It is therefore manifest that both the ordainers, who handed over the Scriptures, and Majorinus, who was ordained, went out of the church. Meanwhile, from the fountain of their own crimes, which in them overflowed with veins of many disgraces, they thought that one reproach of betrayal should be diverted onto Caecilian's ordainer, foreseeing that rumour could not speak of two similar matters at one and the same time. So that they might consign their own crimes to silence, they endeavoured to defame another's life; and though they themselves could be convicted by the innocent, they were eager to convict the innocent, sending everywhere letters drawn up at the dictation of envy, which, among their other acts, we hold for the future. While still stationed at Carthage, they went ahead of themselves by their letters, so as to plant false reports in everyone's ears.
Rumour scattered the lie among the peoples, and while falsehoods were spread abroad about one man, the most true crimes of the aforesaid lay hidden in silence. One is often wont to blush for a crime, but at that time there was no one for whom one might blush, because, except for a few catholics, all had sinned, and the wickedness committed among the many was, as it were, an image of innocence. Too small was the crime of betrayal, which was established as committed through Donatus of Mascula and the other aforesaid; they even joined to that betrayal the enormous outrage of schism. You see therefore, brother Parmenian, that these two crimes, so evil, so grave, of betrayal and of schism, belong to your leaders. Acknowledge, even though late, that you have run into your own people while you assail strangers;
and since it is established that your predecessors committed this second wickedness, you too strive to follow them with criminal footsteps, so that what those predecessors had done in the matter of schism, you also are seen both long since to have done and now to do. They broke the peace in their times; you destroy unity. Of your forefathers and of you it can deservedly be said: if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit. Raging envy had blinded the eyes of your fathers; rivalry has deprived you of yours. That schism is the greatest evil you too will be utterly unable to deny.
And yet you have, without trembling, imitated Dathan and Abiram and Korah, your ruined masters, and you have refused to set before your eyes this evil, both forbidden by the words of God and, when committed, grievously punished. Furthermore, either remission or punishment attests that there is a difference among offences. Finally, among the other precepts, the divine command forbade these three in particular: 'You shall not kill'; 'You shall not go after strange gods'; and, at the head of the commandments: 'You shall not make a schism.' Let us see, concerning these three, what ought to have been punished and what deserved to be relaxed. Parricide is a principal offence; and yet Cain is neither struck as guilty by God, but, when slain afterward, his death is moreover avenged.
In the city of Nineveh there were a hundred and twenty thousand sacrilegious men, who seemed to follow strange gods. After the wrath of God and the message of the prophet Jonah, a fast of brief duration and prayer earned pardon. Let us see whether those obtained anything of the sort who first dared to rend the people of God. Over so many thousands of the children of Israel, from whose necks divine providence had cast off the yoke of slavery, He had set the one holy priest Aaron. But when his ministers, coveting a priesthood not owed to them, having seduced a part of the people, unlawfully invaded it, imitating the rite of the sacred offices, they placed two hundred and more ministers, doomed to perish with them, with censers, before the face of the seduced people.
God, to whom schism is displeasing, could not gladly look upon this. In a manner they had declared war on God, as though there were another god who would receive a rival sacrifice. Therefore God, on account of the schism committed, was angry with great anger; and what He had not done against the sacrilegious and the parricide, He did against the schismatics. There stood the battle-line of the ministers and the sacrilegious multitude, about to perish on the spot with their forbidden sacrifices; the time of repentance was denied and withdrawn, because the fault was not such as might merit pardon. A famine was commanded for the earth: at once it opened its jaws against the dividers of the people, and with greedy gape it swallowed up the despisers of God's commands. Within the space of a moment the earth opened to gulp down the aforesaid, snatched them, and was closed.
And lest they should seem to gain a benefit from the shortening of death, since they were not worthy to live, neither was it granted them to die: shut up suddenly in a hell-like prison, they were buried before they were dead. And do you marvel that anything of the sort has been harshly done against you, who either make or cultivate schism, when you see what the masters of the first schism deserved to suffer? Or is it because such vengeance is now suspended that you claim innocence for yourself and your people? God has set in each matter a pattern of examples, that there might be something to charge against those who imitate. Present punishment repressed the first sins for an example; the second sins He will reserve for judgment. What will you say to these things, you who, having usurped the name of the church, both secretly nourish and shamelessly defend schism?
But since I hear that certain men of your fellowship, out of a passion for litigation, hold I know not what documents, it must be asked to which faith ought to be accorded—those that agree with reason, those that consort with truth. If there are any of yours, they may perhaps seem sprinkled with falsehoods. As for our documents, the conflicts of the cases prove them, and the contentions of the parties, and the outcomes of the judgments, and the letters of Constantine. For as to what you say of us, 'What have Christians to do with kings? or what have bishops to do with the palace?'—if it is a mark to know kings, then envy floods you completely. For your forefathers were Lucian, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito,
Fidentius, and the rest, who entreated the emperor Constantine, as yet ignorant of these matters, with these petitions, a copy of which is written below: 'We beg you, Constantine, best of emperors—since you are of righteous lineage, whose father, among the other emperors, did not carry out persecution, and Gaul is free from this crime; for in Africa there are contentions between us and the other bishops—we ask that your piety command judges to be given to us from Gaul.' Given by Lucian, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius, and the other bishops of Donatus's party. When these had been read, Constantine answered, full of indignation. In which response he also betrayed their prayers, saying:
'You ask of me a judgment in this world, while I myself await the judgment of Christ.' And yet judges were given: Maternus from the city of Cologne, Reticius from the city of Autun, Marinus of Arles. They came to the city of Rome, these three Gauls together with fifteen other Italians. They assembled in the house of Fausta in the Lateran, in the consulship of Constantine for the fourth time and Licinius for the third time, on the sixth day before the Nones of October, on the sixth day of the week, when there had sat together Miltiades bishop of the city of Rome, and Reticius and Maternus and Marinus the Gallic bishops, and Merocles of Milan, Florianus of Siena, Zoticus of Quintianum, Stennius of Rimini, Felix of Florence in Tuscany, Gaudentius of Pisa, Constantius of Faventia,
Proterius of Capua, Theophilus of Benevento, Sabinus of Terracina, Secundus of Praeneste, Felix of Tres Tabernae, Maximus of Ostia, Evander of Ursinum, Donatianus of Forum Claudii. With these nineteen bishops sitting together, the case of Donatus and Caecilian was brought into the midst. By each one these sentences were pronounced against Donatus: that he confessed he had rebaptized and had laid hands upon lapsed bishops, which is foreign to the Church. The witnesses brought forward by Donatus confessed that they had nothing to say against Caecilian. Caecilian was pronounced innocent by the sentences of all the aforementioned, even by the sentence of Miltiades, by which the judgment was closed in these words:
'Since it has been established that Caecilian, according to their own profession, is not accused by those who came with Donatus, nor has it been established that he was convicted by Donatus on any point, I rightly judge that he ought to be retained in his ecclesiastical communion with his standing intact.' It is therefore sufficient that Donatus was struck down by so many sentences and that Caecilian was cleared by so great a judgment. And yet Donatus believed he ought to appeal. To which appeal the emperor Constantine responded thus: 'O the rabid audacity of frenzy! Just as is wont to happen in the cases of the heathen, a bishop has believed he ought to appeal'—and the rest. At the same time this same Donatus petitioned that it might be permitted him to return * * that he might go to Carthage.
Then by Filuminus, his advocate, it was suggested to the emperor that, for the good of peace, Caecilian should be detained at Brixia; and it was done. Then two bishops were sent to Africa, Eunomius and Olympius, to ordain one bishop after the two had been removed. They came and were at Carthage for forty days, in order to pronounce where the Catholic Church was. The seditious party of Donatus did not allow this to be done; out of partisan zeal there were daily uproars. The final sentence of these same bishops, Eunomius and Olympius, is read as follows: that they declared that to be the Catholic Church which was spread throughout the whole world, and that the sentence of the nineteen bishops, given long since, could not be annulled. So they communicated with the clergy of Caecilian and returned.
Of these matters we hold a volume of records, which, if anyone shall wish, let him read in the last sections. While these things were happening, Donatus of his own accord returned first to Carthage. When this was heard, Caecilian hastened to his own people. In this way the parties were renewed again. Yet it stands established that Donatus was struck down by so many sentences and that Caecilian was pronounced innocent by as many sentences. But since in that very case the persons of the two—both the ordained and the ordainer—seemed long since to labour in the Catholic Church, after the ordained man had been cleared in the city, the ordainer still remained to be cleared. Then Constantine wrote to the proconsul Aelianus that, with public necessities set aside, inquiry should be made publicly into the life of Felix of Autumna. He sat in court,
to whom it had been enjoined. There were brought forward Claudius Saturianus, curator of the commonwealth, who had been in the city of Felix at the time of the persecution, and the curator of the then-present time, when the case was being pressed, Callidius Gratianus, and the magistrate Alfius Caecilianus; and also Superius the stationary officer was led in, and Ingentius the public scribe trembled under the dread of impending tortures. From the answers of all, nothing of the sort was found that could have sullied the life of bishop Felix. There is held a volume of records, in which are contained the names of those present, who had taken part in the case of Claudius Saturianus the curator, and of the magistrate Caecilianus, and of Superius the stationary officer, and of the scribe Ingentius, and of Solon the public official of that time.
After their answers, this part of the sentence was pronounced by the aforementioned proconsul: 'It is manifest that Felix, the religious bishop, is free from the burning of the divine instruments, since no one could prove anything against him to the effect that he betrayed or burned the most sacred Scriptures. For the interrogation of all those above named makes it manifest that no divine Scriptures were either found, or corrupted, or burned. This is contained in the records: that bishop Felix, a religious man, was at those times neither present, nor lent his conscience to it, nor commanded any such thing to be done.' Whence, his infamy repulsed and wiped away, he departed from that judgment with great praise.
Long since, the truth seemed to lie hidden amid an uncertain reputation and amid the mists which envy and ill-will had exhaled. But all the recorded writing has also been revealed, both by the volumes of the records and by the letters mentioned, whether read or recalled. You see, brother Parmenian, that you have railed in vain against the catholics with the false charge of betrayal cast at them, changing the persons, of course, and transferring the merits. You closed your eyes, lest you should recognize your own as guilty; you opened them, that you might criminously assail the innocent and undeserving. Everything according to the occasion, nothing according to the truth—so that the most blessed apostle Paul might have said even of you: 'Certain men have turned aside to empty talking, wishing to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things concerning which they affirm.'
A little before, we taught that your forefathers were traditors and schismatics; and you, their heir, were unwilling to spare either the schismatics or the traditors. Now therefore, by the documents mentioned above, all the weapons which you wished to hurl falsely against strangers, repulsed by the shield of truth, are turned back upon your own forefathers with a reciprocal blow. Everything therefore that could have been said by you against traditors and schismatics is yours; for it is not ours, who both remain in the root and are with all throughout the whole world. Since it has been shown who were the traditors, and the origin of the schism has been so demonstrated that it seems perceived almost with the eyes, we have also shown what distinguishes heresy from schism:
It is now next to demonstrate—what we promised to speak of in the second place—what the one Church is, which Christ calls His dove and His spouse. The Church, therefore, is one, whose holiness is gathered from the sacraments, and is not weighed by the pride of persons; therefore Christ calls this one His dove and His beloved spouse. This cannot exist among all the heretics and schismatics; it remains that it be in one place. You, brother Parmenian, have said that it is among you alone—unless perhaps because you contend to claim a special holiness from pride, so that where you wish, there the Church may be, and where you do not wish, it may not be.
So then, that it may exist among you in a little portion of Africa, in a corner of a small region, will it not exist among us in another part of Africa? In the Spains, in Gaul, in Italy, where you are not, will it not be? If you wish it to be only among you, will it not be in the three Pannonias, in Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Achaia, Macedonia, and in all Greece, where you are not? So that it may exist among you, will it not be in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cilicia, and in the three Syrias, and in the two Armenias, and in all Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, where you are not? And throughout so many countless islands and the other provinces, which can scarcely be numbered, where you are not, will it not be?
Where then will be the property of the catholic name, since it is called 'catholic' from this, that it is reasonable and everywhere diffused? For if you thus, according to your own will, confine the Church into a narrow space, if you withdraw whole nations from it, where will be that which the Son of God deserved? Where will be that which the Father gladly bestowed upon Him, saying in the second Psalm: 'I will give You the nations as Your inheritance and the ends of the earth as Your possession'? Why do you break such a promise, so that the breadth of kingdoms is sent by you, as it were, into a kind of prison? Why do you strive to stand in the way of so great a love? Why do you war against the Saviour's merits? Permit the Son to possess what has been granted, permit the Father to fulfil His promises. Why do you set bounds? Why do you fix limits?
Since the whole earth has been promised by God the Father to the Saviour, there is nothing in any part of the lands that seems excepted from His possession. The whole earth, together with the nations, has been given; the whole world is one possession to Christ. This God proves, who says: 'I will give You the nations as Your inheritance and the ends of the earth as Your possession.' And in the 71st Psalm it is thus written concerning the Saviour Himself: 'He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the orb of the earth.' The Father, while He gives, excepts nothing; you, that you may concede an ounce, strive to carry off the whole pound.
And still you strive to persuade men that the Church is among you alone, taking away the merit from Christ, denying what was appointed by God. O your ungrateful and foolish presumption! Christ invites you, along with others, into the fellowship of the heavenly kingdom, and exhorts that you be co-heirs; and you labour to defraud Him of the inheritance granted Him by the Father, while you concede a part of Africa and deny the whole orb of the earth, which has been given Him by the Father. Why do you wish the Holy Spirit to seem a liar, who in the 49th Psalm narrates the benevolence of almighty God, saying: 'The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken, and has called the earth from the rising of the sun unto its setting'?
The earth, therefore, was called, that it might become flesh; and, as it is read, it was made so, and it ought to render praises to God its Creator. Finally, it is brought to mind by the Holy Spirit, who exhorts and says in the 112th Psalm: 'The name of the Lord is to be praised from the rising of the sun unto its setting'; and again in the 95th Psalm: 'Sing to the Lord a new song.' If He said this verse alone, you might say that the Holy Spirit exhorted you alone. But to show that it was said not to you alone but to the Church, which is everywhere, He went on, saying: 'Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim among the nations His glory, His wonders among all peoples.'
'Proclaim,' He says, 'among the nations'—He did not say 'in a little portion of Africa, where you are.' 'Proclaim,' He says, 'among all peoples'; He who said 'all peoples' excepted no one, and do you congratulate yourselves on being separated, you alone, from all the peoples concerning whom this command was given, and do you wish to be alone the whole, you who are not in the whole entire? 'The name of the Lord,' He says, 'is to be praised'—both by the whole earth and from the rising of the sun unto its setting. Can the lawless pagans either sing to God or praise the name of the Lord, and not the Church alone, which is in the law? If you say that it is among you only, you defraud the ears of God. If you alone praise, the whole world will fall silent, which is from the rising of the sun unto its setting.
You have shut the mouths of all Christian nations; you have imposed silence upon all peoples who desire to praise God at every moment. Therefore, if God awaits the praises due to Him, and the Holy Spirit exhorts that they should resound, and the whole world is ready to render to God what it owes—then, lest God be defrauded, do you also yourselves praise together with all; or, since you were unwilling to be with all, be silent alone. Therefore, since we have proved that to be the Catholic Church which is diffused throughout the whole orb of the earth, its ornaments are now to be mentioned, and it is to be seen where are the five endowments, which you said were six, among which the chair is first, where, unless a bishop has sat, the second endowment cannot be joined—which is the angel.
It is to be seen who first sat upon the chair, and where. If you do not know, learn; if you know, blush: ignorance cannot be ascribed to you, so it remains that you must know. For one who knows to err is a sin; but to the ignorant it is sometimes wont to be pardoned. Therefore you cannot deny that you know that in the city of Rome the episcopal chair was first conferred upon Peter, in which sat Peter, the head of all the apostles, whence too he was called Cephas; in which one chair unity might be preserved by all, lest the other apostles should each claim separate chairs for themselves, so that he was now a schismatic and a sinner who should set up another chair against that single chair.
Therefore the unique chair, which is the first of the endowments, Peter sat upon first; to him succeeded Linus, to Linus succeeded Clement, to Clement Anacletus, to Anacletus Evaristus, to Evaristus Alexander, to Alexander Sixtus, to Sixtus Telesphorus, to Telesphorus Hyginus, to Hyginus Anicetus, to Anicetus Pius, to Pius Soter, to Soter Eleutherius, to Eleutherius Victor, to Victor Zephyrinus, to Zephyrinus Callixtus, to Callixtus Urban, to Urban Pontianus, to Pontianus Anterus, to Anterus Fabian, to Fabian Cornelius, to Cornelius Lucius, to Lucius Stephen, to Stephen Sixtus, to Sixtus Dionysius, to Dionysius Felix, to Felix Eutychianus, to Eutychianus Gaius, to Gaius Marcellinus, to Marcellinus Marcellus, to Marcellus Eusebius, to Eusebius Miltiades, to Miltiades Silvester, to Silvester Marcus, to Marcus Julius, to Julius Liberius, to Liberius Damasus, to Damasus Siricius, who today is our colleague:
with whom the whole world agrees with us in one fellowship of communion through the interchange of letters of commendation. Render the origin of your chair, you who wish to claim the holy Church for yourselves. But you also say that you have some portion in the city of Rome: it is a branch of your error, stretched out from a lie, not from the root of truth. In short, if it should be said to Macrobius where he sits there, can he by any means say, 'In the chair of Peter'?—which I doubt that he knows even by sight; and to whose memorial he does not approach, like a schismatic acting against the apostle who says: 'communicating with the memorials of the saints.' Behold, present there are the memorials of two apostles. Say whether he was able to enter to these, or offered there, where it is established that the memorials of the saints are.
It remains, therefore, that your colleague Macrobius confess that he sits there where Encolpius once sat; and if Encolpius himself could be questioned, he would say that he sits where Bonifatius Ballitanus sat before; and then if he himself could be questioned, he would say where Victor of Garba sat, sent long since from Africa by your people to a few wandering men. What is this, that your party could not have a bishop who was a citizen in the city of Rome? What is this, that men wholly African and foreigners are known to have succeeded one another in that city? Does not the deceit appear, the faction, which is the mother of schism?
Meanwhile, so that Victor of Garba should be sent here as the first—I do not say a stone into the fountain, since he could not even disturb the purity of the catholic multitude; but because to certain Africans a sojourn in the city had been pleasing, and they seemed to have set out hither from you—these very men petitioned that someone be sent hence who might gather them. Victor therefore was sent: there was a son without a father, a recruit without a commander, a disciple without a master, a follower without one going before, a lodger without a house, a guest without a lodging, a shepherd without a flock, a bishop without a people. For they were not to be called a flock or a people, those few who, among forty and more basilicas, had no place where they might gather.
So they fenced off with hurdles a certain cave outside the city, where at that very time they could hold their conventicle; whence they were called 'Montenses' (mountain-men). Therefore, since Claudian is seen to have succeeded Lucian, Lucian Macrobius, Macrobius Encolpius, Encolpius Bonifatius, Bonifatius Victor: if it were said to Victor where he sat, he could neither show that anyone had been there before him, nor show any chair except that of pestilence. For pestilence sends men extinguished by diseases down to the lower regions, which lower regions are known to have their gates; against which gates we read that Peter, our chief of course, received the saving keys, to whom it was said by Christ: 'To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.'
Whence is it, then, that you strive to usurp for yourselves the keys of the kingdom of heaven, you who war against the chair of Peter with your presumptions and bold sacrilege, repudiating the blessedness whereby he deserved to be praised, who 'walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, and stood not in the way of sinners, and sat not in the chair of pestilence'? In the counsel of impiety your forefathers walked, that the Church might be divided. They entered also the way of sinners, while they tried to divide Christ, whose garments not even the Jews wished to rend, when the apostle Paul cries out and says: 'Is Christ divided?'
And would that, if they had now entered the evil way, they had, upon recognizing their sin, turned back upon themselves—that is, amended what they had gone astray in, and recalled the peace which they had put to flight. This was to return from the way: for on a way one walks, one does not stand. But because your forefathers were unwilling to return, it is established that they stood in the way of sinners; whose steps fury had impelled, and sluggish discord bound them fast when held. And lest they might be able to go back to better things, they themselves set upon themselves the fetters of schism, that they might stand obstinately in their error, that they might not be able to return to the peace which they had deserted. Nor did they hear the Holy Spirit saying in the 33rd Psalm: 'Turn aside from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it'—but they stood in the way of their sins.
They have also sat in the seat of pestilence, which, as we said above, sends those who are seduced to their death. But while you, cultivating the error of your forefathers, zealously defend it, you have chosen to be heirs of their wickedness, when you could have been sons of peace, even if belatedly. Since it is written in the prophet Ezekiel: 'Lift up your voice over the son of a sinner, that he may not follow the footsteps of his father, for the soul of the father is mine and the soul of the son is mine. The soul that sins, that alone shall be punished.' If it displeased you that your forefathers sinned, they alone would render account of their own offense; in this way you too might be able to be blessed and to receive praise from the mouth of the prophet, who says in the first psalm:
'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence; but his delight is in the law of the Lord.' What else is it to have one's delight in the law, than both to learn the divine precepts reverently and to fulfill them with fear? In which law it is written: 'Peace to men on earth of good will,' and in another place, in the prophet Isaiah: 'I will lay the foundations of peace in Sion,' and in another place: 'Let us see what the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace unto his people,' and in another place: 'The Son of God has come, and his place has been established in peace,' and in another place: 'Let the mountains receive peace for the people, and the hills justice,' and in the Gospel: 'My peace I give unto you, my peace I leave unto you,' and Paul says:
'He who sows peace shall also reap peace,' and in all his epistles: 'May peace abound to you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,' and in psalm 33: 'Seek peace and you shall obtain it.' Peace had been put to flight and had departed from your forefathers; you ought to have sought it, as God has commanded, but you neither were willing of your own accord to seek it nor to receive it gladly when it was offered. For who among so many provinces in which you were born has heard of this? And if anyone has heard, who among you does not marvel at your error, who among you does not condemn your crime?