Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 84/118

For where you may hope, through our ministry, to know what you desire, we have said enough; and as for those same books, if you do not yet have them, that you may be able to have them, we have taken care, to the extent of our slender means, through the holy brother and my fellow-presbyter Firmus — who loves you greatly and has commended you to us to be loved more diligently — that he may render thanks for your mutual love. CLXXXV. (ON THE CORRECTION OF THE DONATISTS.) I praise and congratulate and admire, dearly beloved son Boniface, that amid the cares of wars and arms you vehemently desire to know those things which are of God. Truly from this it appears that you serve, even by your very military valour, the faith which you have in Christ.

Therefore, to convey briefly to your love what difference there is between the error of the Arians and that of the Donatists: the Arians say that the substances of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are diverse, but the Donatists do not say this; rather, they confess one substance of the Trinity. And if some of them have said that the Son is less than the Father is, yet they have not denied that He is of the same substance; and very many among them say that they altogether believe concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit what the catholic Church believes. Nor is that question in dispute with them; but they wrangle unhappily only about communion, and, rebels against the unity of Christ, they wield hostile enmities through the perversity of their error. Sometimes, however, as we have heard,

some of them, wishing to win over the Goths to their side when they see them able to do something, say that they believe the same thing which those also believe. But they are overcome by the authority of their own forebears, since not even Donatus himself is affirmed to have believed thus — Donatus, of whose party they boast to belong. But let not these things trouble you, dearly beloved son.

For heresies and scandals were foretold as things to come, that we might be instructed among enemies, and that thus both our faith and our love might be able to be more approved: faith, indeed, that we be not deceived by them; and love, that we may take counsel even for the correcting of them, as far as we can — not only insisting that they harm not the weak and that they be freed from their nefarious error, but also praying for them, that the Lord may open to them understanding and that they may understand the Scriptures. For in the holy books, where the Lord Christ is made manifest, there also His Church is declared. But these men, by a marvellous blindness, since they know Christ Himself apart from the Scriptures, yet do not recognize His Church by the authority of the divine writings, but fabricate her from the emptiness of human calumnies.

They acknowledge Christ with us in that which is read: 'They pierced my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones; they themselves indeed considered and gazed upon me; they divided my garments among themselves, and upon my vesture they cast lots' — yet they will not acknowledge the Church in that which follows a little after: 'All the ends of the earth shall be reminded and shall be converted to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in His sight, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and He shall have dominion over the nations.' They acknowledge Christ with us in that which is read: 'The Lord said to me: You are my Son, today have I begotten you' — and they will not acknowledge the Church in that which follows:

'Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.' They acknowledge Christ with us in that which the Lord Himself speaks in the Gospel: 'It behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day' — and they will not acknowledge the Church in that which follows: 'And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.' And innumerable are the testimonies of the holy books which I ought not to cram into this book. In which, just as the Lord Christ appears, whether according to His divinity equal to the Father —

as in 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' — or according to the lowliness of the flesh He assumed, since 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us' — so also appears His Church, not in Africa alone, as these men rave with most shameless emptiness, but diffused throughout the whole globe of the earth. For they set their own quarrels above the divine testimonies, because in the case of Caecilianus, once bishop of the Carthaginian Church, against whom they brought charges which they could neither prove nor can prove, they divided themselves from the catholic Church, that is, from the unity of all nations. And even if the things charged against Caecilianus were true and could sometime be shown to us as well, we would anathematize him, now dead as he is.

Yet nevertheless the Church of Christ, which is not fashioned by contentious opinions but is proved by divine attestations, we ought not to abandon on account of any man whatsoever, because it is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man. For — and this I would say without injury to that man's innocence — if Caecilianus sinned, Christ did not on that account lose His inheritance. It is easy for a man to believe things true or false about another man; but it is a matter of wicked shamelessness, on account of the crimes of a man which you cannot show to the whole world, to be willing to condemn the communion of the whole world. Whether Caecilianus was ordained by traditors of the divine books, I do not know; I did not see it, I heard it from his enemies:

nothing is recited to me from the law of God, nothing from the proclamation of the prophets, nothing from the holiness of the psalms, nothing from Christ's apostle, nothing from Christ's own utterance. But the Church diffused throughout the whole globe of the earth, with which the party of Donatus holds no communion, the testimonies of all the Scriptures proclaim with harmonious voice. 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed,' the law of God said. 'From the rising of the sun even to its setting a pure sacrifice is offered to my name, for my name is glorified among the nations,' God said through the prophet. 'He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth,' God said through the psalm. 'Bearing fruit and increasing in the whole world,' God said through the apostle:

