'Bring,' he says, 'that first robe and clothe him, for this my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found'—that robe, namely, of which the Apostle Paul spoke: 'As many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ.' This I have, in this I rejoice, in this I shall ever appear more glorious. This is the garment which you have either, like robbers, stolen away, or, wretches, defiled. The Donatist said: Inasmuch as wickedness desires to prop up its wandering errors with another's goods, and tries to cover with mists of falsehood things falsely called Catholic, it advances by crooked hills; whom the Lord met as an adversary through Jeremiah: 'Do not,' He says, 'trust in false words, for in all things they will not profit you, when you say:'
'The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, is the temple of God.' And the Lord in Deuteronomy: 'Take heed to yourself, that you offer not your holocausts in every place that you see, but in the place which the Lord your God shall choose in your tribe; there you shall offer your holocausts, and there you shall do all that I command you this day.' The Catholic replied: You have set down a testimony most excellent and much conducive to your own salvation: 'Take heed to yourself, that you offer not your holocausts in every place that you see, but in the place which the Lord your God shall choose in your tribe; there you shall offer your holocausts, and there you shall do all that He shall command you.' Hear then which is the chosen place, and which tribe of the Lord is proclaimed. In the hundred and thirty-first psalm you have:
'For the Lord has chosen Sion; He has chosen her for His dwelling: This is my rest for ever and ever; here will I dwell, for I have chosen her.' Likewise in the hundred and twenty-first psalm: 'Our feet were standing in your courts, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which is built as a city; for thither the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, the testimony of Israel.' This is the chosen place, this the sanctified mountain, this the city set upon a mountain so that it cannot be hidden, this the Catholic root, this the fruitful vine spread far and wide, which in Ecclesiasticus cries and says: 'In Sion I was established, and in Jerusalem is my power.'
'For thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.' Rightly would you reprove me, if you remained in this inheritance. But since you do not remain in this inheritance of God the Father, since you do not serve as a soldier in this tribe of Christ the King, why do you, a deserter, rebuke a soldier? Why do you, a guilty man, upbraid the innocent? And I say to you: Take heed to yourself, that you offer not in every place—that is, in every heresy—and say, 'both here is God and there is God'; but in the place which the Lord your God shall choose in your tribe—that is, in His tribe—there shall you offer your holocausts, and there shall you do all that has been commanded you. Do this, and you shall live.
The Donatist said: And so it cannot be called baptism—that which the crowd of waters has scattered, which malice has separated from the fount of the Church, which a barren wave has dried up, which neither has seen an angel nor found a prophet who could heal it; as in the fourth book of Kings the most holy Elisha, having driven away death, healed the deadly waters and, by a fructifying word, permitted them to flow into abundant offspring: 'And the men of the city said to Elisha: Behold, the situation of the city is good, as you, my lord, see; but the waters are bad and barren here. And Elisha said: Bring me a new earthen vessel, and put salt into it. And they brought it, and he went out to the springs of the waters, and cast in the salt, and said: Thus says the Lord:'
'I have healed these waters, and there shall no longer be death in them, nor barrenness. And the waters were healed unto this day.' The Catholic replied: Thanks be to God the Father, who, being faithful, has fulfilled in us what He showed would come. Thanks, I say, to God the Father, who sent to us not angels only, not prophets, as before, into our Jericho—that is, into this world—but His own Son, the Lord, that is, of angels and the Prince of prophets, that He might heal the barrenness of the waters, that is, the infertility of the nations, having driven away death.
He took an earthen vessel—that is, the body of human frailty; He put in salt—that is, He filled it with divine wisdom; He cast it into the water—that is, He descended into the Jordan; by His descent He healed the waters—that is, by His coming He redeemed the nations; and by a fructifying word He gathered the Church from the nations and spread her abroad far and wide into abundant offspring. Whoever does not see this fulfilled in us is blind; whoever does not believe it is mad. Consider the abundant offspring; say where this Church is not; say where your church is to be found, save in a corner of Africa, ill-gathered like a useless twig. It has remained there where it was cut off; it could not extend farther, because, being cut off from the root, it straightway withered. The Donatist said:
One city received the substance of the Saviour's water; one widow, together with her children, received also the gifts of oil; nor did the prophet bestow the divine benefit everywhere, but only on her whom he knew to have one vessel of oil, as the truth of Kings proves: 'And a certain woman of the wives of the prophets cried out after Elisha, saying: Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared God; and behold, the creditor is come to take my two sons for bondmen. And Elisha said: What shall I do? Tell me, what have you in your house? And she said: Your handmaid has nothing in the house but one vessel of oil. And Elisha said:'
'Go, ask for yourself vessels from abroad, from all your neighbours, empty vessels, not a few; and you shall go in and shut the door upon yourself and upon your sons, and you shall fill the vessels with oil, and shall pay your debt.' For Elisha wrought by the outlines of true baptism. 'For because I do not approve yours as valid, therefore I exsufflate your faithful.' The Catholic replied: For all do this same thing that you do. All exsufflate the faithful, while they claim for themselves the one and only sacrament of baptism. When you have found such a one, will you not seize him, not hold him, not bind him with this bond, but—recognizing the pirate's mark—will you permit him to depart in safety, so that he may ply his craft along with you? Fulgentius said: Far be it that I should permit him to depart, since God has said: 'Compel all to come in, that my house may be filled.'
He who said 'all' excepted none. Augustine replied: What then will you do? Fulgentius said: I will teach him that my church is most certainly the true one. Augustine replied: In what way? Will you show that Christ, who received all nations from the Father, has remained only in an African portion? Fulgentius said: I will say that it consists in a few. Augustine replied: What if that true Church too shall have his few? For all, in comparison with the Catholic Church, have few. Fulgentius said: I will show that this is the true one, which suffers persecution, not which inflicts it. Augustine replied: What if that one also has inflicted no persecution at all? Fulgentius said: I will suggest, according to the Apostle, that my church alone has no wrinkles and spots.
Augustine replied: It will at once be proved to have them. For it is written: 'No one is clean from filth, not even if his life upon earth be of one day.' But why say more? By whatever device you may seize and hold him, how do you receive one who has perchance re-dyed your own faithful, who has extinguished the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer? Fulgentius said: I take him firmly in hand, I exsufflate him, and I baptize him in true water unto the remission of sins. Augustine replied: How do you remit his sins, when it is written that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven in this world? But let us pass this by, and consider another point. Say also to the Maximianist, your rival, what you have said to me: 'How can another have it, if it has been granted to me alone?
Or if you assert that it has been handed over to your jurisdiction, why do you approve another's?' And this Maximianist too will answer: 'How can another not have it, since you yourself have proved it to be granted to me as well as to you? For my Christians and clerics, baptized or ordained outside your church, you have received whole and entire, without any change of their baptism or their rank! This, objected to you from the acts of Marcellinus, you were in no way able to refute.' Again Augustine replied: If you are just, why is your judgment inconsistent? Why do you receive the Maximianist and exsufflate my faithful? Fulgentius said: Because he was mine. Augustine replied: And you were mine. Why do you persist as devout toward your own schismatic, but impious and implacable toward the Catholic? Fulgentius said:
You have sinned more, and therefore in you it is punished differently. Augustine replied: What then? Do you set down baptism as a punishment, and is that which is promised for salvation dispensed by you as a penalty? If in baptism you do not forgive offenses but chastise sins, if in the water you do not free but flog, you openly show yourself to be a pirate. But nevertheless, in what have I sinned more? What have I done? Fulgentius said: You handed over the codices and sacrificed to idols. Augustine replied: Prove it. I did not do it; you impute your own deeds to me. Fulgentius said: Your father did it. Augustine replied: I know no father but God. For it is written: 'Call no man your father upon earth; for one is your Father, the heavenly one.' Fulgentius said: I call Caecilianus your father.
He it was who handed over the Scriptures, he who burned incense, he who committed all evils. Augustine replied: Read the records—who accused him, who convicted him, who condemned him when he was set before them? Granted, suppose he did what he did not do: shall I, the son, be damned for the father, when it is written: 'The soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins shall alone die'? Fulgentius said: You, his son, did not indeed hand over the Scriptures, but you inflicted persecution on us. Augustine replied: I indeed did not do it, yet I believe that my own could have done it. I ask the reason why. What if you deserved it? For it is no sin to persecute the wicked. For we read that the wicked persecuted both the saints and the holy of holies, the Lord. For the demons, unable to bear the persecution of the Lord, cried out:
'What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come to destroy us?' And Paul avenged himself upon Elymas the magician with blindness, and handed the blasphemous man over to Satan; and Peter slew the lying Ananias and Sapphira his wife, and persecuted Simon Magus so long, until he destroyed him by death. But David too, in the person of Christ, cries and says: 'I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not turn back until they fail; I will smite them, and they shall not be able to stand.' Therefore not everyone who has suffered persecution is straightway to be thought righteous, but he who has suffered for righteousness' sake—he indeed is blessed, as Peter says: 'For what glory is it, if, sinning and being buffeted, you endure it?'
'But if, doing well, you suffer and patiently endure it, this is grace with God.' Fulgentius said: The saints whom you mention did not incur the edicts of secular judges, which your party did. Augustine replied: It is either lawful or unlawful. If lawful, it is not fitting to murmur about what is lawful; if unlawful, amend your own crime while you may. For the Maximianists, your schismatics, as the acts declare, you persecuted—by the authority of secular judges, by the supports of various magistracies, and by the execution of sundry soldiers, defenders of the church having been appointed—so as to drive them from their own basilicas. You who rebuke me, why do you not first amend yourself? Fulgentius said:
We took the basilicas from our schismatics in order to restore them to the true Church. Augustine replied: This our party also did to you: they took them from their own schismatics and handed them over to the Catholic mother. What your party did for the peace of Donatus, this ours did for the peace of the body of Christ. Fulgentius said: You are the schismatics, who both burned incense and handed over the codices. Augustine replied: 'Let us become weak to the weak, that we may gain the weak.' I see that it cannot be done. The party of Donatus has vanquished the whole Church of Christ; an African confined to a corner has shut out the whole world; one nation has condemned all nations, has cut the branch from the vine—and lopped off the little twigs of the trees. Would that you kept at least the ordinances of your own predecessors concerning us:
you would not rebaptize, but by the repentance of the erring you would, as you reckon, free souls. Read again the decrees of your fathers, and see what they decreed ought to be done concerning traditors, incense-burners, and schismatics, when they had come to Carthage conspiring against Caecilianus. Your own Marcianus, among the rest, delivered such a sentence, saying—which surely the seventy who were present, by not disapproving, approve: 'In His gospel,' he says, 'the Lord says: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me not bearing fruit He will cut off and cast away; and every branch that abides in me and bears fruit, He purges it.'
As therefore the unfruitful branches, being cut off, are cast away, so the incense-burners, the traditors, being abhorrent to God, cannot abide in the Church of God, unless, having acknowledged their own wailing, they be reconciled through repentance. Wherefore one ought not to communicate with Caecilianus, ordained in schism by traditors.' This is the fixed sentence of your fathers. Behold—which God forbid—suppose we handed over the Scriptures, we burned incense, we committed schism: why then do you transgress the command of your elders, to establish your own traditions? 'As the unfruitful branches,' he says, 'being cut off, are cast away, so the incense-burners, the traditors, and those who are ordained in schism by traditors, cannot abide in the Church of God, unless, having acknowledged their own wailing, they be reconciled through repentance:'
through repentance, not through re-dipping. If you deign, let at least your own leaders convince you. Either confirm their decrees and lay aside your own fabrications, or, if you wish your own statutes to prevail, pronounce them to be in error. If truth reigns among you, why does your own tradition disagree with itself? The Saviour in His gospel thus says: 'Every kingdom divided against itself shall be laid waste.' And therefore, since your kingdom is divided in religion, ruin must needs follow upon division. Amen.