Or do they perhaps not set their portion with adulterers—they who shamefully allow drunken flocks of their nuns to wander about, mingled day and night with the drunken bands of the Circumcellions? Or do they not, sitting, speak against their brethren—they who, on account of certain persons whom they could not convict, contend that those in the inheritance of Christ, spread throughout the whole world, are not Christians, and thus lay a most pernicious stumbling-block against their mother's son, that is, against the weak one still an infant in the faith and to be nourished with the milk of the sacraments, while, not yet knowing how to follow God the Father, the weak one follows a man, and, enticed by a feigned and shadowy appearance of truth, is torn away from the framework of unity by a cruel laceration?
But if to those who do not do evil in the same party the evil deeds of the rest are displeasing, and they do not believe the crimes of others to harm them—crimes which they groan and grieve to see done in their midst—why do they perniciously tolerate in the common sacrilege of schism that which they could have profitably tolerated in the integrity of unity? For they can say—if indeed by very experience they now sometimes awake—they can say that the evils of individuals do not harm the rest who neither do nor approve such things; but that the sacrilege of schism is not the evil of individuals, but pertains to all those who do not commune with the catholic unity, they can most easily be convinced, even if they most difficultly confess it.
For the very cause by which, in their communion, the crimes of others do not pertain to others, is the cause by which schism is the crime of all; because, when they now say that among their own they cannot be defiled by the crimes of others, they must at the same time confess that they had no cause why they should depart from unity, where the crimes of others could not defile them, and are therefore bound together alike by the most manifest crime of schism as by one deadly bond. 'But Jeremiah prophesied.' What did Jeremiah prophesy? 'They do not have true baptism,' he says, 'who forsake God.' For he says: 'The heaven was astonished at this, and shuddered much more vehemently, saith the Lord; for my people have committed two evils.'
'They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water;' and again: 'It is become to me,' he says, 'as deceitful water that hath no faith;' and that which is written: 'He that is baptized by a dead man, what profiteth his washing?' and that in the Psalms: 'Let not the oil of the sinner make fat my head;' and again elsewhere: 'Dying flies destroy the oil of sweetness;' and elsewhere: 'For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will withdraw itself from thoughts that are without understanding.' If all these things are to be understood in the manner in which they are understood by these men, the reasoning of truth accords neither with us nor with them.
But if I shall have taught that they are to be understood in another way, they alone are troubled by their own perversity; and, that they be not troubled, they take refuge in the catholic understanding; and where they find the way out of the answer, thence they are entangled in the crime of schism. For certainly they too have—I will not say 'such men there are,' but I will say what they either confess or most insanely deny—they too therefore have those who forsake God who is the fountain of living water, that is, those who live wickedly. For God is not forsaken with the feet but with the heart. They have also liars, and those who have no faith, that is, professing one thing and conducting themselves otherwise. They certainly have the dead. For if the apostle grants no delights to the more delicate and weaker sex, saying of the widow:
'But she that liveth in pleasures is dead while she liveth,' let them ask whether none among them—men, and, what is more, prelates or ministers—live in pleasures; and thus, if they dare, let them renounce that they have dead among them, and are better than that Church whose angel, in the figure of prelates or of souls, is told that it lives not but is dead, and yet is numbered among the seven churches, nor to it, as divided from the framework of the body of Christ, but as persevering in unity, are the precepts of life given besides. I pass over what they said in their council against the Maximianists: 'After the manner of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the corpses of the perishing.'
Of the number of which dead men there is now within their body Felician, who, being still dead, baptizes; or if he has now revived, he has with him those whom, while dead, he baptized in schism. They certainly have sinners. For if any who among them seem great to themselves be questioned, they do not deny that even they themselves are sinners. For either they do not beat their breasts, or, when they do so, they do it feignedly—and if that be so, then certainly even then they wretchedly sin, deceiving their peoples with feigned humility—or else they do not say in the Lord's Prayer: 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.'
And this indeed is said not of those sins which were remitted in the regeneration of baptism, but of those which the weakness of human life daily contracts from the most bitter billows of the world, for the healing of which the medicines of almsgiving, fasting, and prayers are provided, so that in prayer may be spoken what is done in almsgiving. For even to forgive the sin which another has committed against thee, that God may also forgive thee, is a great work of mercy. But if they say this in prayer feignedly, not truthfully, thinking that they have nothing which God should forgive them, that very thing is an inexpiable sacrilege, that very thing is impious and mad pride, which is certainly a monstrous sin.
