the error of men, did not destroy the sacraments of God; he acknowledged the good of Christ even in malignant men, but he amended the evil of men without violating the good of Christ.

Or if this deed displeases you, at least attend to this, at least prudently, with your good natural disposition, take note of this: that you do not judge one single Primianus concerning the very deeds of Primianus, and yet you judge the whole Christian world concerning the deeds of Caecilianus. You fear lest it pollute you if you should know something you would not dare to punish; then absolve the nations, which could not even know that which you accuse. Nor yet was this the deed of Primianus alone; you know, in as great a measure I suppose as I do:

nearly a hundred of your bishops, conspiring with Maximianus in a damnable faction, dared to condemn Primianus; and, as the words of its decree resound, the council of three hundred and ten at Bagai 'hurled the thunderbolt of sentence from the bosom of peace against Maximianus, the rival of the faith, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother Church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram.' To him were joined, without any delay of condemnation, twelve others who had been present at his ordination when he was raised up against Primianus; but to the rest, lest too great a cutting-off should be made, a delay for returning was granted, a day being appointed, with their honours preserved, if they should return within the term of time.

Nor did the three hundred and ten fear to recall to their college men accused of so great a sacrilege of Maximianus, looking perhaps to what is written: 'Charity covereth a multitude of sins.' For while the time of the delay was being granted, ... they baptized outside your communion whomever they could baptize; for unless they had been outside, they could not, by a delay being granted, be invited to return. Then both before the delay was ended and after it had ended, those twelve, condemned together with Maximianus, were accused before three or more proconsuls, that they might be driven from their sees by judicial force.

Among these was Felicianus of Musti, of whom I now treat, and Praetextatus of Assuras, lately deceased, in whose place, once he was condemned, another had already been ordained. These two men not one Primianus alone but many of your fellow-bishops received back with their honours intact — when they were celebrating with a most frequent multitude the birthday festival of Optatus of Thamugadi — after their condemnation without delay, after the delay granted to the rest had expired, after the accusation published even with forensic clamour before so many magistrates; and after them they baptized no one. If this assertion is resisted, or if any of these things is denied, at the peril of my episcopate let me be required to prove what I say. The case is finished, brother Macrobius; God did this, God willed this;

it was of that hidden providence that in the case of Maximianus a mirror of correction should be held out to you, so that all the criminal calumny against us — nay rather against the Church of Christ, growing throughout the whole world — I will not say your calumny, lest I seem insulting to you, but at any rate that of your people, should be brought to an end. For there remained nothing at all of those things which are wont to be brought forth against us, as though from the Scriptures, by men who do not understand. For they have been accustomed to have this in their mouths: 'Keep thyself from strange water'; but it is answered: 'It is not strange water, although it be among strangers,' just as neither was that water of Maximianus strange, from which you did not keep yourselves. Again it is put to us: 'They are become to me as lying water that hath no faith'; but it is answered:

This was said of feigning men who do not pertain to the sacraments of God, which cannot be lies even among liars. For assuredly those men were liars who, as you yourselves declare, condemned Primianus on false charges; and yet the water was not a lie, in which, separated from you, they baptized those whom they could. For when you received that same water in those whom Felicianus and Praetextatus baptized outside, you perceived that it was truthful even among liars. It is put to us: 'He that is baptized by a dead man, what profit is his washing?' It is answered: If this is written of the baptism by which those baptize whom the Church has cast out as dead, it did not say that this washing does not exist, but that it profits nothing — which we also say.

Yet nevertheless, when such a one comes with it to the Church, what harmed him outside will profit him within — not when the baptism itself is repeated, but when the baptized man is corrected — just as the council of Bagai speaks of Maximianus and his associates as cast out like dead men from your congregation of communion: 'A truth-telling sling,' it says, 'has cast the shipwrecked limbs of certain men, wrecked upon the rough rocks; after the manner of the Egyptians the shores are full of the corpses of the perishing, for whom the punishment is the greater in death itself, in that after their soul has been wrenched away by the avenging waters, they do not even find burial.'

Out of this throng of the dead you received back Felicianus and Praetextatus in their honours, as though restored to life, and you did not rebaptize those whom they had baptized in that death, because you acknowledged that the baptism of Christ given outside does not profit the dead through the dead, yet that the very same profits those within who are restored to life. It is put to us: 'Let not the oil of the sinner make fat my head'; it is answered that this is written to be understood of the smooth and deceitful assentation of a flattering fawner, because their head is anointed and grows when sinners are praised in the desires of their soul, and those who have done iniquity are blessed. Which is sufficiently apparent from the preceding verse; for the whole sentence is set thus: 'The righteous shall correct me in mercy and reprove me;'

'but let not the oil of the sinner make fat my head.' He said he preferred to be restrained by the truthful austerity of one who shows mercy, than to be exalted by the deceiving praise of one who deceives. But in whatever way you may choose to understand this, certainly in those whom Felicianus and Praetextatus baptized in the sacrilege of Maximianus, either you received the oil of sinners, or else you acknowledged that even when administered by sinners the oil given was Christ's; for assuredly they were sinners, when it was said of them in the council of Bagai: 'Know that they are condemned as guilty of a notorious crime, who by the deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel from collected dregs.' Let this suffice to have said concerning baptism.

But the cause of your separation is wont to be coloured over by these testimonies, which are not understood. It is written: 'Do not communicate in the sins of others'; but it is answered that he communicates in the sins of others who consents to evil deeds, not he who, being himself wheat, nevertheless — for as long as the threshing-floor is being threshed — together with the chaff shares in the divine sacraments. For it is written: 'Go out from thence, and touch not the unclean thing,' and: 'He that toucheth what is polluted, is polluted'; but by the consent of the will, by which the first man was deceived, not by the association of the body, by which even Judas kissed Christ. For those fishes indeed, of whom the Lord speaks in the Gospel, good and bad, He fits together within the same nets, that is, in the unity of the congregation.

Until the end of the age — which is prefigured by the name of the shore — they swim together, mingled in body but separated in morals. For it is written: 'A little leaven corrupteth the whole lump' — but the leaven of those who consent to evildoers, not of those who, according to the prophet Ezekiel, groan and mourn for the iniquities of the people of God which are done in their midst. This mixture of the wicked Daniel too bemoans, and the three men also groaned; the one bears witness to this in prayer, the others in the furnace; and yet they did not separate themselves by bodily disjunction from the unity of the people whose sins they were confessing. All the prophets — what and how great things did they say against the very people among whom they were!

And yet they did not seek for themselves another people, among whom they might be, by bodily withdrawal or segregation. The apostles themselves tolerated Judas, a devil mingled among them until the end, in which he even destroyed himself by the noose, without any contamination of themselves — so much so that the Lord said to them, on account of that man's presence among them: 'And ye are clean, but not all.' Nor, on account of his uncleanness, was the lump of unlike morals in them corrupted, as though by leaven. Nor can it rightly be affirmed that his wickedness lay hidden from them, save perhaps in that by which he was even to betray the Lord; for they themselves wrote of him that he was a thief and carried off all that was put into the Lord's purses. Nor did anyone slander them with that testimony:

'Thou sawest a thief and didst run with him'; for one runs together in the deeds of the wicked not by the communion of sacraments but by the consent to those same deeds. The apostle Paul — how greatly does he complain of false brethren! By whose bodily mingling nevertheless he was not defiled, being kept apart by the diversity of a pure heart. For of certain men whom he knew to be envious, he rejoices that Christ is preached all the same: yet envy is assuredly a devilish vice.

Finally, bishop Cyprian, nearer to our times when the Church had already been more copiously spread abroad — by whose authority you sometimes attempt to confirm the repetition of baptism, although that council or those writings, if they are truly his and not, as some think, composed and forged under his name, themselves contain how greatly he loved unity, and how, by a most open exhortation, he counselled that even those against whom he held an opinion should be tolerated within it, attending above all to this: that the bond of peace should not be broken; because, if into either party, to whom something other than the truth holds appears, some human error should creep in, charity, with fraternal concord preserved, covers even a multitude of sins.

