Latin original · 39 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 5:3329–5:3367 (4615 verses in all)
But then those men so blazed up, and were goaded by such great stings of hatred, that against their plots and violence and most open brigandage scarcely any churches of our communion could be safe, scarcely any road secure by which to travel — for whoever should preach the Catholic peace against their frenzy, and refute their madness by the clear truth. To such a degree, indeed, was a hard condition set forth not only to laymen or clerics of any sort, but even to the Catholic bishops themselves: for either the truth had to be kept silent, or their savagery had to be endured. But if the truth were kept silent, not only would no one be freed by that silence, but many even of those men would be lost by their seduction;
but if by the preaching of the truth their fury were provoked to savagery, then — though some were set free and our own were strengthened — dread would again hinder the weak from following the truth. Since therefore the Church was afflicted by these straits, whoever thinks that all things ought rather to have been endured than that God's help should have been sought through Christian emperors, pays too little heed to the fact that no good account could be rendered for such negligence. For what they say — those who do not wish just laws to be established against their impieties — namely, that the apostles did not ask such things of the kings of the earth, they fail to consider that it was then a different time, and that all things are done in their own seasons.
For what emperor had then believed in Christ, so as to serve Him for the sake of godliness by passing laws against ungodliness — while that prophetic word was still being fulfilled: 'Why did the nations rage, and the peoples devise vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes came together as one against the Lord and against His Christ' (Ps. 2:1-2)? For not yet was that being enacted which a little later is said in the same psalm: 'And now, O kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth; serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice unto Him with trembling' (Ps. 2:10-11). How then do kings serve the Lord in fear, save by forbidding and punishing, with a religious severity, those things which are done against the Lord's commands? For a man serves in one way because he is a man, and in another because he is also a king;
for because he is a man, he serves by living faithfully; but because he is also a king, he serves by sanctioning with fitting rigor laws that command what is just and forbid the contrary — just as Hezekiah served by destroying the groves and temples of idols and those high places which had been built contrary to God's commands; just as Josiah served by himself doing such things; just as the king of the Ninevites served by compelling the whole city to appease the Lord; just as Darius served by giving the idol into Daniel's power to be broken and by casting his enemies to the lions; just as Nebuchadnezzar, of whom we have already spoken, served by forbidding with a terrible law all who were set in his kingdom from blaspheming God.
In this respect, therefore, kings serve the Lord insofar as they are kings, when they do for His service those things which they cannot do except as kings. Since then in the times of the apostles the kings did not yet serve the Lord, but were still devising vain things against Him and against His Christ, so that all the predictions of the prophets might be fulfilled, they could not then forbid impieties by laws, but rather practice them. For thus the order of the times was unfolding: that the Jews should kill the preachers of Christ, thinking they did God a service, as Christ had foretold (John 16:2), and that the nations should rage against the Christians, and that the patience of the martyrs should overcome all. But afterwards, when that began to be fulfilled which is written:
'And all the kings of the earth shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him' (Ps. 71[72]:11) — who that is sober-minded would say to kings: 'Do not care, within your kingdom, by whom the Church of your Lord is upheld or assailed; let it not concern you who wishes to be religious or sacrilegious' — kings to whom it cannot be said: 'Let it not concern you who, within your kingdom, wishes to be chaste, and who unchaste'? For why, since free will has been given to man by God, should adulteries be punished by laws and sacrileges be permitted? Or is it a lighter thing not to keep faith with God than with a wife, for the soul than for a woman? Or if those things which are committed not from contempt but from ignorance of religion are to be more mildly punished, are they on that account to be neglected?