For what shall I say of the dying flies, when we have shown that among them are found in manifold ways not men still about to die, but men already dead—whether they confess it or are convicted of it? But how many they have among themselves of the feigned, whom the holy spirit of discipline flees, and who live in ruin without understanding, let them consider according to the things said above. For whoever there lie hidden as wicked—which is certain even from this, that often, being betrayed and convicted, they are condemned not only for recent deeds but even for an old habit of disgraceful acts, men who by most cunning feigning were able to be concealed for a long time—these surely are the more feigned who deceive themselves by feigning to be good.
If therefore these things are to be understood as these men understand them, how will the reasoning be able to stand for them—why among those who by living wickedly forsake God, whether they lie hidden or are known, there do not become broken cisterns that cannot hold waters, if in this place the sacrament of baptism is to be understood? And why are their liars and unfaithful ones believed either to give or to have not deceitful water but truthful? Why does the washing of those who are baptized by their dead profit anything? Why do their sinners anoint other men's heads with fat oil? What have the dying or dead flies there deserved, that they should not destroy the oil of sweetness?
By what privilege are all those fortified who there are feigned, that is, who cover the wolf with the skin of righteousness, so that the holy spirit of discipline flees them not? Or if the holy Spirit flees them, how is he given to those baptized through them? For here it cannot be said what they are wont most ineptly and most impudently to say—that anyone can then be baptized by a wicked man, if the wickedness of the baptizer lies hidden. For he who is feigned is the more feigned the more he lies hidden. Since therefore the Holy Spirit withdraws himself from such a man, what hope will there be for the baptized, if the merit of the baptizing man is to be considered in that grace of God? Here they utterly find not what to answer, because they deny that they have open wicked men. In which they are indeed most openly convicted. But what is that to us?
It is enough for us, for the necessary point of the case, that they cannot deny that among them there are feigned good men, that is, hidden wicked men. For they are refuted by many, who, while they lived there in ruined and criminal ways and by that very feigning had long lain hidden, were at length betrayed and expelled. If therefore they do not wish us to believe that there are still some such there, those at least who were cast out—when they lay hidden there in the same feigning, and the holy Spirit fled them, of whom it is written: 'For the holy spirit of discipline will flee the feigned'—how were they able to baptize? Why are not at least those who are living reviewed, that they may receive baptism, which they surely could not receive from the feigned whom the Holy Spirit was deserting? But if they say:
the holy Spirit was indeed lacking to the feigners who were about to give, for their justification, but was present to the believers who were about to receive, for their cleansing, through the ineffable efficacy of his power—easily able to do both, to flee the former and to foster the latter, to blame the former and to cleanse the latter'—the very question which they resolve for themselves, let them at the same time see resolved for us. But what is understood in this saying of holy Scripture—which they certainly, not understanding it and as it were proposing it in favour of their own party, thrust upon us to their own confutation—this we admonish is to be understood in almost all such questions: namely, that all sacraments, while they harm those who handle them unworthily, nevertheless profit through such men those who take them worthily; just as also the word of God, whence it was said:
'What they say, do; but what they do, do not do.' For to hew broken cisterns, which cannot hold waters—what prevents me from understanding it thus: that this is to be turned to earthly pleasure and not to be able to sustain the Holy Spirit, whom no Christian in any way whatever is ignorant is signified in the Gospel by the name of water? Likewise, 'deceitful water that hath no faith' can be understood not as false baptism, but as a people deceitful and unfaithful—the truthful and faithful not being counted, but in those alone who are deceitful and unfaithful. For let them read the Apocalypse, where peoples are sometimes signified by the term of waters, and let them not slander it before and rather than us. For thus it is said to John:
'The waters which thou sawest, upon which that harlot sitteth, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.' And as to what is written: 'He that is baptized by a dead man, what profiteth him his washing?'—to defer for the present a more careful investigation of these words—I most safely take it that the baptisms of pagans are here marked, because they worship men dead both to righteousness and to this life, in whose name they baptize. For although even their own priests may be said to be dead through impiety, yet it is not understood so on account of them, but on account of their dead gods, in the signifying of whom it is said: 'Our God is a living God.'
