But there the question is not whether this too is counted among wrongdoings, but whether it is joined to that wrongdoing by equality; or, if they are equal on this ground, that both are wrongdoings, then mice and elephants will be equals, because both are animals, and flies and eagles, because both are winged creatures. You still go further and add: 'He has violated places profane or sacred—he is not to be set apart from indulgence.' Here indeed, from violated sacred places, you have come to the crime of your citizens; yet not even you yourself have set it on a level with a wanton utterance; you have only sought for them the indulgence which is rightly sought of Christians on account of abounding compassion, not on account of the parity of sins. But I set down above what is written in our letters:
'All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.' They shall therefore obtain mercy, if they do not hate truth. This mercy is owed by Christian right, not as to those who sin equally, as if they had spoken too wantonly, but to those who rightly repent of a most monstrous and impious crime. But you, a man deservedly praiseworthy, do not, I pray, teach that those paradoxes of the Stoics are to be followed—you, my Paradoxus, whom we wish to grow up in true piety and felicity. For what more iniquitous and more perilous to yourself can a noble youth understand, than if, an insult having been hurled at any stranger whatever, he should set on a level, I do not say parricide, but the very insult against a father?
Fittingly, therefore, you plead with us on behalf of your citizens by pressing upon us the mercy of Christians, not the hardness of the Stoics—which in no way supports the cause you have undertaken, but rather much opposes it. For that very mercy which, if we did not have it, we could be swayed by no petition of yours, by no prayers of theirs, the Stoics set among the vices, and utterly expel it from the mind of the wise man, whom they wish to be altogether of iron and unbending. It would therefore serve you better to say something out of your own Cicero, who, praising Caesar, says: 'Of your virtues none is more admirable or more welcome than your mercy.' How much more ought this to prevail in the churches, when they follow Him who said, 'I am the way,' and read:
'All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.' Do not therefore fear that we should contrive destruction for the innocent, we who do not even wish the guilty to come to a deserved punishment, that mercy forbidding us which in Christ we love together with truth. But he who spares and fosters the nourishing of vices, lest he sadden the will of sinners, is as far from being merciful as one who is unwilling to snatch a knife from a boy, lest he hear him crying, and does not fear that the boy may be wounded and grieve, or be killed.
Reserve therefore for a fitting time what you may plead with us on behalf of these men, in the loving of whom—pardon me—you not only in no way go before us, but do not even yet follow us; and write back rather what it is about this way that moves you—the way which we hold, and in which we urge that you walk together with us to the heavenly homeland, in which we know and rejoice that you take delight. As for the citizens of your carnal homeland, you did indeed call some, though not all, innocent; yet nevertheless—which, on re-reading that letter of mine, you ought to notice—you did not defend them. When, replying to what you had written, that you desired to leave a flourishing homeland, I said that we had felt not the flowers of it but the thorns, you thought I was jesting. As if amid such great evils one could take pleasure in that! It is exactly so!
The ruins of the burned church are still smoking, and in such a case we make sport! And I indeed, although no innocent men there confronted me except those who were either absent, or had themselves suffered those evils, or had no strength or authority to prevent them, nevertheless in my reply distinguished the more guilty from the less guilty, and set down one case for those who feared to offend the powerful enemies of the Church, another for those who wished this to be done, another for those who did it, and another for those who instigated it; wishing that nothing be done concerning the instigators, because this perhaps cannot be discovered without those bodily tortures that are abhorrent to our purpose.
But your Stoics grant that all are equally guilty, since it pleases them that all sins are equal; and even joining to this opinion that harshness of theirs by which they condemn mercy, they judge that in no way should all alike be pardoned, but that all alike should be punished. Remove them therefore, as far as you can, from the patronage of this cause of yours, and choose rather that we act as Christians, so that, as we desire, we may gain in Christ those whom we spare, and not spare them to their own ruinous dissolution. May the merciful and truthful God deign to grant you true happiness. 105. AUGUSTINE, CATHOLIC BISHOP, TO THE DONATISTS.
The love of Christ, in whom, so far as it depends on our will, we wish to win every man, does not permit us to be silent. If you hate us for this reason, that we preach to you the Catholic peace, we serve the Lord who says: 「Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God,」 and in the Psalm it is written: 「With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they warred against me without cause.」 For this reason certain presbyters of your party charged us, saying: 「Depart from our people, if you do not wish us to kill you.」 How much more justly do we say to them: Nay rather, do not depart, but draw near in peace to the people who are not ours but His, whose we all are;
or if you are unwilling and remain unpeaceable, then it is rather you who should depart from the people for whom Christ shed His blood, whom you wish to make yours for this very reason, that they should not be Christ's—although you strive to possess them under His name, just as if a slave should steal sheep from his master's flock and, upon whatever is born from them, brand his own master's mark, lest his theft be recognized. For thus did your forefathers act: they separated from the Church of Christ peoples who had the baptism of Christ, and whoever accrued to them, these they baptized with the baptism of Christ. But the Lord both punishes thieves, if they do not correct themselves, and recalls the sheep from their wandering back to the flock, nor does He blot out His own mark in them.
You call us traitors (traditores), a thing which neither could your forefathers prove against ours, nor will you in any way be able to prove against us. What do you wish us to do for you, who, when we tell you to hear our cause and yours patiently, know nothing but to be arrogant and to rage? For assuredly we would show that they rather were the traitors who condemned Caecilianus and his companions, as it were, on the charge of betrayal. And you say 「Depart from our people」—whom you teach to believe you and not to believe Christ.
For you tell them that, on account of traitors whom you do not point out, the Church of Christ has remained only in Africa, in the party of Donatus—a thing which you recite not from the Law, not from a prophet, not from a psalm, not from an apostle, not from the Gospel, but from your own heart and from the calumnies of your parents. But Christ says that repentance and the remission of sins are to be preached in His name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem; and with this Church, made manifest from the mouth of Christ, you do not hold communion, and, dragging others into your perdition, you refuse to be set free.
But if we displease you for this reason, that you are being compelled to unity by the commands of emperors, this you yourselves have brought about, who, wherever we wished to preach the truth, so that each might hear it in safety and choose it willingly, never permitted it, through your violence and terrors. Do not gnash and disturb your souls; consider patiently, if it can be done, what we say, and recall the deeds of your Circumcellions and of the clerics who were always their leaders, and you will see what cause has stirred this up against you. Hence you complain unjustly, because you yourselves compelled that all these things should be commanded against you. For, not to recall things long past and many, at least consider your recent deeds.
Marcus, presbyter of Casphaliana, compelled by no one, of his own free will became a Catholic; for which reason your people persecuted him and would almost have killed him, had not the hand of God, through men who came upon the scene, restrained their violence. Restitutus of Victoriana crossed over to the Catholic Church with no one compelling him; for which reason he was dragged from his house, beaten, rolled in water, clothed in reeds (sedge), and kept in captivity I know not how many days, nor perhaps would he have been restored to his own liberty, had not Proculianus already seen a summons to court looming over himself on account of this very case. Marcianus of Urga chose Catholic unity of his own free will:
for which reason, when he himself had fled, your clerics beat his subdeacon almost to death and overwhelmed him with stones, and for their crime their houses were demolished. What more shall we say? Just now you sent a herald to cry out at Sinitum: 「Whosoever shall have communion with Maximinus, his house shall be burned.」 What? Before he himself had been converted to the Catholic Church and had not yet returned from beyond the sea, for what other purpose had we sent a presbyter to Sinitum, than that, troublesome to no one, he might visit our people and, placed in a house of his own right, might preach the Catholic peace to those willing? Him you cast out thence with grievous injury. What else were we doing when one of our number, Possidius, bishop of Calama, was going to the estate of Figulina.
except that our people, though few, who were there, might be visited, and that, having heard the word of God, those who wished might be converted to the unity of Christ? Against him, as he walked his way, they lay in ambush after the manner of robbers, and, because he could not fall into their snares, they had well-nigh burned him alive by open violence on the estate of Olivetum, together with the house to which he had fled, had not the tenant-farmers of that same estate, for the sake of the danger to their own safety, a third time extinguished the flames set beneath. And yet, when Crispinus was convicted a heretic in the proconsular court for this deed, by the intercession of that same bishop Possidius the ten pounds of gold were not exacted from him. To which kindness and gentleness, ungrateful, he dared to appeal to the Catholic emperors.
Whence he provoked, far more importunately and vehemently, this wrath of God upon you, of which you murmur. You see that you are violently rising up against the peace of Christ and that you suffer not for Christ but for your own iniquities. What is this madness, that, when you live wickedly, you do the deeds of robbers, and, when you are lawfully punished, you demand the glory of martyrs? If, then, you by your own private audacity so violently compel men either to go into error or to remain in error, how much more ought we, through the most well-ordered powers which God, according to His prophecy, has made subject to Christ, to resist your furies, so that wretched souls, freed from your domination, may be delivered from a most ancient falsehood and may grow accustomed to the most manifest truth!
For as to those whom you say are compelled by us against their will, many even wish to be compelled, as they confess to us both before and afterward, so that in this way they may escape your oppressions. And yet, which is better: to bring forward the true commands of emperors for unity, or false indulgences for perversity—which you did, and with your lie you suddenly filled all Africa? In which deed you showed nothing else than that the party of Donatus, always presuming upon a lie, is tossed about and carried around by every wind, as it is written: 「He who trusts in falsehoods feeds the winds.」
For just as that indulgence was true, so also are the crimes of Caecilianus true, and the betrayal (traditio) of Felix of Aptunga, by whom he was ordained, and whatever else you are accustomed to say against the Catholics, in order to separate the unhappy from the peace of Christ's Church and to be unhappily separated yourselves. We indeed presume upon the power of no man, although assuredly it is far more honorable to presume upon emperors than to presume upon Circumcellions, to presume upon laws than to presume upon seditions; but we remember that it is written: 「Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man.」 Whence, therefore, do we presume, if you wish to know? Consider Him of whom the prophet foretold, saying: 「All the kings of the earth shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him.」
And therefore we use this power of the Church, which the Lord both promised and gave to her. For if the emperors were in error—which God forbid—and for the sake of their error should issue laws against the truth, through these the just would both be tested and crowned by not doing what those men commanded, because God forbade it—just as Nebuchadnezzar had commanded that the golden statue be adored, and those who refused to do this pleased God, who forbade such things. But when emperors hold the truth, they command for the sake of the truth itself against error; and whoever despises this acquires judgment for himself;
for both among men he pays the penalty, and before God he will have no face, because he refused to do what the truth itself commanded him through the heart of the king—just as Nebuchadnezzar himself afterward, moved and changed by the miracle of the deliverance of the three young men, set forth an edict for the truth against error, that whosoever should blaspheme the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should go into destruction, and their houses into dispersion. And do you not wish that Christian emperors should command something such against you, when they know that Christ is blown out (exsufflari) by you in those whom you rebaptize? If the commands of kings do not pertain to the preaching of religion and the prohibiting of sacrileges, why do you yourselves cross yourselves at the edict of the king commanding such things? Or are you ignorant that the words of the king are:
『The signs and wonders which the Most High God has wrought toward me, it has pleased me to proclaim in my sight, how great and mighty is His kingdom, an everlasting kingdom, and His power for ages of ages』? Or, when you have heard this, do you not answer 「Amen」, and, this being said, with a clear voice do you sign yourselves at the king's edict in the holy solemnity? But now, because you can do nothing with the emperors, you wish thereby to stir up ill-will against us; but if you could do anything, how much you would do, when you can do nothing and yet do not cease! Know this: your own forefathers first brought the case of Caecilianus before the emperor Constantine. Demand this of us; we will prove it to you, and if we do not prove it, do with us whatever you can.
But because Constantine did not dare to judge the case of a bishop, he delegated it to be examined and settled by bishops. This was done in the city of Rome, with Melchiades, bishop of that church, presiding together with many of his colleagues. And when they had pronounced Caecilianus innocent and had struck with sentence Donatus, who had made the schism at Carthage, again your people came to the emperor and murmured against the judgment of the bishops, in which they had been defeated. For when can a bad litigant praise the judges by whose judging he has been defeated?
Nevertheless the most clement emperor again gave other judges, bishops, at Arelate (Arles), a city of Gaul; and from these your people appealed to the emperor himself, until he too should take cognizance of the case and pronounce Caecilianus innocent and them calumnious. Nor thus, though so often defeated, did they rest quiet, but concerning Felix of Aptunga, by whom Caecilianus had been ordained, they wearied the emperor himself with daily interpellations, saying that he was a traitor and that therefore Caecilianus could not be a bishop, because he had been ordained by a traitor—until Felix himself also, by the emperor's command, having had his case examined by the proconsul Aelianus, was proved innocent. Then Constantine was the first to issue a most severe law against the party of Donatus.
Imitating him, his sons enjoined the like. Succeeding them, Julian, deserter of Christ and His enemy, at the petition of your Rogatianus and Pontius granted liberty for perdition to the party of Donatus; and then he restored the basilicas to the heretics, at the same time as he restored the temples to the demons—thinking in this way that the Christian name could perish from the earth, if he begrudged the unity of the Church from which he had fallen, and permitted sacrilegious dissensions to be free. This was that justice of his to be proclaimed, which the petitioning Rogatianus and Pontius praised, saying to the apostate man that with him alone justice had a place. To him succeeded Jovian, who, because he died quickly, commanded nothing about such matters. Then Valentinian;
read what he commanded against you. Then Gratian and Theodosius; read, when you wish, what they enacted about you. Why then do you marvel at the sons of Theodosius, as though they ought to have followed anything else in this cause than the judgment of Constantine, most firmly guarded through so many Christian emperors? But to Constantine, as we have said—as we show you, whenever you wish, if only you are ignorant—your forefathers of their own accord brought the case of Caecilianus.
Constantine is dead, but the judgment of Constantine lives against you—to whom your people brought the case, before whom they reproached the bishops as judges, to whom they appealed from the bishop-judges, whom they most wearisomely interpellated concerning Felix of Aptunga, from whom, so often convicted and confounded, they returned, and yet did not withdraw from the destructiveness of their fury and animosity, but left it as a hereditary thing to you their posterity—so that you so shamelessly stir up ill-will over the commands of Christian emperors, when, if it were permitted you, you would interpellate against us, not indeed now Constantine the Christian, because he favored the truth, but you would rouse up from the lower world the apostate Julian—as though, forsooth, if any such thing should happen, it would be a great evil to none but you.
For what is a worse death of the soul than the liberty of error? But now let us remove all these things from our midst; let us love peace, which every learned and unlearned man understands is to be preferred to discord; let us cherish and hold fast unity. This the emperors command, which Christ also commands, because, when they command a good thing, through them none but Christ commands. And He also, through the apostle, beseeches us that we all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among us, nor that we say: 「I indeed am of Paul, but I of Apollos, but I of Cephas, but I of Christ,」 but that together we all be none but Christ's, since neither is Christ divided, nor was Paul crucified for us—how much less Donatus! Nor were we baptized in the name of Paul—how much less in that of Donatus!
This also the emperors say, because they are Catholic Christians, not servants of idols like your Julian, not heretics, such as certain ones were who persecuted the Catholic Church—when the true Christians endured, not most just penalties for a heretical error, as you do, but most glorious sufferings for the Catholic truth. Attend to how, with the most manifest truth, through the heart of the king, which is in the hand of God, God Himself has spoken in this very law which you say was brought forth against you—but which is, if you understand, brought forth for you; attend to what the words of the prince contain:
『For if, in those who are first initiated, the religion of baptism is therefore judged infirm because those from whom it is received are thought to be sinners, then it will be necessary that the transmitted sacrament be renewed as often as the administrant of the conferred baptism shall be found unworthy, and our faith will hang not upon the choice of our own will nor upon the grace of the divine gift, but upon the merits of priests and the quality of clerics.』 Let your bishops hold a thousand councils; let them answer this one sentence, and to whatever you wish, we consent with you.
For see how perversely and impiously it is said—that which you are wont to say—that, if a man be good, he himself sanctifies him whom he baptizes; but if he be bad and the one who is baptized be ignorant of it, then God sanctifies. If this be true, then men ought to wish to be baptized by unknown bad men rather than by known good men, so that they may be sanctified more by God than by man. But far be this madness from us. Why, then, do we not speak the truth and think rightly, that that grace is always God's, and the sacrament is God's, but of man is only the ministry—who, if he be good, cleaves to God and works with God, but, if he be bad, God works through him the visible form of the sacrament, while He Himself bestows the invisible grace?
Let us all think this, and let there be no schisms among us. Be in concord with us, brethren; we love you; we wish for you what we wish also for ourselves. If for this reason you hate us the more grievously, because we do not permit you to err and to perish, say this to God, whom we fear as He threatens the wicked shepherds and says: 「What had strayed, you did not recall, and what had perished, you did not seek.」 This God Himself does for you through us, whether by beseeching or by threatening or by rebuking or by losses or by labors or through His hidden admonitions and visitations or through the laws of temporal powers. Understand what is being done with you; God does not wish you to perish, estranged in sacrilegious discord from your mother the Catholic Church.
You have never at any time been able to prove anything against us; when your bishops were convened by us, did they wish to confer peaceably with us—as though fleeing to speak with sinners? Who could endure such pride? As though the apostle Paul did not confer with sinners and with the greatly sacrilegious—read the Acts of the Apostles and see—as though the Lord Himself did not have discourse concerning the Law with the Jews, by whom He was crucified, and answered them fittingly. Finally, the devil is the first of all sinners, who can never be converted to righteousness, and yet not even the Lord Himself disdained to answer him concerning the Law—that you may understand that these men refuse to confer with us for this reason, that they know their cause is lost.
We know not what men allege against their own selves, who rejoice in calumnious dissensions. In the Scriptures we have learned Christ, in the Scriptures we have learned the Church. These Scriptures we hold in common; why do we not retain in them both Christ and the Church in common? We, where we have recognized Him of whom the apostle said: 「To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed; He does not say『and to seeds』as in many, but as in one, 『and to your seed』, which is Christ」—there we have recognized the Church, concerning which God says to Abraham: 「In your seed shall all nations be blessed.」 Where we have recognized Christ in the psalm prophesying of Himself: 「The Lord said to me: 『You are my Son;
today I have begotten you』」—there we have recognized the Church in that which follows: 「Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.」 Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written: 「The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken」—there we have also recognized the Church in that which follows: 「And He has called the earth from the rising of the sun even to its setting.」 Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written: 「And He, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, has exulted like a giant to run the way」—there we have recognized the Church in that which is said a little above: 「Into all the earth their sound has gone forth, and to the ends of the world their words; in the sun He has set His tabernacle;」
that same is the Church set in the sun, that is, known to all in manifestation, even to the ends of the earth. Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written: 「They pierced my hands and feet, they numbered all my bones; but they themselves considered and gazed upon me, they divided my garments among themselves and cast lots over my clothing」—there we have also recognized the Church in that which is said a little after in that same psalm: 「All the ends of the earth shall remember and be converted to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall adore in His sight, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and He shall have dominion over the nations.」 Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written:
『Be exalted above the heavens, O God』—there we have also recognized the Church in that which follows: 『And above all the earth be your glory.』 Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written: 『O God, give your judgment to the king and your justice to the king's son』—there we have also recognized the Church in that which is said about Him in that same psalm: 『He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth; before Him the Ethiopians shall fall down and His enemies shall lick the earth; the kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer gifts, the kings of the Arabs and of Saba shall bring presents, and all the kings of the earth shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him.』
Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written—that a stone cut from a mountain without hands broke to pieces all the kingdoms of the earth, namely those which presumed upon the worship of demons—there we have also recognized the Church in that which was said—that the stone itself grew and became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written: 「The Lord will prevail against them and will exterminate all the gods of the nations of the earth」—there we have also recognized the Church in that which follows there: 「And each one from his own place shall adore in His sight, all the islands of the nations.」 Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written: 「God shall come from the south, and the Holy One from the shady mountain;」
『His power covered the heavens』—there we have recognized the Church in that which follows: 『And the earth is full of His praise.』 For Jerusalem is set toward the south, as is read in the book of Joshua son of Nun, whence the name of Christ was spread abroad; and there is the shady mountain, the Mount of Olives, whence He ascended into heaven, that His power might cover the heavens and the Church throughout all the earth be filled with His praise. Where we have recognized Christ in that which is written: 『Like a sheep He was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer He was without voice, so He opened not His mouth』, and the rest which are there said of His passion—there we have also recognized the Church in that which is said there: