But for this reason the oracles of the heavenly pages have been set before men as a most flawless mirror, that therein each one may see how great any sin is which perhaps is great yet is despised through the blind custom of those who live wickedly. Could avarice be accused more gravely by the divine words than by being shown to be equal to idolatry and called by its name, since the Apostle says: And avarice, which is the service of idols? Could it be judged worthy of a greater penalty than by being placed among those crimes by which those beset shall not possess the kingdom of God? Let them open the eyes of the heart, lest the eyes of the body be open in vain, and let them read the free herald of truth writing in that same first epistle to the Corinthians: Do not err.
Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor those who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor the rapacious shall possess the kingdom of God. How then did Cyprian and other similar wheat of the Lord, in that Church then of unity, together with the covetous and the rapacious, together with those who shall not possess the kingdom of God — not laymen or clerics of whatever rank, but the bishops themselves — eat the bread of the Lord and drink the cup of the Lord, when the same Apostle commands not to mix with them and cries out that with such a one one should not even take food?
Was it not because they could not be bodily separated from them, lest they root up the wheat as well, and it sufficed them to be severed from such men in heart, to be distinguished from them in life and morals — for the sake of preserving the compensation of peace and unity, for the sake of the salvation of the weak and, as it were, of the milk-fed wheat, lest they tear the members of the body of Christ apart through sacrilegious schisms? But behold, I do not urge any of them to understand it thus;
let them themselves explain how that Church could then be glorious, without spot or wrinkle, where they wished to have silver in abundance while brothers hungered in the Church, where they seized estates by treacherous frauds, where they increased their usury with multiplying interest, where they were entangled in such great iniquities that through them they did not possess the kingdom of God. But if the glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle, was reckoned to consist only of those who mourned and groaned over those iniquities which were done in their midst — whence also, according to the prophecy of holy Ezekiel, such men by a proper sign...
...deserved to be marked, that they might escape most safely from the devastation and destruction of the wicked — then let them cease to slander the good, who do not work evils through a diseased desire, but who endure them through a peace-loving charity, to whom it is said: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. For it was for this reason that the Holy Spirit, through the aforementioned prophet Ezekiel, designated the wicked, whom the good tolerate in unity, by such a word — so that he might say they were placed in the midst of the good; for if he had said the good were in the midst of the wicked, those wicked would have seemed to be, as it were, outside and without. They groan, he says, and mourn over the iniquities of my people which are done in the midst of them — so that we should think of those wicked not only as not excluded, but even as enclosed within.
But if even then there was no Church — because Cyprian and whoever with him knew those covetous and rapacious men, such as they themselves were not, though they accused them with the gravest groans and most illustrious words, yet frequenting one Church with them and handling the same sacraments in one congregation, through communication of this kind became partakers of the same lot, since they did not obey the Apostle who commanded not even to take food together with such a one, and: Put away the evil one from among yourselves — then why do we still toil? Why do they themselves boast that they have any Church, if it already ceased to exist in those times? Let them say whence Majorinus or Donatus was born, that through them Parmenian and Primian might be born.
For what does it profit them that they now lie, saying that they either do not have in their congregation, or do not know, the covetous and rapacious men with whom the Apostle forbids taking food — since there were such men in that Church of unity, from which these boast they themselves sprang, so as to try to persuade that it remained in their sole society, that is, in the communion of Donatus? For if they say that through the communion of such men the Church perishes, why do they not say that it already perished in the times of Cyprian? And thus, not finding whence they themselves arose, let them cease to say that the Church remained with them, which they say wholly perished in earlier times.
But if the Church always remained, and remains, and will remain among the good to whom such things are displeasing, let these people at some time learn not to understand what the Apostle says — Put away the evil one from among yourselves — in such a way that, trying to gather the tares through schisms, they root up the wheat as well. All of which we argue in such a way that those who read or hear these things may remember that these people could never demonstrate, either in those times, when the events were most recent, or now, when with a much firmer conscience of innocence the whole world is joined to itself in the catholic Church in Christian peace, that Caecilian or others who harmoniously clung to him were tares.