'You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth,' the Son of God said with His own mouth. Caecilianus, bishop of the Carthaginian Church, is accused by human litigations; the Church of Christ, established among all nations, is commended by divine voices. Piety itself, truth, and love do not permit us to receive against Caecilianus the testimony of those men whom we do not see in the Church to which God bears witness; for they who do not follow the divine testimonies have forfeited the weight of human testimony. I add

that they themselves referred the case of Caecilianus to the judgment of the emperor Constantine by accusing him; nay rather, after episcopal judgments, where they could not crush him, they dragged Caecilianus himself before the examination of the aforesaid emperor as most obstinate persecutors. And that which they now reprehend in us — in order to deceive the ignorant, saying that Christians ought not to demand anything from Christian emperors against the enemies of Christ — they themselves did first. This too they did not dare to deny in the conference which we held together at Carthage; nay, they even dared to boast that before the emperor their elders had criminally prosecuted Caecilianus, adding besides the lie that they had there defeated him and caused him to be condemned.

How then are they themselves not persecutors, who, since by accusing they persecuted Caecilianus and were overcome by him, wished to arrogate to themselves a false glory by a most shameless lie, not only not reckoning it a fault but even vaunting it to their own praise, if they could prove that Caecilianus had been condemned upon the accusation of their forebears? But in what manner they were in the said conference utterly baffled by every means — since the proceedings are very lengthy, and for you, occupied with other matters necessary to the Roman peace, it is much to have them read — perhaps an abridgment of them can be read to you; which I believe my brother and fellow-bishop Optatus has, or, if he does not have it, can most easily obtain it from the church of Sitifis.

since even this book itself is perhaps already, by its own length, burdensome to your cares. For this has befallen the Donatists which befell the accusers of holy Daniel. For just as against those men the lions, so against these the laws which they had wished to use to oppress the innocent were turned back — save that, on account of the mercy of Christ, these laws are rather on their behalf, which seem to them adverse, since many through them have been corrected and are daily corrected, and give thanks that they are corrected and freed from that raging ruin; and those who hated now love, and confess that laws which were troublesome to them were most salutary.

As much as in their madness they used to detest them, so much, upon receiving sanity, do they rejoice in them; and toward those still remaining, with whom they were about to perish, they are now stirred up, together with us, in like love, that we may equally press on lest those others perish. For a physician is troublesome to a raging madman, and a father to an undisciplined son — the one by binding, the other by chastising, but both by loving. If, however, they should neglect them and permit them to perish, that false gentleness would rather be cruelty. For if a horse and a mule, which have no understanding, resist with bites and kicks the men by whom their wounds needing treatment are handled — and although among their teeth and hooves men are often endangered and sometimes injured, yet they do not abandon them

until through pains and medicinal troubles they recall them to health — how much more must a man not be abandoned by a man, and a brother by a brother, lest he perish forever, seeing that, once corrected, he can understand how great a benefit was being conferred upon him, when he was complaining that he was suffering persecution! As the apostle therefore says, let us, untiring, while we have time, work good toward all.

Those who can, by the sermons of catholic preachers; those who can, by the laws of catholic princes — partly through those who obey divine admonitions, partly through those who obey imperial commands — let all be called to salvation, let all be recalled from ruin. For emperors too, when for falsehood against the truth they establish evil laws, those who believe well are proved and those who persevere are crowned. But when for the truth against falsehood they establish good laws, the raging are terrified and the understanding are corrected. Whoever therefore is unwilling to obey the laws of emperors which are enacted against the truth of God, acquires a great reward;

but whoever is unwilling to obey the laws of emperors which are enacted for the truth of God, acquires a great punishment. For even in the times of the prophets all the kings who among the people of God did not prohibit nor overthrow the things which had been instituted against God's precept are blamed; and those who did prohibit and overthrow them are praised above the merits of the others. And King Nebuchadnezzar, although he was a servant of idols, established a sacrilegious law that an image should be adored; but those who were unwilling to obey his impious enactment acted piously and faithfully.

