That you may terrify the living, you ill-treat even the dead, denying a place for their funerals. If there was contention among the living, let your hatred — or another's death — be appeased. He is now silent with whom but a little before you were quarrelling; why do you insult the funeral? Why do you hinder the burial? Why do you wrangle with the dead? You have lost the fruit of your malice. And if you will not have the bodies rest together, yet the souls, set as one with God, you will not be able to separate. In short, all the things that are done by you cannot be told in full; yet let them be conceded to you, who possess the mastership of this error. Now who could be silent even about your own people — about those, namely, whom by faction or by craft you were able to seduce, to make them yours, not only men but also women:
out of sheep they suddenly became foxes, out of the faithful, faithless; out of the patient, rabid; out of the peaceable, contentious; out of the simple, seducers; out of the modest, shameless; ferocious out of the gentle; out of the innocent, craftsmen of malice. After they have slipped down to you, the men or the women grieve that others are there where they themselves were born; standing firm, they invite others to their own falls; if they knew they had attained glory, they would silently enjoy their own felicity. But now, desiring to console their own ruinous desertions, they invite the rest to stumble in like manner, and they accuse those who remain in the bosom of mother Church as though sluggish and slow. For they do not blush to speak in these words: 'Gaius Seius or Gaia Seia, how long do you hold on?' This is to say:
'Now you ought to follow my error, now you ought to forsake the truth. [How long do you hold on? This is to say:] imitate my falls, imitate my base desertions. How long are you called faithful? Now forsake the faith, now learn penance.' You are the fowlers, and those men or women are the birds. But since there is not one kind of fowlers — there are some who, by simple art, make for the trees that are founded with deep roots and spread out over the face of the grove, where the birds with simple flight settle on the natural branches; there no frauds are reckoned, no artful devices; there is one art and one skill of catching alone. To you I liken that fowler who, after the departure of night, before the coming of light, does not, like the others, go to natural trees,
but himself, carrying a tree, binds the future grove into a bundle; he sets up a dry tree, propped by no roots, with manifold fraud. Into it he inserts adulterine branches, and since it has long ago lost its own, having been cut down, it receives the foliage of others. Some birds he carries shut up in a cage, others disembowelled into the likeness of living ones; long since dead, he sets them upon the deceitful branches as though alive. Some lie hidden in the cages, others seem alive upon the branches. Cunning is joined together with a twofold fraud, and that the simplicity of the living, flying birds may be deceived, those which are known to be dead seem to stretch out their necks with voices, and those which lie hidden in their prison seem to sing, as it were, from another's throat.
Between the image of one and the voice of another a single deceit works: the captive birds take the free, and the dead slay the living. Such are those whom you have wounded either by rebaptism or by penance, who, lest they alone — whether men or women — should seem to have perished, strive with great zeal and labour to make others perish along with them. After the traitors have been exposed and the holy Church demonstrated, after the calumnies you were heaping up have been repelled, and after your sins, which have deserved to be rebuked by God, in due order both the repetition of the sacraments and your presumptions and your terrors have been displayed. Now the end of our responses and sayings ought to have come;
but since, after the forest of envy has been cut down with the axes of truth, I see your provocations, or those of your party, still sprouting forth — provocations which I hear you uttering, namely, that since it is established that you are the sons of traitors, you ought not to have been sought out for one communion — to these few points let me reply. Truly the Catholic Church sufficed unto itself, having innumerable peoples in all the provinces; it sufficed even in Africa, though in but few; but your separation did not please God, since the members of one body had been torn apart, and against the will of God you, brethren, were straying from brethren.
Although a domestic judgment was wrought upon your forefathers, so that they withdrew of their own accord, who ought to have been cast out for the betrayal they had committed, no judgment was celebrated, but the effect of the sentence was wrought. They ought to have been expelled after the betrayal, which they confessed concerning themselves in the council of Numidia; but, lest there should be odium, the severity of judging was excused, while your greater men of their own accord found a counsel concerning their guilt, so that, with their crime covered over, they departed as though proud — they to whom both grief and shame were due. For if at that time, for the sake of peace, they ought to have made unity, even they themselves ought not to have been driven from the Church, in whom necessity had excused the will.
For not any of them had betrayed of their own will, nor can this sin be made equal with the rest of transgressions. For whatever God willed not to be done, He forbade with His own mouth, as when He said: 'Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery,' and the rest. He could also have forbidden this, which was committed by your forefathers; but since it is one thing that the mind does, another thing that the outcome brings about, whatever can be done by a man out of will, this deserved to be forbidden; whatever necessity does amiss cannot be accused with great force. In short, the will incurs punishment, necessity finds pardon. The murderer, while no one compels the crime, can both do it and not do it;
the adulterer, while no one compels him from without, can commit adultery and can also not commit it, and other things of this kind, in which free choice is held. Therefore forbidden things, when they are done, are consigned to judgment; things not interdicted, when they are done under some necessity, perhaps He who did not will to forbid them may readily deign to pardon. In short, the transgression which, as it were capital, could be objected to your forefathers — if at that time they had been laid bare or called into judgment, they could succour themselves by more than one example, where in the earliest times either the tablets of the law are read to have been broken, or the books to have been betrayed, or cut up and burned, and no one was condemned.
If, as I said above, your forefathers had at that time been laid bare, if they could have been accused, they would without doubt say that they had done nothing more than Moses the lawgiver did. Although necessity and will do not resemble each other but rather conflict between themselves, since under the same name of the law there was one common case of your forefathers and of Moses, your forefathers could say that they had done out of necessity what Moses first did out of will. For he, being indignant with the people, did not consider that God had written with His own finger — and what is written in heaven is more than what is written on earth, and what the finger of God made and what a pen composed by a human hand wrote are not one and the same thing.
Moses bore what he had received through the cloud, and your forefathers betrayed what they had procured for a price given. Your forefathers would rightly defend themselves, teaching that it was no capital crime, if each one of them had done it terrified by great fear, which Moses had done in anger. And we do not read that the Lord was indignant with Moses, nor that He avenged the tablets that were broken, which He had written out with His own hand, nor was Moses called a sinner nor punished. Thus the law proceeded from God as water glides from a fountain, or as fruits which are plucked from a tree with the root unharmed. That which has been dispensed does not perish, if in its origin it is safe.
In short, Moses, after the tablets of the law had been scattered and broken into pieces, did not deserve to be condemned, and being recalled afterwards to Mount Sinai, he ascended and deserved again to speak with God, and received according to the renewed law, which the title of the book, which in the Greek term is written 'Deuteronomy', set forth. Behold, that does not perish in the law which had been safe in its origin. But lest to anyone it should seem that Moses had merit, so as to have a certain confidence with God from converse, and that therefore God was not angry — and if this were so, friendship ought always to exact its own merit and fruit — why was vengeance afterwards taken on him for that wherein he offended? Was it not that it might be shown that what he had committed in anger was a light thing? The law was sound in God, and after it was broken by a man together with the stone tablets;
the devotion which was owed by man, where it was not rendered, Moses incurred that punishment, that he should die midway in the journey, and not enter the land of promise; whence it is established that no great sin can be reckoned which, in the present example, could be committed with impunity. If these things were said by your forefathers, who could have denied them communion? What if they should also set forth those consequent examples, in which it is read that the renewed law, when it was held in the ark and the people of Israel was being conquered in battle — the law which was brought against the enemies in the ark by the counsel of the peoples, which could not be defended even by the very presbyters and the rest of the sons of Israel, and was handed over to the enemies, while it was the less brought back:
after the law was handed over, those who had said it should be brought fled timidly, and they are not read to have suffered anything afterwards by way of vengeance. If this account were rendered by your forefathers, who could have driven them from his own communion? What if your leaders had not kept silence even about those examples in which it is read that Baruch handed over the book of the law, which he had taken down from the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, to the scribe of the Jews, and that it was commanded by the king's princes that both Baruch himself, who had taken it down, and Jeremiah, through whom God had spoken, should flee and lie hidden? Jeremiah dictated, Baruch handed it over, both had fled; the book was brought to King Jehoiakim, which king, when he had before him, according to the quality of the cold season, a little hearth-pan ...
and, having heard the book read aloud by Jehudi the scribe with displeasure, he kept cutting it up little by little and casting it into the fire. Yet God was not angry, neither with Jeremiah, who had fled, nor with Baruch, who had fled with him and had handed over the book; for if God had been angry with them, He would have spoken to some other prophet, and not to another, but to Jeremiah himself He spoke. For thus it is read: And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, after the king had burned the scroll of the book and the words which Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah. God said to Jeremiah:
Take you another scroll, and write all your words which were then written in the book that Jehoiakim king of Judah burned. Behold, neither was God angry, nor did he who had burned it perish, nor was Baruch punished, nor was Jeremiah despised by God; from which it appears that in this matter the fault was never grave, since it could never be followed by punishment. If your forefathers had alleged these things, who could have recalled them from communion? Finally, when God saw both the tablets of the Law broken by Moses, and the ark abandoned to the enemy, and, after the handing over by Baruch, the book of the Law both cut up and burned,
He revealed His providence and promised that He would no longer write the Law on tablets nor in books, but in the inner man himself, that is, in the mind and in the heart of every believer, even as He had written in the heart of Noah, of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob and of the other patriarchs, who are agreed to have lived rightly without the Law. This the blessed Apostle Paul also proves, saying: written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart. After the Law had been broken by Moses, and abandoned to the enemy by the children of Israel, and, when Baruch offered it to King Jehoiakim, cut up and burned in pre-Christian times, where afterwards He was about to write it better, God revealed the Law through the prophet, saying:
For this is My covenant which I will make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; and after those days, says the Lord, putting My laws in their heart, and in their minds I will write them. He promised this long ago and lately fulfilled it in Christian times. Therefore now the scroll is in the second place, the parchment is in the second place. If the Law was written there by God, whence it cannot be handed over—so that your forefathers, who had already believed in the Trinity, although they handed over the books, yet handed over neither their hearts nor their minds, in which God wrote His Law, even as He had promised He would write it—where then, brother Parmenian, is what you said, that the Law was utterly burned up by the betrayers?
Behold, it has neither been utterly burned up nor wholly taken away, since both it remains in the hearts of believers and thousands of books are recited everywhere; from which it appears that you, although out of ignorance, wished in vain to accuse your forefathers. Therefore, if your forefathers should come to the times of unity, and, when so many examples have been reasonably alleged, could not themselves be repelled from communion, how much more you, who are agreed to be not betrayers but sons of betrayers, since the persons and the names of fathers and of sons are distinguished, among which persons, if there be no common fault, there cannot be one and the same sentence?
And yet, even if their unity had come about, and if they had come of their own accord to the Catholic Church—not as you, who, it is agreed, were brought back not without the will of God, that you might return whence you had strayed, although you still stray—if, as I said, they had come of their own accord to the Catholic Church, because they had been betrayers, our elders might perhaps have hesitated about receiving such men; but we ought to rejoice that such men by no means lasted down to our times. Therefore today the business is a new one, since the matter is to be dealt with with you, not with them. Although a hereditary stain seems to have been transmitted from them to you, yet in this charge you cannot be guilty together with your fathers according to the judgment of God, who spoke through the prophet Ezekiel, saying:
The soul of the father is Mine, and the soul of the son is Mine; the soul that sins, it alone shall be punished. This truth was proven even in ancient ages, in the very birth of the world, since it did not pertain to Seth, son of Adam, that his father had transgressed. But lest anyone say that it is written elsewhere, the Lord saying: I will repay the sins of the fathers unto the fourth generation—both utterances are without doubt His, but each does not sound forth to one and the same people. The first is through Moses, to a certain kind of men; the second through Ezekiel, to another kind of men. Since God knew that the Jews would make profession before Pontius Pilate, so as to say:
His blood be upon us and upon our children—out of His foreknowledge God saw that, in proportion to the greatness of the fault, what they were about to say was too little, and that the offense might be expiated with fitting punishments, He threatened those same Jews, saying that He would repay the sins of the fathers unto the fourth generation. Therefore this utterance pertains specially to the Jews alone; but that other utterance pertains to Christians, by which He deigned to promise not to take vengeance upon the sons, if anything be sinned by the fathers, nor upon the fathers, if anything perchance be transgressed by the sons. Since both in the times of Moses the Law was repeated without anyone's punishment, and the ark of the covenant was returned of itself by the enemy, and by Jeremiah, at God's command, another scroll was written:
why is it supposed that among your elders alone this sin was a capital one, in which, through so many examples, no one was condemned? For if the Law was given for this purpose, that men might be taught, not that the Law itself should be worshiped as though in place of God, then after the deed of your fathers the multitude of believers suffered no loss; each one of them, under fear, lost his own copies. For the Law, which had been necessary, has its value among the teachers of the peoples and the worshipers of God. The libraries are stocked with books; nothing is lacking to the Church; throughout each place the divine proclamation sounds everywhere; the mouths of readers are not silent; the hands of all are full of copies;
nothing is lacking to the peoples who desire to be taught, although the Law seems to have been written not so much for doctrine as for the future judgment, that the sinner may know what he can suffer if he lives less justly. Finally it is written and read: that the Law was not given for the just, since each just man is himself a law unto himself; and in another place the same blessed Apostle Paul says, that the Law does not make men just, but itself loves justice. Always in all things that produce effects, the effects produced are sought: the Law, which produces, is idle, if by a shortcut that is ready which is to be produced. Finally, it was not said to Abraham: Believe, but he believed of his own accord, in which the effect of the Law was fulfilled without the Law. It is not read: Abraham heard the Law and believed, but it is read:
Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. And in the earliest times the patriarch Noah did nothing whereby he might become just, and yet he was chosen as just, who, having built the ark, sailed happily in the flood. It would take long to go through each one who was found just without the Law. If these things had been said by your forefathers in their time, who would have driven them from his communion? What then? If they should say that it ought not to be passed over in silence, what the Apostle says concerning those outside the Law: the Gentiles, who do not know the Law, do the things that are of the Law; for they have a law written in their hearts. For many are proved to have sinned under the Law, and many to have lived well without the Law. The Law and man are two things, but they cannot be equals:
for man was not made for the sake of the Law, but the Law was given for the sake of men. Nowhere do I see harm inflicted upon God, since the origin of the Law remains with Him. And after the Scripture is said to have been handed over by your forefathers, nothing is lacking; all the members of the Law are sound, are safe, are recited: nothing is the less from the Law, both for teaching and for those desiring to be taught. Or was it the more necessary that a man should be slain, lest some Scripture be handed over? What of this? That neither were men slain, and all the Scriptures are not lacking. The Law and God are not one thing. If one had to die for God, who can both raise the dead and render reward, the book not handed over can do neither of these two. Necessity therefore hampers its own powers.
We see that negligence often works no less than necessity has worked. For if the parchments or the books in which the lawful Scripture is contained ought to be kept wholly unharmed, as though some negligent persons are not condemned, then to hand over is not far from placing badly or carrying badly. One man placed the book in his house, which house was burned up by fire: let him be condemned who placed it negligently, if he is to be condemned who, terrified, gave up the book that was demanded. Let those also be condemned who so placed neglected parchments or books that household little creatures, that is, mice, so gnawed them that they could not be read.
Let him also be condemned who so placed it in his house that, through an excess of rains, certain leaks dripped through some roofs, so that all things, blotted out by the damp, could not be read. Let those also be condemned who, carrying the books of the Law, rashly entrusted themselves to the rapacious waves of rivers, and, desiring to save themselves, let the Scriptures slip from their hands into the waves. Therefore, if the Scripture is one, and he who could not preserve it is guilty; one man handed it over to the waves, another abandoned it to gnawing creatures, another neglected it to be ruined by dripping, another, terrified by fear of death, a man gave it to a man; if there is one thing that is committed by all, why is the one chosen who is to be condemned, since the fault of the betrayer is lighter than that of the negligent?
He who placed it before the mice or left it under the dripping was negligent by his own will; and he who lost it in the river sinned out of rashness; he who handed over something out of fear of death, a man gave to a man; it was intact in the giver, intact in the receiver. If he who received it handed it over to the flames, the sin is rather the kindler's, not the deliverer's. If these things had been said by your elders, when could we have repelled them from our communion? If they had also wished to recall the times of King Antiochus, in which all the Jews were compelled to give the books to the fire, and thus the whole Scripture was given over, so that not a single tittle remained in any book whatsoever?
Of the Jews at that time no one was condemned, nor by God or by any angel was any sentence pronounced against any Jew, because the sin had been that of the one commanding and threatening, not of the people who handed it over with trembling and grief. And lest this Antiochus should seem to have done any harm to the firstborn people, God at once provided that, through one man, Ezra, who was at that time called the reader, the whole Law, just as it had been before, should be dictated down to the last tittle. Thus the tyrant Antiochus could not have the fruit of his malice, since, apart from seven brothers and one elder who refused to eat swine's flesh, he slew no Jew, and the Law could not perish.
Thus also your forefathers in their time were neither themselves slain, and the books of the Lord's Law are wholly recited everywhere. If your forefathers, as I said above, were to say these things, who would not have received them into his communion without fear, where, as has been said, it was necessity that sinned, not the will? In the times of unity your leaders, who are proved to have done these things, had already departed from among the living, leaving to you as it were a hereditary stain, which God had first washed away from you by His providence, when, between fathers and sons, as we said above, He made a separation. Therefore, because to hand over is a sin, let your forefathers see what they will answer at the judgment of God; yet for you, who belong to other times, it cannot be a sin.
Hence it is that we have long wished to receive you into our communion, because you did not sin at that time, but your leaders did. For such a sinner as your elders were, if he comes to the Church and shows the reason of his necessity, is first to be received, then to be upheld in the pious bosom of mother Church. Nor ought anyone, as though wholly holy, to judge concerning another, because it is written in the Gospel, Christ saying: Judge not, lest you be judged concerning yourselves—especially since no one can be found wholly holy. For if there are those who can be without sins, they lie in the Lord's Prayer, if without cause they ask indulgence, saying to God the Father:
Forgive us our sins, as we also forgive our debtors—since the Apostle John both reveals the consciences of all and lays bare his own with these words: If we say, he says, that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. The reason for this saying we have explained more clearly in the fourth book. But grant that there are even some perfect in entire holiness: it is not permitted that they should be without their brethren, who, lest they be repelled, cry out the Gospel precepts, by which is described a field which is the whole world, in which is the Church and the sower Christ, who gives saving precepts. On the contrary, there is the evil man, that is, the devil, who sows not in the light, but through darkness, his troublesome sins;
and in one field diverse seeds are born, even as in the Church the throng of souls is not alike. The field receives seeds good or bad, there is a diversity of seeds; but the Creator of all souls is one, the Lord of the field is one; where tares have sprung up, there are two authors of the seeds, but the field has one lord, God Himself the Lord. His is the earth, His are the good seeds, His is also the rain.
Therefore we have consented to receive you, when brought back, into unity, because it is not lawful for us either to separate or to repel sinners born together with us in one field, nourished by one rain, that is, by one baptism—even as it was not lawful for the apostles to separate the tares from the wheat, because separation cannot take place without extermination, lest, while what is not needed is plucked up, what is needed be trampled down. Equally Christ commanded that in His field throughout the whole world, in which there is one Church, both His own seeds and the alien seeds should grow. After their common growth, the day of judgment will come, which is the harvest of souls; the Judge, the Son of God, will sit, who recognizes what is His own and what is alien.
His it will be to choose what He stores in the granary and what He hands over to the fire, whom He destines to unending torments and to whom He presents the promised rewards. Let us all acknowledge that we are men: let no one usurp to himself the power of the divine judgment. For if any bishop should claim the whole to himself, let it be said what Christ is going to do at the judgment. Let it be enough for a man if he be not guilty of his own sin, rather than that he should desire to be the judge of another's. Finally, our profession is not only not to repel you, but also not to repel your forefathers, if in their times it had come about and unity had been made, for the good of peace.
For it is unlawful that we bishops should do what the apostles did not do, who were not permitted either to separate the seeds or to pluck the tares from the wheat. But if the Catholic Church should hesitate about receiving you, ought you not to have pursued the pattern of unity? But you were unwilling to set forth the examples read in the Gospel, such as is the reading concerning the person of the most blessed Peter, from which the pattern of unity to be retained or to be made is set down and recited. Indeed it is an evil to do anything against a prohibition; but it is worse not to have unity, when you can. This unity we see that Christ Himself set before His own vengeance, who chose rather that all His disciples should be in one, than to avenge what He had been offended by;
for while He was unwilling to be denied, He promised that He would deny before the Father him who should deny Him before men—and yet He did not promise that He would punish anyone who had handed over some Scripture: for it is graver to deny Him who has spoken than to have handed over the words which He spoke—and though these things are thus written, yet, for the good of unity, blessed Peter, for whom it was enough if, after he denied, he should obtain pardon alone, both deserved to be preferred to all the apostles and alone received the keys of the kingdom of heaven to be shared with the rest. That for the good of unity sins are to be buried is given to be understood from this, that the most blessed Apostle Paul says that charity is able to cover over the multitude of sins: Bear, he says, one another's burdens, and in another place he says: