書信與論戰集（CSEL） 第 14 章 第 1/9 段

Against the Letter of Parmenian. Book One. I have indeed, on other occasions, discoursed much against the Donatists — partly by writing, partly also by disputation — with such strength as the Lord supplies. But now, since there has fallen into our hands a certain letter of Parmenian, once their bishop, which he writes to Tychonius — a man endowed with keen ability and rich eloquence, yet nonetheless a Donatist — since Parmenian judged Tychonius to be erring in this, that the latter was compelled to confess the truth, it has pleased me, at the request, or rather the command, of the brethren, to reply here to this same letter of Parmenian, chiefly on account of certain testimonies from the Scriptures which he takes otherwise than they ought to be taken.

For Tychonius, battered on every side by all the voices of the sacred pages, awoke and saw the Church of God diffused throughout the whole world, just as concerning her it had, so long before, been foreseen and foretold through the hearts and mouths of the saints. Perceiving this, he undertook to demonstrate and assert against his own people that no man's sin, however wicked and monstrous, can prejudice the promises of God, nor can any impiety of whatsoever persons established within the Church bring it about that the faithfulness of God concerning the Church that was to be spread abroad even to the ends of the earth — the faithfulness held in the promises to the fathers and now displayed — should be made void.

Therefore, though Tychonius argued this vehemently and copiously, and stopped the mouths of his adversaries with many, great, and manifest testimonies of the holy Scriptures, he did not see what ought consequently to have been seen: namely, that those Christians in Africa belong to the Church diffused throughout the whole world who are joined, not to these men cut off from the communion and unity of that same world, but to the very world itself through communion.

But Parmenian and the rest of the Donatists saw that this was the consequence, and they preferred to take up a most obstinate mind against the most evident truth which Tychonius asserted, rather than, by granting it, to be overcome by the African churches which rejoiced in the communion of that unity which Tychonius asserted, from which these men had separated themselves. And Parmenian indeed at first thought Tychonius should be corrected by a letter; but afterwards, they report, he was even condemned by their council. Accordingly, we have resolved to reply in this work to the letter of Parmenian which he wrote to Tychonius, rebuking him for preaching the Church diffused throughout the whole world, and admonishing him not to dare to do so.

Let us first, then, see of what sort this is: that he says the Gauls and Spaniards and Italians and their allies — by whom he surely wishes the whole world to be understood — are made like unto the African traditors through a commerce of crimes and a fellowship in wrongdoing. For to a man who brings forward from the holy Scriptures so many and so mighty documents, he himself speaks without documents, and wishes to be believed while proving nothing, inviting the man, of course, to imitate himself, since he too believed nobody but mere talkers, against so many churches established throughout so great a breadth of all the lands. And than such credulity, what more rash can be found?

For he says that certain men, discharging an embassy — as he himself asserts, most faithful witnesses — came to those same provinces; then, by a doubled arrival of the most holy priests of the Lord (as he himself says), the things they allege were published more clearly, more fully, and more truly. O man, thinking that more credit should be given to himself than to God! Tychonius brings forth the thunders of the divine testament, which was made in the promise to Abraham and the promise to Isaac and the promise to Jacob, whose God He testifies Himself to be, saying: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; this is my name forever. And this man sets against it the tales of his fellow-priests. What was said to Abraham? In thy seed shall all nations be blessed. What was said to Isaac?

And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed, because Abraham thy father obeyed my voice. What was said to Jacob? I am the God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac; fear not. For the land upon which thou sleepest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and it shall be spread abroad to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east. And in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed, and in thy seed. And lest they think this was said of the Jews, what the seed of Abraham is, in whom it was said that all nations should be blessed, let the Apostle expound: To Abraham, he says, were the promises made, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

In Christ, therefore, that all nations were to have blessing was promised with such great authority and displayed with such great truth; and those who wish to be called Christians contradict it. And what do they set against these things? Certain most faithful witnesses, he says, discharging an embassy, came to those same provinces; then, by a doubled arrival of the most holy priests of the Lord, it was published more clearly, more fully, and more truly. What, I ask you, what was published through these faithful witnesses, whom you wish to be more faithful than God? Was it that, through the African traditors, the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, was not permitted to reach unto all nations, and there dried up whither it had come?

Go, tell your colleagues that they are to be believed more than the testament of God, and while saying these things, boast that you have preserved from the flame that very testament which you try to blot out with your tongue. But let each one choose what he pleases; and if against the heavenly lightnings the earthly smoke of a lie has any power, then, with heaven dismissed, let it vanish into the winds. For if Parmenian did not favour his own throne, he would rather choose to believe the Scripture of God than his colleagues. For God says to Jacob: I will not forsake thee, until I have done what I have spoken to thee.

But it is surely much more credible concerning these men — because they had already been rejected by a just judgment — that they were not admitted to associate in communion in those parts where God was already fulfilling what He had promised to our fathers; and that therefore they boasted such things about the holy priests of God, by whom they had not been counted worthy of being received, in order that by false rumours they might agitate the weak souls of the peoples deceived by them, and tear away rashly credulous minds, ensnared by the pride of their own name, from the peace of the whole world. What more insane than this folly — nay rather, than this madness — can be found? Among so many nations of the world God has already, in great part, fulfilled it, and still fulfils it, until there come to absolutely all what He promised, who said:

I will not forsake thee, until I have done what I have spoken to thee; and yet these men already believe those who announce that what God promised is not being fulfilled, and therefore that from those parts of the earth in which it had already been fulfilled the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, had perished, and that the promises of God had been made void — because they themselves were not admitted to the communion of those among whom the world now retained this fulfilled promise. And it is not said to them: 'God alone is truthful, but every man a liar. These things you say of your own, for he who speaks a lie speaks of his own. You therefore lie as men, because you are angry as men.' This is not said to them; but on top of it, they are believed concerning the world, which He had already begun to possess, that Christ has perished from it.

And those who believe these things, while they shamelessly say 'We are Christians,' dare to say 'We alone are.' Parmenian also says that hence it is proved that the whole world was made criminal by the crimes of the handing-over of the Scriptures and of other sacrileges, because, although many such things were committed in the time of persecution, no separation of peoples was afterwards made in those very provinces.

As if it could not have happened that some of the wicked lay hidden and were not accused, so that they could not be condemned without any rashness; while some, too, were both exposed and condemned, and because they were convicted by manifest evidence, ceased from disturbing and dividing the churches; and so it came to pass that — since certain men were not accused, while certain uncertain crimes were remitted to God for the sake of certain peace, and certain others were so made manifest and convicted that they were condemned in such a way that no condemned man could deceive the peoples by a feigned innocence — the bond of unity was by no means broken. For not even in Africa would this so monstrous evil of severance have come about, unless a faction of men fabricating falsehoods had prevailed over the true reasoning of those who convict by evidence.

Let those who wish read what Optatus, bishop of Mileve of venerable memory, of the catholic communion, narrates, and by what documents he persuades so many things: whether concerning Lucilla, then a most wealthy and most factious woman, whom the holy Caecilian, while still a deacon, had offended for the sake of ecclesiastical discipline; or concerning the rest of the associates of her faction, whether they were thieves of the church's silver, or grieved that they had not attained to the episcopate and, with such snares as they could, persecuted Caecilian who had been preferred before them; or concerning the Numidian bishops, whom that faction had summoned to the ruin of Caecilian, so that, when he was deposed, another might be ordained for them.

These men, coming with their primate, then Secundus of Tigisis, and with others to whom Secundus himself had pardoned their confessed crimes of handing over the Scriptures, as though consulting for peace — as the ecclesiastical records testify — judged the absent Caecilian, without any delay of more careful inquiry, no place being kept for a reply, to be a traditor; so that, of course, crimes of handing-over merely alleged might weigh against him in his absence, while they had, being themselves present, pardoned crimes confessed to their very selves.

Thus, against one seated on the throne, with whom the whole Christian world in lands across the sea and far remote, and among the Africans themselves — the graver ones and more robust against deceits of this kind — held communion in their churches, they ordained another bishop, so that by their own deed they might be able to contradict the promises of God, lest all nations be blessed in the seed of Abraham; so that they might say that even those parts of the world were defiled by the African traditors which had neither heard the name of Caecilian, or at any rate had heard, as of an innocent man, how his life stood — a life which nonetheless these men convicted of no crime. And what is more, against the world which says:

'That which you charge against your fellow-citizens, I neither could know nor ought to condemn what is unknown to me' — they bring forward the testimony of the Apostle, who says: Not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to those who do them. For it was too little to condemn so many and so great Christian peoples unheard, unless they also dared to bring out against the Apostle himself his very words, but not his meaning. For if this is to consent to evildoers — to be with them in the Church — then the Apostle himself consented to the false brethren, among whom he testified that he was in peril, and whom, preaching the Gospel not chastely but through envy without charity, he nonetheless permits to preach.

But if to consent to evildoers is nothing else than to approve and praise their evil deeds, then, by the example of the Apostle, the world would not consent to the crimes of the Africans, even if it tolerated them, once known, for the sake of the Church's peace — though these men do not prove that the world knew them, even if they could have proved them to have been true. In vain, therefore, does Parmenian say that traditors condemned in Africa were received into fellowship of holiness by the provinces across the sea. For this is what we ought not to believe, lest by a sacrilegious rashness we condemn the whole world, founded in the unity of Christ, on the ground of these men's false accusation, rather than love it on the ground of God's true promise. For which is more to be believed — what God said:

In thy seed shall all nations be blessed, or what these men say: In the seed — the seed of the African traditors — all nations are cursed, so that what iniquity has committed avails more than what truth has promised? Why then do we not rather believe that those who were received into communion by the provinces across the sea either could not, being innocent, be crushed by the slanderers — which can be more probably persuaded by many documents — or at any rate, since they could not be convicted, even if they were wicked, were believed innocent and received without any contamination of those who received them?

What of the fact that, even if through evil brethren — such as the Apostle tolerated in the unity of the Church, such as the martyr Cyprian bewails in his letter on the lapsed — even if, then, through such brethren, set even in the number of the judges, something had been done with some perversity, so that the traditors could not be excluded and convicted, and the Christian world was deceived by their feigned innocence, it would in no way have lost its own innocence? For as to what he said concerning Ossius, once a catholic bishop of Cordova, it must be demanded that they prove not only that he was such as they say, but that it was manifest to those with whom they assert he communicated that he was such.

For unless they prove this, they say in vain that they knew what sort of man he was; because he could not harm those who did not know, from whom these men, by separating themselves from innocent persons, cannot be innocent, on account of the very sacrilegious iniquity of the separation itself.

For this is more credible — if indeed Ossius, condemned by the Spaniards, was absolved by the Gauls — that it could have happened that the Spaniards, circumvented by false accusations and deceived by the cunning fraud of snares, passed sentence against an innocent man, and afterwards peacefully, in Christian humility, yielded to the sentence of their colleagues, by whom his innocence was proved; lest, by an obstinate and passionate perversity, defending their former sentences, they should rush by the blindness of impiety into the sacrilege of schism, which surpasses all crimes — as these wretched men did, and, so often divided and cut to pieces, do not even at last perceive what they have done.

And so they sufficiently declare whence they have become incurable: namely, lest they be compelled to condemn their own former sentences, which they rashly passed against the absent Caecilian, if they were to acquiesce, in consideration of truth and peace, in the judgment across the sea, where they were overcome by the present Caecilian — though they would have carried off a greater victory if they had overcome human passion at least after the judgment, than if they had overcome the man in the judgment itself. For that victory is more exalted and fuller with a loftier triumph than if it were reported not only of one man conquered, but of a whole subjugated city, since Scripture says: Better is he who conquers anger than he who takes a city.

They therefore desired to conquer a man, they whom anger was conquering; and because they could not conquer the man, they were overcome both by the man and by anger: by the man, because they were vanquished in the judgment; by anger, because not even when vanquished did they rest, hearing or reading with a most depraved heart the sentence of the Apostle who says: For if I build again the same things which I destroyed, I constitute myself a transgressor. Which words, of course, if the Apostle himself had understood with so sinister a mind, he would neither have become a Christian nor an apostle, nor as a preacher have built up the churches which as a persecutor he had before been destroying.

Nowhere, therefore, have these men so openly shown why they refused to be corrected even when overcome, as when they detest the Spaniards for yielding, after their sentences had been otherwise pronounced, to the later examination and judgment of their colleagues. For as much as this was done out of Christian meekness, so much was that other done out of diabolical contentiousness; and therefore it is no wonder that by this humility peace was kept, while by that elation it was broken. Accordingly, to them is rightly rendered what they did;

for they taught such things to their descendants. For the Maximianists too, for no other reason, refused to yield to the council of the three hundred and ten of their own colleagues, by whom Primian — whom they themselves had first condemned — was judged innocent, than by opposing, with lost obstinacy, the apostolic sentence to the unlearned and saying: For if I build again the same things which I destroyed, I constitute myself a transgressor. For a hundred colleagues had destroyed Primian, and on that account refused to build him up again with the three hundred. Thus, while they pretend to beware lest they build up a man whom they had destroyed, they destroyed themselves in another schism by a greater sacrilege.

But nevertheless, if Parmenian were living, he would not now dare to reprehend the Spaniards and call them transgressors because they bent their own sentence into the sentence of their colleagues, lest he himself should offend his own colleagues — many of whom, after Primian had already been condemned by them, were corrected for the better and passed over to the council of the three hundred, preferring rather to go against their own precipitate sentences than against the peace of unity, even in the party of Donatus.

And Parmenian would most especially spare Praetextatus of Assuras and Felician of Musti, who, even though condemned by three hundred and ten of their own fellow-bishops, returned, out of zeal for concord, to those very men by whom they had been condemned, and, with the same zeal, were received for the sake of peace by their own condemners, without any detriment to their own honour; nor did anyone think that those were to be rebaptized who had been baptized by them outside, in the schism.

Or perhaps, because those who correct their own sentences greatly displease Parmenian, and, not understanding them, he calls them transgressors after the Apostle, he would detest these men because they wished to return within rather than remain without, and, joining to himself certain like-minded allies, would even create Parmenianists — just as already many fragments have been made from this great fragment throughout all Africa? So, so it must needs be: little by little, cut and chopped, they perish, who preferred the swelling of their own passion to the most holy bond of catholic peace. For the things which Parmenian charges are not so much to be feared as the things which he confesses are to be regarded.

For when he said that, through Ossius the Spaniard, help was furnished to Caecilian, so that the number of saints and untainted men should be forced into communion with them, and that the unimpaired faith of the servants of God resisted this impiety, he confessed of his own accord that his own men went even to Constantine, and that by his arbitration the case was heard by episcopal judges, over whom Miltiades, bishop of the city of Rome, presided. In which judgment, as the ecclesiastical records testify, because these men were vanquished and Caecilian was found innocent, they accuse this same Miltiades of the crime of handing over the Scriptures. And I ask, when did they come to know this?

For if before the judgment, they ought not to have prejudged their own case, so as to begin to plead their cause before such a judge and, by the command of the emperor whom they themselves had approached, to submit to such a judgment. But if after the case had been pleaded and the sentence pronounced they profess that they learned him to be a traditor, then men are mad to such a degree that, against the judges before whom they were vanquished, they believe the vanquished litigants? And yet in all these things, with however great rashness, they accuse the Italians and Gauls and Spaniards, leaving aside the rest of so many provinces and nations, from which they are separated by a wicked sacrilege, and to whom the crimes of the Italians, Spaniards, and Gauls surely could not be prejudicial, even if they were spoken truly.

For now they blame the other lands in a blind manner — or rather in a fury — and are angry with them because, when there were two parties in Africa — one, they say, of traditors and the other of the innocent — they chose to join to themselves the traditors rather than the innocent. Which vain accusation is most briefly and most truly refuted thus: that, when they had heard there were two parties in Africa, one of traditors and the other of the innocent, they believed that to be the innocent one which had obtained its case before the neighbouring ecclesiastical judges.

Therefore those men always remained innocent who, not knowing how these things were done in Africa, nevertheless believed what they ought peaceably and religiously to have believed; and from such innocent men no separation could in any way be innocent. Parmenian himself admits that at the town of Arles both the bishops as judges and the parties from Africa came together — namely Caecilian and the Donatists. There he entrusted everything to his own men, who, being defeated, could do nothing but complain about the judges; nor yet does he deny that they came again to Constantine, and, because there too they were overcome in the final judgement, he even charges the emperor himself with having been corrupted by favour.

When all these things have been considered, let whoever judges without partisan zeal choose whom to believe: whether the judges who pronounced the sentences, or the litigants against whom the sentences were pronounced and who refused to let the case be ended. And assuredly the whole world believed the judges. But those who agree with the Donatists and defend them confess that they believe those who, whatever their cause may have been, could nevertheless not win it in so many hearings overseas; and they take up the murmurs and accusations of these men against the judges with a credulous emptiness.

In this matter, if they call themselves innocent and refuse rashly to believe that those whom they see defeated were defeated by the truth, how much more innocent are those who refuse rashly to believe any evil of the judges themselves — of whom it is inevitable that the defeated should complain! For not only does he who has lost a good cause complain of an unjust or slow or negligent judge, but even he who has been most justly defeated murmurs, out of that same blindness, against an innocent judge, with the very blindness by which he was contending against an innocent adversary.

Wherefore these men are guilty, not because they refuse rashly to believe anything about defeated men, but because in the frenzy of schism they cut themselves off from those innocent men who, with far better reason, refuse to believe any such thing about the judges themselves. Let there arise, then, out of those seven, some most noble church of one of those parties in the name of Christ — and, if you please, especially Philadelphia, which by a mystic name in the Greek tongue signifies brotherly love. Let us therefore hear its voice; and let not its chaff speak, but its wheat. If, then, it should say to these men: 'Why do you accuse me, brethren, why do you charge me? By how great an interval, according to earthly place, I am removed from Africa, you have been able partly to know, partly to hear.

What was done there at that time — whether by traditors, or by the accusers or condemners of traditors, or by the calumniators or oppressors of the innocent — I am utterly ignorant. But that Lord of ours, who bought the whole world with the price of his own blood, whose holy transactions the prophet sang so long before, saying: 'They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones. But they themselves have looked and gazed upon me; they divided my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots' — he has not set between you and us empty spaces bare of Christians; he has filled all these with the sanctification of his name. For indeed in that very psalm of the passion it is declared not only at how great a price, but also how great a thing he bought. For there, a little after, it is said:

'All the ends of the earth shall remember and be turned to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight; for the kingdom is his, and he shall rule over the nations.' Concerning your cause, then, perhaps I might be compelled to judge, if I were either near, or so remote that between us and you there dwelt no other Christians marked with the same name and pacified in the same unity. Many families of nations lie between us, bought together with me by his blood, in whose sight they worship equally with me. Through them the report about you passed to me; they themselves, being near, could have examined your cause. But if that was not done, you neglected it; for had you not been neglected by the rest, you would not have come even as far as us.

But if something has been judged, grant me pardon: I do not dare rashly to believe you who are defeated, and with the same rashness to condemn your judges. There is added to me another thing which greatly moves me: because, if you innocent men had been oppressed, you would at least love us, your brethren, who have done you no harm. But when in fact you try to tear us — who are well aware in our own consciences that your cause was committed to your neighbours by the right order of the Church, who know before God how they judged — to tear us, I say, with curses and to hound us with bitter hatreds, and, as though on your account Christ had lost his inheritance among us, you even attempt to rebaptize: what good can we think about that cause of yours?

For you who least hesitate to condemn brethren far removed by rash suspicions, thereby show how justly you were condemned by your neighbours. For why should I not believe that one could rightly be condemned by a neighbouring judge after being heard, when he does not hesitate to condemn me, a brother so far absent, unheard — laying this greatest charge against me, that, since I could not be present, I believed rather the judges to whom the case was brought than the defeated litigants? And if I had not believed those judges instead, then, even if those who were defeated were innocent, I could not be innocent.

For we would be entangled in a great sin if, since we could not see into human hearts and could not maintain ecclesiastical discipline, we were unwilling to believe those who were judging — beyond whom the case could not pass, and through whom the report could run down to us. Do you, rending yourself from these innocent men by an impious severance, call yourself innocent? And yet if you were, then, since you saw in the Holy Scriptures that the harvest of your Lord cannot, before the final separation and winnowing, be separated from the tares and the chaff, you would rather choose to be brave in tolerating the evil than impious in deserting the good. — For of how many churches far removed throughout the world do we think these voices are, and how most just, which I have figured under Philadelphia!

Nay more, Parmenian dares even to complain that Constantine ordered those men to be led to the field — that is, to execution — who, being defeated before the ecclesiastical judges and before the emperor himself, could not prove what they were saying, and were still being borne by sacrilegious frenzy into cutting off portions of the holy Church; and he charges the emperor with having commanded this savagely, at the suggestion of the Spaniard Ossius — condemning the unheard by his own suspicions, as always. As though, rather, another might not more humanely and more probably have believed that it was done at the suggestion of Ossius, as a bishop, precisely so that the emperor might bend his sentence toward a milder coercion of a crime most monstrous — that is, of sacrilegious schism.