Thence he now runs off into Judas the betrayer, and says against him whatever he can, applying the prophetic testimonies which were sent forth concerning him so long before, as though he would drench with the impiety of Judas the betrayer the Church of Christ spread throughout the whole world, whose cause is at issue in this question — not considering that even from this he ought to have been admonished: that it is as little to be doubted that this is the Church of Christ which is enlarged among all nations, since this was so long before truly prophesied, as it is not to be doubted that Christ had to be betrayed by one of his disciples, since this too was similarly prophesied.
But plainly after these things Petilian, when he comes to that objection of ours — that they received the baptism of the Maximianists whom they had condemned — although in the framing of this question he preferred to use his own words rather than mine (for we do not say that the baptism of sinners ought to profit us, which we say is the baptism not only of no sinners but of no men at all, because we recognize it to be Christ's; for thus he set it forth: 'But you obstinately assert,' he says, 'that the baptism of sinners ought to profit you, because we too, as you said, preserve the baptism of the guilty whom we justly condemned') — when he comes to this question, as I said, all his even simulated combat failed him.
Where he might go, by what way he might get out, by what searched-out or contrived entrance he might either secretly slip away or break out by force, he did not find. 'Although,' he says, 'I may demonstrate in the second book how great is the difference between us and our people and yours whom you call innocent, nevertheless meanwhile do you first rescue yourselves from the crimes of your colleagues which you know, and so demand an account concerning those whom we cast out.' Let anyone answer thus! What man would answer thus, except one who opposes the truth, against which he finds nothing to answer? If, then, we too should say the same words:
'Meanwhile do you first rescue yourselves from the crimes of your colleagues which you know, and so charge us with any crime concerning those whom you think evil among us,' have we both conquered or have we both been conquered? Nay rather, he conquers for his Church and in his Church who taught us in his Scripture that no one should glory in man, and that he who glories should glory in the Lord. For behold, we who with the utterance of truth say that the believer is not justified by the man by whom he is baptized, but by him of whom it is written:
'To him who believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned unto righteousness' — since we do not glory in man and, relying on him who gives, when we glory, we glory in the Lord — how secure are we, whatever of error or crime he may have been able to prove concerning certain men of our communion! For among us whoever are evil either lie entirely hidden, or are known to some, and for the sake of the good, to whom they are unknown and among whom they cannot be convicted, are tolerated for the bond of unity and peace, lest with the tares the wheat also be rooted up; and so they bear the burden of their own malice, in such a way that no one shares in it with them except those to whom their iniquity is pleasing.
For we do not fear that those whom they baptize cannot be justified, since they believe in him who justifies the ungodly, so that their faith is reckoned unto righteousness. Accordingly, among us neither that man whom he said was cast out by us on account of the crime of the Sodomites, and another appointed in his place, and again restored to our very fellowship — he not knowing what he says — nor that man whom he mentions to have been a penitent among you, in whatever way their cases can or cannot be defended, prejudice in any way the Church of God, which is diffused throughout all nations and grows in the world until the harvest.
In which, if those whom you accuse are truly evil, they are now not in her, but in her chaff; but if they are good, when you defame them with unjust accusations, they themselves, like gold, are proved, while you burn like chaff; yet by others' sins the Church is not stained, which, according to the most faithful prophecies, spread throughout the whole world, awaits the end of the age like a shore, to which being brought she may be free of the bad fish, with which, within the same nets of the Lord — so long as they ought not impatiently to be separated from them — the discomfort of nature could innocently be borne. Nor yet on that account is ecclesiastical discipline neglected by the steadfast and diligent and prudent stewards of Christ, where crimes are so manifested that they can be defended by no probable reasoning.
There exist innumerable documents concerning those who were either bishops or clergy of some other such rank, and now, being degraded, have either through shame gone off into other lands, or crossed over to yourselves or to other heresies, or are known in their own regions. Of these so great a multitude is dispersed throughout the lands that, if Petilian, his rashness of reviling somewhat restrained, would consider it, he would by no means fall into so openly false and vain an assertion, by which he thought it must be said to us: 'None of you is innocent, where no one guilty is condemned.'