This unity he so held, so loved, that even if he had thought anything otherwise than the matter is concerning the sacrament of baptism, God would reveal that too to him — just as the apostle says to the brethren walking in charity: 'As many therefore as are perfect, let us be thus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, this also God shall reveal unto you. Nevertheless, whereunto we have already attained, in that let us also walk.' To this is added that the fruitful shoot, if it still had anything to be purged, was purged even by the glorious sickle of martyrdom — not because he was slain for the name of Christ, but because he was slain for the name of Christ in the bosom of unity. For he himself wrote and most confidently asserts that those who are outside unity, even if they die for that name, can be slain but cannot be crowned.

So greatly avails the charity of unity — whether kept or violated — for the blotting out or the confirming of sins. This same Cyprian, therefore, when, through the persecution of impious heathen, the Church having been laid waste, he lamented many fallen ones — attributing this to the evil morals of those who were living in the very Church in a damnable manner of life — groans over the morals of his own colleagues and does not cover his groaning with silence, but says that they had advanced into such great covetousness that, 'while their brethren in the Church were even hungering, they wished to have silver in abundance, seized estates by treacherous frauds, and increased their usury by multiplying interest.'

I suppose that Cyprian was not defiled by the avarice, rapines, and usury of these men, and yet was separated from them not by bodily segregation but by the dissimilarity of life. He touched the altar with them, but he did not touch their unclean life, when he thus blamed and reproved it. For things that please are indeed touched; things that displease are repelled. And therefore to that most excellent bishop there was lacking neither the censure by which he might restrain sins, nor the caution by which he might guard the bond of unity. There is read, in a certain letter of his which he wrote to the presbyter Maximus, a clear and open sentence on this matter, in which, holding the prophetic rule, he altogether commanded that the unity of the Church ought in no way to be deserted on account of the admixture of the wicked.

'For although,' he says, 'there seem to be tares in the Church, yet neither our faith nor our charity ought to be hindered, so that, because we discern that there are tares in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church. We must only labour that we may be able to be wheat.'

This law of charity, promulgated from the mouth of Christ the Lord — for these similitudes are His own, both of the tares to be tolerated in the unity of the field throughout the world until the time of harvest, and of the bad fishes to be tolerated within the same nets until the time of the shore — this law of charity, therefore, if your forefathers had retained in mind, if they had pondered it with the fear of God, they would not, on account of Caecilianus and I know not what Africans (whether, as you suppose, truly criminal, or, as is rather to be believed, assailed by calumnies), have torn themselves by a wicked separation from the Church — which Cyprian himself described as stretching forth its rays through all nations and extending its branches through the whole earth with the abundance of its richness — they would not, I say, have severed themselves from so many Christian nations, which utterly knew not who, or what, or against whom they were objecting; which is not done save either from private rancour rather than common utility, or from that vice which Cyprian himself consequently reckons up and commemorates as to be avoided.

For when he had enjoined that, on account of the tares which are discerned in the Church, the Church is not to be deserted, he goes on and adds: 'We must only labour that we may be able to be wheat, that when the wheat shall begin to be stored in the Lord's granaries, we may reap fruit for our work and labour. The apostle in his epistle says: But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earthenware, and some indeed unto honour, some unto dishonour. Let us give diligence and, as far as we can, let us labour, that we may be a vessel of gold or of silver. But to break the earthen vessels is permitted to the Lord alone, to whom also a rod of iron has been given.

A servant cannot be greater than his lord; nor let anyone claim for himself that which the Father has granted to the Son alone, so as to think that he can either bear the fan openly for winnowing and purging the threshing-floor, and even the winnowing-fan, or separate all the tares from the wheat by human judgment. This is a proud presumption and a sacrilegious obstinacy, which a depraved fury assumes to itself; and while they ever assume to themselves something more than gentle justice demands, they perish from the Church; and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their very swelling, they lose the light of truth.' What is clearer than this attestation of Cyprian, what is more truthful? You see with how great an evangelical and apostolic light it shines forth;

you see that those who, as though offended for their own righteousness by the iniquities of others, desert the unity of the Church, are themselves rather the most iniquitous; you see that they are the tares outside, who were unwilling to tolerate the tares in the unity of the Lord's field; you see that they are the chaff outside, who were unwilling to tolerate such things in the unity of the great house; you see how truthfully it is written: 'The evil son calls himself righteous, but washes not his own going-forth' — his going-forth, that is, by which he goes out from the Church, he does not cleanse, does not excuse, does not defend, does not show to be pure and without crime;