And yet you, by these very same powers by which those who fear God strive to fulfil His commandments, have striven on the contrary to despise His precepts. Show me where you were commanded to shave the heads of priests, when on the contrary so many examples have been set before you that it ought not to be done. Saul, before he sinned, deserved to be anointed; after his anointing he gave no light offence. When God saw this, wishing to set forth an example concerning the oil that must not be touched, He professed His own repentance. For thus we read that the Lord said: 'It repenteth me that I have anointed Saul to be king.' And God could surely have taken away the oil which He had given. But when He wished to teach that the oil must not be touched even in a sinner, He Himself who had given it performed an act of repentance.
Therefore if God, in order to teach you, could not take away what He had given, through the very thing by which He was unwilling to do so — who are you, that you should take away what you did not give? You who ought to have prepared your ears for hearing, prepared instead a razor for transgressing. And though you could have been sons of God, you chose to be sons of men, and to fasten your bite upon honours that were not yours, you turned your teeth into arrows and weapons, you sharpened your tongues into swords, and you fulfilled what is written of you in Psalm 56: 'The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.' Therefore you sharpened your tongues into swords, which you wielded to deal death not to bodies but to honours; you cut the throats not of limbs but of names. What does it profit, that the men live while the honours have been slain by you?
They are indeed sound in their limbs, but stripped of their dignity they carry their own funerals. For you stretched out your hand and held out deadly veils over every head, so that — since, as I said above, there are four kinds of heads in the Church: of bishops, of presbyters, of deacons, and of the faithful — you were unwilling to spare even one, and you overturned the souls of men. God grieves over these deeds of yours in the prophet Ezekiel, when He says: 'Woe to those who make a veil' — that is, who lay on a hand — 'over every head and over every age, to overturn souls.' You found boys; you wounded them with penance, that none of them might be able to be ordained: acknowledge that you have overturned souls. You found the faithful of old standing; you made them penitents: acknowledge that you have overturned souls.
You found deacons, presbyters, bishops; you made them laymen: acknowledge that you have overturned souls. He was once your ally and companion, against whom you have now attempted to lay hands: you were running together. Suppose that he sinned, though it is agreed there was no sin; suppose he was lying fallen, as you reckon. If you have read the Apostle, look to whom you stand, and to whom he lies; if you are a servant, recognize your Lord and understand that he was not lying fallen before you, who a little while before was running with you. Why do you rush into another's authority? Why do you rashly ascend the tribunal of God? And though you yourself are guilty, you dare to pronounce sentence on another; and you have read: 'He who stands, stands to his own Lord, and he who lies, lies to his own Lord. But his Lord is able to raise him up.'
Who are you, that you should judge another man's servant? That you ought not to have touched the oil conferred upon a priest by God, you ought to have learned from David, the boy of God, who was so anointed by Samuel that what had long since been given to Saul was in no way taken away. Indeed, whether by God's command or by chance's contrivance, when one cave enclosed them both, Saul, who had sinned, had come into the power of the boy David. He sees yet sees not — for this reason, that, as commonly happens, coming from greater light into the darkness of the enclosed air, he could not see the other beside him. Innumerable armies followed the old king, but the king himself had come into another's power. David held the chance of victory in his hands:
He could have slain his off-guard and unsuspecting adversary without effort, and without blood and the conflict of many he could have ended the war by a shortcut into slaughter; both his men and the opportunity urged him on, the favourable moment exhorted him to victory. He had already begun to draw the iron, his armed hand had already begun to go for the enemy's throat — but the full memory of the divine commandments stood in the way. Against his urging men and opportunities he speaks in contradiction, as though he were saying this also: 'In vain, O victory, do you provoke me; in vain, O opportunity, do you invite me to triumphs.' He wished to conquer the enemy, but first comes the keeping of the Lord's divine precepts. 'I will not,' he said, 'put forth my hand against the Lord's anointed.' He held back his hand together with the sword;
And while he feared the oil, he spared his enemy, and that he might complete his reverence, he avenged the slain. But you neither fear God nor recognize your brothers; on the whetstone of envy you sharpened the razors of your tongue, and trampling on the divine precepts you rushed upon the heads of the wretched, that with your leaders cut down you might drag the blind and untaught peoples into captivity. You hunger after the honours of innocent priests; whence has so great a hunger been born in your fury, that you should make your throats yawning sepulchres? For each sepulchre one funeral suffices, and it is closed: for your throat the funerals of honours have by no means sufficed, and they still gape, while you seek to devour some, so that it is rightly said of you: 'Their throat is an open sepulchre.'