But we say these things so that each one may securely remain in the unity of the holy Church, and not follow the deserters of that same unity, lest he perish with them; for if those men had been tares, they ought rather to have been tolerated until the harvest than to have been separated by the ruin of schism with the wheat rooted up. But someone will say: 'How then shall we be able to obey the Apostle who commands, with such a one not even to take food together? For if he were commanding that only a separation of the heart should be made from them, he would not say: I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with fornicators — certainly not the fornicators of this world, that is, those who are not Christians, of whom he afterward says: For what have I to do with judging those who are outside?'
Do you not judge those who are within? But those who are outside God will judge. Since therefore he gives this precept concerning such a separation as is not made from those wicked who are not Christians, but from those who are Christians — while a separation of heart is to be made from all the wicked, and through this we ought also to be separated in heart from those wicked who are not Christians — what remains but that we understand this to be commanded us through the Apostle: that with certain wicked Christians, such as he himself designates, we should not mingle in the kind of association in which we mingle with pagans in the fellowship of this human life itself?
And therefore in another place: If any of the unbelievers invites you and you are willing to go, eat whatever is set before you, asking no questions; but here he says, with such a one not even to take food together. He permits taking food with unbelievers — that is, with those who have not yet believed in Christ — among whom he says one should eat what they set before us, and concerning whom, since they are outside, God will judge; but with those who are within — that is, if anyone is called a brother yet is a fornicator, or an idolater, or covetous, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber — he forbids even to take food. He persuades us, therefore, to separate the tares from the wheat before the time of harvest.
But if we are unwilling to do this — since the Lord forbids it — we are going to tolerate them and to persevere in a separation from them of the will and heart alone, and thereby even to take food with such people, which the Apostle forbids. In this seeming difficulty of the question I shall say nothing new or unusual, but that which the soundness of the Church observes: namely that, when any of the brethren — that is, of the Christians established within the fellowship of the Church — has been caught in some such sin as to be held worthy of anathema, let this be done where there is no danger of schism, and with that love concerning which he himself elsewhere gives precept, saying: that you do not regard him as an enemy, but correct him as a brother.
For it is done not for rooting up, but for correcting. But if he does not acknowledge himself nor correct himself by repenting, he himself will go out and by his own will be severed from the communion of the Church. For the Lord himself, when he said to the servants who wished to gather the tares: Let both grow until the harvest, prefixed the reason, saying: lest perhaps, when you wish to gather the tares, you root up the wheat as well. Whereby he sufficiently showed that, when this fear is not present, but there remains altogether a sure security concerning the stability of the wheat...
...that is, when anyone's crime is so well known and appears so execrable to all that it has either no defenders at all, or none such through whom a schism could arise, then let the severity of discipline not sleep — in which the amendment of depravity is the more effective the more careful is the preservation of charity. And then this can be done without the ruin of peace and unity, and without injury to the wheat, when the multitude of the Church's congregation is a stranger to that crime which is anathematized. For then it aids the presiding minister who corrects, rather than the criminal who resists; then each one wholesomely keeps himself from association with him, so that no one takes food with him — not out of hostile rage, but out of brotherly restraint;
then too that man is both struck with fear and healed with shame, when, seeing himself anathematized by the whole Church, he cannot find an associated crowd with which he might rejoice in his own offense and insult the good. For to this end the Apostle himself says: If anyone is called a brother. For in saying 'if anyone,' he seems to have wished to signify nothing else than that he can be wholesomely corrected in such a manner who sins among men unlike himself — that is, among those whom the pestilence of similar sins does not corrupt. But in saying 'is called,' he doubtless wished this to be understood: that it is not enough for anyone to be such, unless he is also named — that is, appears notorious — so that the sentence of anathema pronounced against him may seem to all most worthy.
For thus he is both corrected with peace preserved and struck not to be killed, but is cauterized medicinally. Therefore also concerning that man whom he wished to be healed by such a medicine, he said: This punishment which was inflicted by many is sufficient for such a one. For a correction by many cannot be wholesome unless the one corrected is one who has no associated multitude. But when the same disease has seized very many, nothing else remains for the good but grief and groaning, that through that sign which is revealed to holy Ezekiel they may deserve to escape unharmed from the devastation of those men — for they cry out to Him who cannot err:
Destroy not my soul with the wicked, and my life with men of blood — lest, when they wish to gather the tares, they root up the wheat as well, and not by their diligence purge the Lord's crop, but through rashness be themselves rather numbered among the refuse. And therefore the same Apostle, when he had already found many defiled with unclean luxury and fornications, writing to the same Corinthians in his second epistle, does not repeatedly command that with such people they should not take food; for they were many, and it could not be said of them: 'If anyone is called a brother, a fornicator or covetous or something such, with such a one not even to take food together' — but he says:
Lest again, when I come, God humble me before you, and I mourn over many of those who sinned before and did not repent of the uncleanness and luxury and fornication which they committed. He threatens rather that they are to be restrained by the divine scourge through his own mourning, than through that correction whereby the rest keep themselves from association with them. For he consequently says: Behold, this third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand. I have foretold, and I foretell, as present the second time and now absent, to those who sinned before and to all the rest, that if I come again I will not spare, since you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me. What else did he here say — I will not spare — but what he said above:
and I mourn — so that his mourning might obtain from the Lord a scourge, by which those might be corrected who, on account of their multitude, could not be corrected in such a way that the rest would keep themselves from association with them and make them ashamed, as ought to be done if any brother is named in some crime unlike the rest? And truly, when the contagion of sinning has invaded a multitude, the severe mercy of divine discipline is necessary. For counsels of separation are both empty and pernicious and sacrilegious, since they are made through impious pride and disturb the weak good more than they correct the spirited wicked.
Thus that most faithful witness to the avarice of his colleagues, when he attributed to the divine censure and discipline those evils of tribulations which the Church suffered at that time, having mentioned the worst morals of the bishops whom he knew — who wished to have silver in abundance while brothers hungered, who seized estates by treacherous frauds, who increased their usury with multiplying interest — said: What do we not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind? And then he adduces a testimony from the Psalms, saying that the divine censure had long since forewarned and said:
'If his sons forsake my law and walk not in my judgments, if they profane my justifications and keep not my precepts, I will visit their transgressions with the rod, and their offenses with scourges. But my mercy I will not scatter away from them.' Therefore let a man mercifully correct what he can, but what he cannot let him patiently bear and with love groan or mourn, until either He from above amend and correct it, or defer until the harvest to root up the tares and to winnow the chaff.
Yet so that Christians of good hope, secure concerning their own salvation, may dwell in unity among the desperate whom they are not strong enough to correct, let them put away the evil from themselves — that is, so that there may not be found in them what displeases them in the morals of others. For when the Apostle had said: For what have I to do with judging those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are within? But those who are outside God will judge — as though they answered: 'What are we to do, when we are so pressed by the multitude of the wicked that we cannot exert our judgment into any restraint?' — Put away, he says, the evil one from among yourselves, that is:
'If you cannot put away the wicked from your midst, put away the evil itself from yourselves.' But if anyone should wish to understand what was said — Put away the evil one from among yourselves — in such a way that through the correction of separation each wicked man is to be removed from the congregation of the brethren, no one will doubt that it must be done with zeal for healing, not with hatred for destroying. And what measure is to be applied, and what times observed, lest the peace of the Church be violated — in which the wheat must above all be spared, lest it be rooted up together with the tares — we have, as seemed necessary for the present, discussed.
He who considers these things diligently and peaceably neither neglects the severity of discipline in preserving unity, nor breaks the bond of fellowship through immoderate restraint. For this very thing which the Apostle says — with such a one not even to take food together — how many good Christians do concerning those of whom they have a more intimate care, so that those whom they could separate from their company — those whom they perceive can be corrected by such correction, or those whom they altogether despair of being corrected — they do not hesitate to do, lest they corrupt others by the contagion of evil conversations.
But he does this well — that is, with humble charity and kindly severity — who so presides over his brethren as to remember that he is their servant, just as is both the precept and the example of the Lord himself. For then it is done both without the swelling of arrogance toward man, and with the mourning of intercession to God. But it is not so easy — since anyone is easily removed from the rank of clergy by a bishop, or from the number of the poor whom the Church feeds, or from the very congregation of the laity by a bishop or a cleric or whatever presiding officer who has the power, so that with such a one no food is taken by the rest to whom this can be enjoined — it is not so easy that a multitude of the wicked in any order of the Church can be shut out and expelled from the fellowship of the good.
For even in their own homes all good faithful people so moderate and govern the discipline of their households that there too they obey the Apostle who commands, with such a one not even to take food together, when they do this, or command it to be done, concerning both their children and their servants, when they see them so living that the very charity which is held toward them suggests that this must be done to them. But a throng of the wicked, when there is opportunity to deliver a sermon among the people, must be struck with a general rebuke — and especially if some scourge from the Lord above has offered an occasion and opportunity by which it appears that they are being beaten according to their deserts.
For then the calamity of the hearers offers humble ears to the amending sermon, and drives their afflicted hearts more easily to the groaning of confession than to the murmurs of resistance — just as the blessed Cyprian then perhaps would not have said those things about his colleagues, unless the divine severity from above had aided him. For he was saying those things at that time so grievous, so calamitous and mournful, that they not only did not dare to be angry, but even felt they could scarcely obtain pardon from those who were angry — although, even if no calamity of tribulation presses, when opportunity is given, a multitude is usefully rebuked within a multitude; for just as, separated, it is wont to rage, so within the very congregation, when reproached, it is wont to groan.
Wherefore that precept of the Apostle is by no means to be neglected, when it can be done without danger of violating peace — since he himself did not wish it to be done otherwise, namely that the wicked man be separated from the congregation of the good — and that other saying of the same Apostle is especially to be held: that, bearing with one another, we be zealous to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Likewise we ought to obey the Lord speaking in the Gospel both in that place where he says: If he will not hear even the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican, and in that place where he forbade the tares to be gathered, lest the wheat be rooted up as well. For both can be observed by those of whom it is said: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
But let us now look at the other testimonies which Parmenian adduced. Among all the things by which their sacrilegious pride appears, he disclosed himself nowhere more than in this: that he dared to cite even that passage from the prophet Jeremiah, whence he might persuade blind men that the communion of the Donatists is not only the true Church, but even already at this time such as the holy Church will be after the final winnowing. To this sacrilegious presumption and abominable exaltation, I know not what could be added. And in many places of their discourses they are understood to presume nothing else, but sometimes they grow bashful when the truth begins to press them — when they are asked either whether they do not have, or whether they themselves are not, sinners.
Nevertheless, in this prophetic testimony they have most openly betrayed their impious vanity and excessive perversity. For when the holy Jeremiah wished to show to the good and the wicked that, even if for a time there is one society of congregation, yet the weights of morals and the end of merits are far different, he said: What is the chaff to the wheat?
But Parmenian, when he wished to refute Tychonius, who said that the wicked must for the time being be tolerated by the good in unity for the sake of peace, and be separated at the end in the final divine judgment, cited this testimony of Jeremiah — by which, being himself perverse and erring, he inflames the perverse and erring to most turbulent and most wicked seditions, so that whoever, with the inflated mind of his flesh, seems to himself to be something when he is nothing, esteeming himself and those like him as the most purified grains, may think that he ought no longer to join the congregation of the Church, in which it is necessary that those who pertain to eternal life should tolerate, until a certain end, those who pertain to eternal fire — as the wheat tolerates its own chaff.
No other blast has shaken the lightest chaff from the threshing-floor of Christ before the time of winnowing; no other presumption has made the sacrilegious schisms, whatever and wherever they are. Jeremiah, he says, most holy, admonishes, and separates the unfruitful and barren throng of sinners from the honored produce of the just, saying: What is the chaff to the wheat? O trumpet of fury! O voice of an execrable pestilence! Does the human race perhaps err in such a way that it does not recognize the winnower Parmenian? Or does he too give place to Donatus, and boast that he has come to the mass purged through him? For that Majorinus before him — I know not whether he deigns to acknowledge him.
Or were those three like the three prongs of some winnowing-fork in the Lord's hand, by whom the harvest of the whole world was to be cleansed, and was Africa chosen as the place where the purged heap should stand, while the chaff, separated off, was to clothe all the rest of the earth? Whence, then, come such great droves of Circumcellions? Whence such great crowds of drunken revellers, and the countless debaucheries of women unwed yet by no means uncorrupted? Whence so great a throng of robbers, of the greedy, of usurers? Whence so many men, each notorious throughout his own region, wishing to be as great but not so able—Optatuses all? What is answered to these things? Do these things not exist? Or is even this wheat?
Woe to the most shameless denial, if they answer that these things do not exist among them; woe to the most wicked perversity, if they answer that they are wheat. Finally, why did Primianus too dare once again to winnow the heap of purged wheat, even after the three-pronged fork of such great authority—that is, Maiorinus, Donatus, Parmenianus—so as to separate the Maximianists from his communion? Or did he perhaps cast out the wheat? What then is he himself, together with his followers, who cast out such things? Or has this wheat been so purged that they do not recognize one another and, by condemning one another, strive to winnow one another? Could chaff baptize wheat? If it could, why then do they say, 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat?'
But if it could not, why is it that, when Felicianus had flown out among the chaff of the Maximianists, all whom he there baptized returned together with him to that most thoroughly purged heap, and they now hold them all within, and do not say to themselves, 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat?' Let them therefore at last wake up and understand in what sense the prophet said, 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat?' Let them first consider where it is said, if any human sense at all is in them. Can it be said in the field, 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat,' when they are borne by the same root? Can it be said on the threshing-floor, where they are threshed together? But surely in the barn: 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat?'
For that householder will come, bearing his winnowing-fork in his hand; he will cleanse his threshing-floor, and store the wheat in the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. For by another likeness all the wheat is signified under the name of sheep, and all the chaff under the name of goats—two kinds of livestock which for the time being feed intermingled under one shepherd. 'But the Son of Man shall come,' he says, 'with his angels, and all nations shall be gathered before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. And he shall say to those on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which was prepared for you from the beginning of the world.'
But to those on his left hand he will say: 'Depart into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.' Then, therefore, the prophecy will be fulfilled, 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat,' when the pasture cannot be common to the goats and the sheep. If the good fish can say to the bad fish, within that net to which the Lord said the kingdom of heaven is like, 'Depart from us,' or 'Let us depart from you, until all are drawn to the shore and the good are put by the angels into vessels, while the bad are cast out'—then that which was said can be fulfilled at this present time: 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat?'
But those who already suppose their own assembly to be purged wheat have flown away from the mixture of wheat and chaff as though they were pure chaff; and those who do not perceive that they still feed together with the goats under one shepherd have been separated by the ambushes of wolves from the Lord's flock; and those who suppose they are not gathered together with the bad fish are not only bad fish, but have also torn apart the nets of unity. But if we understand that at this present time there comes to pass what Jeremiah says, 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat,' we can rightly understand nothing else than that they are indeed in one assembly, until at the end of the winnowing they are separated even bodily; yet nonetheless for the wheat the heart is upward, but for the chaff downward.
For the chaff seeks its own things, not the things that are of Jesus Christ; but the wheat treasures up treasure in heaven, and where its treasure is, there is its heart also. So too are the words of blessed Isaiah to be understood, which that man, likewise failing to understand, tried to twist to the same opinion of his own error. For what does Isaiah say? 'Depart, depart, go out thence, and touch not the unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her and be separated, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.' Are these things to be so often repeated as to how the separation of the heart from the wicked is to be made? For he does not touch the unclean thing who consents to no man's sin. And he goes out thence, that his cause may be safe before God, if only, while safeguarding peace, he does not neglect the discipline of correcting and reproving.
For he who wishes to forsake bodily the wicked as though they were manifest, spiritually forsakes the hidden good, whom, being untried and unknown, he is compelled to accuse while he tries to defend his own separation. But let these men answer: if Felicianus is clean, why did he go out from the midst of them? But if he is unclean, why do they now touch the unclean? But if he was then unclean while he was outside, those whom he there baptized are unclean, because they touched an unclean thing. Or were they all made clean by returning with him? Can these men, then, make clean those baptized outside, whom they have not baptized in their own communion? Why then do they re-baptize others?