書信與論戰集（CSEL） 第 18 章

BOOK ONE. To his most beloved brethren belonging to the care of our stewardship, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. You know that we have often wished to bring the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics into open notice and to refute it, not so much from our own words as from their own mouth.

Hence it came about that we sent letters even to some of their leading men — not indeed letters of communion, since by dissenting they have already in time past made themselves unworthy of the Catholic Church, yet not abusive but peaceable — that, the question having been discussed with us which tore them away from the holy communion of the whole world, they might be willing, upon considering the truth, to be corrected, and might not defend the headstrong perversity of their forefathers with a still more foolish obstinacy, but might be restored to the Catholic root for the fruit of charity. But since it is written, 'With those who hated peace I was peaceable,' they spurned my letters even as they hated the very peace which by them was being sought for them.

But now, when I was in the church of Constantina, with Absentius present and my colleague Fortunatus his bishop, the brethren brought me a letter which they said the bishop of that same schism had sent to his presbyters, as the very heading of the letter also declared. When I had read it, I so marveled that in its opening words it cut away the whole communion of its own party by the very roots, that I was unwilling to believe the letter to be that man's — the man whom rumor is wont to proclaim as excelling most among them in learning and eloquence. But because, as I read, there were present certain men who recognized the polish and adornment of his style, they began to persuade me that the discourse was altogether his.

Yet I, whosever it might be, thought it should be refuted, lest whoever wrote it should seem to himself to have written something against the Catholic Church in the eyes of the unlearned. This then he set down first in his letter, saying that we object to a double baptism against them, we who under the name of baptism pollute our souls with a guilty washing. But what does it profit to weave together all his abusive words? For since it is one thing to establish proofs, another to deal with slanders by refuting them, let us rather attend to this: by what argument he wished to demonstrate that we do not have baptism and therefore he does not repeat what already existed, but gives what did not exist. For he says: 'For the conscience of the giver is what is regarded, which washes that of the receiver.'

But what if the giver's conscience is hidden and perchance is stained — how will it be able to wash the receiver's conscience, if, as he says, it is the giver's conscience that is regarded, which washes that of the receiver? For if he shall say that whatever evil lay hidden in the giver's conscience does not pertain to the receiver, then perhaps that ignorance will avail to this extent: that from the conscience of his baptizer he cannot, unknowing, be stained. Let it suffice, then, that another's stained conscience, when it is not known, does not stain; but surely can it also wash? Whence therefore is he to be washed who receives baptism, when the giver's conscience is polluted and he who is about to receive it is unaware of this — especially since he goes on to add and say:

'For he who receives faith from a faithless man does not receive faith but guilt.' Behold, a faithless man stands ready to baptize, but he who is to be baptized is unaware of his faithlessness; what do you suppose he will receive — faith or guilt? If you say 'faith,' you will concede that it can come about that one receives faith and not guilt from a faithless man, and that saying will be false which was stated: 'He who receives faith from a faithless man does not receive faith but guilt.' For we find that it can come about that one receives faith even from a faithless man, if he be ignorant of the giver's faithlessness. For he does not say:

'he who receives faith from a manifest or known faithless man,' but he says, 'he who receives faith from a faithless man does not receive faith but guilt' — which is surely false when someone is baptized by a hidden faithless man. But if he shall say, 'Even when the baptizer's faithlessness is hidden, one does not receive faith from him but guilt,' then let them rebaptize those who are established to have been baptized by men who long lay hidden among them as steeped in crime, and were afterward exposed, convicted, and condemned. For at the very time when they lay hidden, whomever they baptized they could not hand faith to, but only guilt, if indeed whoever receives faith from a faithless man does not receive faith but guilt. Therefore let them be baptized by good men, that they may be able to receive faith and not guilt.

But how will they be secure even about these, if the giver's conscience is regarded, which lies hidden from the eyes of the one about to receive? Thus, according to their opinion, that spiritual salvation becomes uncertain, since — against the holy Scriptures, which say, 'It is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man,' and, 'Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man' — they take away the hope of those to be baptized from the Lord God and persuade them that it must be placed in man. Whence it comes about altogether that salvation is not merely uncertain but utterly non-existent, because salvation belongs to the Lord and the salvation of man is vain. And so whoever places his hope in man — even in one whom he knows to be just and innocent — is cursed. Whence also the apostle Paul rebukes those who said they were of Paul, and says:

'Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?' Wherefore, if those who wished to be of Paul were erring, and unless they were corrected would perish, what hope, pray, is there for those who seek to be of Donatus? For this is what these men do: that the origin, root, and head of the baptized should be none other than the one by whom he is baptized. Thus it comes about that, since for the most part it is uncertain what sort of man the baptizer is, with an uncertain origin, an uncertain root, an uncertain head, all hope too is uncertain.

And since it can come about that the giver's conscience is criminal and stained, and the receiver is unaware of this, it consequently follows that, with a criminal origin, a criminal root, a criminal head, the hope also of the baptized turns out empty and void — seeing that this man sets down in his letter and says, 'For every thing consists of an origin and a root, and if it does not have a head, it is nothing'; and since he wishes the origin, root, and head of the baptized to be understood as the man by whom he is baptized, what does it profit the wretched baptized man that he is unaware how evil his baptizer is? For he does not know that he has an evil head, or that he is altogether without a head. Yet what hope is there for him whose head, whether he knows it or not, is utterly wicked, or none at all?

Does that very ignorance become a head for him whose own baptizer is either an evil head or no head at all? But whoever supposes this is truly without a head. We therefore ask, since this man has said, 'He who receives faith from a faithless man does not receive faith but guilt,' and at once linked to it saying, 'For every thing consists of an origin and a root, and if it does not have a head, it is nothing' — we therefore ask: when that faithless baptizer lies hidden, if then the one whom he baptizes receives faith and not guilt, if then his baptizer is not his origin and root and head — from whom does he receive faith, where is the origin from which he arises, where the root from which he sprouts, where the head from which he begins?