For, to pass over others dwelling in diverse lands — for scarcely anywhere is this kind of men lacking — that it might appear that iniquitous prelates and ministers are wont to be condemned even in the catholic Church, he could have observed Honorius of Mileu close at hand. But concerning Splendonius — whom, a deacon condemned in the catholic Church and rebaptized by himself, he made a presbyter, whose condemnation in Gaul, sent to us by the brethren, our colleague Fortunatus proposed to be read publicly there at Constantina, and whom the same Petilian afterward, having experienced his horrendous plots, cast out — concerning this Splendonius, then, how could he not be admonished in what manner the evil are degraded even in the catholic Church?
I wonder in what precipice of rashness his heart was, when he was dictating these things, where he dared to say: 'None of you is innocent, where no one guilty is condemned.' Wherefore the evil, mingled bodily but separated spiritually in the catholic Church, both when by the human condition they are unknown and when by consideration of discipline they are condemned, bear their own burdens; and through this those are secure, if by imitation and consent they do not share in their sins, whoever are baptized by them with the baptism of Christ, because even if they were baptized by the best, they would be justified by none other than him who justifies the ungodly. For to those who believe in him who justifies the ungodly, their faith is reckoned unto righteousness.
But you, when the Maximianists are objected against you — condemned by the sentence of a council of three hundred and ten, assailed by the same council alleged before so many proconsular authorities, so many municipal records, driven out from the basilicas which they held by the commands of judges and the aid of cities, and again received and honored by you together with those whom they had baptized outside your communion, without any question of baptism — you find nothing to answer. For you are conquered by a sentence, not a true one but your own, by which you contend that in the same communion of the sacraments some perish by the crimes of others, and that each one is such as is the man by whom he was baptized: if guilty, guilty; if innocent, innocent.
If these things are true — to pass over countless others — then surely the crimes of the Maximianists have ruined you, whose wickedness, in your own so numerous a council, you heightened even to a likeness of those men whom the earth swallowed up while they yet lived. But if the crimes of the Maximianists have not ruined you, then the things you thus suppose are false; and much less could I-know-not-what unproven crimes of certain Africans have ruined the whole round world.
And so, as the Apostle writes, each one bears his own burden, and no one's baptism is Christ's except Christ's own; and in vain does Petilian promise, concerning that which we press upon him about the Maximianists, that he will speak in a second book — thinking far too meanly of human hearts, as though they would not perceive that he has nothing to say. For if the baptism which Praetextatus and Felicianus administered in the communion of Maximian was theirs, why was it received by you, in those whom they baptized, as though it were Christ's?
But if it truly is Christ's — as indeed it is — and yet could not profit those who had held it with the wickedness of schism, what can you say that you conferred upon those whom you received together with that same baptism, except that, through the bond of peace, once the crime of their wicked division was blotted out, they were not compelled to receive the sacrament of the holy laver as though they did not possess it, but that what they possessed, which was before ruinous, should now begin to be profitable to them? Or if this was not conferred upon them in your communion — because indeed no such thing could be conferred upon schismatics among schismatics — yet this is conferred upon you in the catholic communion: not that you should receive a baptism as though it were lacking to you, but that the very one you received should profit you.
For indeed all the sacraments of Christ, apart from the charity of the unity of Christ, are had not unto salvation but unto judgment. But because it is not the true view, but your view, that through the baptism of I-know-not-what traditors the baptism of Christ has perished from the round world, it is with good reason that you find nothing to answer concerning the baptism of the Maximianists which you received back. Consider therefore, and most vigilantly bear in mind, how Petilian has not even answered the very points which he himself so proposes, so as to seem to say something. But that other matter, which he cited from the first parts of my letter as though it were to be refuted, he long since let go altogether, nor was he willing to speak to us of it — because assuredly he could not — nor will he ever, right to the end of his volume, speak of it.
Indeed, although he even added two words which he boasted that I had suppressed as though they were his strongest defenses, he nonetheless lies unfortified, finding nothing to answer when it is asked: if the conscience of the one giving in holiness is what is regarded as cleansing the receiver, whence is that man's conscience to be cleansed who, in ignorance, receives from an unfaithful giver whose conscience — not one giving in holiness — is polluted; and if he who knowingly takes the faith from a faithless man receives not faith but guilt, whence is he to receive faith and not guilt who is baptized unknowingly by a faithless man? It is manifest that to this, in all the time since he began speaking, he has answered nothing. Thereupon he went on with a slanderous mouth to disparage monasteries and monks, accusing even me, on the ground that this kind of life was instituted by me;
which kind of life, what it is like, he is altogether ignorant of — or rather pretends to be ignorant of that which is most widely known throughout the whole world. Then, asserting that I had said Christ is the baptizer, he further subjoined certain words from my letter, as though I had said this from my own view, when I said it from yours and his; and with most abundant fierceness he inveighed against me, as though it were I who had said this, whereas that which he censures is not mine but his own and your view — as I shall presently, as far as I am able, clearly demonstrate.
Next he attempted to teach us, with many superfluous words, that it is not Christ who baptizes, but that baptism is administered in His name together with the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and concerning the Trinity itself he said either what he willed or what he could, namely that Christ is the middle of the Trinity. Then, from the name of Simon and of Bar-Jesus the magicians, he heaped upon us such insults as pleased him; then, cautiously suspending the case of Optatus of Thamugadi, lest he be splashed with the odium of that man, he said that neither he nor his people had been able to pass judgment on him, and in that very matter accusing us on the ground that Optatus had been brought low by my suggestions. Finally he concluded his letter, exhorting and warning his own not to be deceived by us, and lamenting over our people, that we had made them worse than they had been.
When therefore these things have been diligently considered and examined — which appears clearly enough from that very letter which he wrote — Petilian gave no answer at all to that which I set down first in my letter: if, as he says, the conscience of the giver, or rather (to add what he thinks a great support) if the conscience of the one giving in holiness is what is regarded as cleansing the receiver, whence is he to be cleansed who receives baptism, when — if the conscience of the giver is polluted — the one about to receive is ignorant of it. Hence it is not to be wondered at that a man resisting on behalf of falsehood, hard pressed by the straits of the truth that comes against him, should rather have panted out insane reproaches than have been willing to walk with that truth which cannot be overcome.
Now then, I beg you, give your minds for a little while, that I may plainly show you what he feared, so as not to answer this, and may bring into the light what he tried to obscure. He could surely, when we ask whence he is to be cleansed who receives baptism, when the giver's conscience is polluted and this the receiver does not know, have answered most easily: 'by the Lord God,' and could have said with the utmost confidence: 'assuredly God cleanses the receiver's conscience, when he is ignorant of the stained conscience of one not giving in holiness.' But the man, who had already been driven by the aim of your sect to place the cleansing of the receiver in the giver's conscience — for he had said:
'for it is the conscience of the giver, or of the one giving in holiness, that is regarded as cleansing the receiver' — he feared lest a man should seem to be better baptized by a hidden evil man than by a manifest good man; for then he would have to be cleansed not by the conscience of the man giving in holiness, but by the most excellent holiness of God Himself.
Fearing this therefore, lest so great an absurdity — or rather madness — should follow him, so that he would not know whither to flee, he was unwilling to say whence the receiver's conscience is to be cleansed when he is ignorant of the stained conscience of one not giving in holiness; and, throwing everything into confusion with contentious din, he preferred to hide what was being asked of him rather than to answer this to the questioner, whereby he would at once be choked — never supposing, however, that our writings could be read by men of sound heart, or that his own would be read by those who had read even mine, to which he pretended to reply.
For this which I have just said is set down most evidently in that very letter of mine, against which he said nothing in his writing; and what he did there, I pray you, attend a little, and, however much you favor him and hate us, if you can, bear it with an even mind. For since in his former letter — to the first parts of which alone, being the only parts that had then come into our hands, I had first replied — he had so placed the hope of the man being baptized in the man baptizing that he said: 'For everything consists in its origin and root, and if a thing has no head it is nothing.' Since therefore Petilian had said this, wishing nothing else to be understood by the origin and root and head of the man being baptized except the man by whom he was baptized, I subjoined and said:
'We ask therefore, when that faithless baptizer lies hidden, if then the one whom he baptizes receives faith and not guilt, if then his baptizer is not to him origin and root and head: who is it from whom he receives 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 being baptized is ignorant that his baptizer is faithless, then Christ gives faith, then Christ is origin and root and head?' This therefore I say and cry out now also, as I cried out there too: O human rashness and pride!