For you presume even on cursing, though it is written: 'Bless, and curse not.' Whoever does anything against your will, you threaten with terrors, you hold out curses; and because some men can deserve evil more than good, whatever the judgment of God or the desert of sin has wrought, you avenge with your bitter curses — rightly, since it is said of us: 'Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.' You glory that when you cursed, some men were able to die. Surely it is not lawful to kill. Or do you think yourselves innocent because you have not used the sword? Let the poisoner too judge himself innocent, if homicide lies in the sword alone.
Let not him think himself guiltless who has killed another by withholding food; let him judge himself innocent who has suffocated one longing to live by depriving him of the means of breathing. The kinds of slaughter are many, but death has one name. When with confidence you proclaim a man dead by your curses, what difference does it make whether you strike with the sword or smite with the tongue? You are undoubtedly a murderer, if through you one who was living has died. Whoever among you is such, in vain does he profess himself a Christian or a priest of God, who does not care to imitate the gentleness of God, since it is written in Solomon: 'God made not death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living.'
I believe you cannot forget what you did in certain places, when you wished to kill those who preached the law of God, that is, the prophets, against the command of God who says: 'And lay not your hand upon my prophets.' Deuterius, Parthenius, Donatus, and Getulicus, bishops of God, you slew with the sword of the tongue, shedding blood not of the body but of honour. The men lived afterward, but by you the priests were slain in the honours of God. It is known and proved to many that in the time of persecution some bishops, fallen by cowardice from confessing the name of God, offered incense; and yet none of those who escaped either laid a hand on the lapsed or ordered them to bend their knees.
And you do today, after the unity, what was done by no one after the incense-offering, because it is written: 'Touch not my anointed ones, neither put forth a hand against my prophets.' God defends His own oil, because, though it is the sin of a man, yet the anointing is of the divine. 'Touch not,' He says, 'my anointed ones': for this reason, lest, while the man's sin is struck, the oil also, which is God's, be smitten. By His own judgment God reserved His own thing, and yet you everywhere rushed upon what belonged to another, corrupting the felicity of all. For what greater misery is there than for the priests of God to live and yet not be what they had been?
Matrons, boys, and virgins alike, compelled by you with no intervening sin, with their innocence and chastity intact, learned by your teaching to perform penance. Is this a lesser misfortune? You have crushed the sexes, you have harassed the ages; truly it is said of you in Psalm 13: 'Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes.' You imposed penance on the peoples; for it was not undertaken by anyone, but exacted by you, and that not over equal spans of time, but you did everything according to persons — one did penance a whole year, another a month, another scarcely a whole day, at your command.
If to consent to unity, as you allege, is a sin — if the fault is alike — why is not the penance equal for the same guilt? There is no doubt that the people of believers is called Israel, and the individual congregations daughters of Israel, that is, those who have seen God with the mind and have believed in God. And yet these congregations you compelled to bend and bow their necks, and, with their heads joined in a row, to make a mass of penitents. God grieves over these congregations through the prophet Ezekiel, saying: 'Woe to the daughters of Israel, who sew cushions' — that is, the parts of the neck — 'to set them under the elbow and under the hand.' Surely under your elbows and under your hands, and when over their heads — whether men's or women's — you stretch the veils of penance.
How great your impiety has been shown, and your fury, and your pride demonstrated; even your folly was to be revealed, but this I shall demonstrate in the sixth book. Enough, I think, has been said in the second little book about the Church, which is the bride of Christ, and about her dowries and the inheritance of the Saviour; it follows, first, to show the errors of the schismatics; then, what was the cause that unity should be brought about; thirdly, who brought it about that an armed soldier was sent. Many things indeed were done harshly by the workmen of unity, but to what end do you charge them to Leontius, to Macarius, or to Taurinus? Charge them to your own forefathers, who, as it is written in the prophet, 'in order that your teeth might be set on edge, themselves ate the sour grapes.'
First to those who divided the people of God and made unnecessary basilicas; then to Donatus of Carthage, who provoked that unity should at the next opportunity be attempted; thirdly to Donatus of Bagai, who had gathered a mad multitude, from which, lest Macarius should suffer violence, he begged the aid of armed soldiery to protect himself and the things he was carrying. Then came the armed men with their quivers, and every city was filled with those shouting; when unity was announced, you all fled. To no one was it said: 'Deny God'; to no one was it said: 'Burn the testament'; to no one was it said: 'Either offer incense or tear down the basilicas'; for these are the things that are wont to produce martyrdoms. Unity was proclaimed;
There had been only exhortations, that God and His Christ might be entreated alike by the people gathering into one. At first there was no terror: no one had seen a rod, no one a prison; there were only, as we said above, exhortations. You all were afraid, you fled, you trembled, so that it may be said of you for certain what is written in Psalm 52: 'There they trembled with fear, where there was no fear.' All the bishops therefore fled with their clergy; some died; those who were stronger were captured and banished far away.
And yet of all these things nothing was done with our wish, nothing with our counsel, nothing with our knowledge, nothing with our act; but all was done amid the grief of God bitterly weeping, and in vengeance for the water which, against the prohibition, you stirred up again, diverting to yourselves the water of the ancient pool — but I do not know whether it was with that Fish who is understood to be Christ, who is read in the lesson of the patriarchs as caught in the river Tigris, whose gall and liver Tobias took for the protection of the woman Sarah and for the enlightening of Tobias who could not see: by the entrails of that same fish the demon Asmodeus was put to flight from the maiden Sarah, who is understood to be the Church, and blindness was shut out from Tobias.
This is the Fish which in baptism, through invocation, is set within the waters of the font, so that what had been water might also from the Fish be called a fishpond. The name of which Fish, according to the Greek appellation, contains in one word, through its single letters, a host of holy names — ΙΧΘΥΣ — which in Latin is: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. This fishpond, which throughout the whole Catholic Church over all the world overflows with saving waters unto the life of the human race, you have diverted to your own will, and you have dissolved the one baptism — from which baptism walls were made for men as a protection — and you have made, as it were, other walls, building no good edifice. You could not construct, except by tearing down.
And what kind of building can it be that is constructed out of ruin? God grieves and weeps over this matter through the prophet Isaiah, when He says that the daughter of His own kind has been crushed. It is God's kind to have no kind, who is of Himself and abides for ever. Like to Him also is the water, which we do not read to have been made. In the injury done to that water God shows His tears, which you caused, which He testifies can be dried by no consolation, when He speaks to you through the prophet Isaiah, saying: 'Let me be; I will weep bitterly; no one will be able to console me in the crushing of the daughter of my kind.' In this passage our innocence is defended, while God with grief declares His anger to you, while He both brings forth the cause and shows the reason. Finally He does not say:
'in Zion,' but the things were celebrated in one valley of it; not on that Mount Zion which in Syria Palestina a little stream separates from the walls of Jerusalem — on whose summit is a plain not large, where there had been seven synagogues, where the people of the Jews, gathering, could have learned the Law given through Moses — but where no lawsuit was heard, nor was any judgment held by anyone, nor was any sentence there pronounced by any judge — because it was a place of teaching, not of controversy after teaching. If anything had to be done, it was done within the walls of Jerusalem. Hence it is written in the prophet Isaiah: 'Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.'
Not therefore on that Mount Zion does Isaiah behold the valley, but on the holy mount, which is the Church, which throughout the whole Roman world has lifted up its head under all heaven; on which mount the Son of God rejoices that He was appointed king by God the Father, saying in the first Psalm: 'For He appointed me king over Zion, His holy mount' — surely over the Church, of which He is king and bridegroom and head — not on that mount where there are no gates which God loves, but on the mount of the Church, which is called spiritual. Through the gates of which Church there enter the innocent, the just, the merciful, the continent, and the virgins — which gates the Holy Spirit recalls through David in Psalm 86, when He says:
'His foundations are in the holy mountains; the Lord loves the gates of Zion' — not of that bodily mount, where now there are no gates, and after the victories of the emperor Vespasian scarcely traces of the ancient ruins remain. Zion therefore is the spiritual Church, in which Christ has been appointed king by God the Father, which is in the whole world, in which there is one Catholic Church. For that Zion is the Church, the most holy prophet David testifies in another place too, saying: 'Praise thy God, O Zion, who has strengthened the bars of thy gates, who has blessed thy children within thee.'