Or is it perhaps that, when the one who is baptized is unaware that his baptizer is faithless, then Christ gives faith, then Christ is the origin and root and head? O human rashness and pride! Why do you not rather allow that Christ always gives faith, He who will make a Christian by giving it? Why do you not allow that Christ is always the origin of the Christian, that the Christian fixes his root in Christ, that Christ is the head of the Christian?

For not even when spiritual grace is imparted to believers through a holy and faithful steward does the steward himself justify, but rather that One alone of whom it is said that He justifies the ungodly; nor indeed is the apostle Paul the head and origin of those whom he had planted, nor is Apollos the root of those whom he had watered, but rather He who had given the increase — since the same apostle says: 'I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase; therefore neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase'; nor was he himself their root, but rather He who says: 'I am the vine, you are the branches.'

And how could he be their head, when the same apostle says that we who are many are one body in Christ, and in many places most plainly proclaims that Christ Himself is the head of the whole body? Wherefore, whether one receives the sacrament of baptism from a faithful or from a faithless steward, let all his hope be in Christ, lest he be cursed who places his hope in man.

Otherwise, if each person is reborn in spiritual grace such as is the one by whom he is baptized, and, when the man who baptizes is manifestly good, he himself gives faith, he is the origin and root and head of the one being born, but when the faithless baptizer lies hidden, then each one receives faith from Christ, then draws his origin from Christ, then is rooted in Christ, then glories in Christ as his head — then all who are baptized must labor to have faithless baptizers and to be unaware of them. For however good the ones they may have had, Christ is at any rate incomparably better, and He will then be the head of the baptized, if the faithless baptizer lies hidden.

But if it is most senseless to believe this — for Christ always justifies the ungodly by making a Christian out of the ungodly, faith is always received from Christ, Christ is always the origin of the regenerate and the head of the Church — what weight have those words, which vain readers do not attend to as to what they hold within, but only as to how they sound? He, however, who does not receive the words with the ear alone, but also beholds the meanings with the mind, when he shall hear, 'The giver's conscience is regarded, which washes that of the receiver,' will answer: 'Often the human conscience is unknown to me, but I am certain of Christ's mercy.' When he shall hear, 'He who receives faith from a faithless man does not receive faith but guilt,' will answer:

'Christ, from whom I receive faith and not guilt, is not faithless.' When he shall hear, 'For every thing consists of an origin and a root, and if it does not have a head, it is nothing,' he will answer: 'My origin is Christ, my root is Christ, my head is Christ.' When he shall hear, 'Nor does anything rightly regenerate unless it be regenerated by a good seed,' he will answer: 'The seed by which I am regenerated is the word of God, which I was admonished to hear obediently, even if he through whom I hear does not himself do what he says to me — the Lord saying and making me secure: What they say, do; what they do, do not do; for they say and do not do.' When he shall hear:

'What perversity can there be, that one who is guilty by his own crimes should make another innocent?' — he will answer: 'None makes me innocent except Him who died for our offenses and rose again for our justification. For I do not believe in the minister through whom I am baptized, but in Him who justifies the ungodly, that faith may be reckoned to me for righteousness.' When he shall hear, 'A good tree produces good fruit, a bad tree produces bad fruit. Do they gather grapes from thorns?' and, 'Every good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth evil things,' he will answer: 'This then is the good fruit — that I should be a good tree; that is, a good man — that I should offer good fruit; that is, good works.'

But this shall be given me not by him who plants nor by him who waters, but by God who gives the increase. For if the good tree is a good baptizer, so that his fruit is good — namely, the one whom he baptizes — then whoever shall have been baptized by an evil man, even one not manifest, will be unable to be good, for he has sprung from an evil tree (for a good tree is one thing, a hidden yet evil tree another); or else, if, when the evil tree is hidden, whoever shall have been baptized by it is born not from it but from Christ, then those who are baptized by hidden evil men are more holily justified than those who are baptized by manifestly good men. Likewise, when he shall hear, 'He who is baptized by a dead man — his washing does not profit him,' he will answer:

'Christ lives, He dies no more, and death shall no longer have dominion over Him — He of whom it is said: It is He who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.' But those are baptized by dead men who are baptized in the temples of idols. For not even they themselves suppose that they receive from their priests the sanctification they imagine, but from their gods. And since these were men and so died that they are neither above the earth nor in the rest of heaven, they are truly baptized by dead men — unless in some other way these words of holy Scripture can be truly inquired into and wholesomely examined and understood.

For if in this place I understand a dead man to mean a sinful baptizer, that same absurdity will follow: that whoever shall have been baptized even by a hidden ungodly man, as though baptized by a dead man, has been washed to no purpose. For he did not say, 'He who is baptized by a manifestly dead man,' but said absolutely, 'by a dead man.' But if they think each man dead at the time when they know him to be a sinner, yet living even if the wicked man most cunningly lies hidden in their communion, then in the first place, by an execrable pride they arrogate more to themselves than they attribute to God — that when the sinner is known to them, he is called dead, but when he is known to God, he is reckoned alive.

Next, if that sinner is to be called dead who is known to men, what will they answer concerning Optatus, whom they feared to condemn for a long time as a scoundrel known to themselves? Why are those who were baptized by him not said to be baptized by a dead man? Or was he alive because God was his companion? — a thing which they themselves are wont to bandy about and praise, wittily and elegantly said by some chief man or other, their colleague, not understanding that by the outcome of most arrogant Goliath his head is carried off by his own sword.