Why do you not rather allow that Christ should always give faith, being about to make a Christian by the giving? Why do you not allow that Christ should always be the origin of the Christian, that the Christian should fix his root in Christ, that Christ should be the Christian's head? For not even when spiritual grace is imparted to believers through a holy and faithful steward does the steward himself justify, but that One only, 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 them the increase, since the same Paul says: 'I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase;
and so neither is he who plants 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.' How too could he be their head, when he says that we, being many, are one body in Christ, and in many places most openly 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, everyone who places his hope in man.' These things I in my former letter, in replying to Petilian, set down, I think, both clearly and truthfully.
These things I have now also recalled, insinuating and commending this: that our hope be by no means in man, and that we believe God, Christ, to be the cleanser and justifier of men — of those who believe in Him who justifies the ungodly, so that their faith may be reckoned unto righteousness — whether the man be holy who administers baptism, or ungodly and feigned, one whom the Holy Spirit flees. Then next I added that, if it were otherwise, how great an absurdity would follow, and I said what I say now also:
'Otherwise, if each one is reborn in spiritual grace such as is he by whom he is baptized, and, when he who baptizes is a manifestly good man, he himself gives faith, he himself 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 it is to be wished by all who are baptized that they may have faithless baptizers and be ignorant of them. For however good they may have had, Christ is assuredly incomparably better, who will then be the head of the baptized, if the faithless baptizer lies hidden.'
But if it is most insane 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? These things I said then; these things are written in that letter of mine. Then a little after, since he had said: 'Since these things are so, brethren, what perversity can there be, that one who is guilty of his own crimes should make another innocent, when the Lord Jesus Christ says: A good tree makes good fruits, a bad tree makes bad fruits. Do they gather grapes from thorns?' And again:
'Every good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and every bad man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth evil things' — by which words Petilian shows quite plainly that the man who baptizes is to be taken as the tree, and the one who is baptized as the fruit. To this I had replied: If the good tree is the good baptizer, so that the fruit of it — the one he baptizes — is good, then whosoever has been baptized by a bad man, even one not manifest, will not be able to be good; for he sprang from a bad tree. For one thing is a good tree, another a hidden yet bad tree.
What else did I wish to be understood by these words except what I had set down a little above: that the tree and its fruit are to be taken not as the one who baptizes and the one who is baptized, but that the man is the tree, and its fruit is his work and his life, which the good man always has good and the bad man bad — lest that absurdity follow, that a man baptized even by a hidden evil man should be evil, as the fruit of a tree, hidden though it be, yet bad? Against which he answered nothing at all.
But lest either he or any of you should say that, when the one who baptizes is a hidden evil man, then the one whom he baptizes is not his fruit but the fruit of Christ, I straightway subjoined what an insane error even this view entails, and I repeated, albeit in other words, what I had said a little before: If, when the tree is hidden and bad, whoever has been baptized by it is born not of it but of Christ — then those who are baptized by hidden evil men are more holily justified than those who are baptized by manifest good men.
Petilian therefore, hemmed in by these so violent straits, kept silent about the premises above, on which these things hung, and recounted these absurdities — which follow from his error — in his reply as though I had said them from my own view, whereas they were said in order that he might attend to how much evil follows his view, and might be compelled to change it.
Practicing therefore this fraud upon his hearers or readers, and utterly despairing that what we wrote could be read, he began to inveigh against me grievously and petulantly, as though I had held that it is to be wished by all who are baptized that they should have faithless baptizers and be ignorant of them, since, however good they had, Christ is incomparably better, who will then be the head of the baptized, if the faithless baptizer lies hidden;
likewise as though I had held that those who are baptized by hidden evil men are more holily justified than those who are baptized by manifest good men — whereas this marvelous madness was recounted by me for this reason: that it necessarily follows those who hold with Petilian that the baptized man stands to his baptizer just as fruit stands to the tree from which it is born, good from good, bad from bad.
To whom, when we say that they should answer whose fruit they think the baptized man is, when he is baptized by a hidden evil man — since they do not dare to rebaptize him — they are forced to answer that then he is not the fruit of that hidden evil man, but is the fruit of Christ; and by this there follows for them what they do not want and what it is a mark of madness to hold: namely, that if a man is then the fruit of the man who is his baptizer, when he is baptized by a manifest good man, but when he is baptized by a hidden evil man, then he is not that man's fruit but Christ's — then those who are baptized by hidden evil men are more holily justified than those who are baptized by manifest good men.
And when Petilian, attributing this to me as though I had held it, inveighs against me quite grievously and vehemently, he himself surely demonstrates, by that very most grievous invective of his, how great a wickedness it is to hold these things; and by this, whatever he wished to seem to have said against me on account of this view is found to have been said against his very self, who is convicted of holding such things. For there he shows by how great a force of truth he was overcome, where he found no other way out except to feign that I held what he himself holds. Just as if those whom the Apostle reproves, because they said there is no resurrection of the dead, should wish to accuse the same Apostle, because he said:
'Neither did Christ rise again,' and 'the preaching of the apostles is vain,' and also 'the faith of believers is vain,' and 'they are found false witnesses against God, who had said that He raised up Christ' — this is what Petilian wished to do to me, despairing that what I wrote could be read, to which he could not reply, and eagerly desiring to be thought to have replied.
But just as, if anyone had done that to the Apostle, once the whole passage itself from his letter had been recited and the preceding words restored — from which whoever reads understands that those things depend — all that slanderous censure would be dashed back upon the foreheads of the censurers, so, once the preceding words from my letter are restored, while Petilian accuses me, they are hurled back with greater force into his own face, whence he tried to remove them. For the Apostle, refuting those who denied the resurrection of the dead, corrects them by that absurdity which follows those who hold such things against their will, so that, while they shudder at what it is impious to say, they may correct what they dared to believe. Accordingly he says thus: 'If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither did Christ rise again;
but if Christ did not rise again, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain; we are even found false witnesses of God, because we have testified against God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up' — so that, while they fear to say that Christ did not rise again, and the other evil and impious things that follow, they may correct what they had foolishly and unbelievingly said, namely that there is no resurrection of the dead. If therefore you take away what is placed at the head of this reasoning — 'if there is no resurrection of the dead' — the rest is badly said and must be attributed to the Apostle; but if you restore that on which they depend and set it at the beginning — 'if there is no resurrection of the dead' — they rightly follow: 'neither did Christ rise again,' and:
our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain,' and the rest that is connected; and all these things have been well and prudently said by the Apostle, since whatever evil they contain must be imputed to those who denied the resurrection of the dead. So too in my letter, take away what is set down:
'If each one is reborn in spiritual grace such as is he by whom he is baptized, and, when he who baptizes is a manifestly good man, he himself gives faith, he himself 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' — take away these things, on which what follows depends, and it is very badly said, and must be attributed to me: 'It is to be wished by all who are baptized that they may have faithless baptizers and be ignorant of them. For however good they may have had, Christ is assuredly incomparably better, who will then be the head of the baptized, if the faithless baptizer lies hidden.'
But let those things be restored which you yourselves say: then this, which depends upon them and follows as bound to them, is found not to be held by me, and whatever evil it contains is hurled back upon your view. Likewise take away what is set down: 'If the good tree is the good baptizer, so that the fruit of it — the one he baptizes — is good,' and 'if, when the tree is hidden and bad, whoever has been baptized by it is born not of it but of Christ' — take away these things, which you are compelled both by your sect and by Petilian's letter to confess, and that insane thing which follows will be mine and must be imputed to me: 'Those who are baptized by hidden evil men are more holily justified than those who are baptized by manifest good men.' But restore those things on which this depends: