in which three hundred and ten men condemned this same Maximian and his associates, when Primian did not plead his cause among them as one to be cleared, but sat with them as a most innocent judge, and brought forth sentence against Maximian and his twelve associates, in whose presence he had been ordained? And, a delay being granted, did he not recall as though innocent to his own peace so many others by whom he himself had been condemned? In this conflict of yours, what do you wish us in the middle to judge, since we are held by neither the communion of Maximian nor yours?
What, I say, do you wish us to judge herein, except that, against the two councils by which Primian was condemned, the one later Council of Bagai — by which Maximian was condemned — ought to prevail, judging it to be for this reason the firmer, in that, being later, it was able to judge concerning the earlier ones? Behold, in this we favor you; another cause is ours with the Maximianists, if we should dare to decide. We favor you, I say. A third judgment, that of Bagai, was made for Primian against Maximian and his colleagues, by which, being later, the earlier ones could deservedly be annulled — although from the two earlier judgments to the third we neither read nor hear any voice of appeal on Primian's part, except that, being absent, he was first pre-condemned and secondly condemned.
But even against Maximian and his associates, who were absent, that most eloquent Bagai sentence was brought forth. And in this those forty-three at Carthage testified that they had conducted themselves more modestly, more cautiously, and more diligently, in that they sent legates to the same Primian not once, but a second and a third time, so that, if he himself were unwilling to come to them, he might permit them to come to him.
When he refused both — as they write — and treated even those who were sent with injurious rejection, they perceived that necessity pressed upon them to make provision now for the Church; and so, not yet daring to precipitate the final judgment, but by a kind of preliminary decision taking counsel, that room might be left for him — if he trusted his own cause — to answer and clear himself at a following and more crowded council; and when he had been unwilling to come to it, they then thought that he must of necessity be condemned, with no suspension of the sentence. But in the decree of the Council of Bagai we not only do not read of any legates ill-treated by Maximian, but we do not even read of any sent that he might come;
we see nevertheless an altar raised against an altar and a bishop ordained against that bishop who was sitting in the chair where he had been ordained, in such a way that he was not deserted by the assembly of his own people, nor was his communion severed from the rest of the more numerous bishops — and this had stirred up so great an indignation, the sacrilegious schism having been perpetrated, that the condemnation neither of Maximian himself nor of his ordainers was to be any longer deferred. Since these things are so, yet such deeds do not move you on behalf of Caecilian, against whom, while he remained and presided over his people, Maiorinus was ordained, an altar being erected against an altar; against whom not by you two — as against Primian by the Maximianists — but one judgment is brought forth, hastened by the haste of a dreadful rashness.
For he, unlike Primian, did not refuse to have his colleagues come to him, but rather invited them to come — a fact which they themselves could not pass over in silence in the decree of their council which they drew up against him. On his behalf not one judgment, as on Primian's behalf, but four later judgments are read out.
His adversaries were refuted not in their absence, as Primian's were, but while present, before those judges whom they had consented should judge them — even before the emperor Constantine himself, before whom they first accused Caecilian, before whom afterwards they complained about the episcopal judges by whom he had wished the very cause to be heard, as though these had not judged rightly, and to whom they appealed again from a second episcopal judgment, so that even after one and another episcopal judgment, while he himself was hearing the case between the parties, they were overcome; and a fourth conviction of them was not lacking either.
For when in the charges proper to Caecilian they had been found to be slanderers, and had brought against him a question concerning the surrender of the scriptures by his ordainer Felix of Aptunga, Felix himself too was cleared by a proconsular judgment, when that same Constantine — whom they wearied with their incessant appeals — ordered that his case be examined. These evils the Maximianists did not practice against Primian: they were not so often defeated, nor were they defeated while present, nor were they defeated before judges whom they themselves had chosen; and yet, as is plain, they made a schism from your communion, while you refuse to notice that your own people did this from the catholic communion. With what shamelessness of most empty animosity, I truly do not know.
For if you wish everything you say about Caecilian and his ordainer Felix to be true, because some seventy bishops judged concerning this matter, why are you unwilling that the things said about Primian be true, since concerning him first forty-three, and afterwards a hundred bishops judged, and confirmed the earlier prejudgment by a later judgment? But if you reckon those crimes of Primian to be false because on his behalf, against his enemies, the council of Bagai is afterwards read out, why are you unwilling to confess as utterly false the crimes charged against Caecilian, on whose behalf so many later judgments are read out?
If Caecilian, against whom those seventy had once given judgment, ought not now to have found room for exculpation before other judges, then neither ought Primian, whom so many more than seventy, confirming the first sentence by a second hearing, had condemned. But if to one twice condemned a third judgment gives most sufficient support, because it was rendered on his behalf, why with I-know-not-what iron effrontery do you contend that for one once condemned a second, third, fourth, and fifth judgment do not suffice for acquittal?
But if perhaps number moves you, so that you think the council of Bagai prevails against the hundred by whom Primian was condemned, because in it there were three hundred and ten, why are you unwilling to agree with a number of bishops so much greater — that of the whole world? But as for that unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit which you charge against Caecilian, concerning which the Lord says:
'It shall not be forgiven, neither here nor in the age to come' — we too could show that against Felician of Musti, whom today along with Primian you have as a bishop, one of the ordainers of Maximian and among the condemners of Primian himself, and whose people baptized in the sacrilegious schism you did not rebaptize — we brought a charge of a sin that is against the Holy Spirit, in that we charged him with the sacrilege of schism, just as was proclaimed in the sentence of the council of Bagai.
For just as you therefore think that those whom you accuse of having handed over the divine scriptures to persecutors to be burned have sinned against the Holy Spirit with that irremissible guilt, because holy men of God, moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke those same scriptures — so we too could bring this same charge not only against your betrayers, whom the records convict, but also, as I said, against Felician; we could show that we brought this charge against him in the crime of sacrilegious schism, because in the Holy Spirit is preserved the unity of love and peace, as the Apostle says: 'Bearing with one another in love, being eager to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace' — which unity he assuredly violates who commits schism.
But this guilt of the insoluble and eternal sin which is committed against the Holy Spirit we charge neither against you, whom, while you live, we do not despair of being able to be healed once you are corrected, nor against those of your party who handed over the sacred books to be burned in the fire — except in so far as, being severed from unity until the end of this life, they had an impenitent heart. Nor do you show that you charged this against Felician and Praetextatus, with whom you afterwards communicated, who — bound in the chain of sacrilege with Maximian, drawn into fellowship of the crime — are read, by the truthful mouth of your own plenary council, to have been condemned; and after the day of the delay's expiry they are proved to have been received back — not, indeed, those already condemned, but others, as though innocent — the extension having been granted.
But as for the fact that the derivation of the name does not please you, whereby from Donatus they are called Donatists, and you think it should rather be inflected according to the rule of Latin speech, I do not scorn your admonition; nevertheless, seek out grammarians as judges, before whom you may contend over this art with the Maximianists and refute them. For I do not now even wish to call them Maximianists, lest I offend your so learned ears — men who certainly, as I judge, will not so easily yield to you as I do, so as to call by any other name those whom they have called Claudianists, when they set among the other crimes for which they both pre-condemned and condemned Primian the fact that he received the Claudianists into communion.
And at the same time recognize that this rule of inflection pleased not me alone, as you reproach, but that perhaps I alone yielded to you with such readiness in a matter which has no bearing on the cause. But as to your thinking that I ought to be more vehemently accused because, when I had said:
that we receive, though not purged from sacrilege, into communion those in the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics — calling 'heresy' what you wish rather to be reckoned 'schism' — you who accuse us so gravely in this cause, answer: how did your people purge the sacrilege of Felician and Praetextatus, with whom they afterwards communicated, joining and restoring them to themselves as bishops just as they had been before, and rebaptizing none of those whom they had baptized in the sacrilege of schism? Or perhaps they were not stained with sacrilege, as some of you foolishly say, alleging that they sinned not against God but against a man? But sacrilege is a sin so much the graver, inasmuch as it cannot be committed except against God;
whence you judged that I should be pressed by your argument for no other reason than that we so receive those who cross over from you to us — save that I called your error sacrilegious. Read, therefore, the council of Bagai. Surely these are its very first words: 'When, by the will of Almighty God and of His Christ our Saviour, coming from all the provinces of Africa, we held a council in the holy church of Bagai — Gamalius, Primian, Pontius, Secundian, Ianuarian, Saturninus, Felix, Pegasius, Rufinus, Fortunius, Crispinus, Florentius, Optatus, Donatus, Donatian, and the rest, three hundred and ten in number — it pleased the Holy Spirit who is in us to establish perpetual peace, to cut away sacrilegious schisms.' Do you hear? Do you notice? Do you attend?
'To cut away,' they say, 'sacrilegious schisms.' Therefore, in that schism, was Maximian alone held guilty of the crime of sacrilege — not against a man, but against God by a wicked perversity — when that sentence was pronounced? Read a little later what they say about his associates, among whom are written the names of those with whom we are here concerned: 'Not this one alone,' they say, 'does a just death condemn for his crime; the chain of sacrilege drags many others also into fellowship of the crime.' What is this, most eloquent man? What have you to say to me? Read what follows; see, among the many whom the chain of that sacrilege drags into fellowship of the crime, Praetextatus and Felician bound. I see them to be sacrilegious bishops: what will you do, if you do not prove them purged?
Surely you are compelled to yield to the truth, by which we say that your people are purged when they come to us, by the very bond of fraternal peace, and that love covers their sins, as it is written: 'Love covers a multitude of sins.' What of those whom the men who were separated from your communion and bound to Maximian in the fellowship of that sacrilegious chain baptized — whom, together with them, in the same baptism, you received into peace and concord? Will you answer anything except that you rightly approved in them the same sacraments which we too approve in you? For you will be more consistent with yourself if you answer this and do not struggle against the words of your own letter.
In which letter, when you were trying to show that not heresy but rather schism had been committed between us and you, you said that we and your people have one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance. For you could not accuse the repetition of baptism more gravely than by these words, when those seduced by us are rebaptized by your people, in whom you both hold and say and write that the sacraments are the same. With what shamelessness of wickedness, then, is that not preserved in those whom the Christian world baptizes in holy unity, which was preserved in those whom Praetextatus and Felician baptized in sacrilegious schism?
And so you have already terminated by your own judgment our cause which we have with you, since those who were struck by your condemnation, who most insistently warned the peoples not to come to you, who decreed that men must even be baptized after you — these, together with those whom, being established outside your communion in sacrilegious schism, they had baptized, you received into the concord of the altar without any degradation, without any repetition of baptism, and you believed them purged from that crime of sacrilege by nothing other than the holy fire of love. Which would truly happen, if you held that same love in true unity.
But nevertheless let us also look at the words of Petilian's letter, which you wished to defend against me, to see how you extricate yourself in this cause of the Maximianists, about which alone I have now determined to argue against your writings. He certainly set down these words of his: 'The conscience of him who gives in holiness is regarded, which cleanses that of the receiver.' To which I said: 'What if,' I asked, 'the giver's conscience be hidden and perhaps stained — how will it be able to cleanse the receiver's conscience?' This unavoidable question, since it is in no way solved in Petilian's words, you undertook to solve with your own, and you spoke not against me but against him whom you wished to defend. For he indeed says:
'The giver's conscience is regarded, which cleanses that of the receiver.' But you, having confessed that a hidden conscience cannot be seen, said it is regarded in such a way that it is not itself seen, but what is known about it in public repute. Whence it is gathered that it is now no longer true that the giver's conscience cleanses the receiver's conscience; but, according to you, his reputation cleanses it — a reputation which certainly deceives the beholder, when it speaks good things of the worst man, chaste things of the adulterer, religious things of the sacrilegious. For then it cleanses, when it lies. For if reputation should speak the truth about a secret scoundrel, then it does not cleanse but stains the one who has received baptism from him.
And on this account, this reputation, which you wished to bring in as patroness of so bad a cause, see what sort it is — which when lying cleanses, and when truthful pollutes — so that, forsooth, by your marvellous argument the water with it is then not lying, when it itself is lying. But what need is there to speak longer of this, when Felician today sits among your bishops, and, though he was disjoined from them and clung to Maximian in the chain of sacrilege, whomever he baptized, no one rebaptized after him? I ask Petilian what sort of conscience that man then had, and I read the decree of the council of Bagai, where it is written: 'Not this one alone does a just death condemn for his crime; the chain of sacrilege drags many others also into fellowship of the crime, of whom it is written:
the venom of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.' Among these many, then, Felician too is reckoned; and to him, with such lips and such a mouth, you did not spit back the water, you did not rescind it, you did not destroy it; and because it was consecrated with the gospel words, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, through whatever tongue and conscience, you acknowledged it not as lying but as truthful, and received it. But of you I ask, concerning that Felician whose conscience was so evil when he baptized in the chain of sacrilege, what was then in public repute; and I recite that same council again, where it is written:
'Know, therefore, that the men guilty of a notorious crime — Victorian of Carcabia, and, among the rest whom it is irksome to repeat, Praetextatus of Assuras and Felician of Musti, who by the deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel with the collected dregs' — and a little later — 'have been condemned by the truthful mouth of the plenary council.' What do you answer to these things? If one separated from your communion does not baptize, I read that men drawn into fellowship of the crime with Maximian did baptize. If one who sins against God does not baptize, I read that men bound in the chain of sacrilege did baptize. If the conscience of him who gives in holiness is regarded, which cleanses that of the receiver, I read that men venomous with the bites of asps did baptize.
If, that the giver's conscience may be able to cleanse, his public reputation is regarded, I read that men guilty of a notorious crime did baptize. Felician still remains in the body; with him are all those baptized by him in the sacrilege of schism, who were received into your communion and rebaptized by no one. Against Petilian, one stained with a sacrilegious conscience baptized; against you, one guilty of a notorious crime baptized. By what reasoning, I ask, do you defend yourselves, except that — as we too say — convicted by your own deeds, you may at last say that neither the giver's conscience nor his reputation cleanses the receiver's conscience, but the faith of the receiver himself, and, on the giver's part, the grace of God, not of man?
And if in the receiver there be not even the inquiry of a good conscience, and faith itself either wholly or in some part waver, then men's morals are to be corrected, not the sacraments destroyed — sacraments which you confess to be not other or similar, but altogether the same; just as you reckoned that the life and will of those whom Felician and Praetextatus baptized in sacrilegious schism were to be corrected, lest they should remain in that sacrilege of schism, but that the baptism was not to be violated, though administered to the most unworthy through the most unworthy.
In vain, therefore, with slanderous mouth did you wish to accuse our conscience, as though made public and condemned for the crime of offering incense, of surrendering the scriptures, of persecution, so that from this you might as it were prove that we cannot give baptism — since you both boast falsehoods and, however that matter may stand, certainly a conscience condemned for the crime of the Maximianists' sacrilege was able to give a baptism which you were afraid to rescind, and which is shown even by yourselves to be able to be given even by persecutors — you who, having most fiercely persecuted those same Maximianists, contend not only that men baptized by them, but that you alone, ought to baptize. You say it is written in the law: 'The oil of the sinner — let it not anoint my head.' Which is neither so written nor to be understood as you suppose.
But is not the oil of the sinner the oil of the sacrilegious Praetextatus and Felician? You say likewise that it is written: 'He who is baptized by a dead man — what does his washing profit him?' Which you neither attend to carefully nor understand, from the very context of the reading, what it means. But nevertheless attend to what that most eloquent Bagaian sentence resounds: 'Longed-for indeed,' it says, 'is the united brotherhood of peace and concord, as it is written: Justice and peace have kissed each other. But the truth-telling wave, shipwrecked, has cast forth limbs upon the harsh rocks of certain men; quite after the manner of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the corpses of the perishing, whose punishment is greater in death itself,
in that, after their soul has been wrung out by the avenging waters, they do not even find a burial.' These men, then — not only dead but also, what is graver, unburied — how could they baptize? How did the washing profit those who were baptized by these dead men, whom, received in the same laver, you did not wash again, if, as you suppose, that is to be understood so? For as to what, in my letter to which you seem to yourself to be replying, you think — that I excepted only the worshipper of an idol as guilty of a most grievous sin — and you insist vehemently that you may prove that no sinner is excepted in what you say is written:
'The oil of the sinner — let it not anoint my head' — look at Felician and Praetextatus, whether they were not sinners, when they were said by so great a council to be dragged along in the chain of sacrilege with Maximian. Dare to assert, dare to contend, dare at least to say that they were indeed sinners but hidden ones — men whom there I read to be guilty of a notorious crime. Yet even if they had sinned lightly, even if they had lain hidden, you by this testimony, which you cite about the oil of the sinner, in this suggestion try to wring out that no sinner is excepted. Where will you be, if it is so? Whither will you flee? In what hiding-places will you be able to conceal yourselves, with your own sacrilegious ones, with your own men guilty of a notorious crime, with your own unburied corpses?
You say that, when it is objected by what licence we claim the right of baptism — that we treat not of the merit of deeds, not of innocence of life, but say that it is lawful for anyone, and that, as though guilty of pre-judged crimes, while we wish to show that even sinners have the faculty of baptizing, we openly confess that we have sinned. As though we must speak against God on account of our own merits, so that we may make baptism as righteous as we ourselves are righteous — whereas no man ought to presume upon his own righteousness, and hence above all we prove that baptism is Christ's, not men's, because it is not made various by the variety of human merits. Whence I would argue more fully, were I not rather using the shortcut given by you.
For since the baptism which the Maximianists gave was received and not destroyed — asps, vipers, parricides, Egyptian corpses, and whatever else was declaimed against them with grandiloquent mouth in the council of Bagai, so that our cause might be made most easy — you yourselves too have sufficiently judged that baptism consists neither in the merits of those by whom it is administered, nor of those to whom it is administered, but in its own holiness and truth, for the sake of Him by whom it was instituted — to the ruin of those who use it ill, to the salvation of those who use it well.
But I marvel how they could even persuade you to make mention of Cyprian in your argument — by whose very letters, which you say are his, concerning the destruction of a baptism given among heretics or schismatics, your whole cause is overthrown. But we ought to argue this against the Maximianists or others who do not accept baptism given whether among you or among us; you, however, have already finished this cause with marvellous ease, you have already accepted the baptism given in the sacrilegious schism of Maximian, together with Praetextatus and Felician, among their peoples; you have already, against the letters you say are Cyprian's and against whatever others it seemed good, done this without any hesitation.
For as to your saying that the Easterners were on that account cut off from your communion, because afterwards, by holding our view, they preferred to rescind their judgment which they had held about baptism — if this was done by some few Easterners (whether it can be shown is indeed a matter of question), they assuredly corrected their judgment. And you too, by receiving the baptism which was given in the schism of Maximian, rescinded your old sentence; yet you are with yourselves, and are unwilling to be with the Easterners. But of course you seem to yourself to have found where you might expand your eloquence, when at this — which I set down in my letter: 'Whether from a faithful or from a faithless dispenser anyone receives the sacrament of baptism, let his whole hope be in Christ' — you cry out and say:
'O glorious command of a priest! O praiseworthy precepts of righteousness from a good father! You must make no distinction,' he says, 'between the faithful and the faithless; the pious and the impious must seem the same to you; it profits nothing to live by good morals, since whatever is lawful for the just man the unjust also can fulfil.' What can be said more iniquitous than this precept: let the stained man purify another, the filthy wash clean, the unclean cleanse, the unbeliever give faith, the criminal make innocent?
These are certainly your words, with which you reproach my opinion — although I by no means agreed to this nor wrote it, since between the faithful and the faithless there is indeed a very great difference, not as to the sacrament, if each has it, but as to merit, because the one has it unto salvation, the other unto punishment; nor can the unjust fulfil whatever is lawful for the just, because although the unjust man can baptize, yet the unjust man cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven; nor does he who administers baptism to anyone purify or wash or cleanse or make him innocent, but the grace of God who gives and the good conscience of him who receives. But you, look whether there was no difference between Primian and Felician, when Primian was sitting among the three hundred and ten,
by whom that man was said to have the venom of asps under his lips, and swift feet to shed blood, and destruction and unhappiness in his ways, and to know not the way of peace, nor to have the fear of God before his eyes — whether then he was not stained, unclean, filthy, who glued together a filthy vessel with collected dregs; not unfaithful, having the venom of asps under his lips; not criminal, guilty of a notorious crime. And yet he too now sits with Primian as your bishop, and those whom he then baptized, nowhere afterwards washed, he now has with you.
And still you fight against the truth, and do not concede that Christ always gives faith, that Christ is the origin of the Christian, that in Christ the Christian fixes his root, that Christ is the head of the Christian. To these my words, set down in that letter against Petilian, you subjoin your own words and say: 'This we too urge, this we wish; but we ask through whom this may better be done' — and you do not attend that Petilian does not urge this, Petilian to whom I then replied, and whose letter you try to defend and affirm against my response. For he indeed openly said: 'The conscience of him who gives in holiness is regarded, which cleanses that of the receiver. For he who receives faith from a faithless man receives not faith but guilt.'