Finally, if they are unwilling to call dead either the hidden scoundrel or the manifest one who has nevertheless not yet been condemned by them, but only the one both manifest and condemned — so that whoever is baptized by him is himself baptized by a dead man, and his washing profits him nothing — what will they say concerning those whom, as they said, by the truth-speaking mouth of their plenary council they condemned together with Maximian and the rest of his ordainers, namely Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, of whom I speak for the present, who are named among the twelve ordainers of Maximian and erectors of an altar against their altar at which Primianus presides? These men certainly are reckoned by them among the dead.

Witness is that famous sentence of their council, which once, when it was read out among them to be decreed, they acclaimed with fullest voice, but now, if perchance it be read out to them by us, they fall silent — whereas they ought rather at first not to have rejoiced in it as eloquent, lest afterward they should bewail it as made notorious. For there, concerning the Maximianists excluded from the fellowship of their communion, they say thus: that limbs shipwrecked upon the rough crags of certain men were cast forth by the truth-speaking wave, and, quite after the manner of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the corpses of the perishing, for whom in their very death the punishment is greater, in that after the soul has been wrested from them by the avenging waters, they do not even find burial itself.

Thus indeed do these men insult their own schismatics, so as to call them both dead and unburied. But surely they ought to have wished them buried, lest out of the multitude of unburied corpses lying on the shore, Gildonian Optatus, advancing with a band of soldiers like a raging billow leaping still further onward, should afterward suck Felicianus and Praetextatus back within. Of these I ask whether, by passing over to their sea, they came back to life, or whether they still remain dead there. For if they are nonetheless corpses, the washing profits nothing to those who are baptized by these dead men; but if they came back to life, how does the washing profit those whom, while they lay lifeless outside, they had baptized beforehand — if it must be understood in the way they think: 'He who

is baptized by a dead man — what does his washing profit him?' For those whom Praetextatus and Felicianus baptized while they still communicated with Maximian, they now hold within themselves, unrebaptized, mingled into their own communion together with those same baptizers of theirs, that is, with Felicianus and Praetextatus.

On the occasion of this deed, were they not to foster the primacy of their own obstinacy but rather to consider the so-certain ruin of their own spiritual salvation, they surely ought to wake up and, with sanity of mind recovered, to breathe again in Catholic peace — if, laying aside the swelling of pride and overcoming the fury of stubbornness, they were willing to consider with what monstrous sacrilege the baptism of the churches beyond the sea (which from the holy books we have received to be the earliest founded) is execrated, while the baptism of the Maximianists, whom by their own mouth they condemned, is received. But our brethren themselves, the sons of the aforesaid churches, both then knew not and now know not what was done in Africa so many years ago;

whence the crimes which were objected against the Africans by their party, even if they were true, could not, in their ignorance, contaminate them. But these men, openly separated and divided, though they are said even to have taken part in Primianus's ordination, condemned Primianus, ordained another bishop against Primianus, baptized apart from Primianus, rebaptized after Primianus, and with their own who had been baptized by them outside and were rebaptized within by no one, returned to Primianus. If so great a conjunction with the Maximianists does not stain the Donatists, how could the reputation of the Africans stain foreigners?

If in the kiss of peace lips that condemned one another come together without crime, why is each person condemned by them in churches very far removed indeed in their judgment, across the sea, not kissed as a faithful Catholic but blown upon as an impious pagan? But if for their unity's sake they made peace with the Maximianists once received back, behold, we do not reprove it — except that by their own judgment they cut their own throats, in that, when for the sake of the unity of their own faction they gather back what had been cut off from them again, they yet disdain to mend that very cutting-off of theirs into true unity.

If, for the sake of the unity of the party of Donatus, no one rebaptizes those baptized in a wicked schism, and the guilty of so great a crime — such that in their own council they compared them to those ancient authors of schism whom the earth swallowed up alive — are either, when separated, not punished, or, when condemned, restored to the whole; why not for the sake of the unity of Christ, which is spread over the whole earth, of which it was foretold that He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth (and what was foretold is seen and proved to be fulfilled) — why then is not, for the sake of this true and full unity, the law of that inheritance acknowledged, which resounds from the common codices: 'I will give You the nations as Your inheritance and the ends of the earth as Your possession'?

— For the sake of Donatus's unity they are not compelled to recall what they scattered, but only admonished to give ear to what the Scriptures cry aloud — why do they not understand that this was done to them by the mercy of God: that, since they were accusing the Catholic Church of false crimes, by whose contagion, as it were, they were unwilling to have their excessive sanctity contaminated, they should be compelled, through the reign of Gildonian Optatus, again to receive and to ally to themselves the true and greatest crimes condemned, as they say, by the truth-speaking mouth of their plenary council?

Let them at last perceive how they are filled with the true crimes of their own men, they who fabricate false ones against their brethren — crimes which, even had they spoken them truly, they ought at last to perceive how much must be borne for the sake of peace, and for the peace of Christ to return to the Church that has not condemned things unknown, if for the peace of Donatus it seemed good to recall things condemned. And so, brethren, let this one thing, which was done concerning the Maximianists among them, suffice us for admonishing and correcting them. We do not rummage through old archives, we do not fan out ancient cabinets, we do not send our proof into distant lands, but we set aside all the documents of our forebears, we defer the testimonies crying out over the whole earth. Behold the cities of Musti and Assuras!