Yet the same king, corrected by a divine miracle, established a pious and praiseworthy law for the truth, that whoever should utter blasphemy against the true God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should utterly perish together with his house. If any despised this law and suffered that which had been decreed, they deservedly suffered it. They ought to say what these men say — that they are just, because under the king's law they suffered persecution. Which indeed they would say, if they were as mad as these men are mad, who divide the members of Christ and blow away the sacraments of Christ and boast of persecution, because they are prohibited from doing these things by the laws of emperors, which they established for the unity of Christ.

And they falsely boast of their innocence, and the glory of martyrs, which they cannot receive from the Lord, they seek from men. But the true martyrs are those of whom the Lord says: 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake.' Therefore not those who suffer persecution for iniquity and for the impious division of Christian unity, but those who suffer persecution for righteousness — these are the true martyrs. For Hagar too suffered persecution from Sarah; and she who inflicted it was holy, she who suffered it was unjust. Is holy David, whom the unjust Saul persecuted, to be compared to this persecution which Hagar suffered? Very greatly indeed does it differ — not because he suffered, but because he suffered for righteousness' sake.

And the Lord Himself was crucified with robbers; but though suffering joined them, their cause separated them. Therefore in the psalm that voice is to be understood as the voice of true martyrs wishing themselves to be distinguished from false martyrs: 'Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from a nation that is not holy.' He did not say 'distinguish my penalty,' but 'distinguish my cause.' For the penalty of the impious can be alike, but the cause of the martyrs is unlike; whose voice this too is: 'They have persecuted me unjustly, help me.' Therefore he judged himself worthy to be justly helped, because they were persecuting him unjustly; for if they were justly persecuting him, he would have had to be corrected, not helped.

But if they think that no one can justly persecute anyone — as in the conference they said that that is the true Church which suffers persecution, not that which inflicts it — I pass over saying what I mentioned above: that, if it is so as they say, Caecilianus belonged to the true Church when their forebears were persecuting him by accusation even up to the emperor's judgment. For we say that he belonged to the true Church, not because he suffered persecution, but because he suffered it for righteousness' sake; and that they were alienated from the Church, not because they persecuted, but because they persecuted unjustly. We therefore say this;

but if they do not inquire into the causes why anyone inflicts persecution or why he suffers it, but think this to be the sign of a true Christian — if he does not inflict persecution but suffers it — then without doubt they place Caecilianus within that definition, who did not inflict but suffered; and they cast their own forebears out of that definition, who inflicted, and did not suffer. But this, as I said, I pass over: this I say — if the true Church is that very one which suffers persecution, not that which inflicts it, let them ask of the apostle which Church Sarah signified when she inflicted persecution upon the handmaid. For he says that our free mother, the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the true Church of God, was prefigured in that woman who afflicted the handmaid.

But if we discuss it more carefully, Hagar rather persecuted Sarah by her pride than Sarah persecuted her by restraining her: for the one was doing an injury, the other was imposing the discipline of pride. Then I ask: if the good and holy inflict persecution on no one, but only suffer it, whose do they think is the voice in the psalm where it is read: 'I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not turn back until they fail'? If therefore we wish to speak or to acknowledge the truth, there is an unjust persecution which the impious inflict upon the Church of Christ, and there is a just persecution which the Church of Christ inflicts upon the impious. She therefore is blessed, who suffers persecution for righteousness' sake; but those are wretched, who suffer persecution for unrighteousness.

Accordingly, she persecutes by loving, they by raging; she that she may correct, they that they may overthrow; she that she may recall from error, they that they may cast headlong into error. In short, she persecutes her enemies and lays hold of them until they fail in vanity, that they may profit in truth. But they, repaying evil for good, because we take counsel for them unto eternal salvation, endeavour even to take from us our temporal life, so loving homicides that they perpetrate them upon themselves, when they cannot commit them upon others. For just as the love of the Church labours to free them from that ruin, so that none of them may die,

so their fury labours either to kill us, that they may feed the lust of their cruelty, or even themselves, lest they seem to have lost the power of killing men. But those who do not know their custom think that they only kill themselves now, when, by the occasion of these laws which have been established for unity, so great a people is freed from their most insane domination. But those who know, and know what they were wont to do even before these laws, do not marvel at their deaths, but recall their manners — especially when, while the worship of idols still flourished, huge throngs came to the most crowded solemnities of the pagans, not to break the idols, but to be killed by the worshippers of idols.

For that thing, if they had wished to do it with lawful power granted, then if anything had befallen them, they could have had some kind of shadow of the name of martyrs; but they came for this alone, that with the idols left intact they themselves might be slain. For each of the strongest young idol-worshippers used to vow to those very idols how many he would kill. Some even thrust themselves upon armed travellers to be slaughtered, terribly threatening that they would strike them down unless they were killed by them. Sometimes too they violently extorted from passing judges that they might be struck by the executioners or by their staff.

Whence a certain man is reported to have mocked them thus: he ordered them to be bound as though to be struck, and then dismissed, and so, bloodless and unharmed, he escaped their onslaught. And indeed, to kill themselves over sheer precipices, through waters and flames, was for them a daily sport. For the devil taught them these three kinds of death, so that, wishing to die when they did not find someone whom they might terrify into striking them with his sword, they would cast themselves over rocks or give themselves up to fires and whirlpools. But who is to be believed to have taught them these things, possessing their heart, except he who suggested to our Saviour too, as though out of the law, that He should cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple? Whose suggestion they would surely have warded off from themselves, if they carried Christ the Master in their heart.

But because they gave place within themselves rather to the devil, either they thus perish in the manner of that herd of swine which the throng of demons cast down from the mountain into the sea; or, being snatched from those deaths and gathered into the pious bosom of their mother the catholic Church, they are freed in the manner in which he was freed by the Lord whom his father offered to be healed of a demon, saying that he was wont sometimes to fall into water, sometimes into fire. Whence great mercy is shown toward them, when even through these laws of emperors they are first, though unwilling, snatched from that sect, where through the doctrines of lying demons they learned these evils, so that afterwards in the catholic Church, accustomed to good precepts and morals, they may be healed.

For many of them, whose pious fervour of faith and love in the unity of Christ we now admire, give thanks to God with great joy that they lacked that error in which they had thought these evils to be goods. Which thanks they would now be unwilling to give, unless first, even unwilling, they had departed from that nefarious society. What shall we say of those who daily confess to us that they had long ago been unwilling to be catholics, but dwelt among those among whom they could not be that which they wished to be, through the weakness of fear — where, if they had said one word for the catholic faith, both they themselves and their households would have been utterly overthrown? Who is so senseless as to deny that these ought to have been succoured through imperial commands, so that they might be rescued from so great an evil, while those men...

Are those whom they feared compelled to fear, and by that same fear are they themselves either corrected, or at any rate — when they pretend that they have been corrected — do they spare the corrected, by whom they were formerly feared? But if they should wish to kill themselves, so that those who ought to be set free may not be set free, and in this way to terrify the loving concern of those who would deliver them — so that, while it is feared lest certain lost souls should perish, those who were already unwilling to perish, or who when restrained were able not to perish, should not be rescued from perdition — what is Christian charity to do here, especially since those who threaten their own voluntary and frenzied deaths are exceedingly few in comparison with the peoples to be set free? What, then, is brotherly love to do? Shall it, while it dreads the passing fires of the furnaces for a few,

abandon all men to the eternal fires of Gehenna, and leave to everlasting ruin so many who either already will, or who afterwards will be unable, to come through the Catholic peace to life eternal — merely to take precaution lest certain men die by a voluntary destruction, men who live only to hinder the salvation of others whom they do not permit to live according to the doctrine of Christ, in order to teach them at any time, according to the custom of diabolical teaching, to hasten to those voluntary deaths which alone are now feared in them? Or shall it rather preserve those whom it can, even though these perish of their own accord — those whom it cannot preserve? For it ardently longs that all should live; but it labors still more that not all should perish.

But thanks be to the Lord that among us also — not indeed in all places, but very much in most, and throughout other parts of Africa — the Catholic peace runs and has run its course without any of these deaths of madmen. Yet those deadly things happen there where there exists so frenzied and useless a breed of men, who at other times too have been accustomed to do the same. And indeed, even before these laws were sent by the Catholic emperors, the doctrine of Christ's peace and unity was gradually growing, and each man was crossing over to that side from his own party, according as he learned, and was willing, and was able — although among those men the most demented bands of lost men were disturbing the peace of the innocent in various affairs.

What master was not compelled to fear his own slave, if that slave had fled for refuge to their patronage? Who dared even to threaten a wrecker or an instigator? Who could exact anything from a storekeeper who had squandered goods, or from any debtor whatever, when he sought their aid and defense? Through fear of clubs and fires and imminent death, contracts were broken so that the worst of slaves might depart as free men. Bonds of debt extorted from debtors were given back. Whoever had despised those men's harsh words, were compelled to do what they commanded by yet harsher blows. The homes of innocent people who had offended them were either razed to the ground or consumed by fire.

Certain heads of households, born in an honorable station and reared in noble refinement, were carried off barely alive after those men's beatings, or were yoked to a mill and driven with the whip to turn it round like contemptible beasts of burden. For what help from the laws availed anything against them from the civil authorities? What official dared even breathe in their presence? What tax-collector exacted anything they did not wish exacted? Who attempted to avenge those who had been killed in their massacres, except that their own madness demanded punishment upon them? For while some terrified with death the men whose swords they provoked against themselves, so as to be struck by them, others cast themselves down over various precipices, others into the waters,

others hurled themselves into voluntary deaths through fire in every possible way, and cast forth their savage souls by the torments they inflicted upon themselves. Very many, established within that heretical superstition itself, shuddered at these things; and since they judged it enough for their own innocence that such deeds displeased them, the Catholics said to them: If these evils do not defile your innocence, how do you say that the Christian world is defiled by the false or at least unknown sins of Caecilianus? How do you, by an unspeakable crime, separate yourselves from Catholic unity as from the Lord's threshing-floor, which until the time of winnowing must needs contain both the grain to be stored in the barn and the chaff to be consumed by fire? And so a reason was rendered to some,

so that some crossed over to Catholic unity, ready to endure even the enmities of those lost men; but the greater number, though they wished to do so, nevertheless did not dare to make enemies of those men to whom so great a license of savagery had been granted. For some indeed, when they had come over to us, suffered most cruelly from them. It even happened at Carthage that certain bishops of that same party, when a deacon of theirs named Maximianus was rising up in pride against his bishop, formed a schism, and — with the party of Donatus in the populace of Carthage now divided — ordained a bishop against a bishop.

When this displeased the greater part of them, they condemned this same Maximianus together with twelve others who had been present at his ordination; but to the rest who belonged to that same fellowship of schism they granted, on a fixed day, the opportunity of returning. Afterwards, however, they received back — for the sake of their own peace, into their honors — some of those very twelve, and some of those to whom a postponement had been granted, though they returned after the appointed day; and whomever those condemned men had baptized outside their communion, they did not dare to rebaptize. This deed of theirs began to carry great weight against them on behalf of the Catholic Church, so that their mouths were utterly stopped. And when this matter, as was fitting,

was more insistently spread abroad for the healing of men's souls from schism, and wherever it could be, was shown forth by the discourses and disputations of the Catholics — that for the sake of Donatus's peace they had received back their own condemned men into full honor, and had not dared to annul the baptism which those condemned, or even postponed, men had given outside their church, and yet cast against the whole world, contrary to the peace of Christ, the contamination of the sins of I-know-not-whom, and made void the baptism given even in those churches from which the Gospel itself had come into Africa — very many were confounded, and blushing at the manifest truth were corrected more frequently than usual, and much the more, wherever some freedom breathed a little from their savagery.