Wherefore, even if among Christians there are some prelates or ministers dead through their own iniquity and impiety, yet He lives of whom it was said in the Gospel: 'This is he that baptizeth,' because, as the apostle says, 'Christ rising from the dead now dieth no more, and death shall no more have dominion over him.' But how the oil of the sinner is to be understood, the Psalm itself most openly indicates. For it says: 'The righteous shall correct me in mercy, and shall reprove me; but let not the oil of the sinner make fat my head.'
Whence it is manifest that by the oil of the sinner are signified the blandishments of the flatterer; which being rejected and detested, he chooses to be corrected and reproved by the righteous man, because the righteous man, doing this not with the deceitful smoothness of flattery but with the truthful sharpness of rebuke, does it much more mercifully. Whence is also that saying in the Apocalypse: 'Whom I love, I reprove and chastise,' and that saying in Solomon: 'Better are the wounds of a friend than the voluntary kisses of an enemy'—and many things of this kind are found. But the oil of sweetness, namely the good odour through the good repute of Christians, those men destroy who, about to live wickedly and to return to the death of their iniquities, rush in in a great multitude, that their sins may be forgiven them through baptism, and that they may turn back again to them.
For on account of their numerousness I judge them to be compared to flies. But those men destroy the oil of sweetness for these, who look not to the grace of God itself, but to the manners of men; and since, just as grains are not seen amid the chaff, so those who live piously do not easily appear amid the crowds of the wicked, being carnally offended, they are either delayed from receiving eternal salvation or altogether recoil from it. But that there is a good odour in the good repute of rightly-living Christians, the apostle teaches, saying: 'We are the good odour of Christ in every place.' On the contrary, those to whom it is said: 'For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you'—these surely destroy the oil of sweetness.
Thus therefore these passages have other, sincerer meanings, which if they themselves also would follow, they would be freed from the straits of those questions. But their understanding, if it be not confirmed by us, entangles themselves alone; but if it be confirmed by us, it entangles both of us. What need is there now to discuss more? Unless perhaps that will move one, that when Parmenian wished to prove that carnal men cannot beget spiritual sons, he added a testimony from the Gospel: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'
As if we said that any man whatever begets spiritual sons through himself, and not through the Gospel, in whose preaching the Holy Spirit works to beget spiritual sons in baptism, even when he flees the feigned minister, as we have learned above. And therefore the apostle, when he was speaking with such sons—if he had said: 'I begot you,' and had not added: 'in Christ Jesus through the Gospel'—no faithful man would in any way religiously confess himself born of him. But even Judas the thief preached the Gospel without detriment to those who believed; and their feigned ones, that is, hidden wicked men—as they themselves also concede—although the Holy Spirit flees them, they nevertheless assert that spiritual sons are begotten through their ministry.
For who would bear such madness, that, when he perhaps calls carnal a man begetting sons from his wife, he should call an adulterer spiritual? 'God forbid,' he says, 'that I should think this.' How then could a hidden adulterer, when he was prelate among them, propagate spiritual sons, if carnal men cannot do this? Or did perhaps at that time Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or perhaps an angel baptize through his hands?
If therefore then a man baptizes when the baptizer is manifestly good, but when the baptizer is a hidden wicked man, then God or an angel baptizes, and each one is born spiritually such as he was by whom he is baptized—then let those who desire baptism choose that the men through whom they are baptized be not manifestly good but hidden wicked men, so that thus, with God or an angel baptizing, they may deserve to be reborn more holily. If they think to avoid this absurdity, let them confess that through whatever man—when anyone is baptized with the baptism of Christ—Christ baptizes, of whom alone it was said: 'This is he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit.' Now that saying from the Gospel: 'As the Father sent me, I also send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them:
'Receive ye the Holy Spirit. If ye remit any man's sins, they shall be remitted; and if ye retain any man's, they shall be retained'—this would be against us, so that we should be compelled to confess that this is done by men, not through men, if, after he had said 'and I also send you,' he had immediately subjoined 'if ye remit any man's sins, they shall be remitted, and if ye retain any man's, they shall be retained.' But since there is interposed 'And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive ye the Holy Spirit,' and then it is set forth that through them either the remission or retention of sins takes place, it is sufficiently shown that they themselves do not do it, but through them, surely, the Holy Spirit; as he says in another place: 'For it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit that is in you.'