There still survive in this life and in this province those who separated themselves and those from whom they were separated, those who erected an altar and those against whom they erected it, those who condemned and those who were condemned, those who received back and those who were received, those who were baptized outside and were not rebaptized within: if these things stain for the sake of unity, let the stained hush their voice; if these things do not stain for the sake of unity, let the corrected drop their quarrel. Now let the very man who wrote it deride the words of his own letter — he who, by a testimony ignorantly and mendaciously usurped, which he cites as written, 'He who is baptized by a dead man — what does his washing profit him?' — endeavors to show us in what way a traditor is held to be dead in life, and adds, saying:

'Dead is that man who did not merit to be born by true baptism; dead likewise is that man who, begotten by just baptism, has been mingled with a traditor.' If, then, the Maximianists are not dead, why do they say in their plenary council that the shores are full of the corpses of those perishing among them? But if they are dead, whence lives the baptism which they gave? Next, if Maximian is not dead, why is there rebaptism after him? But if he is dead, why has not Felicianus of Musti, his ordainer, died with him; and could a man from across the sea die together with some African traditor or other as his colleague? Or if he too is dead, whence do there live among you, within, unrebaptized, those who were baptized outside by that dead man? Then he added:

'Both lack the life of baptism — both he who never had it at all and he who had it and lost it.' Never, then, did he have it whom Maximianist Felicianus or Praetextatus baptized outside; but they themselves had lost what they once had. When, then, these men were received back with their own, who gave to those they had baptized what they did not have, and who restored to these very men what they had lost? But if they carried off with them the form of baptism, yet lost the very power of baptism through the evil schism, why do you blow away in Catholics whom you have not heard that very form which is always and everywhere holy, and embrace it in Maximianists whom you have punished?

But whatever he seemed to himself to say by way of accusation concerning Judas the traditor, what does it pertain to us — we who are neither proved traditors by them, nor, if the treason of any who died before us in our communion were proved, would even that treason, disproved and displeasing to us, stain us in any part? For if they themselves are not stained by crimes condemned by them and yet received back, how much less shall we be able to be stained by things heard and disapproved! However much, then, he inveighs against traditors, let him reckon that in just so many words they too are accused by me.

But indeed I draw this distinction: he brings a charge against a man in my presence whom my own judgement never condemned, since he had long since died; whereas I point to a man clinging to his own side, one whom, though he was condemned by himself or at any rate cut off by a sacrilegious schism, he took back without any diminution of his honour. 'You,' he says, 'a most wicked traitor to us who keep the law, have shown yourself a persecutor and executioner.' If the Maximianists kept the law when they were separated from you, then be you too a keeper of the law, seeing that you are separated from the Church which is spread abroad throughout the whole world. But if you press the matter of persecutions, I quickly reply: if you have suffered anything unjustly, that does not concern those who, doing such things (however wrongly) for the sake of peace, nevertheless praiseworthily tolerate them for the unity's sake.

Wherefore you have nothing to cast in the teeth of the Lord's wheat, which bears with its own chaff until the final winnowing—wheat from which you would never have departed, had you not, as the lighter chaff, been blown away by the wind of temptation even before the coming of the winnower.

But that I may not depart from this one example—which the Lord has thrown back into their faces to shut their mouths, and either, if they are wise, to correct them, or, if they persist in their perversity, to confound them—if those who suffer persecution are more righteous than those who inflict it, then by that same reckoning the Maximianists are the more righteous: their basilica was razed to its foundations, they were grievously harried by the military escort of Optatus, and it is well known that decrees of the proconsul were obtained by the Primianists to expel them all from the basilicas. Wherefore, if under emperors who abhorred their communion they dared so much to persecute the Maximianists, what would they do, if it were granted them to accomplish anything through the fellowship of kings?

But if they did these things in order to correct the wicked, why do they marvel if Catholic emperors decree that those who attempt to rebaptize the whole Christian world are to be pressed and corrected with greater power—men who have no cause for dissenting, seeing that they themselves testify that even the wicked, even if true crimes were charged against them, ought nevertheless to be tolerated for the sake of peace, since they received back those whom they had condemned, together with their honours and with the baptism conferred outside? Let them consider at last what treatment the enemies of Christian unity, which is diffused throughout the whole world, deserve to suffer at the hands of the Christian powers of the whole earth.

Now therefore, if their correction is slow in coming, let at least shame be present, lest, when they themselves begin to read the very things they write, laughter overcome them—since they do not recognize in themselves what they wish to seem to see in others, nor recognize in themselves what they cast up against others. What then does he mean, who put in his letter the Lord's words to the Jews: 'Therefore I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some ye shall scourge'? For if they wish themselves to be understood as the wise men and scribes and prophets, and us as the persecutors of the wise and the prophets, why are they unwilling to speak with us, seeing that they were sent to us?

In short, the man who wrote that letter to which we are now replying—if he were pressed by us to acknowledge it as his own by signing it with his own hand, perhaps he would not do it; so much do they fear lest we should get hold of any of their words. For when we wished somehow to obtain the latter part of that same letter—since those who gave it to us were unable to copy out the whole—no one from whom it was sought was willing to give it, after they had learned that we were replying to that part which we had reached. And so, when they read how the Lord says to the prophet:

'Cry aloud with all your might, spare not, and write down with my pen their sins'—these true prophets who were sent to us fear and guard against nothing so much as that their cry should be heard by us; which, assuredly, they would not fear, if they were speaking the truth about us. Not without reason, as is written in the psalm, 'the mouth of those who speak iniquity has been stopped.' For if they refuse our baptism on the ground that we are a 'generation of vipers,' as this man put it in his letter, why did they receive the baptism of the Maximianists, of whom their own council speaks thus: that 'the womb of an envenomed belly long concealed the noxious offspring of viperous seed, and the moist clots of a conceived crime warmed themselves into the limbs of asps with sluggish heat'?

Was it not likewise said of these same men, consistently, in that same council, that 'the poison of asps is under their lips,' whose 'mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known'? And yet these very men they now hold within, in their full honour and baptized by them outside.

Wherefore all these things—about the 'generation of vipers,' about the 'poison of asps under their lips,' and the other things said against those who 'have not known the way of peace'—if these men truly wished to say them, they themselves are rather the ones to whom they apply; since, for the sake of the peace of Donatus, they received the baptism of those against whom by their council's sentence they said these things, while, to the sacrilegious injury of Christ's peace, they reject the baptism of the Church of Christ diffused throughout the whole world, whence that very peace came into Africa. Who then are rather the false prophets who 'come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves'?

Is it those who either do not know the wicked in the Catholic Church and innocently commune with them, or who tolerate for the sake of unity's peace those whom they cannot separate from the Lord's threshing-floor before the winnower comes? Or is it those who do in schism the very things they blame in the Catholic Church, and who receive back—in their own manifest severance and self-condemned—those whom they pretend to flee while they profess that such things ought to be tolerated in unity as being uncertain? Finally, it was said thus, and this too he himself has quoted: 'By their fruits ye shall know them.' Let us therefore consider the fruits. You charge us with the surrender of the Scriptures: this very charge we cast back upon you with far greater probability.

And not to run through many instances: in that same city of Constantina your forebears, at the very outset of their schism, ordained Silvanus as bishop. This man, while he was still a subdeacon, was shown by the municipal records to be a most manifest traditor. If you too bring forward some documents against our forebears, a fair condition is demanded: that we believe either both to be true or both to be false. If both are true, you are beyond doubt guilty of schism, you who pretended to flee, in the communion of the whole world, crimes which you had in that very fragment of your severance. But if both are false, you are beyond doubt guilty of schism, you who by an immense crime of separation are stained on account of false charges of traitors.

But if some things are produced by us and none by you, or true things by us and false by you, there is no need to discuss how utterly your mouths are shut. What, if the holy and true Church of Christ were to convict and overcome you—even if we held no documents of surrender, or false ones, while you held some true ones—what would then remain for you, save that, if you will, you should love peace, or, if you will not, at least fall silent? For whatever you might produce, I would most easily and most truly say that you ought then to have proved those things to the full and Catholic unity, already diffused and established among so many nations, so that you might be within, and those whom you convicted might be driven out.

But if you attempted to do this, without doubt you could not prove it, and being vanquished or enraged you severed yourselves by an immense sacrilege from the innocent, who could not condemn what was uncertain. But if you did not even attempt to do so, then by an all-too-execrable and impious blindness you cut yourselves off from Christ's wheat—which grows throughout the whole field, that is, the whole world, until the end—offended by a few tares in Africa. Finally, the testament is said to have been surrendered to the flames by certain persons in the time of persecution: now let it be read out, produced from wherever it may be. Surely at the very beginning of the testator's promises this is found, said to Abraham: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed'; and what this means the Apostle truthfully interprets:

'In thy seed,' he says, 'which is Christ.' No one's surrender has made void the faithfulness of God. Commune with all nations, and then boast that you have preserved the testament from the destruction of the flames. But if you will not, which party is rather to be believed to have insisted on burning the testament, if not the one that refuses to consent to it once produced? For how much more surely, without any sacrilegious rashness, is he judged to have succeeded the traitors who now persecutes with his tongue the testament which they are said to have persecuted with the flame! You charge us with persecution: the Lord's wheat answers you, 'either it was justly done, or our chaff did it.' What do you say to this? You charge that we do not have baptism:

the same wheat of the Lord answers you that the form of the sacrament profits nothing even to certain persons within, just as it did not profit Simon Magus when baptized; much more does it profit nothing to those who are outside; yet that it is nevertheless present in them when they depart hence is proved by the fact that it is not restored to those who return. Can you then, except most shamelessly, cry out against this wheat and say that they are 'false prophets clothed in sheepskins, but inwardly ravening wolves,' seeing that they either do not know the wicked in Catholic unity, or, when they know them, tolerate them for the sake of unity?

But if we consider your fruits—I pass over the tyrannical dominations in the cities and especially on other men's estates; I pass over the frenzy of the Circumcellions and the sacrilegious and profane cults of the corpses of those who cast themselves down of their own accord, the bacchanals of drunkenness, and the ten-year groaning of all Africa under one Optatus the Gildonian; I pass over these things, because there are among you certain men who proclaim that these displease them and have always displeased them. But they say that they tolerate these things for the sake of peace, because they cannot suppress them; wherein they condemn themselves by their own judgement, for if they loved peace, they would not have torn asunder unity. For what great madness is it, to want to leave peace in peace itself, and to want to retain it in dissension?

And so, on account of those who pretend not to see the evils of that same party of Donatus—evils which all see and blame—to such a degree that even of Optatus himself they say, 'What did he do? Who accused him? Who convicted him? I know not, I did not see, I did not hear'—on account of these men, then, who feign ignorance of manifest things, the Maximianists arose, in whom their eyes may be opened and their mouths shut: openly they separate themselves, openly they set up altar against altar, openly in council they are called sacrilegious and vipers and swift to shed blood and to be compared with Dathan and Abiram and Korah, and are cursed with harsh words and condemned; and openly they are received back again in their honours together with those they baptized.

These are the fruits of those who do such things for the peace of Donatus, so as to cover themselves with sheep's skin, and who refuse the peace of Christ throughout the whole world, so as to be inwardly ravening wolves. I think I have passed over nothing of what this man put in his letter—at least of what I could find in that part which we reached; let them produce the remaining part too, lest perchance there be in it something that cannot be refuted. But these things, which by the Lord's help we have answered, I admonish your charity that you give them not only to those who ask, but also press them upon those who do not ask. Let them answer if they wish anything; and if they will not answer us, let them at least send letters to their own people—letters which, however, they must not order to be hidden from us.

But if they do so, they most openly betray their own fruits, whereby the ravening wolves clothed in sheep's clothing are shown to be those who secretly lie in wait for our sheep and openly dread to answer the shepherds. We charge them only with the crime of schism, in which they are all utterly involved—not with the crimes of certain of them, which some of them may answer displease them. But they, if they do not charge us with the crimes of others, have nothing to charge us with, and therefore they cannot at all defend themselves from the wickedness of schism; because whether on account of false crimes fabricated by themselves, or even on account of true, yet chaff-crimes, they have by a wicked severance separated themselves from the Lord's threshing-floor and from the innocence of the wheat growing throughout the whole world.