Someone may indeed doubt whether it is better that men be led to worship God by teaching rather than compelled by fear or pain of punishment. But not because these latter are better, are therefore those who are not such to be neglected. For it has profited many — as we have proved and do prove by experience — first to be compelled by fear or pain, so that afterwards they may be able to be taught, or may follow in deed what they had already learned in words. Some set before us the sentence of a certain secular author who said: 'I believe it is better to hold children back by shame and generosity than by fear.' This indeed is true; but just as those are better whom love directs, so those are more numerous whom fear corrects. For, that answer may be made to these men from that very author, they read in him also:
'Unless compelled by an evil, you do not know how to do right' (Terence). Moreover, the divine Scripture, both on account of those better ones, said: 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear' (1 John 4:18); and on account of these inferior ones, who are the more numerous, it says: 'A stubborn servant will not be amended by words: for even if he understands, he will not obey' (Prov. 29:19). When it said that he is not amended by words, it did not command that he be abandoned, but tacitly admonished from what source he ought to be amended; otherwise it would not say, 'He will not be amended by words,' but only, 'He will not be amended.' For in another place it says that not only a servant but even an undisciplined son must be chastised with blows, and with great profit: for 'You,' it says, 'indeed strike him with the rod,
but you shall deliver his soul from death' (Prov. 23:14); and elsewhere it says: 'He who spares his rod hates his son' (Prov. 13:24). Grant me a man who with faith and true understanding says with all the strength of his soul: 'My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' (Ps. 41[42]:3) — and to such a man not only the fear of temporal punishments or of imperial laws, but not even the fear of Gehenna is necessary, since to him so desirable a good is it to cleave to God, that he not only shudders at being estranged from that felicity as at a great torment, but even bears it grievously to have it deferred. Yet nevertheless, before the good sons say, 'We have a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ' (Phil. 1:23),
many, first like bad servants and in a sense wicked runaways, are recalled to their Lord by the scourge of temporal chastisements. For who can love us more than Christ, who laid down His soul for His sheep (John 10:15)? And yet, when He had called Peter and the other apostles by a word alone, Paul — formerly Saul — who was afterwards a great builder of His Church but before a dreadful destroyer of it, He did not restrain by voice alone, but even laid low by His power; and, in order to urge on to the desiring of the light of the heart one who was raging in the darkness of unbelief, He first struck him with bodily blindness (Acts 9).
If that punishment had not existed, he would not afterwards have been healed of it; and when with open eyes he saw nothing — supposing he had kept them sound — Scripture would not have related that at the laying on of Ananias's hand, that his sight might be opened, there fell from thence, as it were, the scales by which he had been shut in (Acts 9:18). Where now is that which these men are wont to cry out: 'It is free to believe or not to believe: on whom did Christ use force? whom did He compel?' Behold, they have the apostle Paul: let them recognize in him Christ first compelling and afterwards teaching, first striking and afterwards consoling.
But it is wonderful how he who was driven to enter the Gospel by bodily punishment labored more in the Gospel than all those who were called by a word alone; and he whom a greater fear compelled to charity — his perfect charity casts out fear (1 John 4:18). Why then should the Church not compel her lost sons to return, if lost sons have compelled others to perish? Although even those whom they did not compel, but only seduced, if they be recalled into her bosom through terrible but salutary laws, their pious mother embraces them the more tenderly, and rejoices over them far more than over those whom she had never lost.
Does it not indeed pertain to pastoral diligence, when those sheep also which have strayed from the flock — not violently seized, but gently and softly led astray — and have begun to be possessed by strangers, are found, to recall them to the Lord's fold, if they are unwilling to yield, by the terrors and even the pains of scourges? Especially since, if among fugitive and robber slaves they multiply by fruitfulness, he has all the more right — he in whom the Lord's mark is acknowledged — who is in no wise violated in those whom we receive and yet do not rebaptize. For the sheep's error must be so corrected that the seal of the Redeemer be not corrupted in it.
For if anyone marked with the royal mark be re-marked by a deserter who himself was so marked, and they receive pardon, and the one returns to the military service, while the other begins to be in the service in which he was not yet — in neither of them is that mark annulled. Or is it not rather acknowledged in both, and, since it is royal, approved with due honor? Since therefore they cannot show that to be evil to which men are compelled, but contend that they ought not to be compelled to good — yet we have shown that Paul was compelled by Christ — the Church therefore, in compelling these men, imitates her Lord, who first waited to compel no one, that the prophetic preaching concerning the faith of kings and nations might be fulfilled.
For hence too is not absurdly understood that apostolic sentence where the blessed Paul says: 'Being ready to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall first be fulfilled' (2 Cor. 10:6). Whence also the Lord Himself, at His great supper, first bids the guests be brought, and afterwards compelled; for when the servants had answered, 'Lord, it is done as you commanded, and yet there is room,' He said, 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and whomever you find, compel them to come in' (Luke 14:22-23). In those, therefore, who were gently brought in first, the prior obedience is fulfilled; but in these who are compelled, disobedience is restrained. For what is 'compel them to come in,' when first it was said 'bring in' and it was answered 'it is done as you commanded, and there is still room'?
If He had wished those to be understood as compelled by the terrors of miracles, then rather to those who were first called were many divine miracles wrought, especially to the Jews, of whom it was said: 'The Jews seek signs' (1 Cor. 1:22). Among the Gentiles too such miracles in the times of the apostles commended the Gospel, so that, if by such things they were bidden to be compelled, the former guests, as I said, would rather with reason be believed to have been compelled. Wherefore, if by the power which the Church has received as a divine gift through the religion and faith of kings, at the time when it was due, these who are found in the highways and hedges — that is, in heresies and schisms — are compelled to come in, let them not find fault because they are compelled, but consider to what they are compelled.
The Lord's banquet is the unity of the body of Christ, not only in the sacrament of the altar, but also in the bond of peace. Of these men indeed we can most truly say that they compel no one to good; for whomever they compel, they compel only to evil. Yet nevertheless, before these laws by which men are compelled to come in to the holy banquet were sent into Africa, it seemed to some of the brethren — among whom I too was one — that, although the frenzy of the Donatists was raging on every side, it ought not to be asked of the emperors that they should command the heresy itself to be utterly abolished, by appointing a penalty for those who chose to be in it.
But rather that they should decree this: that they might not suffer the frenzied violences of those men who either preached the Catholic truth by speaking, or read it by decreeing. We thought this could in some measure be done, if the law of Theodosius of most pious memory, which he promulgated generally against all heretics — that whoever of them, bishop or cleric, was found anywhere, should be fined ten pounds of gold — were confirmed more expressly against the Donatists (who denied that they were heretics), in such a way that not all should be struck by that fine, but only those in whose regions the Catholic Church suffered any violences from their clergy or Circumcellions or their populace.
That is, so that after the protest of the Catholics who had suffered these things, the care of the municipal councils should thenceforth be bound to make the bishop, together with the other ministers, pay the fine. For thus we thought that, once those men were terrified and dared do no such thing, the Catholic truth could be freely taught and held, so that no one might be compelled to it, but whoever willed might follow it without dread — lest we should have false and pretended Catholics.
And although it seemed otherwise to other brethren, now more advanced in age, or attending to the examples of many cities and places where we saw the Catholic Church firm and true — a Church which nevertheless had there been established and strengthened by such benefits of God, while through the laws of earlier emperors men were being compelled to Catholic communion — yet we prevailed that rather that thing which I have described should be asked of the emperors. It was decreed in our council, and legates were sent to the court.
But greater was the mercy of God, who knew how necessary the terror of these laws and a certain medicinal affliction was for the depraved or lukewarm souls of many, and for that hardness which cannot be amended by words, yet can be by some measure of the severity of discipline. He brought it about that our legates could not obtain what they had undertaken. For already there had forestalled us, from other places, certain most grievous complaints of bishops who had suffered many evils from those very men and had been driven from their sees; especially the horrible and incredible slaughter of Maximianus, the Catholic bishop of the church of Bagai, brought it about that our embassy now no longer had anything to do.
For a law had already been promulgated, that the heresy of the Donatists — of so great a monstrousness, which it seemed more cruel to spare than that heresy itself raged — should not only not be violent, but should not be permitted to exist at all with impunity; yet not with capital punishment, for the sake of preserving Christian gentleness even toward the unworthy, but with pecuniary penalties imposed, and exile appointed for their bishops or ministers. For the aforesaid bishop of Bagai — because before the ordinary judge, when sentence had been pronounced between the parties, he had obtained the basilica which they had seized, though it was Catholic — as he stood at the altar, they rushed upon him with a horrible onslaught and cruel fury, and with clubs and weapons of every kind, and finally with the timbers of that very altar broken off, they monstrously struck him down;
they even struck him with a dagger in the groin, and the blood flowing from that wound would have rendered him lifeless, had not the greater savagery of those men itself served to keep him alive. For while they dragged him, gravely wounded, along the ground besides, dust stopped up the gushing vein and held back the blood, by whose effusion he was going to his death. Then, when he had at last been left by them, and our people attempted with psalms to carry him off, they, kindled with a fiercer wrath, snatched him from the hands of those carrying him, after the Catholics — whom they far surpassed in vast numbers and easily terrified by their savagery — had been sorely beaten and put to flight. Thence, having lifted him onto a certain tower, thinking he had already expired — though he was still alive — they cast him down.
