I spare them, I do not inveigh, I do not exaggerate; I press down my grief rather than pour it out. But if they say that they give their heart to Christ, then let them believe Christ when He says that throughout the whole world both the children of the kingdom and the children of the evil one grow together — and not Donatus, who says that throughout the world only the children of the evil one have grown, but the good children have been reduced to Africa alone. But if they believe Christ, we now say: let them have peace, not with the churches of the world, but with the very Gospel — which they falsely boast they preserved from the fire, since they do not prove it by their deeds. And now, to what does that pertain which the same Parmenianus thought should be cast at us from the prophet Isaiah: 'Is not the hand of the Lord strong to save, or has He made His ear heavy that He should not hear?'
'But your iniquities have made a division between you and your God, and because of your sins He has turned His face away from you, that He should not have mercy. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquities; but your lips have spoken iniquity, and your tongue meditates injustice. No one speaks just things, nor is there true judgment. They trust in vanities and speak empty things, for they conceive travail and bring forth iniquity. They have hatched the eggs of asps, and they weave the spider's web; and he who was about to eat of those eggs, breaking one, found it addled, and in it a basilisk. Their web shall not serve for clothing, nor shall they cover themselves with their works.'
'For their works are works of iniquity, and their feet run to wickedness, swift to shed blood; and their thoughts are the thoughts of the foolish. Ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known.' Those whom Scripture describes in this passage, wherever they are, even among the good, do not harm the good — just as the chaff does not harm the wheat — until the Lord of the threshing-floor comes, bearing His winnowing-fan in His hand, and cleanses His floor, and lays up the wheat in the barn, but burns the chaff with unquenchable fire; just as so great a multitude of the wicked did not harm the good, which we have learned through the prophet Ezekiel — those, namely, who groaned and mourned over the crimes of the people that were done in their midst.
Whence, because they could not correct them, nor ought they in any way to separate themselves from the unity of God's people, they deserved — by the merit of their most innocent tolerance — to be marked and to be delivered in the devastation and destruction of those lost ones.
Yet these men who cast these things at the Catholics — why do they not look upon themselves, whose very hordes of raging bands, armed with iron and cudgels, fly hither and thither, and by so frequent slaughters, wherever they can, are in no way sated in such savagery — where, over the graves of their corpses, together with women (who, mingled with them promiscuously against the order of things divine and human, wander about by day and night), so great a drunkenness seethes that from it they conceive a daily madness, not only of persecuting others, but even of hurling themselves headlong? Do not their feet run to malice, and are they not swift to shed blood? Does not judgment depart from these men, who usurp for themselves even the most unjust license of disordered power?
Does not darkness come upon these men, while in a false martyrdom they endure the light? Do they not walk in the midst of night even by day, since the Apostle says: 'Those who are drunk are drunk in the night'? Do not these men fall at midday as though at midnight? This indeed belongs to all heretics, who cannot see the most manifest thing, set in the light of all nations — outside whose unity, whatever they do, however much it may seem to be done with great skill and diligence, profits them nothing against the wrath of God, just as the spiders' webs cannot defend from the cold.
What then do they put forward from this prophetic chapter that cannot be turned back upon themselves — unless perhaps concerning the eggs of the asps, of which the composer of the sentence of the plenary council of three hundred and ten had made much mention, when they gathered from all the provinces of Africa? This surely, if Parmenianus were now living, he would not say, nor would he set it against us from the prophet Isaiah: 'They have hatched the eggs of asps.' For he would consider Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, joined to his own college — men whom, out of the number of the condemned, as though for the good of peace (yet not of Christ but of Donatus), they received back afresh as if whole and sound — men who both were the eggs of asps and had hatched.
For thus do the three hundred and ten of the plenary council describe them with truthful mouth, just as their acts, alleged also in the proconsular records, bear witness. For these indeed are the words of their council: 'For although the womb of the poisoned belly has long concealed the noxious offspring of the viper-seed, and the moist clots of conceived crime have with slow warmth exhaled themselves into the limbs of asps, yet the conceived venom could not be hidden by a vanishing shade. For, though late, they brought forth the public wickedness and their parricide, the teeming vows of their crimes.'
These eggs of asps had now hatched, and now, horrible and foul-smelling with their venomous offspring, they had been cast out from their communion; but within there was Optatus the basilisk, who, by a certain royal nod (by which among serpents he is said to excel), would call back even the cast-out asps. But if these things do not harm for the sake of peace, why do they cast at the Catholics — whom they could not convict — that which they themselves committed, when they received back those whom with their own mouth they had condemned? If these things do not harm for the sake of peace, they yet harm for the sake of the peace of Donatus, which is greatly favored to the injury of the peace of Christ; and for this sacrilege, whatever bodily afflictions they suffer is a warning from God to beware of eternal damnation.
For they themselves truly shed blood, not only bodily through the furies of the Circumcellions, but also spiritually, since they attempt, if they could, to rebaptize the whole world. Or if only he sheds blood who wounds mortal flesh or kills by a wound, but he does not shed blood who destroys seduced souls by the sacrilege of schism, then why did they say such things against their own schismatics, the Maximianists, through that same sentence of their plenary council: 'Their feet are swift to shed blood,' when it is established that among them no one was bodily killed, no one wounded, but rather that they themselves suffered many things at the hands of these men, when they were shut out from the basilicas by the judicial authorities?
Such things — even many things — they did to those who earlier had made schisms from the party of Donatus, before the separation of the Maximianists, when they were together in one body. For to what schismatic of their own did they ever spare, who wish that too shamelessly they themselves should be spared by the whole world (of which they are schismatics), when it is only by that very true unity that schisms are most justly punished — if indeed these things are to be punished in that way? And that which is written: 'As the ruler of the people, so also his ministers; and as is the governor of the city, such also are its inhabitants,' — if they understood to what it pertains, they would neither cast it at us nor swell with empty boasting themselves.
For we, in order that we may place the hope of men — which is safe and rightly secure in God alone — not in men, since we remember it is written: 'Cursed is he who puts his hope in man,' do not understand in this passage the ruler of the people and the governor of the city to signify the bishop;
not for the reason that we cannot behold innumerable holy bishops in the Catholic Church, but lest anyone's hope of man, as I said, be placed in man; and lest, if it perhaps befall him to live in that city where there is no good bishop, he should think that he can with impunity become evil, usurping for his own defense this Scripture as perversely understood as it is perversely understood by these men, and saying that he therefore cannot be good, because 'as the ruler of the people, so also his ministers, and as is the governor of the city, such also are its inhabitants.' For this error is contradicted by the mouth of Truth saying: 'What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not.'
And so, when the people have such bishops as speak good things from the seat of Moses, but do not do what they say because of their own pestilence, if the people do the good things which those bishops say, and do not do the evil things which they do, as the Lord commanded, do they not sufficiently show that the ruler of the people and the governor of the city are not to be understood as these men understand? — since the people can be good even where the bishops have been evil, just as the people could be evil where Moses was a good ruler and governor. For those who err in the words of the holy Scriptures and, as the Apostle says, understand neither what they say nor concerning what they affirm, rather suffer great straits according to the perversity of their own understanding, when it is said to them:
'Therefore, as Optatus was, such also was the people of Thamugadi; and if, as you say, even those who reprove evil deeds — even those which they tolerate for the peace of unity — are contaminated by the communion of the sacraments, then such are you all, who communicated both with that colleague of yours and with that people, when all Africa declared him, with manifest groaning, a satellite of Gildo.' Him I often name for this reason, because he appeared so manifest that, wherever he was named, no one could answer that he did not know him.
For let them themselves look and remember how many like men they have among themselves, whose malice is equal, but whose notoriety unequal; and let them at some time come to the true meaning of these words, and understand the one ruler of the people to be our Lord Jesus Christ, whose ministers are good; and Him to be the governor of that city Jerusalem, which is our eternal mother in the heavens. To the dignity of this governor the inhabitants correspond — not to equality, but according to their measure — because it was said to them: 'You shall be holy, for I also am holy,' according, that is, to a certain likeness of image, into which we are transformed from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord, by the gift of Him who makes us conformed to the image of His Son.
There is also the devil, prince of another evil people, and governor of that city which is mystically called Babylon; since the Apostle Paul calls him and his angels the princes and rulers of this darkness — that is, of sins — and his ministers are like him, because they transfigure themselves into ministers of righteousness, just as he into an angel of light; and the inhabitants correspond to their most wicked governor in like deeds. But then there will be an open separation of these peoples and cities, when this harvest has been winnowed; and until that is done, the love of the wheat tolerates all things, lest, while the grains too hastily flee from the chaff, they be impiously separated from their fellow grains.
'What then does it now avail their case that they cast at us — because through Isaiah the Lord says of evil sacrificers: 'The wicked man who sacrifices to me a calf is as one who slays a dog, and he who offers fine flour is as one who offers swine's blood, and he who offers incense in memorial is as a blasphemer'? All these things are said much more fittingly of those who have erected the altar of their schism against the Church of God, spread — as it was promised — throughout the whole world;
which sacrilege involves them all, and whoever, wherever, offers sacrifice with such a heart or with such deeds as to deserve to hear these things, brings destruction upon himself — not upon those good men who, according to the prophet Ezekiel, groan and mourn over the sins and iniquities that are done in their midst, although they do not bodily separate themselves therefrom; for the Lord renders to each according to his heart.
For if in the earliest times evil priests did not harm either their good colleagues — such as was Zacharias — or the good among the people — such as was Nathanael, in whom there was no guile — how much more does an evil bishop in Christian unity harm nothing to either his good fellow-bishops or the good laity, since now that Priest, forever according to the order of Melchizedek, and our Pontiff, sitting at the right hand of the Father, intercedes for us — He who was delivered up for our offenses and rose again for our justification. Neither therefore does that harm the good, but the evil who offer it, which was most truly said: 'The Most High does not approve the gifts of the wicked.' For He did not say:
'The Most High does not approve the gifts of those who tolerate the wicked for the sake of peace' — since yet these men could not prove those things which they cast up, at the time when they made the schism. Otherwise, those being excluded, the inheritance of Christ, spread throughout the whole world, would have held these men in Catholic communion. 'The sacrifices of the impious,' he says, 'are an abomination to the Lord; for they offer them iniquitously.' It has already been answered above that Christ is not iniquitous, who offered Himself for us and is our mediator in heaven; and while He governs His Church, the evil will not harm the good, who are either not known or are tolerated for the sake of peace, until He Himself comes and separates — the reapers being sent ahead — the tares from the harvest and, with the winnowing-fan, the chaff from the wheat.
Although these men, as must often be said, brought false charges — which, even if they were true, would in no way injure the charity of the good, tolerating all things for the sake of unity within unity, if perhaps they could not, even when known, persuade the ecclesiastical judges of them. Therefore the sacrifices of the impious will harm those very men who offer impiously. For one and the same sacrifice, on account of the name of God (which is invoked there and is always holy), becomes to each such as is the heart with which he approaches to receive it; for he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself. He did not say 'to others,' but 'to himself.' He therefore who eats and drinks worthily eats and drinks grace to himself.
Let those men therefore consider whether they eat worthily, who, among so many parents and children, husbands and wives, among so many — which is the chief thing — heirs of God and coheirs of Christ, spread throughout the whole world, divided them by a wicked schism; whereas assuredly, if they were good and truly reproved the evil, they could fruitfully tolerate for the peace of Christ those things which they perniciously tolerate for the party of Donatus. 'In Exodus,' he says, 'it is written: But let the priests who draw near to the Lord God be sanctified, lest perhaps the Lord forsake them'; and again: 'And when the ministers draw near to the altar of the holy things, let them not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die'; and that in Leviticus: 'The man who has a blemish and a defect, let him not draw near to offer gifts to God.'
It is well that they bring forward these testimonies from the ancient books. Let them then tell me: to which holy man, whether set among the priests or among the people, did an evil or blemished priest do harm as regards spiritual salvation? Where Moses and Aaron were, there were the sacrilegious murmurers, whom God ever threatened to destroy from before His face; where Caiaphas and others like him were, there were Zacharias, there Simeon and the other good men; where Saul was, there David; where Jeremiah, where Isaiah, where Daniel, where Ezekiel were, there were evil priests and evil peoples; but each one bore his own burden. I forbear to say with what wicked pride it is said that no one among his colleagues, or he himself, is without some blemish and defect — not of members, but, what is worse, of morals.
When we begin to deal with them on this point, they answer that it matters of what sort the blemish is and what sort the defect — as though the Scripture had distinguished, which says: 'The man who has a blemish and a defect, let him not draw near to offer gifts to God.' Had not — I do not say Optatus, but Parmenianus himself or Donatus himself — some blemish and defect? But these men are so blinded by love of men, and with an unchaste heart do not hesitate to make the adulterers of their own mind equal to the one lawful Husband, that they contend that what could be said of the Lord Jesus Christ alone was perfectly fulfilled even in Donatus. Who will give to my eyes a fountain of tears? What groaning fitting to this crime can be wrung from a stricken breast? But meanwhile let them attend whether at least Optatus had any blemish or any defect;
they are not so blinded as to answer that this man's life too was wholly spotless and free from every defect. Why then did he draw near to offer gifts to God, and did the others with joined hands receive from him what a blemished and defective man had offered? Let them attend, among their other men, whether drunkenness is no blemish — but let them first read to what wicked men the Apostle Paul joined the drunkards;
whether covetousness is no blemish, which the same Apostle so detests that he compares it to the servitude of idols. But those who are rightly wise understand that any of men whatsoever — although, for the fellowship of human society, he may not absurdly be said to live most justly — cannot nevertheless be without some defect, so long as the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and: 'He who is born of God does not sin'; and: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.'
For although, in so far as we are born of God, we do not sin, yet there is still within us also that which we are from Adam, because death is not yet swallowed up in victory — which is also promised in the resurrection of the bodies, that in every way we may be blessed and immaculate and incorrupt, we who are already according to faith the sons of God, but according to appearance it has not yet appeared what we shall be. For not yet in reality, but in hope, are we saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it through patience.
And so long as through patience we wait for the redemption of our body, let us not dare to say that we lack every defect, lest that very pride be a most monstrous defect; and let us at some time awake and see that in the priests of that time, when bodily defects were avoided, there was prefigured Him who, though He was God, was made man for our sake, alone truly the immaculate Lamb and the Priest without defect. And therefore then too the priest alone entered into the Holy of Holies, but the people stood outside; just as now that Priest, after the resurrection, has entered into the secret places of the heavens, that at the right hand of the Father He may intercede for us, but the people whose Priest He is still groans outside.
For with the bishop, within, is the people, and it prays with him and, as though subscribing to his words, responds 'Amen.' To such a degree, in that time, when — because the souls could not — the bodies of the priests were sought to be without any blemish and without any defect, He alone was prefigured, not these proud and impious men who, while their soul commits fornication, are not jealous for the Bridegroom, but dare to display themselves to men in place of the Bridegroom. 'In the Gospel,' he says, 'it is written: God does not hear sinners; but if anyone worships the Lord and does His will, him He hears.' And here the answer is complete. For if two should pray together, one a sinner and the other one who worships the Lord and does His will, doubtless the latter He hears, the former He does not hear.
What then does this testimony mean, or how do they suppose it should be brought forward on their own behalf, when by these very words the good are made most secure among the evil, and no cause of bodily separation exists, so that by a wicked schism men should be separated even from the good through a spiritual discord — seeing that both the evil among the good can fail to be heard on account of their unfaithfulness, and the good among the evil can be heard on account of their faith? For God, who is the inspector of the heart, does not err, so as to hear or to reject one man for another. Or do they say these things so that it may be understood that an evil bishop is not heard when he prays for the people? Which, even if it were so, the people nevertheless, if it is good and faithful, ought not on that account to be anxious.
For that Scripture makes them secure which says: 'My brethren, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not; and if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.' Let them hear with what truthful and pious humility this was spoken, if they have ears wherewith to hear. For John had said: 'These things I have written unto you, that ye sin not.' If it had followed on so that he said: 'And if any man sin, ye have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for your sins,' he would have seemed to set himself apart, as it were, from those who sin, so that he now had no need of the propitiation which is made through the Mediator who sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us.
And this indeed would have been said not only proudly but also falsely. But if he had even said thus: 'These things I have written unto you, that ye sin not; and if any man sin, ye have me as mediator with the Father; I entreat for your sins'—just as Parmenian in a certain place set the bishop as mediator between the people and God—who among good and faithful Christians would have tolerated him? Who would have regarded him as an apostle of Christ, and not rather as an antichrist? And yet these worn-out cisterns bear the smoky pride of those men, and cannot contain the Holy Spirit, so as to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and to be secure, in all their prayers, concerning the one Mediator. For all Christian men commend one another by their prayers.
But he for whom no one intercedes, while he himself intercedes for all—this one is the sole and true Mediator; and since his type was prefigured in the priest of the Old Testament, there too no one is found to have prayed for the priest.
But the apostle Paul, although under the Head he is a chief member, yet because he is a member of the body of Christ, and knew that the greatest and truest Priest had entered for us—not by a figure into the inner part of the veil unto the Holy of Holies, but by the expressed and fulfilled truth into the inner part of heaven unto a holiness not imaginary but eternal—he too commends himself to the prayers of the Church, and does not make himself a mediator between the people and God, but rather that all the members of the body of Christ should pray for one another in turn; for the members are anxious for one another, and if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together;
and thus the prayer of all the members for one another, while yet they labour on earth, ascends to the Head that has gone before into heaven, in whom is the propitiation for our sins. For if Paul were a mediator, then surely his fellow-apostles would also be, and thus there would be many mediators; nor would the reasoning hold together for Paul himself, whereby he had said: 'For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.' In whom we also are one, if we keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and do not for the sake of the wicked forsake the good, but for the sake of the good bear with the wicked—lest, when we wish to defend that which by rash presumption we abandon unexamined, we be forced by a greater crime to condemn the unheard.
What of the fact that in the Scriptures there is also found the prophet Balaam—not of the people of Israel, but a foreigner hired by an enemy to curse the people of God—who, being turned by the Lord to blessing, we hear and read that all his words were of one imprecating good; and though he had another thing in his desire, yet his words were of one praying, and were both good and were heard by the Lord on behalf of the people. Whence it is no wonder that good words which are spoken for the people in prayers, even if they be spoken by wicked bishops, are nevertheless heard—not for the perversity of the prelates, but for the devotion of the peoples. Nevertheless there is what is written in the Gospel: 'God heareth not a sinner;'
'but if any man worship the Lord and do his will, him he heareth'—this was not spoken by the Lord, but by that man who now indeed had the eyes of his body restored, but to whom the eyes of the heart were not yet open, whence he still thought the Lord himself to be a prophet. For afterwards, when he was recognized as the Son of God, he worshipped him with prostration. But the Lord himself, when a publican and a Pharisee were praying in one temple, says that the sinner confessing his sins was more justified than the Pharisee boasting of his merits—to whom these men are like. For although the man who was justified ceased to be a sinner, yet it was as a sinner that he prayed in order to be justified, and confessed his sins, and having been heard was justified, so that he ceased to be a sinner.
Therefore he would not have ceased to be a sinner, unless as a sinner he had first been heard. Wherefore the truth is witness that indeed not every sinner is heard, but nevertheless not every sinner is unheard. They also object what was said in the Psalms: 'But unto the sinner God saith: Why dost thou declare my ordinances, and take my covenant in thy mouth? For thou hast hated instruction, and hast cast my words behind thee. If thou sawest a thief, thou didst run with him, and with adulterers thou didst set thy portion. Sitting, thou didst speak against thy brother, and against thy mother's son thou didst lay a stumbling-block.' But let them at last open the ears of the heart, and cease to be men who understand neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.
For they attend to what was said to the sinner: 'Why dost thou declare my ordinances, and take my covenant in thy mouth?' and they do not understand that it was said to this end: that he might know that the words of God which he pronounces with his mouth profit him nothing, if he himself does not do what he says, yet that they profit others who hear and do even through the wicked what the Lord commands. The Lord himself teaches this in the Gospel, saying of the Pharisees: 'They sit in the seat of Moses. What they say, do; but what they do, do not do. For they say, and do not.'
And would that they were willing, in these words which they have recalled from the Psalm, to behold themselves as in a mirror—how they cast the words of God behind them, who proclaim peace to the peoples and do not love peace; how they hate instruction, who dare to condemn an unheard world; and because, according to merit—nay, far less than their merit—for the audacity of so great a fury, they suffer temporal troubles according to the discipline of the divine mercy, they do not confess their sins to be punished, but boast that their merits are crowned. I do not indeed say that they have run with a thief, because a robber is worse than a thief, which Optatus was on all sides proclaimed to be.