Unless perhaps you expect from me that the things he inserted about Mani should also be refuted. In this matter nothing displeases me except that he blamed a most pestilential and most pernicious error—that is, the heresy of the Manichaeans—with an altogether trifling and almost non-existent censure, an error which the Catholic Church assails with the strongest proofs of truth. For the inheritance of Christ, established among all nations, is safe against all the disinherited heresies. But as the Lord says, 'How can Satan cast out Satan?'—so how can the error of the Donatists overthrow the error of the Manichaeans?

Wherefore, dearly beloved, although this error, convicted in many ways, is overcome, and dares to resist the truth by no assertions of any kind of reasoning, but by stubborn shamelessness alone, nevertheless, lest a multitude of documents burden your memory, hold fast this one deed of the Maximianists, fix this upon their forehead, wedge this into their mouths to suppress their deceitful tongues, slaughter their calumny with this as with a trident, or as though it were a three-headed beast. They charge surrender, they charge persecution, they charge false baptism: to all these things reply from the Maximianists alone. For they think it is hidden that their forebears surrendered the holy books to the flames:

but since the sacrilege of schism exceeds the crime of surrender, they received back the Maximianists—stained with the sacrilege of schism—in their honours. This assuredly they cannot hide. Likewise the most violent persecutions, which they inflict on any they can wherever they can, they think are hidden: but since spiritual persecution exceeds bodily persecution, they received back in their honours the Maximianists, whom they themselves persecuted bodily and of whom they themselves said, 'their feet are swift to shed blood.' This assuredly they cannot hide. Finally, the question of baptism, by which they deceive the wretched, they think is hidden:

but although they say that all who are baptized outside the communion of the one Church do not have baptism, they received back the Maximianists in their honours together with those whom the Maximianists baptized outside their communion in schism. This assuredly they cannot hide. 'But these things,' they say, 'do not defile for the sake of peace, and it is good to bend the rigour of severity toward mercy, so that the broken branches may be grafted in anew.' Thus, then, the whole case is concluded, vanquished in them, unvanquished on our side; because, if the name of peace is taken up as some shadow of a defence for tolerating the wicked in schism, then without doubt, by a horrible crime and with no defence, the true peace itself is violated through the unity of the whole world.

31. These things, brethren, retain, to be done and proclaimed with tireless gentleness: love men, slay errors; presume upon the truth without pride, contend for the truth without cruelty; pray for those whom you refute and convict. For the prophet beseeches God on behalf of such, saying: 'Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek thy name, O Lord.' And indeed the Lord has already done this, that he has most openly filled their faces with the shame of the Maximianists; it remains that they should learn to blush for their salvation.

For thus they will be able to seek the name of the Lord, from whom they have most perniciously turned away, while for his sake they exalt their own name. May you live and persevere in Christ, and be multiplied and abound in the love of God and of one another and of all, most beloved brethren. SECOND BOOK. Those who were able to read or hear it remember that we have sufficiently answered the first parts of Petilian's letter, which alone we had found. But since afterwards the whole was found by the brethren, and copied out and sent to us, that we might reply to it in its entirety, this duty of our pen was not to be shunned—not because he says anything new, to which reply has not already been made in many ways and often;

but for the sake of the slower brethren, who cannot refer things they have read somewhere to all like cases, I will thus oblige those who altogether compel me to answer point by point, so that we may discourse in the present as though in alternating speeches. I will set down the words from his letter under his name, and render the reply under my own name, as though, while we were pleading, they had been taken down by notaries. Thus there will be no one to complain that I have passed over anything, or that he could not understand because of the indistinct persons; and at the same time, that these same Donatists, who are unwilling to discuss with us face to face, may not, by the letters they have published to their own people, thus escape the truth answering them point by point, as though they were conversing with us face to face.

From the very beginning of his letter Petilian said: 'Petilian, bishop, to his dearly beloved brethren, fellow-presbyters and deacons, ministers appointed with us throughout the diocese in the holy Gospel: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Augustine replied: I recognize the apostolic salutation. See what you say; yet consider whence you have learned what you say. Thus Paul salutes the Romans, thus the Corinthians, thus the Galatians, thus the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians. What madness, then, is it to be unwilling to commune in the salvation of peace with those churches from whose letters you have learned the peaceful salutation? Petilian said:

'They cast baptism twice in our teeth, these men who under the name of baptism have polluted their own souls with a guilty washing—men beside whose obscenities all filth is cleaner, whom it has befallen to be defiled by their own water with a perverse cleanness.' Augustine replied: We are neither defiled by our water nor cleansed by yours; but the water of baptism, given to anyone in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, is neither ours nor yours, but his of whom it was said to John: 'Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending like a dove and remaining upon him, this is he that baptizes in the Holy Spirit.' Petilian said: 'For the conscience of the giver is what cleanses the conscience of the receiver.' Augustine replied: Of the conscience of Christ, therefore, we are secure.

For if you set up any man you please, the cleansing of the receiver will be uncertain, because the conscience of the one who washes is uncertain. Petilian said: 'For he who has received faith from one who is faithless receives not faith but guilt.' Augustine replied: Christ is not faithless, from whom the faithful man receives faith, not guilt. For he believes in him 'who justifies the ungodly, that his faith may be reckoned unto righteousness.' Petilian said: 'For everything consists of its origin and root, and if a thing has not a head it is nothing, nor does anything rightly regenerate, unless it be regenerated by good seed.' Augustine replied: Why do you wish to set yourself up in Christ's place, under whom you are unwilling to place yourself?