But being received on a certain soft heap of earth, and spied by the light of a lantern by some passers-by in the night, he was recognized and gathered up, and carried to a religious house; and by great care applied, after many days he was restored from that despair of life. Yet the report, through the crime of the Donatists, had announced him slain even across the sea; whither after he came and his most unhoped-for life appeared, by his scars — so many, so vast, so fresh — he showed that not without cause had the report announced him dead. He therefore sought help from the Christian emperor, not so much for the sake of avenging himself as of defending the church entrusted to him; and if he had neglected this, his patience would not have been praiseworthy, but his negligence would rightly have been blamed.
For neither did the apostle Paul take thought for his own transitory life, but for the Church of God, when, against those who had conspired to kill him, he brought it about that their plan should be disclosed to the tribune; whence it came to pass that armed soldiery escorted him to the place to which he was to be conducted, lest he should suffer their ambushes (Acts 23). He did not in the least hesitate also to invoke the Roman laws, proclaiming himself to be a Roman citizen, whom it was then not lawful to afflict with scourges (Acts 22:25). And likewise, lest he be handed over to the Jews desiring to kill him, he besought the aid of Caesar — a Roman prince indeed, but not a Christian (Acts 25:11). Wherein he sufficiently showed what Christ's stewards ought afterwards to do, when they should find Christian emperors in a time of danger to the Church.
Hence therefore it came to pass that the religious and pious emperor, when such causes were brought to his notice, preferred by most pious laws to correct altogether the error of that impiety, and to bring back to Catholic unity, by terrifying and restraining, those who bore the standards of Christ against Christ, rather than merely to take away the license of raging and to leave the license of erring and perishing. Now indeed, when these very laws had come into Africa, especially those who sought an occasion — or feared the savagery of the raging, or were ashamed to offend their own — immediately crossed over to the Church. Many also,
who were held only by the custom handed down there from their parents, and had never before considered what sort of cause the heresy itself had, had never wished to inquire and reflect — soon, when they began to notice, and to find nothing in it worthy for which they should suffer such great losses, without any difficulty became Catholics. For solicitude taught those whom security had made negligent. And many followed the authority and persuasion of all these who went before, men who were less capable of understanding by themselves what difference there was between the error of the Donatists and the Catholic truth.
Thus, while the true mother received into her bosom, rejoicing, great throngs of the peoples, there remained the hard crowds, standing fast in that unhappy plague with an ill-fated animosity. Of these also very many communicated by dissembling; others lay hidden by their small numbers. But those who dissembled, by gradually growing accustomed and by hearing the preaching of the truth — especially after the conference and disputation which took place between us and their bishops at Carthage — were for the greater part corrected.
But in certain places, where a more obstinate and unpacified multitude prevailed, whom the fewer could not resist — those whose judgment concerning communion was the better — or where crowds, subjected to the authority of a few more powerful men, obeyed to the worse part, the labor lasted somewhat longer. Of these there are some in which the labor still continues; and in that labor Catholics, and especially bishops and clerics, have suffered horrible and hard things, which it would be long to recount — when the eyes of some have been put out, and the hand and tongue of a certain bishop have been cut off, and some have even been slaughtered.
I pass over in silence the most cruel slaughters, and the plunderings of homes through nocturnal assaults and fires, not only of private dwellings but even of churches; into which flames there were not lacking those who would cast even the Lord's books. But a consequent fruit has consoled us who were afflicted with evils of this kind. For wherever these things were committed by the lost, there Christian unity advanced more fervently and more perfectly, and the Lord is more abundantly praised, who deigned to grant that His servants should by their sufferings gain their brethren, and gather His sheep, scattered by a deadly error, by His own blood into the peace of eternal salvation. Mighty is the Lord and merciful,
whom we daily beseech that He may also grant to the rest repentance, and that they may recover themselves out of the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive according to his will (2 Tim. 2:26); who seek nothing except whereby they may slander us and requite us evil for good, because they have not known how even to understand what disposition and love we keep toward them, and how we wish, according to the Lord's precept which He gave to the shepherds through the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 34), to recall the erring and to find the lost. But they, as we have also sometimes said elsewhere, both do not impute to themselves what they do to us, and do impute to us what they do to themselves. For which of us would wish not only that any of them should perish, but even that anything should be lost?