But the Holy Spirit is so present in the prelate or minister of the Church that, if he is not feigned, the Spirit works through him both his reward unto eternal salvation, and the regeneration or edification of those who through him are either consecrated or evangelized; but if he is feigned—since it is most truly written: 'For the holy spirit of discipline will flee the feigned'—the Spirit is indeed lacking to his salvation and withdraws himself from his thoughts that are without understanding, yet does not desert his ministry, whereby through him the Spirit works the salvation of others. On this account the apostle says:
'For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a dispensation is entrusted to me'—that is, 'it profits those to whom I dispense this, not me who am feigned.' For he who does it unwillingly, on account of carnal advantages and joys, which if he could have otherwise he would desert it, is himself certainly feigned; and therefore he does not say: 'if I do it unwillingly, I profit nothing those toward whom I do it,' but he only alienates himself from the reward of salvation, not also those to whom even a wicked servant dispenses the Lord's provisions.
But because the apostle was not such a one, but rather such that he did it willingly—that is, dispensed freely-given grace with the piety of a chaste heart—the Holy Spirit through him worked also his reward, which, as he himself says, 'the Lord, the righteous judge, will render him in that day.' But those who announced the Gospel not chastely, who indeed announced nothing but the truth, that is, Christ, yet announced it not with the truth of their own heart but through the occasion of their own advantages—he permits them to announce and rejoices, not indeed for their sake, but for the sake of those who through them were made whole, holding the precept of him who says: 'What they say, do; but what they do, do not do. For they say and do not.' For thus the apostle speaks to the Philippians:
'Some indeed,' he says, 'preach Christ through envy and strife, but some also of good will; some of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the Gospel; but some also proclaim Christ through contentiousness, not chastely, supposing to raise up tribulation for my bonds. What then? So long as in every way, whether by occasion or in truth, Christ be proclaimed. And in this I rejoice, yea, and I will rejoice.'
Would he permit them to preach Christ, although they preached the truth of the Gospel not in the truthful chastity of their own heart? Would he rejoice at the preaching of such men, unless he knew that to announce a chaste thing unchastely was indeed pernicious to them, but salutary to those who, hearing good and true things through them, made progress unto salvation? For where not Christ, who is the truth, but falsehood and lie is preached, he most openly forbids it, saying to the Galatians: 'If any man preach unto you a gospel besides that which ye received, let him be anathema;' and likewise to Timothy: 'As I besought thee,' he says, 'to abide at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge certain men not to teach otherwise.'
But those envious, contentious, contumacious, unchaste men, seeking an occasion to satisfy their evil will—because the Holy Spirit so fled their feigning that he did not desert their ministry whereby through them Christ was preached—he not only permits to do it, but even rejoices that they do it. These proofs we bring forward from the holy Scriptures, that it may appear that there is scarcely anything more grievous than the sacrilege of schism; because there is no just necessity for cutting off unity, since the good tolerate the wicked—who will in no way spiritually harm them—for this reason: that they may not be spiritually severed from the good, when the consideration of preserving peace restrains or defers the severity of discipline;
which severity, nevertheless, security puts forth, when it appears that, without the wound of schism, something can be vindicated by ecclesiastical judgment unto salutary correction. For rather we say: 'The name of the Lord belongs to those who fear him,' although they be mingled with the crowds of those who do not fear him; and that which the apostle says: 'The Lord knoweth them that are his,' and 'Let everyone that calleth upon the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.' For if, for the good of peace, lest before the time, when the tares are gathered, the wheat also be rooted up together, anyone is compelled by necessity to be among the unjust, let him nevertheless depart from iniquity, and secure he calls upon the name of the Lord.
For at the same time he both withdraws from the unjust and departs and separates himself from them, for the present in his heart, so that in the end he may deserve to be separated from such men even in body. And as for what is written, 'Praise is not comely in the mouth of a sinner,' in the mouth of the faithful it is assuredly comely. But just as each man has his own burden, so each has his own mouth, nor is anyone wounded by another's mouth without the consent of his own heart. When, however, the preaching of God proceeds from the mouth of a sinner, it must be asked what kind of sinner Scripture in this place meant to signify. For even the publican, who was justified rather than that Pharisee, was assuredly a sinner. For if his sins were not real, his confession of sins was false;
but if that confession was true, on account of which he even deserved to be justified, then beyond doubt his sins were real. This I would also say most truly of the prayer of holy Daniel, who indeed said truthfully, 'While I was praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people.' In the mouth, then, of what sinner is praise not comely, except above all of the liar and the counterfeit, whom the Holy Spirit of discipline shall flee? Yet when such a one speaks the truth, it is not comely in his mouth, because it is not credited to him whose partaker he is not; just as prophecy was not comely in the mouth of Caiaphas, high priest of the priests, who knew not what he said, but, being high priest, prophesied.
Yet nevertheless in itself the praise of God is comely in the ears of hearers and in the heart of believers. Moreover, from a saying of the Apostle wrongly usurped, Parmenianus dares as it were to insult those whom he denies to have baptism, and therefore says they cannot give it. 'For what have you,' he says, 'that you have not received?' To pass over from what source and for what reason the Apostle says this — which is made clear by the context of his very epistle — if he wishes this to be understood of baptism, and if he cannot give who does not have, and again he does not have who has not received, so that what is written may in some way favour him, 'For what have you that you have not received?', I ask whether the man who received among them does not have it. If they say, 'He has it,' I ask whether he loses it if he departs from them.
If they say, 'He loses it,' then he must be baptized again if he returns, so that what he lost may be restored to him. But if this is not done, and no one says it ought to be done, then he had not lost it. Furthermore, if he received it and was not deprived of it, he assuredly has what he received, and therefore it cannot be said to him according to the understanding of these men, 'For what have you that you have not received?' Turn now your mind to the very origin of the schism. Whatever they may think of Caecilianus, whom we believe innocent, without doubt he had been baptized in unity; for that division had not yet been made. Let us suppose, as they wish, that he himself withdrew from unity; he certainly did not lose what he had received. For he would not, if he returned, be baptized again in order to receive back what he had lost.
Furthermore, if he was not deprived of what he had received, he assuredly had it. Therefore even to him it could not be said, according to the perverse understanding of these men, 'For what have you that you have not received?' Much less can this be said to the man who received it through Caecilianus from the Lord. For why could not a man who is not joined to you receive that which he did not have through him who did not lose it when he withdrew from you? How much more impudently, then, is it said to the whole world, 'For what have you that you have not received?' — the world to which the joining together of this very sacrament came into Africa, which through no traitor's crime could lose the promise of God, who with a most manifest pledge said to Abraham:
'In your seed shall all nations be blessed' — even if these men had not been impious slanderers of the brethren, but true examiners of crimes. For as to what some of them, when convicted by the truth, began to say — that a man who withdraws from the Church does not indeed lose baptism, but nevertheless loses the right of giving it — this appears in many ways to be said vainly and emptily. First, because no reason is shown why he who cannot lose baptism itself should be able to lose the right of giving it. For each is a sacrament, and each is given to a man by a certain consecration: the one when he is baptized, the other when he is ordained; and therefore in the Catholic Church neither may be repeated.
For if at any time even prelates coming over from that party have been received, for the good of peace, once the error of schism has been corrected — even if it seemed necessary that they should exercise the same offices which they had exercised — they are not ordained again, but just as baptism, so ordination remained intact in them, because the fault had been in the severance, which was corrected by the peace of unity, not in the sacraments, which, wherever they are, are themselves. And when it is judged expedient for the Church that their prelates, coming into Catholic fellowship, should not there administer their honours, nevertheless the very sacraments of ordination are not taken from them, but remain upon them. And therefore hands are not laid upon them among the people, lest injury be done not to the man, but to the sacrament itself.
And if at any time it is done in ignorance and the deed is not obstinately defended, but is piously corrected when recognized, ready pardon is obtained. For our God is not the God of dissension, but of peace; nor are the sacraments of the Church his enemies in those who have withdrawn from the Church, but those very ones who have withdrawn are the enemies. But just as in baptism they have that which can be given through them, so in ordination they have the right of giving; both indeed to their own destruction, so long as they do not have the charity of unity. Yet it is one thing not to have, another to have destructively, another to have wholesomely. What is not had must be given when there is need to give; but what is had destructively must, once the destruction has been driven off by correction, be so dealt with that it may be had wholesomely.
Yet even if a layman, compelled by some necessity of a dying person, has given that which, when he himself received it, he learned how it ought to be given, I do not know whether anyone could piously say it must be repeated. For if it is done under no compelling necessity, it is the usurpation of another's function; but if necessity presses, it is either no offence or a pardonable one. But even if it is usurped under no necessity, and is given by anyone to anyone, that which has been given cannot be called ungiven, although it may rightly be called unlawfully given. Therefore the unlawful usurpation is corrected by the disposition of one who remembers and repents.