He is the origin and root and head of the one being born—concerning whom we have no fear, as we do concerning any man whatever, lest perchance he be feigned and utterly wicked, and lest we spring from a wicked origin, rise up from a wicked root, be conformed to a wicked head. For what man is secure concerning a man, when it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man'? But the seed by which we are regenerated is the word of God, that is, the Gospel; whence the Apostle says: 'For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel.' Yet he permits even those who do not chastely proclaim the Gospel to proclaim it, and in this he rejoices, because, although they proclaimed it unchastely, seeking their own things and not those of Jesus Christ, yet what they proclaimed was chaste. And the Lord had said of certain such men:

'Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not.' If, then, that which is chaste is chastely proclaimed, the proclaimer too, because he is joined to the word, begets a believer along with it; but if he himself is not regenerated, yet what he proclaims is chaste, the believer is born, not from the barrenness of the minister, but from the fecundity of the truth. Petilian said: 'Since these things are so, brethren, what perversity can there be, that one who is guilty by his own crimes should make another innocent, when the Lord Jesus Christ says: A good tree brings forth good fruits, a bad tree brings forth bad fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns? And again:'

'Every good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and every evil man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth evil things?' Augustine replied: Every man, even if he is not guilty of his own crimes, does not make another innocent, because he is not God. Otherwise, if from the innocence of the baptizer it is expected that the innocence of the baptized should come to be, each will be the more innocent the more innocent a baptizer he finds, and each will himself be the less innocent the less innocent is he by whom he is baptized; and if perchance the one who baptizes holds a hatred against someone, this too will be imputed to the one who is baptized. Why then does the wretch run to baptism? That his sins may be remitted him, or that another's may be imposed upon him?

Or is it as a merchant's ship, that lays down some cargo and takes on other? But we are wont to understand the good tree and its good fruit, and the bad tree and its bad fruit, as men and their works, as is consistently shown in the words which you too have quoted: 'A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things.' But when he preaches the word of God or ministers the sacrament of God, if he is evil, he does not preach or minister of his own, but it shall be reckoned among those things of which it was said: 'Do what they say, but do not do what they do'; for they say the things that are God's, but do the things that are their own.

For if it is as you say—that is, that the baptized themselves are esteemed to be the fruits of the baptizers—you announce a great evil to Africa, if as many Optatuses have sprung up as Optatus baptized. Petilian said: 'And again: He who is baptized by a dead man, his washing profits him not. He did not assert that a lifeless dead body or a man's corpse rigidly stretched out is the baptizer, but one not having the Spirit of God, who is compared to a dead man, as in another place he makes clear to a disciple. The Gospel bearing witness, his disciple says: Lord, permit me to bury my father; Jesus says to him: Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead. The disciple's father was not baptized; a pagan he consigned to pagans.'

'Unless he said this of the unbelieving, a dead man cannot bury a dead man. A dead man, then, indeed struck down not by any death, but by his own life. For he who so lives as to be guilty is tormented by a dead life. To be baptized, therefore, by a dead man is to have received death, not life. It must be discussed and stated by us in what sense a traitor is held to be dead in life: dead is he who did not merit to be born by true baptism; dead likewise is he who, begotten by just baptism, was mingled with a traitor. Both do not have the life of baptism—both he who never at all had it, and he who had it and lost it. For the Lord Jesus Christ says: There shall come upon that man seven worse spirits, and that man shall be worse than the former.' Augustine replied:

Inquire more diligently how the testimony which you have adduced from Scripture was said, and how it is to be understood. For it is manifest that all the wicked are wont to be mystically called dead; but Christ, whose is the true baptism which you call false on account of the vices of a man, lives, sitting at the right hand of the Father, and will not now die even by that infirmity of the flesh, and death shall no longer have dominion over him. Whoever is baptized with his baptism is not baptized by a dead man; and even if perchance the ministers, deceitful workmen seeking their own things and not those of Jesus Christ, and not chastely proclaiming the Gospel, and preaching Christ through strife and envy, are to be called dead on account of their iniquities, yet the sacrament of the living God does not die even in a dead man.

For that Simon, baptized by Philip in Samaria, was dead—he who wished to purchase the gift of God with money; yet the baptism which he had lived on, to his own punishment. But how false is what you say—'Both do not have the life of baptism, both he who never at all had it and he who had it and lost it'—you may perceive from this, that those who, being baptized, apostatize and return through penance, do not have baptism restored to them, which, if they had lost it, would be restored. But how do your dead men baptize, according to your understanding? Or are they not dead—to be silent about the rest and to say what is known to all and is of daily occurrence—the drunkards, since the Apostle says of the widow: 'She that lives in pleasures is dead while she lives'?

Then, in that council of yours, in which you condemned Maximian together with his sponsors or his ministers, it slipped out from you how eloquently you said: 'After the manner of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the funerals of the perishing, whose punishment in their very death is the greater, because after the soul has been wrenched out by the avenging waters they do not find even burial itself.' And yet one of them, Felician—whether he has come back to life you may see to it—nevertheless has within, among you, those whom, dead, he baptized outside. As, therefore, one is baptized by a living man who is clothed with the baptism of the living Christ, so one is baptized by a dead man who is wrapped in the baptism of the dead Saturn or of any other whatever—that we may for the moment quickly state how the words which you have set down can be understood without distress to any of us.

For as they are taken by you, you strive not to disentangle yourselves, but to entangle us together with you. Petilian said: 'It must be discussed by us, I say, and stated, in what sense a faithless traitor is held to be dead in life. Judas was an apostle when he betrayed Christ, and having lost the honour of an apostle, he died spiritually, destined afterwards to die by his own noose, as it is written: I have sinned, he says, in that I betrayed innocent blood; and he departed and hanged himself with a noose. By a noose the traitor perished, a noose he left for such men; concerning whom the Lord Christ cried out to the Father:'

'Father, those whom thou gavest me, I have kept them all, and of them none has perished but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.' For long ago David had thus pronounced sentence against him who was to betray Christ to the faithless: 'Let another take his bishopric; let his wife be a widow and his children orphans.' Behold how great is the spirit of the prophets, that he saw all future things as though present, so that the traitor, to be born after very many ages, was condemned beforehand; and finally, that the sentence once pronounced was fulfilled, holy Matthias received the bishopric of the lost apostle. Let no fool, no faithless man, dispute hereupon:

Matthias won a triumph, not an injury, since from the victory of Christ the Lord he carried off the spoil of the traitor. By this deed, then, why do you claim the episcopate for yourself, heir of a still more wicked traitor? Judas betrayed Christ in the flesh; you, raging in spirit, delivered the holy Gospel to sacrilegious flames. Judas handed over the Lawgiver to the treacherous; you, as though handing over his relics, delivered the law of God to men to be destroyed. If you loved the law, you ought, like the young Maccabees, to be slain for the laws of God — if indeed one can call it death when in dying for the Lord it makes men immortal. One of those brothers answered the sacrilegious tyrant with this voice of faith: 'You indeed, wicked and impious one, destroy us from this present life;'

but the King of the world, who reigns for ever and whose kingdom shall have no end, will raise us up, who die for his holy laws, into the fellowship of eternal life. If you were to burn a dead man's will with fire, would you not be punished as a forger? What then shall become of you, who have burned the most holy law of God the Judge? Judas at least repented of his deed even in death; but you not only do not repent — nay, most wicked traitor, you have moreover become a persecutor and executioner against us who keep the law. Augustine replied: See what difference there is between your slanderous words and our truthful assertions. Attend a little. Behold, you have exaggerated the crime of betrayal, and with most odious words, as though a rich inventor of a Judas, you have compared us, ruined, to him.

To this let me answer you most briefly: 'I did not do what you say; I did not betray. You charge me falsely; you will never prove it.' Does not all this smoke of towering words at once melt away? Or will you perhaps try to prove it? Then you ought first to have done this, and only afterwards to rise against us with whatever heap of invective you pleased, as against men convicted. Behold, one act of empty vanity; hear another. You yourself, when you were speaking of the aforesaid damnation of Judas, said:

'Behold how greatly the spirit of the prophets was sought out, that it might see all things future as though present, so that many ages before he was born the traitor was condemned.' Yet you did not see, by that same prophecy — settled, certain, and by an unshaken truth — by which it was foretold that one disciple would betray Christ, it was likewise foretold that the whole world would believe in Christ. Why did you attend in the prophecy to the man who betrayed Christ, and not attend there to the world for which Christ was betrayed? Who betrayed Christ? Judas. To whom did he betray him? To the Jews. What did the Jews do to him? 'They pierced,' he says, 'my hands and my feet; they numbered all my bones.'

'They themselves indeed gazed and looked upon me; they divided my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots.' How great, then, is that which was bought at so great a price, read a little further in that same Psalm: '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 the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations.' But who could suffice to recall the rest — the innumerable prophetic testimonies concerning the world that would believe? Yet you praise the prophecy because you see in it the man who sold Christ, and do not see in it the possession which Christ, being sold, purchased. Behold a second vanity; hear a third. Among the many words of your invective you said:

'If you were to burn a dead man's will with fire, would you not be punished as a forger? What then shall become of you, who have burned the most holy law of God?' In saying this you did not attend to what ought surely to have moved you: how it could come to pass that we should burn the testament and yet abide in that inheritance which was written in that testament — whereas it is a marvel that you should have kept the testament and yet lost the inheritance. Is it not written in that testament: 'Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession'? Enter into fellowship with this inheritance, and then object to me whatever you please out of the testament.

For what madness is it that you were unwilling to hand over the testament to the flames, only that you might contend against the words of the testator? But we, though we hold in our hands ecclesiastical and municipal records, in which we may read that those who ordained a rival bishop against Caecilian were rather the ones who handed over the divine books — we nevertheless do not insult, we do not inveigh against you, nor do we bewail in your hands the ashes of the holy pages, nor do we set the burning torments of the Maccabees against the sacrilege of your swelling pride, saying: 'You would sooner deliver your own limbs than the oracles of God to the fires.' For we are unwilling to be empty men, so as to stir up an idle uproar against you over the deeds of others, which you either do not know of or disapprove.

But that we see you separated from the communion of the whole world — a crime both very great and manifest and belonging to all of you — if I should wish to exaggerate it, time would fail me sooner than words. And if you wish to defend this, you are going to object against the whole world the very things which, if they ought to be objected, you only warn us whence you may be the more accused, and if they ought not to be objected, do not defend you. Why then are you puffed up against me over a betrayal which is neither mine nor yours, if that pact still stands, that we should not object to each other the deeds of others; but if it does not stand, the betrayal is rather yours than mine? And yet, even if that pact stands, I think I say most justly that he should be judged the companion of him who betrayed Christ, who together with the whole world has not given himself over to Christ.

'Therefore,' says the apostle, 'you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise'; and again he says: 'heirs indeed of God, but joint-heirs with Christ.' And the same apostle shows that Abraham's seed pertains to all nations, from that which was said to Abraham: 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed.' Wherefore I think it just that I ask that we should give some attention to the testament of God, which has long since been opened, and that whomever we find not to be a joint-heir of him who was betrayed, we should judge to be the heir of the traitor; let him pertain to the seller of Christ, who denies Christ to be the purchaser of the world. For assuredly, when after his resurrection he showed himself to his disciples and offered his limbs to be handled by those who doubted, he said to them this:

'Because thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.' Behold from what inheritance you estrange yourselves; behold what heir you resist! Would he then spare Christ walking on the earth, who contradicts him seated in heaven? Do you not yet understand that whatever you object to us, you object to his word? A Christian world is promised, and is believed; it is fulfilled, and is contradicted. Consider, I beseech you, what you ought to have suffered for such great impiety; and yet, if you have suffered anything, I know not, I have not seen it, I have not done it. You who today do not suffer the violence of any persecution from me, render me the account of your separation.