But if the house of David could not otherwise obtain peace unless Absalom, his son, were slain in the war which he was waging against his father — although he had charged his men with great concern to keep him, so far as they could, alive and unharmed, that there might be one whom a father's affection could pardon should he repent — what was left to him but to weep for the lost one, and, once the peace of his kingdom had been secured, to console his own grief?
So then, when men war against her, what else are they to the Catholic mother than her own sons? For surely it is from that same great tree — which by the reaching out of its branches spreads over the whole world — that this little branch in Africa was broken off; and since she travails for them in love, that they may return to the root, apart from which they cannot possess true life, if by the loss of some she gathers in so many others, and especially because these perish not, like Absalom, by the chance of battle but rather by a self-chosen destruction, then the deliverance of so great a people soothes and heals the sorrow of the mother's heart. And could you but behold their joys in the peace of Christ, their thronging multitudes,
their eagerness and their crowded, joyful assemblies both to hear and to sing hymns and to receive the word of God; and in these assemblies, among many, the recalling with deep sorrow of their past error, and with joy the contemplation of the truth now known, and with indignation and detestation of their lying teachers now recognized — because they now perceive how falsely those teachers boasted concerning our sacraments; and among these too the confessions of many, that they had long wished to be Catholics but did not dare amid men of such fury — could you then behold under a single view the gatherings of these peoples, delivered from that ruin throughout very many regions of Africa, you would say it had been excessive cruelty if, while men feared lest those desperate ones (in no way to be compared, by any reckoning, with the innumerable multitude of these) should be consumed by their own voluntary fires, these others had been left to perish eternally and to be tormented in everlasting flames.
For if two men were dwelling in one house which we knew for certain was about to collapse, and though we forewarned them they refused to believe us and persisted in remaining in it, if we were able to drag them out even against their will, afterwards showing them the ruin that had threatened them, so that they would not dare to return again beneath its peril — I think that, unless we did so, we should not undeservedly be judged cruel. Further, if one of them said to us, 'The moment you enter to drag us out, I will slay myself on the spot,' while the other neither wished to go out from there nor to be dragged out, yet would not dare to kill himself — what should we choose?
Whether to leave both to be crushed by the collapse, or, with at least one delivered by our merciful effort, to let the other perish not by our fault but rather by his own? No one is so wretched that he cannot most easily judge what ought to be done in such cases. And this comparison I have set forth concerning two men, one indeed lost and one delivered. What then is to be thought concerning a certain few who are lost and an innumerable multitude of peoples delivered? For those men who perish by their own will are not even so many as are those set free by these laws from that pestilent and eternal destruction — villages, hamlets, strongholds, townships, cities. But if we ponder more carefully the matter of which we speak, I think —
that if there were very many in a house about to collapse, and from it at least one could be delivered, and while we were attempting to do this the others were to destroy themselves by throwing themselves down, we would console our grief over the rest by the salvation of at least the one; yet we would not, lest the others should destroy themselves, permit all to perish with none delivered. What then is to be judged concerning the work of mercy which we owe to men for the obtaining of eternal life and the avoiding of eternal punishment, if for this welfare — not only temporal but even brief, to be preserved for this scanty span of time itself — true and kindly reason compels us thus to come to men's aid?
But as to their objection against us, that we covet their property and take it away — would that they might become Catholics and possess in peace and love together with us not only what they call their own, but also what is ours! To such a degree, however, are they blinded by their lust for slander that they do not notice how contradictory the things they say are among themselves. They certainly say, and they seem to complain of it most enviously against us, that we constrain them into our communion by the violent enforcement of laws. Now this we should by no means do if we wished to possess their property. What miser seeks a co-possessor? Who, inflamed with the lust of dominion or puffed up with the arrogance of ruling, desires to have a partner?
Let them but consider those very men, once their own and now ours, joined to us in brotherly love — how they hold their own possessions, not only what they had, but also what is ours, which they did not have; which nevertheless, if we are fellow-poor with the poor, are both ours and theirs. But if we possess privately what suffices for us, those things are not ours but the poor's, whose stewardship we in a manner discharge; we do not claim ownership for ourselves by a damnable usurpation. Whatever therefore was possessed in the name of the churches of the party of Donatus, the Christian emperors ordered by religious laws to pass over, together with those churches themselves, to the Catholic Church.