Throughout the individual provinces of the whole world we understand the single valleys of the mount; and since Isaiah does not see in the whole mount but in one valley — that is, in Africa alone, in which alone, when the temples of God that already existed sufficed, your leaders wished to make others; in which alone the walls were thrown down, and (that walls might be made) the water of the holy fishpond was diverted, and novelty against antiquity was instituted by you, and human water was ordained against the divine — all this God both questions and rebukes concerning the valley of Mount Zion, saying: 'Why has this been done to you?' For this reason, because 'you have gone up into superfluous temples':
'Every city is filled with those crying out; thy wounded are not wounded by the sword, and the dead in thee are not slain in war: they are in error, erring from the least even to the greatest; all thy princes are in the mountains, they are turned to flight, and those who are captured are grievously bound, and thy stronger ones are driven far away. Let me be; I will weep bitterly; no one will be able to console me in the crushing of the daughter of my kind; and the Elamites shall go up with their quivers' — the Elamites in the Latin tongue are called the bands of the camps — and He went on, saying: 'Your inmost places shall be brought out into the open, and the secrets of the house of Israel shall be laid bare.' This was done in Africa, and why all this was done God declared, while He charges it to you, saying:
'Because you have turned the water of the ancient pool to your own city, and you have thrown down the walls of Jerusalem, that you might make another fortification, and you have set the water between two fortifications, and you would not give heed to the ancient pool, nor to Him who from the beginning created it.' Now you see, brother Parmenian, that all things flow back to you, from whose leaders the cause of all these things was sown; then to Donatus of Carthage, by whose poison the business of unity seems to have been stirred up. In which I shall show that his workmen did nothing according to our will nor from their own malice, but at the provocation and impulse of causes and persons whom Donatus of Carthage set up out of his own levity, while he strove to appear great.
For who is unaware, except you, since you are a stranger and false tales could be told you? Or who can deny a matter to which all Carthage is chiefly a witness — that the emperor Constans did not at first send Paul and Macarius to bring about unity, but with alms by which poverty, relieved through the individual churches, might be able to breathe again, to be clothed, fed, and made glad? When they came to Donatus, your father, and made known why they had come, he, kindled with his usual fury, burst out into these words: 'What has the emperor to do with the Church?' and from the fountain of his levity he poured out many curses, no less than once against Gregory, to whom he did not in the least hesitate to write thus:
'Gregory, stain of the senate and disgrace of the prefects,' and other such things — to which Donatus the aforesaid prefect replied with episcopal patience. Copies of these letters are everywhere recited from the mouths of many. Even then he was contriving, against the precepts of the apostle Paul, to do injury to powers and kings, for whom, if he had heeded the apostle, he ought daily to have prayed. For thus the blessed apostle Paul teaches: 'Pray for kings and powers, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life with them.' For the commonwealth is not in the Church, but the Church in the commonwealth, that is, in the Roman empire, which Christ calls Lebanon in the Song of Songs, when He says:
'Come, my bride who hast been found, come from Lebanon' — that is, from the Roman empire, where there are holy priesthoods and chastity and virginity, which do not exist among the barbarian nations, and, if they did, could not be safe. Rightly does Paul teach that we must pray for kings and powers, even if such an emperor were one who lived as a pagan; how much more when he is a Christian, how much more one who fears God, how much more one who is religious, how much more one who is merciful — as the very matter proves! For he had sent ornaments to the houses of God, he had sent alms to the poor, nothing to Donatus. Why then did he rage? Why was he angry? Why did he reject what had been sent?
And when those who had been sent said that they were going through the individual provinces and would give to those willing to receive, he said that he had sent letters everywhere, lest what had been brought should anywhere be dispensed to the poor. O to take counsel for the wretched! O to provide for the poor! O to help sinners! God cries out, saying: 'I am He who made the poor man and the rich,' not because He could not give also to the poor, but because, if He gave to both, the sinner would not be able to find the means by which to help himself. Finally it is thus written: 'As water extinguishes fire, so alms extinguishes sin.' Surely both are now before God — both he who wished to give and he who stood in the way that it should not be given. What? If God should now say to Donatus:
'Bishop, what did you wish Constans to be? If innocent, why would you not receive from the innocent? If a sinner, why did you not permit him to give, for whose sake I made the poor man?' Under this questioning, what will become of him? Why did he toil out of levity and fury to hinder so many poor? He had believed that he held the primacy of Carthage; and since above the emperor there is none but God alone, who made the emperor, when Donatus exalted himself above the emperor, he had already, as it were, overstepped the bounds of men, so that he reckoned himself almost a god, not a man, by not revering him who, after God, was feared by men.
Finally, through Ezekiel the Holy Spirit rebukes the prince of Tyre — that is, the prince of Carthage — when through the prophet He speaks these words: 'Son of man, say against the prince of Tyre: Thus says the Lord God: Because your heart is exalted and you have said, I am God.' That Tyre is Carthage, Isaiah first proves, in whom is read 'the vision concerning Tyre,' and there follows: 'Howl, ye ships of Carthage.' Then that Tyre is Carthage, even secular writings attest; and if there be another city called by this name, nothing is seen to have been done in the other which is established to have been committed at Carthage. 'Speak,' says God, 'against the prince of Tyre';
He says that the words are to be spoken not against some secular king, nor to many but to one, that is, to the bishop Donatus. For it would not have been right to compare the prophet Ezekiel — whom I have just named — to anyone but a prince, that is, to a bishop, who, as we have said, claimed for himself the primacy of Carthage, who exalted his heart and seemed to himself superior to men, and would have wished to have all under him, even his own colleagues; from whose offerings he never deigned to receive — in which matter the faith and God and Christ His Son and the complaints of many stand as witness, men to whom in that very fellowship he did this injury, that alone, in secret, he did I know not what, and afterward mingled with the rest perfunctorily.
In this way his heart was exalted, so that he now seemed to himself not a man but a god. Finally, even in the mouth of the people he was rarely called bishop, but was called 'Donatus of Carthage.' And rightly he deserved to be called and rebuked as the prince of Tyre, that is, of Carthage, because he was the first of the bishops, as though he himself were more than the rest; and while he wished to have nothing human, he exalted his heart, not as the heart of a man but as the heart of a god, while he desired to be something more than the rest of men. To whom God goes on, saying: 'You have said, I am God.' For this reason: because, although he did not use this word, yet he either did or allowed what would fulfil the effect of this word.
He lifted up his heart, so that he reckoned no man comparable to himself, and out of the swelling of his mind he seemed to himself higher; for whatever is above men is now, as it were, a god. Then, since bishops ought to serve God, he exacted so much for himself from his own bishops, that all should venerate him with no less fear than God — this is the sense in which he seemed to himself a god. And since men are wont to swear only by God, he allowed men so to swear by him as by God. In which, if any of the men had erred, he himself ought to have forbidden it; since he did not forbid it, he seemed to himself a god.
Then, since before his pride all who had believed in Christ were called Christians, he dared to divide the people from God, so that those who followed him should no longer be called Christians, but Donatists; and if ever any came to him from some African province, he did not ask that which human custom always demands — to inquire something about the rains, about peace, about the year's harvest — but to each who came his words were these: 'How does my party fare with you?' as though he had now truly divided the people from God, so that he might fearlessly speak of his party.
For from his times and even to this day, whenever any case concerning ecclesiastical matters has been tried in public courts, the individuals, when questioned, spoke thus in the records, that they said they were of the party of Donatus; about Christ they were silent. And what shall I say of the clergy, when the petitions are read, of which we made mention in the first book, long since sent to Constantine and subscribed, which contained the names of bishops, thus: 'Given by Capito and Nasutius, Dignus and the other bishops of the party of Donatus'? And they were petitioning, of course, against bishops who, while they were not in the party of Donatus, were dwelling in the Catholic Church of Christ;
And since the bishop was not among his fellow bishops, nor wished to be a man among men, it is evident that he exalted his heart and seemed to himself to be God. For when even your ordainers — whose names, brother Parmenian, you well know, and where they were you are not ignorant, and from whom they petitioned, and what manner of thing they begged, that they might return and might have returned with you, we too have learned, when they alleged before the African judges those same petitions which they had given, in which it is written: 'Given by the bishops of the party of Donatus' — what now will they answer at that impending divine judgment, who in this world in another manner confessed that they were not of the Church of Christ, who willingly professed that they were of the party of Donatus, when in
the Gospel it is written, with Christ saying: 'Whoever shall confess me before men, I will confess him before my Father.' These confessed Donatus, not Christ. And lest this proof be slight — which is manifestly relevant to his own person — there is added also that testimony by which the rebuke mentioned above was concluded, namely that God said he would not die on land; and that it so happened is known to all. He dwelt in the house of God and was in the heart of the sea; everywhere we read the sea as the world, since he was not only in the love of certain Christians, but, on account of his knowledge of secular literature, was also in the heart of the sea, that is, in the love of the world, and out of his own knowledge he seemed to himself wise.