While the bond of concord remains and the undivided sacrament of the Catholic Church perseveres, each bishop orders and directs his own conduct, being one who shall render to the Lord an account of his purpose.' What do you say to this, brother Vincentius? Surely you behold that this so great man, a peaceable bishop and most valiant martyr, strove after nothing more vehemently than that the bond of unity should not be broken. You see him in travail, not only that the little ones conceived in Christ may be born, but also that those already born may not, shaken out from the bosom of their mother, die. Moreover, attend to the very matter which he brought forward against the impious separators.
If those who gave peace to penitent adulterers communicated with adulterers, were those who did not do this defiled by the fellowship of the former? But if, as the truth holds and as the Church rightly holds, peace was rightly given to penitent adulterers, then those who closed the whole place of penitence against adulterers were surely acting impiously, since they denied healing to the members of Christ, and withdrew the keys of the Church from those who knocked, and, with hard cruelty, spoke against the most merciful patience of God — which for this reason allowed them to live, that by repenting they might be healed, when the sacrifice of a contrite spirit and a troubled heart was offered.
And yet their so monstrous error and impiety did not defile those merciful and peaceable men who shared the Christian sacraments with them and tolerated them within the nets of unity, until, brought to the shore, they should be separated; or, if it did defile them, then already at that time the Church was blotted out by the communion of the wicked, and there was none to give birth to Cyprian himself. But if, as is certain, the Church remained, it is also certain that no one can be defiled by the sins of others in the unity of Christ, who does not consent to the deeds of the wicked (lest by communicating in those very sins he be polluted), but who, for the sake of the fellowship of the good, tolerates the wicked as chaff upon the Lord's floor until the final winnowing. Since these things are so, where is the presumption of your separation?
Are you not evil sons? You call yourselves righteous, but you do not wash away your going-out. Now, if I should wish also to recall those things which Tychonius, a man of your communion, inserts into his writings — he who wrote rather against you on behalf of the Catholic Church, vainly separating himself from the communion of the Africans as though of traditors, by which one thing alone Parmenianus stifles him — what will you be able to reply, save what this same Tychonius said about you, and which I recalled a little before: 'What we wish is holy'? For that Tychonius, a man,
as I said, of your communion, writes that a council was held at Carthage by two hundred and seventy of your bishops, in which council, over the course of seventy-five days, all past matters being set aside, a decision was refined and decreed: that to the traditors, guilty of an immense crime, if they were unwilling to be baptized, communion should be given as to men of unimpaired standing.
He says also that Deuterius, bishop of Macri, of your communion, mingled a gathered people of traditors with the Church, and, according to the statutes of that council enacted by two hundred and seventy of your bishops, made unity with traditors; and that Donatus continually communicated with this Deuterius after this deed, and not only with this Deuterius but also with all the bishops of the Moors for forty years — whom he says communicated with traditors without baptism up until the persecution carried out by Macarius. But you say: 'Who is this Tychonius to me?' He is that Tychonius whom Parmenianus restrains by writing back, and deters, lest he write such things; yet he does not refute the very things which he writes;
with one thing, as I said above, he presses him: that, when he said such things about the Church diffused throughout the whole world, and that the sins of others defiled no one in its unity, he nevertheless removed himself from the Africans as if from the contagion of traditors, and was in the party of Donatus. Now Parmenianus could say that Tychonius had lied in all these things; but, as the same Tychonius records, many were still living through whom these things could be shown to be most certain and most evident. But of these I am silent. Contend that Tychonius lied; I call you back to Cyprian, of whom you yourself made mention. Absolutely, according to the writings of Cyprian, if anyone is defiled in unity by the sins of others, then the Church already perished before Cyprian, and there was no source from which Cyprian himself could arise.
But if to hold this opinion is sacrilegious, and it is certain that the Church remains, then no one is defiled in its unity by the sins of others, and in vain do you, evil sons, call yourselves righteous — you do not wash away your going-out, you do not cleanse it. 'Why then,' you say, 'do you seek us? Why do you thus receive those whom you call heretics?' See how easily and briefly I answer. We seek you because you have perished, that we may rejoice over the found, over whom, when lost, we grieved; but we call you heretics — yet before you are converted to Catholic peace, before you are stripped of the error in which you are entangled; whereas when you pass over to us, you first assuredly leave behind what you were, lest you pass over to us as heretics. 'Baptize me, then,' you say.
I would do so, if you had not been baptized, or if you had been baptized with the baptism of Donatus or of Rogatus and not with the baptism of Christ. It is not the Christian sacraments that make you a heretic, but your perverse dissent. Because of the evil that has proceeded from you, the good that has remained in you is not to be denied — the good that you possess to your own harm, if you do not possess, along with it, that source from which comes the good you possess. For all the Lord's sacraments are from the Catholic Church. These you hold and administer in the very same way as they were held and administered even before you departed from her. Yet you do not on that account fail to possess them, merely because you are not in that place from which come the things you possess. We do not change in you those matters in which you are with us; for in many things you are with us. Indeed, of such it was said: 'Because they were with me in many things.'
But we correct those matters in which you are not with us, and we desire that you here receive those things which you do not possess there where you now are. Now with us you are in baptism, in the Creed, in the other sacraments of the Lord. Yet in the Spirit of unity and in the bond of peace, and finally in the Catholic Church herself, you are not with us. If you receive these things, then the things you already possess will not merely be present, but will at last profit you. Therefore we do not, as you suppose, take in your people; rather, by taking them in we make them our own — those who withdraw from you that they may be received by us; and, in order to begin to be ours, they first cease to be yours. Nor do we compel to be joined to us the workmen of the error which we detest, but for this reason we desire those men to be joined to us: that they may no longer be that which we detest.
'But,' you say, 'the apostle Paul baptized after John.' Was it after a heretic? Or, if perchance you dare to call that friend of the Bridegroom a heretic and to say that he was not in the unity of the Church, then I would have you write that too. But if it is utterly insane either to think or to say such a thing, then it now belongs to your prudence to consider why the apostle Paul baptized after John. For if he baptized after an equal, then you all ought to baptize after one another; if after one greater, then you too ought to baptize after Rogatus; if after one lesser, then Rogatus ought to have baptized after you, seeing that you baptized while yet a presbyter.
But if the baptism that is now given is for this reason equally valid in those to whom it is given — even though those through whom it is given are of unequal merit — because it is Christ's and not that of those by whom it is administered, then I think you now understand why Paul gave the baptism of Christ to certain persons: namely, because they had been baptized with John's baptism and not with Christ's. For that was called John's baptism, as the divine Scripture testifies in many places; even the Lord himself says: 'The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men?'
But the baptism which Peter gave was not Peter's but Christ's; and that which Paul gave was not Paul's but Christ's; and that which those gave who in the time of the apostles proclaimed Christ not sincerely but out of envy was not theirs but Christ's; and that which those gave who in the time of Cyprian seized estates by treacherous frauds and multiplied their gains by compounding usury was not theirs but Christ's. And because it was Christ's, therefore, although it was not given to them by equals, yet it equally profited those to whom it was given. For if a man is baptized so much the better in proportion as he has been baptized by a better man, then the apostle does not rightly give thanks that he baptized none of the Corinthians except Crispus and Gaius and the household of Stephanas.
For they would have been baptized so much the better, the better Paul was, if they had been baptized by him. Then again, when he says, 'I planted, Apollos watered,' he seems to signify that he himself evangelized while Apollos baptized. Was Apollos better than John? Why then did the one who had baptized after John not baptize after Apollos, except because that baptism, given through whomsoever, was Christ's, whereas the other, given through whomsoever, though it prepared the way for Christ, was nevertheless John's? It seems to be said with malice: 'Baptism was given after John, and yet after heretics one is not rebaptized.' But this too can be said with malice: 'Baptism was given after John, and yet after drunkards one is not rebaptized.'
For I rather adduce this vice, which those in whom it reigns cannot conceal, and — for who, even a blind man, does not know how many such there are everywhere? And yet among the works of the flesh, whose doers shall not possess the kingdom of God, the apostle sets even this, in the place where he also enumerates heresies: 'The works of the flesh,' he says, 'are manifest, which are fornications, uncleanness, wantonness, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and the like; of which I foretell you, as I have foretold, that they who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.'
By this reasoning, therefore, although one is baptized after John, one is not rebaptized after a heretic — by the same reasoning by which, although one is baptized after John, one is not rebaptized after a drunkard; since both heresies and drunkenness are among those works, and they who do such works shall not possess the kingdom of God. Does it not seem to you as if intolerably outrageous that, when one has been baptized after him who prepared the way of the kingdom of God not by drinking wine soberly but by not drinking wine at all, yet one is not rebaptized after a drunkard who will not possess the kingdom of God? What is to be answered here, except that that was the baptism of John, after which the apostle baptized with the baptism of Christ, whereas this is the baptism of Christ, with which the drunkard baptized?
Between John and a drunkard there is a great difference, and one of opposites; between the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ there is not a difference of opposites, but nevertheless a great difference. Between the apostle and a drunkard there is a great difference; between the baptism of Christ which the apostle gave and the baptism of Christ which the drunkard gave there is no difference. So too, between John and a heretic there is a great difference, and one of opposites; and between the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ which the heretic gives there is a difference, not of opposites, but nevertheless a great one; but between the baptism of Christ which the apostle gave and the baptism of Christ which the heretic gives there is no difference. For the outward form of the sacraments is recognized to be the same, even when there is a great difference in the merits of the men. But grant me pardon;
I erred, when I wished to confute you by the case of a drunkard baptizing; it had slipped my mind that I was dealing with a Rogatist, not with any ordinary Donatist. For you, among your so few colleagues and among all your clergy, can perhaps find not a single drunkard. For you are the ones who hold the Catholic faith not by communion with the whole world, but by observance of all the divine precepts and all the sacraments — you in whom alone the Son of Man will find that faith when he comes, at the time when he will find no faith on earth, since you are neither earth nor upon earth, but, being heavenly, dwell in heaven! Nor do you heed or fear that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Nor does that very passage of the Gospel prick your conscience, where the Lord says: 'When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on earth?' For immediately afterward, as though foreseeing that certain people would proudly arrogate this faith to themselves, he spoke to some who thought themselves righteous and despised the rest this parable: 'Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a publican,' and the rest. Now answer for yourself what follows. Yet examine more diligently those very few of yours, whether none there baptizes while a drunkard.
For this pestilence lays waste souls so widely and lords it over them with such great license, that I should greatly marvel if it has not also penetrated your little flock — though you boast that, even before the very coming of the Son of Man, the one good Shepherd, you have already separated your sheep from the goats. Hear, then, through me the voice of the Lord's grain toiling on the Lord's threshing-floor, until the final winnowing, amid the chaff — that is, throughout the whole world, in which God has called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting, where even children praise the Lord: 'Whoever persecutes you on the occasion of this imperial law, not out of love to correct but out of hatred to do harm, displeases us.'
And although no earthly thing can rightly be possessed by anyone except either by divine right — by which all things belong to the righteous — or by human right, which lies in the power of the kings of the earth (and therefore you falsely call yours those things which you do not possess as righteous men, and which by the laws of the earthly kings you have been ordered to relinquish; and in vain do you say, 'We labored to gather these,' when you read what is written: 'The righteous shall eat the labors of the ungodly') — nevertheless, whoever, on the occasion of this law which the kings of the earth, serving Christ, have promulgated for the amendment of your impiety, greedily covets your own possessions, displeases us.
Finally, whoever holds — not by justice but by avarice — the very goods of the poor, or the basilicas of the congregations which you held under the name of the Church (which are by no means owed to any but that Church which is the true Church of Christ), displeases us. Whoever receives one cast out by you for some disgrace or crime in the same manner as those are received who, apart from the error by which you are separated from us, have lived among you without reproach, displeases us. But you neither easily point out such cases, and, if you should point them out, we tolerate some whom we are unable to correct or to punish;
for neither do we abandon the Lord's threshing-floor because of the chaff, nor do we break the Lord's nets because of the bad fish, nor do we desert the Lord's flock because of the goats that must be separated at the end, nor do we depart from the Lord's house because of vessels made for dishonor. But you, brother, as far as I can see, if you would pay no heed to the vainglory of men and would despise the reproach of the senseless who will say, 'Why now...?' — you would without doubt cross over to the Church, which I understand you perceive to be the true one. Nor do I seek far for testimonies of this your own opinion. You yourself, at the very beginning of that letter of yours to which I am now replying, set down these words:
'When I knew you well,' you say, 'to be as yet far removed from the Christian faith, and to have been once devoted to the pursuits of letters, a cultivator of quiet and honesty; and when afterward, converted to the Christian faith, you gave your effort — as I have learned from the report of many — to legal disputations.' Assuredly, if it was you who sent that letter to me, these are your own words. Since therefore you confess that I was converted to the Christian faith, whereas I was converted neither to the Donatists nor to the Rogatists, you affirm without any doubt that the Christian faith exists apart from the Rogatists and apart from the Donatists. This faith, then, as we say, is spread abroad among all nations, which, according to God's testimony, are blessed in the seed of Abraham.
Why then do you still hesitate to hold what you perceive, unless because you are ashamed that once you either held or defended something different from what you now perceive — and while you blush to correct your error, you are not ashamed to remain in error, though this surely is what ought rather to be blushed at? This is what Scripture did not pass over in silence: 'There is a shame that brings sin, and there is a shame that brings grace and glory.' Shame brings sin when a man blushes to change a perverse opinion, lest he be thought inconstant, or be held, by his own testimony, to have long erred; and thus they descend living into hell — that is, perceiving their own perdition — whom Dathan and Abiram and Korah, swallowed up by the gaping of the earth, prefigured as those who were to come so long after.
But shame brings grace and glory when a man blushes for his own iniquity and, by repenting, is changed for the better — which you are loath to do, being overcome by that ruinous shame, lest that apostolic saying be cast at you by men who know not what they say: 'For if I build again the very things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.' But if this could be said even against those who, having been corrected, preach the truth which they once perversely assailed, then it would be said first of all against Paul himself, in whom the churches of Christ glorified God, hearing that he preached the faith which he once laid waste.
And do not think that anyone can pass from error to truth, or from any sin whatsoever, whether great or small, to correction, without repentance. But it is a most shameless error to be willing to slander the Church — which by so many divine testimonies is established to be the Church of Christ — because she treats differently those who forsake her, if they correct this very thing by repenting, and differently those who have not yet been in her and then for the first time receive her peace: humbling the former more, receiving the latter more gently, loving both, serving both for their healing with a mother's charity. You have a letter perhaps longer than you would wish. But it would be much shorter, if I were considering only you in my reply; as it is, however,
even if it profits you nothing, I do not think it will profit nothing to those who take care to read it with the fear of God and without partiality of persons. Amen. XCIV. TO THE HOLY, MOST BLESSED, AND SINGULARLY LIKE-MINDED, VENERABLE AND LONGED-FOR FATHER AND BROTHER, MASTER AUGUSTINE THE BISHOP, FROM PAULINUS AND THERASIA, SINNERS. Your word is ever a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my paths. Thus, as often as I receive the letters of your most blessed holiness, I feel the darkness of my foolishness dispelled, and, as if an eye-salve of illumination were poured in, I see more purely with the eyes of my mind, the night of ignorance driven away and the mist of doubt wiped clean.
And though I have often felt this granted to me on other occasions through the gift of your letters, yet especially so through that little book of your recent letters, whose bearer was to me as welcome as he was worthy — the blessed man of the Lord, our brother Quintus the deacon — who, indeed after a long interval since he had come to the city, when I had come thither after the Lord's Pasch, according to my customary observance, for the veneration of the apostles and martyrs, delivered to us the blessing of your mouth.
Nevertheless, the time which he had unwittingly consumed at Rome being blotted out, he seemed to me most recently come from your presence, so that at once I believed him to have come to me straight from you, the moment I first saw him and he offered me the full fragrance of your sweetness in your utterances, redolent with the chastity of a heavenly ointment. Yet I confess to your venerable like-mindedness that I could not read the very volume at once at Rome, as soon as I had received it; for there were such great crowds there that I could not diligently examine your gift and enjoy it as I desired — namely, that I might read it through continuously, once I had begun to read.
And so, as often happens, with the secure expectation of a banquet prepared, I restrained the hunger of my eager mind, and with sure hope of taking my fill, since I held in my hand the bread of my longing in a volume to be devoured — which afterward, as I devoured it, was most sweet both in my mouth and in my belly — I easily held in check my gullet gaping after the honeycombs of your letters, until I should set out from the city, and until I should devote wholly to this work the day which was to be interposed as a resting-stage of the journey, the day we spent in the town of Formiae, so that in the spiritual delights of your letter I might feast, free from all dregs of cares and from the suffocation of crowds.
What then shall I, lowly and earthly, reply to this wisdom which has been given you from above, which this world does not receive, and which no one savors save the one who is wise with the wisdom of God and eloquent with the Word of God? Therefore, because I have proof of Christ speaking in you, in God I will praise your discourses, and I will not fear the terror by night; for you have taught me, in the Spirit of truth, the wholesome tempering of a mind moderating itself amid the perishing mortal things — by which you saw that blessed mother and grandmother Melania weep at the death in the flesh of her only son, indeed with a silent grief, yet not with a sorrow dry of a mother's tears.
Indeed, her modest and grave tears, as one nearer and more nearly matched to her soul in spirit, you understood more deeply; and, with the manly firmness of a woman perfected in Christ preserved, you contemplated her maternal heart the better, from the likeness of your own, out of an equal state — so that you perceived her to have wept, moved first by natural affection, then pierced by a weightier cause: not so much that human matter, that she had lost her only son, who had ended his life by mortal condition in the present age, as that he had been forestalled, so to speak, in worldly vanity, since the ambition of senatorial dignity had not yet forsaken him; so that she did not, in accordance with the holy avarice of her vows, think of him as taken up, that he might have passed from the glory of a religious way of life to the glory of the resurrection, to take up rest in common with his mother and a crown — if in this world's life he had, by his mother's example, preferred the sackcloth to the toga and the monastery to the senate.
Nevertheless, that same man, as I think I have reported before to your holiness, departed enriched with these works, so that, if he did not wear in his garment the nobility of maternal humility, he yet displayed it in his mind. For he was, according to the word of the Lord, meek in his manners and humble of heart, so that it is not undeservedly believed that he has entered into the rest of the Lord; for there are remains for the man of peace, and the meek shall possess the earth, being pleasing to God in the region of the living.
For assuredly he fulfilled that saying of the apostle not only with silent meek affection but also with conspicuous religious offices, so that, although he was a colleague, in rank and honor, of the exalted ones of this age, he yet did not, like one glorying, set his mind on the high things of the earth, but, as a perfect imitator of Christ, consented with the lowly, and persisted the whole day long in showing mercy and lending. Whence also his seed has become mighty in the earth, among those who, as God's mighty ones of the earth, have been greatly exalted; so that even by the blessed visitation of his family and household the holy merit of the man is revealed. 'The generation of the upright,' it says, 'shall be blessed'; glory that does not fall away and riches that do not slip are in his house — a house that is built in the heavens, not by the labor of hands but by the holiness of works.
But I cease to relate more about the memory of a man as beloved by me as he was devoted to Christ, since I recall that in my earlier letters I narrated not a little concerning him, and since I can preach nothing better or holier concerning the blessed mother of this son, and Melania, an equal root of holy branches, than your holiness has deigned to declare and discourse concerning her — so that, because I, a sinner having unclean lips, could speak nothing worthy, being far from the merits of her faith and the virtues of her soul, you, that man of Christ, teacher of Israel in the church of truth, being made — by the grace of God procuring things for the better — a worthier herald of so manly a soul in Christ, might both, as I said, behold with a nearer spirit her mind strengthened by divine power, and praise with worthier eloquence her piety mingled with virtue.
But what shall be the activity of the blessed in that age, after the resurrection of the flesh, you have deigned to question me about. Yet I consult you, as a master and spiritual physician, about the present state of my life, that you may teach me to do the wills of God, to walk in your footsteps after Christ, and first to die this evangelical death, by which we voluntarily anticipate our fleshly dissolution by a departure — withdrawing from this world's life not by decease but by resolve — this life which is wholly of temptations, or, as you once said to me, is wholly temptation.
Would then that my ways might be so directed after your footsteps, that, by your example, loosening the old sandal from my feet, I might burst my bonds and, being free, exult to run the way, whereby I might attain that death by which you died to this world, that you might live to God, with Christ living in you — whose death and life is known in your body and heart and mouth; for your heart savors nothing earthly, nor does your mouth speak the works of men, but the word of Christ abounds in your breast, and the Spirit of truth is poured out upon your tongue with the rush of a heavenly river, gladdening the city of God! And what virtue works this death in us, save charity, which is strong as death?
For it so blots out and destroys this world for us, that it fulfills the effect of death through the affection of Christ, to whom being turned, we are turned away from this world; and living to him, we die to the elements of this world, nor do we, as though living, decide anything in their sight and use; because our portion is the death of Christ, whose resurrection from the dead we do not apprehend in glory, unless we imitate his death on the cross, having mortified the members and senses of the flesh — so that we may now live not by our own will but by his, whose will is our sanctification, and who therefore died for us and rose again, that we might now live no longer to ourselves but to him who died for us and rose again, and gave us the pledge of his promise by his Spirit, as he laid up the pledge of our life in the heavens in his own body, which is of our body.