Letter 93

TO THE MOST BELOVED BROTHER VINCENT, AUGUSTINE.

Augustine of Hippo, A.D. 408

Chapter 1

1. 1. I have received a letter which it did not seem incredible to me to be yours: for the one who brought it, who was known to be a Catholic Christian, would not, as I think, dare to lie to me. But even if perhaps the letter is not yours, I thought I should write back to the one who wrote it. You knew me at Carthage, then a young man, when Rogatus, whom you succeeded, was still alive, to be rather avid for, and seeking, quiet. But the Donatists are too unquiet, whom to be coerced and corrected through the powers ordained by God does not seem to me useless. For we now rejoice over the correction of many, who so truthfully hold and defend Catholic unity, and so rejoice that they have been freed from their former error, that we marvel at them with great gratulation. Who nevertheless, by I know not what force of habit, would in no way have thought of being changed for the better, unless, struck by this terror, they had turned their solicitous mind to the consideration of the truth; lest perhaps, if not for righteousness, but for the perversity and presumption of men, they should endure those temporal troubles by a fruitless and vain tolerance, and afterward find before God nothing but the due penalties of the impious, who had despised his so gentle admonition and his fatherly scourges: and so, made docile by this thought, they might find, not in the slanders and human tales, but in the divine books, the Church promised through all the nations, which they would behold restored to their own eyes, in which they would by no means doubt that Christ too, who was foretold, was above the heavens, even unseen. Was I, then, to envy the salvation of these men, so as to recall my colleagues from a fatherly diligence of this kind, through which it has come about that we see many accusing their former blindness? Who, when they believed, even not seeing, that Christ was exalted above the heavens, yet denied his glory over all the earth, even seeing it, when the Prophet embraced both in one sentence with so great a manifestation, saying: Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and your glory over all the earthPs 57:5, 11 (56:6, 12).

1. 2. If, then, we so despised and tolerated these men—once our atrocious enemies, grievously infesting our peace and quiet with various kinds of grave violences and ambushes—that nothing at all should be devised and proved by us which could avail to terrify and correct them, we would truly be rendering evil for evil. For if anyone saw his enemy, made frenzied by dangerous fevers, running headlong, would he not then rather render evil for evil, if he permitted him so to run, than if he took care to seize and bind him? And yet then he would seem to him most troublesome and most adverse, when he had stood forth most useful and most merciful: but plainly, with health restored, he would give him thanks so much the more abundantly, the less he had felt him spare him. O if I could show you, of the Circumcellions themselves, how many we now have as manifest Catholics, condemning their former life and the miserable error by which they thought they were doing for the Church of God whatever they did with unquiet rashness! Who nevertheless would not be brought to this soundness, unless, by the bonds of those laws which displease you, they were bound like frenzied men. What of that other kind of most grave disease—of those who indeed did not have a turbulent audacity, but were pressed by a certain old sluggishness, saying to us, You indeed speak the truth, there is nothing to answer; but it is hard for us to leave the tradition of our parents: were they not wholesomely to be shaken out by the rule of temporal troubles, that they might emerge as from a lethargic sleep, and wake up to the salvation of unity? How many of them, now rejoicing with us, accuse the former weight of their pernicious work, and confess that we ought to have been troublesome to them, lest they perish, as by a deadly sleep, so by the disease of a lethargic habit?

1. 3. But, you say, these things do not profit certain men. Is the medicine therefore to be neglected, because the plague of some is incurable? You attend only to those who are so hard that they do not receive even this discipline. For of such it is written: In vain have I scourged your sons; they have not received disciplineJer 2:30. Yet I think that they were scourged in love, not in hatred. But you ought also to attend to so many over whose salvation we rejoice. For if they were terrified, and not taught, it would seem an improper domination, as it were. Again, if they were taught and not terrified, hardened by the oldness of habit, they would be moved more sluggishly to lay hold of the way of salvation; since many—which we know well—when the reason had been rendered to them and the truth manifested by divine testimonies, answered us that they desired to pass over into the communion of the Catholic Church, but dreaded the violent enmities of abandoned men: which indeed they ought to have despised for righteousness and for eternal life; but the weakness of such men, until they are made firm, is to be supported, not despaired of. Nor must we forget that the Lord himself said to the still-weak Peter: You cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterwardJn 13:36. But when wholesome teaching is joined to useful terror, so that not only does the light of truth expel the darkness of error, but the force of fear also breaks the bonds of evil habit, we rejoice, as I said, over the salvation of many, who bless with us, and give thanks to God that, his promise fulfilled by which he promised that the kings of the earth would serve ChristSee Ps 72:11 (71:11), he has so cared for the diseased, so healed the weak.

Chapter 2

2. 4. Not everyone who spares is a friend; nor everyone who beats, an enemy. Better are the wounds of a friend than the voluntary kisses of an enemySee Prov 27:6. It is better to love with severity than to deceive with leniency. More usefully is bread taken from the hungry, if, secure about food, he neglects righteousness, than bread is broken for the hungry, so that, seduced, he acquiesces in injustice. And he who binds the frenzied, and he who rouses the lethargic, troublesome to both, loves both. Who can love us more than God? And yet he ceases not only to teach us sweetly, but also wholesomely to terrify us. To the gentle soothings by which he consoles, often adding even the most biting medicament of tribulation, he exercises with hunger the Patriarchs, even the pious and religious; he agitates the contumacious people with graver penaltiesSee Num 11; 14; he does not take away from the Apostle the goad of the flesh, though asked three times, that he may perfect virtue in weaknessSee 2 Cor 12:7-9. Let us love even our enemies, because this is just, and God commands this, that we may be sons of our Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjustMatt 5:45. But just as we praise these gifts of his, so let us also reflect on his scourges upon those whom he loves.

2. 5. Do you think that no one ought to be compelled to righteousness, when you read that the head of the household said to his servants: Whomever you find, compel them to come inLk 14:23; when you read too that Saul himself—first Saul, afterward Paul—was compelled, by the great violence of Christ compelling him, to know and hold the truthSee Acts 9:1-22? Unless perhaps you think money, or any possession whatever, is dearer to men than this light which is taken in by the eyes. This light, suddenly lost when he was prostrated by the heavenly voice, he did not recover until he was incorporated into the holy Church. And do you think that no force is to be applied to a man, that he may be freed from the destruction of error, when you see God himself—than whom no one loves us more usefully—doing this by most certain examples, and hear Christ saying: No one comes to me, unless the Father has drawn himJn 6:44, which is done in the hearts of all who are turned to him by fear of the divine wrath; and when you know that sometimes a thief scatters fodder to lead away the cattle, and sometimes a shepherd recalls the straying cattle to the flock with a scourge?

2. 6. Did not Sara rather afflict the contumacious slave woman, by the power given herSee Gen 16:6? And surely she did not cruelly hate her whom above, by her own benefit, she had made a mother; but in her she wholesomely tamed pride. But you are not ignorant that those two women, Sara and Hagar, and their two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, are figures of the spiritual and the carnal. And although we read that the slave woman and her son suffered grave troubles from Sara, yet the apostle Paul says that Isaac suffered persecution from Ishmael: But just as then, he says, he who was according to the flesh persecuted him who was according to the spirit, so also nowGal 4:29—so that those who can may understand that the Catholic Church rather suffers persecution by the pride and impiety of carnal men, whom it tries to amend by temporal troubles and terrors. Whatever, then, the true and lawful mother does, even if it be felt harsh and bitter, she does not render evil for evil; but she applies the good of discipline, by expelling the evil of iniquity, not from a hatred of harming, but from a love of healing. When the good and the evil do the same things, and suffer the same things, they are to be distinguished surely not by the deeds and penalties, but by the causes. Pharaoh wore down the people of God with hard laborsSee Exod 1:11-14; Moses afflicted the same people, acting impiously, with hard coercionsSee Exod 32:27-28: they did similar things, but did not wish to profit in a similar way; the one was inflated by domination, the other inflamed by love. Jezebel killed the Prophets; Elijah killed the false prophetsSee 1 Kgs 18:4, 40; 19:1-2: I think that the merits of the doers are diverse, the merits of the sufferers diverse.

2. 7. Look also at the times of the New Testament, when now the very gentleness of love was to be preserved not only in the heart, but also shown in the light; when Peter's sword is recalled into its sheath by Christ, and it is shown that it ought not to have been drawn from the sheath even for ChristSee Matt 26:51-52; Jn 18:11. Yet we read not only that the Jews beat the apostle PaulSee Acts 16:22-23, but also that the Greeks beat the Jew Sosthenes for the apostle PaulSee Acts 18:17: does not the likeness of the deed, as it were, join both, and yet the unlikeness of cause distinguish them? Surely God did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us allRom 8:32: surely of the Son himself it is said: Who loved me, and handed himself over for meGal 2:20: surely of Judas too it is said that Satan entered into him, to hand over ChristSee Jn 13:27. When, then, both the Father handed over his Son, and Christ himself his own body, and Judas his Lord, why in this handing-over is God pious, and the man guilty, except because in the one thing they did, the cause is not one for which they did it? Three crosses were in one place; on one, a robber to be freed; on another, a robber to be condemned; in the middle, Christ, about to free the one, to condemn the otherSee Lk 23:33-43: what is more like than these crosses? What more unlike than these hanging men? Paul was handed over to be shut up and boundSee Acts 21:33; but than any keeper of a prison whatever, surely Satan is worse; to whom nevertheless Paul himself handed over a man for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus1 Cor 5:5. And here what do we say? Behold, the cruel deliverer handed over to a milder, the merciful deliverer handed over to a crueler. Let us learn, brother, in the likeness of works to distinguish the minds of the workers, lest with closed eyes we slander, and accuse the well-meaning in place of the harmful. Likewise, when the same Apostle says that he handed over certain men to Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme1 Tim 1:20, did he render evil for evil, or rather judge it a good work to amend the evil even through evil?

2. 8. If it were always praiseworthy to suffer persecution, it would suffice the Lord to say: Blessed are those who suffer persecution; nor would he add, for the sake of righteousnessMatt 5:10. Likewise, if it were always blameworthy to make persecution, it would not be written in the holy books: Him who secretly disparaged his neighbor, this man I persecutedSee Ps 101:5 (100:5). Sometimes, then, both he who suffers it is unjust, and he who makes it is just. But plainly always both evil men have persecuted the good, and good men have persecuted the evil: the former by harming through injustice, the latter by consulting through discipline; the former monstrously, the latter temperately; the former serving cupidity, the latter love. For he who slaughters does not consider how he may mangle; but he who heals considers how he may cut: for the one pursues health, the other rottenness. The impious killed the Prophets; the Prophets too killed the impious. The Jews scourged ChristSee Mk 15:15; Christ too scourged the JewsSee Jn 2:15. The Apostles were handed over by men to human power; the Apostles too handed over men to the power of Satan. In all these things, what is attended to, except which of them acts for the truth, which for iniquity; which for the sake of harming, which of amending?

Chapter 3

3. 9. No example is found in the evangelical and apostolic Letters of anything's being asked from the kings of the earth for the Church, against the enemies of the Church. Who denies that it is not found? But that prophecy was not yet being fulfilled: And now, O kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth; serve the Lord in fearPs 2:10-11. For there was still being fulfilled what is said a little above in the same psalm: Why have the nations raged, and the peoples meditated vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes came together as one, against the Lord, and against his ChristPs 2:1-2. Nevertheless, if past deeds in the prophetic books were figures of things to come, in that king who was called Nebuchadnezzar both times were figured—both that which the Church had under the Apostles, and that which it now has. And so in the times of the Apostles and martyrs that was being fulfilled which was figured, when the said king compelled the pious and just to adore an image, and cast those who refused into the flame. But now that is being fulfilled which was figured a little after in the same king, when, converted to honoring the true God, he decreed in his kingdom that whoever should blaspheme the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should be subject to due penaltiesSee Dan 3. The earlier time of that king, then, signified the earlier times of the unbelieving kings, whom the Christians suffered for the impious; but the later time of that king signified the times of the later kings, now believing, whom the impious suffer for the Christians.

3. 10. But plainly, in the case of those who err under the name of Christ, seduced by perverse men—lest perhaps they be straying sheep of Christ, and are so to be recalled to the flock—a tempered severity, and rather gentleness, is preserved, so that by the coercion of exiles and fines they may be admonished to consider what and why they suffer, and may learn to prefer to the rumors and slanders of men the Scriptures which they read. For who of us, who of you, does not praise the laws given by the emperors against the sacrifices of the pagans? And certainly there a far severer penalty is established; for of that impiety the punishment is capital. But concerning the correcting and coercing of you, reason was had, that you might rather be admonished to depart from error than be punished for crime. For perhaps it can be said of you too what the Apostle says of the Jews: I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, ignorant of the righteousness of God, and wishing to establish their own, they have not been subject to the righteousness of GodRom 10:2-3. For what else do you too wish but to establish your own righteousness, when you say that none are justified except those who could be baptized by you? In this apostolic sentence, then, which he brought forth concerning the Jews, you differ from the Jews in this: that you have the Christian Sacraments, which they still lack. But as for what he says: ignorant of the righteousness of God, and wishing to establish their own, and that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, you are altogether equal—except, at least, those among you, whoever they are, who know what is true, and, for the animosity of their perversity, fight against the truth even most well known to themselves. For the impiety of these perhaps even surpasses idolatry. But because they cannot easily be convicted (for this evil lies hidden in the mind), you are all coerced, as less estranged from us, with a milder severity. And this indeed I would say either of all heretics who are imbued with the Christian Sacraments and dissent from the truth or unity of Christ, or of all Donatists.

3. 11. But as for what pertains to you, who are called not only, in common with them, Donatists from Donatus, but also, properly, Rogatists from Rogatus, you indeed seem to be milder, because you do not rage with the most monstrous bands of the Circumcellions; but no beast, if it wounds no one, is therefore called gentle because it has no teeth and claws. You say that you do not wish to rage; I think that you cannot. For you are so few in number that you would not dare to move yourselves against the multitudes adverse to you, even if you desired it. But let us grant that you do not even wish what you are unable to do; let us grant that you so understand, so hold, the evangelical sentence in which it is written: If anyone wishes to take your tunic and contend with you at law, leave him your cloak alsoSee Matt 5:40, that you think no resistance should be made to those who persecute you, not only by any injury, but even by any right; this understanding, certainly, Rogatus your founder either did not have, or did not fulfill, who, about some matters which, as you say, were yours, fought with the keenest perseverance, even by a forensic dispute. To whom, if it were said: Which of the Apostles ever defended his goods in a public judgment in a case of faith?—just as you set down in your letter: Which of the Apostles ever invaded another's goods in a case of faith?—he would indeed find no example of this deed in the divine Letters; but yet he would perhaps find some true defense, if he held the true Church, and did not, under the name of the true Church, shamelessly possess something.

Chapter 4

4. 12. But as for what pertains to the commands of the earthly powers, to be obtained or exercised against schismatics or heretics, those from whom you separated were most keen, both against you, as far as we could hear, and against the Maximianists, which we prove even by certain documents of the records; but yet you were not yet separated from them, when they said to the emperor Julian, in their petition, that with him justice alone had place; whom surely they knew to be an apostate, and saw to be so given over to idolatries that they would either confess that justice was idolatry, or could not deny that they had wickedly lied, in saying before him that justice alone had place, before whom they discerned idolatry to have a great place. But suppose there was an error in the word; what do you say about the deed itself? If nothing just is to be sought from an emperor, why was that sought from Julian which was thought just?

4. 13. Or is this to be sought, that each one recover his own, not that he accuse someone, by whom he may be coerced by the emperor? Meanwhile, even in the suit for recovering one's own goods, one departs from the apostolic examples, because none of them is found to have done this. But yet, when your forebears accused Caecilianus himself, then bishop of the Church of Carthage—with whom, as with a criminal, they were unwilling to commune—before the prince Constantine through the proconsul Anulinus, they did not sue for their own lost goods, but slanderously assailed an innocent man, as we judge and as the very outcome of the judgments taught: than which what more wicked could be done by them? But if, as you falsely judge, they handed over to the earthly powers one to be judged truly a criminal, why do you cast at us what the presumption of your own people first did? Whom we would not reprove because they did it, if they had done it not with an envious and harmful mind, but with the will of amending and correcting. But you we reprove without doubt, to whom it seems a crime to complain anything to a Christian emperor about the enemies of our communion, when the document given by your forebears to the proconsul Anulinus, and to be sent to the emperor Constantine, was thus inscribed: The document of the Catholic Church, of the crimes of Caecilianus, handed over by the party of Majorinus. But we reprove them rather on this account: that, when they had of their own accord accused Caecilianus before the Emperor—whom they ought first surely to have convicted before their overseas colleagues—with the Emperor himself acting far more orderly, so as to send the case of the bishops, brought to him, to bishops, they were unwilling, when defeated, to have peace with the brothers; but again they came to the same emperor; again they accused not only Caecilianus, but also the bishops given to them as judges, before an earthly king; again they appealed from another episcopal judgment to the same emperor. Nor, even with him examining and judging between the parties, did they think they ought to yield either to the truth or to peace.

4. 14. But what else would Constantine have established against Caecilianus and his companions, if they had been defeated with your forebears accusing, than what he established against those very men who, when they had of their own accord accused, and could not prove what they intended, were unwilling to consent to the truth even when defeated? For that emperor was the first to establish, in this case, that the goods of the convicted and of those obstinately resisting unity should be claimed for the treasury. But evidently, if, with your forebears accusing and prevailing, the emperor had decreed any such thing against the communion of Caecilianus, you would wish to be named providers for the Church, defenders of peace and unity. But when, against those who, accusing of their own accord, could prove nothing, and were unwilling to consent even to the offered bosom of peace by which they might, corrected, be received, such things are decreed by the emperors, an unworthy deed is cried out: it is contended that no one is to be compelled to unity, that evil is to be rendered to no one for evil. What is this other than that which someone wrote about you: What we wish is holy? And now it was not great nor difficult to consider and reflect that the judgment and sentence of Constantine against you are in force, which were promulgated against you, with your forebears so often accusing Caecilianus before the Emperor and not convicting him; and that the other emperors, especially Catholic Christians, necessarily follow it, as often as the necessity of your obstinacy compels them to do something about you.

4. 15. It was easy to reflect on these things, so as to say at some time to yourselves: If Caecilianus was either innocent, or could not be convicted of guilt, in what did the Christian society, so far and wide diffused, sin in this affair? Why was it not permitted the Christian world to be ignorant of what those who had accused could not demonstrate? Why are those whom Christ sowed in his field, that is, in this world, and bade grow among the weeds until the harvestSee Matt 13:24-30; why are so many thousands of the faithful in all nations, whose multitude the Lord compared to the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea, whom he promised would be blessed in the offspring of Abraham, and rendered so, denied to be Christians, because in this case, in the discussing of which they were not present, they chose to believe the judges judging at their own peril, rather than the defeated litigants? Surely no one's crime stains one who knows it not. How could the faithful, diffused throughout the whole world, know the crime of traditors, which the accusers, even if they knew it, yet could not show them? That these, then, are innocent of this crime, surely their very ignorance most easily shows. Why, then, are the innocent accused of false crimes, because they did not know another's crimes, whether false or true? What place is reserved for innocence, if it is one's own crime not to know another's crime? Further, if their very ignorance, as has been said, shows the peoples of so many nations innocent, how great a crime is it to be separated from the communion of these innocent ones? For even the deeds of the guilty, which cannot be demonstrated to the innocent, or believed by the innocent, stain no one, if, for the sake of fellowship with the innocent, even when known, they are endured. For the good are not to be deserted on account of the evil, but the evil are to be tolerated on account of the good: as the Prophets tolerated those against whom they said such great things, nor did they leave the communion of the sacraments of that people; as the Lord himself tolerated the guilty Judas until his fitting end, and permitted him to share the sacred supper with the innocent; as the Apostles tolerated those who through envy—which is the vice of the devil himself—announced ChristSee Phil 1:15; as Cyprian tolerated the avarice of his colleagues, which, according to the Apostle, he calls idolatrySee Col 3:5. Finally, whatever was then done among those bishops, even if perhaps it was known by some of them, is now, if there is no respect of persons, unknown to all. Why, then, is not peace loved by all? You could reflect on these things most easily, or perhaps you even reflect on them. But it was better for you to love earthly possessions, which, fearing to lose, you would consent to the known truth, than to love the most vain glory of men, which you think you lose if you consent to the known truth.

Chapter 5

5. 16. You see, then, now, as I think, that one must not consider what each is compelled to, but of what sort that is to which he is compelled, whether good or evil: not that anyone can be good unwillingly; but, by fearing what he does not wish to suffer, he either leaves the animosity that hindered him, or is compelled to know the truth he was ignorant of, so that, fearing, he either rejects the falsehood about which he contended, or seeks the truth he did not know, and, willing, now holds what he was unwilling to hold. This might perhaps be said in vain in any words whatever, if it were not shown by so many examples. We see that not these or those men, but many cities have been Donatist and are now Catholic, vehemently detesting the diabolical separation, ardently loving unity: which, nevertheless, were made Catholic, by the occasions of this fear which displeases you, through the laws of the emperors—from Constantine, before whom your people first accused Caecilianus of their own accord, down to the present emperors, who most justly decree that the judgment of him whom your people chose, whom they preferred to the bishop-judges, is to be kept against you.

5. 17. By these examples, then, proposed to me by my colleagues, I yielded. For my opinion at first was none other than that no one was to be compelled to the unity of Christ; that we must act by word, fight by disputation, conquer by reason, lest we have as feigned Catholics those whom we knew as open heretics. But this opinion of mine was overcome, not by the words of those contradicting, but by the examples of those demonstrating. For first my own city was set against me, which, when it was wholly in the party of Donatus, was converted to Catholic unity by the fear of the imperial laws; which we now see so detest the destructiveness of this animosity of yours that it is believed never to have been in it. So too many others, which were recalled to me by name, so that by the very facts I might recognize that even in this case what is written can be rightly understood: Give the wise man an occasion, and he will be wiserSee Prov 9:9. For how many—which we know for certain—now wished to be Catholics, moved by the most manifest truth, and, out of reverence for the offense of their own people, daily put it off! How many were bound by no truth, in which you never had ground, but by the grave bond of a hardened habit, so that in them was fulfilled that divine sentence: A hard servant will not be amended by words; for even if he understands, he will not obeySee Prov 29:19! How many thought the party of Donatus the true Church for this reason, that security made them torpid, fastidious, and sluggish in coming to know the Catholic truth! How many had the entrance of coming in barred by the rumors of slanderers, who kept boasting that we put I know not what else on the altar of God! How many, believing it made no difference in which party each was a Christian, remained in the party of Donatus for this reason, that they were born there, and no one compelled them to depart thence and to pass over to the Catholic Church!

5. 18. To all these the terror of these laws—in promulgating which the kings serve the Lord in fearSee Ps 2:11—so profited that now some say: We wished this already; but thanks be to God, who furnished us an occasion of doing it at once, and cut off the little delays of postponements. Others say: We already knew this to be true; but we were held by I know not what habit: thanks to the Lord, who broke our bonds, and transferred us to the bond of peace. Others say: We did not know the truth was here, nor did we wish to learn it; but fear made us intent on coming to know it, by which we feared lest perhaps, without any gains of eternal things, we be struck by the loss of temporal things: thanks to the Lord, who shook off our negligence with the goad of terror, so that, at least anxious, we might seek what, secure, we never cared to know. Others say: We were terrified by false rumors from entering, which we would not know to be false if we did not enter; nor would we enter, unless we were compelled: thanks to the Lord, who took away our trepidation with the scourge, and taught us by experience how vain and empty the things were that lying fame boasted about his Church; hence we now believe that those things too are false which the authors of this heresy charged, when their descendants have invented things so false and worse. Others say: We thought indeed it made no difference where we held the faith of Christ; but thanks to the Lord, who gathered us from division, and showed that this befits the one God, that he be worshiped in unity.

5. 19. For the hindering, then, of these gains of the Lord, should I have set myself against my colleagues to contradict them, lest, on your mountains and hills—that is, in the swellings of your pride—the straying sheep of Christ be gathered into the sheepfold of peace, where there is one flock and one shepherdJn 10:16? Should I indeed have contradicted this provision, lest you lose the things you call yours, and, secure, proscribe Christ: so that you might make wills by Roman law, and by calumnious accusations break the Testament arranged for the fathers by divine law, where it is written: In your offspring shall all the nations be blessedGen 22:18: so that in buyings and sellings you might have free contracts, and dare to divide among yourselves what Christ, sold, bought: so that what any of you had given to anyone might be valid, and what the God of gods gave to his sons, called from the rising of the sun to its setting, might not be valid: so that you might not be sent into exile from the land of your body, and Christ from the kingdom of his blood, from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earthSee Ps 72:8 (71:8)? Should I try to make Christ an exile? No, rather let the kings of the earth serve Christ, even by passing laws for Christ. Your forebears cast Caecilianus and his companions, by false crimes, to be punished by the kings of the earth; let the lions be turned to crush the bones of the slanderers, nor let Daniel himself intercede, proved innocent, and freed from the den in which they perishSee Dan 6:24: for he who prepares a pit for his neighbor will himself more justly fall into itSee Prov 26:27.

Chapter 6

6. 20. Snatch yourself, brother, while you live in this flesh, from the wrath which is to come upon the obstinate and the proud. The terror of temporal powers, when it attacks the truth, is a glorious proving to the just and strong, a dangerous temptation to the weak; but when it preaches the truth, it is a useful admonition to the sensible who err, and a useless affliction to the senseless. There is nevertheless no power except from God; but he who resists the power resists the ordinance of God: for rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Do you wish not to fear the power? Do good, and you will have praise from itRom 13:1-3. For whether the power, favoring the truth, corrects someone, he who has been amended has praise from it; or whether, hostile to the truth, it rages against someone, he who has been crowned as victor has praise from it. But you do not do good, so that you ought not to fear the power: unless perhaps it is good to sit, and disparage not a brotherSee Ps 50:20 (49:20), but all the brothers established in all the nations, to whom the Prophets, Christ, and the Apostles bear witness, when it is read: In your offspring shall all the nations be blessedGen 22:18; when it is read: From the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice is offered to my name; for my name is glorified among the nations, says the LordSee Mal 1:11; hear, says the Lord; not, says Donatus, or Rogatus, or Vincent, or Hilary, or Ambrose, or Augustine; but, says the Lord: when it is read: And in him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed, all the nations shall magnify him. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things; and blessed be the name of his glory forever, and unto the age of the age: and all the earth shall be filled with his glory; so be it, so be itPs 72:17-19 (71:17-19). And you sit at Cartenna, and with the ten Rogatists who have remained, you say: So be it not, so be it not.

6. 21. You hear the Gospel speak: It was necessary that everything written in the Law, and the Prophets, and the Psalms about me should be fulfilled. Then he opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them: Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name among all the nations, beginning from JerusalemSee Lk 24:44-47. You read too the Acts of the Apostles, how this Gospel began from Jerusalem, where the Holy Spirit first filled those hundred and twentySee Acts 1:15, 2:1-4, and thence went out into Judea and Samaria, and into all nations, as he had said to them when about to ascend into heaven: You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the ends of the earthActs 1:8: for their sound went out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the worldSee Ps 19:4 (18:5); Rom 10:18. And you contradict the divine testimonies, strengthened with so great firmness, manifested with so great a light, and try to bring the inheritance of Christ to that proscription, so that, although in his name, as he said, repentance is preached among all the nations, whoever has been moved by this preaching, in any part of the world, unless he has sought and found Vincent of Cartenna lying hidden in Mauretania Caesariensis, or some one of his nine or ten partners, cannot have his sins forgiven him. What would the conceit of a dead little skin not dare? Into what would the presumption of flesh and blood not hurl itself? Is this your good work, on account of which you should not fear the power? You set so great a scandal against the son of your motherSee Ps 50:20 (49:20)—a little one, namely, and weak, for whom Christ diedSee Rom 14:15; 1 Cor 8:11, not yet fit for the father's food, but still to be nourished by the mother's milk: and you set against me the books of Hilary, so as to deny the Church growing among all the nations until the end of the age, which God promised, with an oath, against your unbelief! And whereas you would be most unhappy if you resisted then, when it was being promised, now also, when it is rendered, you contradict it.

Chapter 7

7. 22. But, learned historian, you have found something great, which you thought should be brought forth against the testimonies of God. For you say: As far as it pertains to the parts of the whole world, it is a modest part, in comparison with the whole world, in which the Christian faith is named: nor do you wish to attend, or you dissemble that you know, into how many barbarian nations the Gospel has already come, in so short a time, that not even the enemies of Christ can now doubt that there will be, in a short time, what he answered to the Disciples asking about the end of the age: And this Gospel will be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will comeMatt 24:14. On this both clamor and contend, as much as you can—that even if the Gospel be preached among the Persians and Indians, where indeed it is now long preached, unless whoever hears this comes to Cartenna, or into the neighborhood of the people of Cartenna, he cannot at all be cleansed from his faults. So, if you lacked that utterance, you fear to be laughed at; and when you do not lack it, do you not wish to be wept over?

7. 23. But you seem to yourself to say something acute, when you interpret the name "Catholic" not from the communion of the whole world, but from the observation of all the divine precepts and all the Sacraments: as though we—even if perhaps it was called "Catholic" from this, that it truthfully holds the whole, certain particles of which truth are found even in various heresies—were relying on the testimony of this name to demonstrate the Church in all the nations, and not on the promises of God and so many and so manifest oracles of truth itself. But surely this is the whole of what you try to persuade us: that the Rogatists alone have remained, who are rightly to be called Catholics, from the observation of all the divine precepts and all the Sacraments; and that you alone are those in whom, when the Son of man comes, he will find faithSee Lk 18:8. Grant pardon, we do not believe it. For although you perhaps dare to say even this—that, since faith can be found in you, which the Lord said he would not find on earth, you are to be reckoned not on earth, but in heaven—the Apostle has nevertheless made us so cautious that he commanded that even an angel from heaven, evangelizing to us anything other than what we received, ought to be anathemaSee Gal 1:8. But how do we trust that we have received from the divine Letters a manifest Christ, if we have not thence received also a manifest Church? Let anyone weave whatever handles and hooks against the simplicity of the truth, let him pour over it whatever clouds of crafty falsehood; just as he will be anathema who announces that Christ neither suffered nor rose again on the third day—since in the evangelical truth we have received: It behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead on the third daySee Lk 24:46—so he will be anathema, whoever announces a Church apart from the communion of all nations; because by the same truth we have consequently received that repentance and the forgiveness of sins are to be preached in his name among all the nations, beginning from JerusalemSee Lk 24:47, and we ought to hold without shaking, whoever announces to you anything other than what you have received, let him be anathemaSee Gal 1:9.

Chapter 8

8. 24. But if we do not heed all the Donatists when they put themselves forward as the Church of Christ, because they bring forth no testimony for themselves from the divine books by which they teach it, how much less, I ask you, ought we to heed the Rogatists, who will not even try to interpret for themselves what is written: Where do you feed, where do you lie down at noonSong 1:7? For if in this passage of the Scriptures "noon" is to be understood as Africa, in the party of Donatus—because it is under a more fervent region of the sky—all the Maximianists will surpass you, whose schism flared up in Byzacium and in Tripolitania. But let the Arzuges contend with them, and claim that this rather pertains to themselves: yet Mauretania Caesariensis, nearer to the western than to the southern part—since it does not even wish to be called Africa—how will it boast of the noon, I do not say against the world, but against the very party of Donatus, whence the party of Rogatus, a most tiny fragment, was cut off from a larger fragment? But who would strive, most shamelessly, to interpret for himself something set in allegory, unless he had also manifest testimonies, by whose light the obscure things may be illumined?

8. 25. But what we are wont to say to all the Donatists, how much more strongly do we say to you: If some can—which cannot be done—have a just cause by which they separate their communion from the communion of the world, and call it the Church of Christ, because they have justly separated themselves from the communion of all nations; whence do you know, in the Christian society so far and wide diffused, whether perhaps before you separated, some had already separated themselves by a just cause in most distant lands, whence the fame of their justice could not reach you? How can the Church be in you, rather than in those who perhaps separated themselves earlier? So it comes about that, when you do not know this, you are uncertain about your own selves: which must necessarily befall all who use, for their own society, a testimony not divine, but their own. For neither can you say, If this had happened, it could not be hidden from us, since, of Africa itself, how many parties have already been made out of the party of Donatus, if you were asked, you would not say: especially since those who do this seem to themselves so much the more just, the fewer they have been; and surely they are so much the more hidden. And through this you are uncertain whether perhaps a few just men—and therefore little known—somewhere far against the south of Africa, before the party of Donatus separated its justice from the iniquity of the rest of men, may first have separated themselves by a most fair cause in the side of the north, and that it may rather be the Church of God, as a spiritual Zion, which preceded you all by a just separation, and much more presumptuously, I beg, interpret for itself what is written: Mount Zion, the sides of the north, the city of the great kingPs 48:2 (47:3), than the party of Donatus interprets for itself: Where do you feed, where do you lie down at noonSong 1:7.

8. 26. And yet you fear lest, when you are compelled to unity by the imperial laws, the name of God be longer blasphemed by the Jews and pagans: as though the Jews did not know how the first people of Israel even wished to destroy by war those two and a half tribes which had received lands beyond the Jordan, when they thought that they had separated themselves from the unity of their peopleSee Josh 22. But the pagans can rather blaspheme us about the laws which the Christian emperors passed against the worshipers of idols; and yet many of them, corrected, were turned to the living and true God, and are daily turned. But plainly both the Jews and the pagans, if they thought the Christians as few as you are few, who maintain that you alone are Christians, would not deign to blaspheme us, but would never cease to laugh. Do you not fear lest the Jews say to you: Where is what your Paul understands as your Church, where it is said: Rejoice, you barren one who do not bear, break forth and cry out, you who do not travail; for many are the sons of the deserted one, more than of her who has a husbandSee Isa 54:1; Gal 4:27, setting the multitude of Christians before the multitude of Jews, if your fewness is the Church of Christ? Will you say this to them: For this reason we are more just, because we are few; and do you not attend that they will answer: However many you say you are, yet you are not those of whom it was said: Many are the sons of the deserted one, if you have remained so scanty in number?

8. 27. Here you will set against me the example of that just man in the flood, who alone with his house was found worthy to be freedSee Gen 7. You see, then, how far you still are from justice? Plainly, until you remain among seven, of whom you are the eighth, we do not say that you are just; if, however, no one—as I was saying—seized this justice before the party of Donatus, and, moved by some just cause, separated himself with his own seven far elsewhere, and freed himself from the flood of this world. And since you do not know whether this was done, and it is thus unheard of by you, just as to many peoples of Christians established in distant lands the name of Donatus is unheard of, you are uncertain where the Church is. For it will be there, where perhaps was first done what you afterward did, if there could be any just cause by which you could separate yourselves from the communion of all the nations.

Chapter 9

9. 28. But we are certain, for this reason, that no one could justly separate himself from the communion of all the nations, because none of us seeks the Church in his own justice, but in the divine Scriptures, and beholds it rendered as it was promised. For it is that of which it is said: As the lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughtersSong 2:2: who cannot be called thorns except by the malignity of their morals, nor daughters except by the communion of the Sacraments. For it is that which says: From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, when my heart was in anguishPs 61:2 (60:3). Which in another psalm says: A weariness held me because of the sinners who forsake your law; and: I saw the senseless, and I wasted awaySee Ps 119:53 (118:53); Ps 119:158 (118:158). It is that which says to its spouse: Where do you feed, where do you lie down at noon; lest perhaps I become as one veiled over the flocks of your companionsSong 1:7. That is what is said elsewhere: Make known to me your right hand, and those instructed in heart in wisdomSee Ps 90:12 (89:12): in whom, shining with light and fervent with love, you rest as at noon; lest perhaps, as one veiled—that is, hidden and unknown—I rush, not into your flock, but into the flocks of your companions, that is, of the heretics. Whom it calls "companions," just as it calls those thorns "daughters," on account of the communion of the Sacraments. Of whom it is said elsewhere: But you, my like-minded one, and my guide, and my acquaintance, who together with me took sweet food; in the house of the Lord we walked with consent. Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into hellPs 55:13-15 (54:14-16), like Dathan and Abiron, the authors of an impious separationSee Num 16.

9. 29. It is that to which it is immediately answered: Unless you know yourself, O fair one among women, go out yourself in the footsteps of the flocks, and feed your kids in the tents of the shepherdsSong 1:8. O answer of the sweetest spouse! Unless you know yourself, he says: for surely a city set upon a mountain cannot be hiddenMatt 5:14; and therefore you are not veiled, so as to run into the flocks of my companions. For I am a mountain prepared on the summit of the mountains, to which all the nations will comeSee Isa 2:2: Unless, then, you know yourself, not in the words of slanderers, but in the testimonies of my Books. Unless you know yourself, for of you it was said: Stretch out your cords farther, and make firm your strong stakes: again and again extend to the right and to the left. For your offspring will inherit the nations, and you will inhabit the cities that were deserted. There is nothing for you to fear, for you will prevail; nor be ashamed that you were detestable. For you will forget the confusion forever; you will not be mindful of the disgrace of your widowhood. For I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name. And he who rescues you, he, the God of Israel, will be called the God of all the earthSee Isa 54:2-5. Unless you know yourself, O fair one among women; for of you it was said: The king has desired your beautySee Ps 45:11 (44:12); for of you it was said: In place of your fathers, sons have been born to you; you will set them princes over all the earthPs 45:16 (44:17). Unless, then, you know yourself, go out yourself; I do not cast you out, but go out yourself, so that it may be said of you: They went out from us; but they were not of us1 Jn 2:19. Go out yourself in the footsteps of the flocks, not in my footsteps, but in the footsteps of the flocks; and not of one flock, but of divided and straying flocks. And feed your kids: not as Peter, to whom it is said: Feed my sheepJn 21:17; but feed your kids in the tents of the shepherds, not in the tent of the shepherd, where there is one flock and one shepherdSee Jn 10:16. For she knows herself, lest this befall her which befell those who did not know themselves in her.

9. 30. It is that of whose fewness it is said, in comparison with the very many evil: Narrow and strait is the way that leads to life, and few are they who walk in itMatt 7:14. And again, it is that of whose multitude it is said: So shall your offspring be, as the stars of heaven, and as the sand of the seaSee Gen 22:17. For the same faithful, holy and good, are both, in comparison with the more numerous evil, few, and in themselves many: for many are the sons of the deserted one, more than of her who has a husbandSee Isa 54:1; and many will come from the east and west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heavenMatt 8:11; and because God provides for himself an abundant people, a zealot of good worksSee Titus 2:14; and many thousands which no one can number are seen in the Apocalypse, from every tribe and tongue, in white robes and with victorious palmsSee Rev 7:9. It is that which is sometimes obscured, and, as it were, beclouded by a multitude of scandals, when the sinners bend the bow, to shoot in the dark moon the upright of heartSee Ps 11:2 (10:3). But even then it stands out in its most firm members. And if any distribution is to be made in these divine words, perhaps it was not in vain said of the offspring of Abraham: As the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is on the shore of the seaSee Gen 22:17: so that in the stars of heaven the fewer, firmer, and clearer may be understood; but in the sand of the seashore, the great multitude of the weak and carnal, which sometimes, in the tranquility of the time, appears quiet and free, but sometimes is covered and troubled by the waves of tribulations and temptations.

9. 31. Such, then, was the time about which Hilary wrote, whence you thought you should lay a snare against so many divine testimonies, as though the Church had perished from the world. You can in this way say that there were not even so many Churches of Galatia then, when the Apostle said: O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that, when you began with the spirit, you are now made perfect by the fleshGal 3:1, 3? For thus you slander the learned man, who gravely rebuked the slow of heart and the timid, whom he was again bringing forth in travail, until Christ should be formed in themSee Gal 4:19. For who does not know that at that time, by obscure words, many of little sense were deluded, so that they thought what was believed by the Arians was what they too believed; but that others yielded through fear and feignedly consented, not walking rightly toward the truth of the GospelSee Gal 2:14—whom afterward, corrected, you would be unwilling to be pardoned, just as it is unknown? You plainly do not know the Letters of God. For read what Paul wrote of Peter, and what Cyprian too thought thence; and let not the gentleness of the Church displease you, which gathers the dispersed members of Christ, and does not disperse the gathered: although even those who were then most firm, and could understand the insidious words of the heretics—few indeed in comparison with the rest, but yet they too—some bravely went into exile for the faith, some lay hidden throughout the whole world. And so the Church which grows through all the nations was preserved in the Lord's grain, and will be preserved unto the end, until it holds absolutely all the nations, even the barbarian ones. For it is the Church in the good seed which the Son of man sowed, and which he foretold would grow among the weeds until the harvest. But the field is the world, the harvest is the end of the ageSee Matt 13:24-39.

9. 32. Hilary, then, was reproving, of the ten Asian provinces, either weeds, not wheat, or even the wheat itself which was imperiled by a certain failing—which he thought ought to be reproved so much the more usefully, the more vehemently. For the canonical Scriptures too have this manner of reproving, that it is said, as it were, to all, and the word reaches certain ones. For what the Apostle says to the Corinthians: How do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead1 Cor 15:12? surely manifests that not all are such, and yet testifies that even such were not outside, but among them: by whom, lest those be seduced who did not think so, he admonished a little after, saying: Do not be deceived: bad company corrupts good morals. Be sober, righteous, and do not sin: for some have an ignorance of God; I speak to your shame1 Cor 15:33-34. But what he says: For since there are among you envy and contention, are you not carnal, and walk according to manSee 1 Cor 3:3? he says, as it were, to all; and you see how grave is what he says. Accordingly, unless we read in the same Epistle: I give thanks to my God always for you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in all things you were enriched in him, in all speech and in all knowledge, as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you lack nothing in any grace1 Cor 1:4-7, we would think all the Corinthians carnal and animal, not perceiving the things which are of the Spirit of GodSee 1 Cor 2:14, contentious, envious, walking according to man. And so both the whole world is set in the evil one1 Jn 5:19, on account of the weeds which are throughout the whole world; and Christ is the propitiator of our sins, not only of ours, but also of the whole worldSee 1 Jn 2:2, on account of the wheat which is throughout the whole world.

9. 33. But the love of many grows coldSee Matt 24:12 on account of the abundance of scandals, the more and more, with the name of Christ glorified, there are gathered into the communion of his Sacraments even the malicious, and the altogether perseveringly perverse, but yet, like chaff, to be separated from the Lord's threshing-floor only at the final winnowingSee Matt 3:12. These do not extinguish the Lord's grain—few indeed in comparison with them, but many in themselves; they do not extinguish the elect of God, to be gathered at the end of the age, as the Gospel says, from the four winds, from the heights of the heavens unto their endsSee Matt 24:31. For theirs is the voice: Save me, O Lord, for the holy one has failed, for truths are diminished from among the sons of menPs 12:1 (11:2): of whom the Lord too says, amid the abundance of iniquity, he who perseveres to the end, this one will be savedSee Matt 24:13. Finally, that not one man, but several speak in the same psalm, the following words teach, where it is said: You, O Lord, will preserve us, and will keep us from this generation foreverPs 12:7 (11:8). For on account of this abundance of iniquity, which the Lord foretold would be, that too was set down: When the Son of man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earthLk 18:8? For the doubt of him who knows all things prefigured our doubt in him, when the Church—deceived often by many of whom it hoped much, because they were found other than they were believed—is so disturbed in its own members that it is unwilling easily to believe anything good of anyone. Yet that those, whose faith he is to find on the earth, grow throughout the whole field with the weeds, it is not lawful to doubt.

9. 34. It is, then, that Church which swims within the Lord's net with the bad fishSee Matt 13:47-48, from whom in heart it is always separated, and in morals departs, so that it may be presented to its husband glorious, having no spot or wrinkleSee Eph 5:27. But the bodily separation it awaits on the seashore, that is, at the end of the ageSee Matt 13:48-49, correcting those it can, tolerating those it cannot correct: yet, on account of the iniquity of those it does not correct, it does not desert the very unity of the good.

Chapter 10

10. 35. Do not, then, brother, against so many, so clear, so undoubted divine testimonies, wish to gather slanders from the writings of bishops—whether ours, like Hilary; or, before the party of Donatus separated, those of unity itself, like Cyprian and Agrippinus: first, because this kind of literature is to be distinguished from the authority of the canon. For they are not read in such a way that testimony is so brought forth from them that it is not permitted to think otherwise, wherever perhaps they thought otherwise than the truth demands. For we are in that number to whom it is not disdainful to accept what was said by the Apostle: And if you think anything otherwise, this too God will reveal to you. Nevertheless, in what we have attained, in it let us walkPhil 3:15-16; in that way, namely, which is ChristSee Jn 14:6: about which way the Psalm thus speaks: May God have mercy on us, and bless us; may he illuminate his countenance over us, that we may know your way on the earth, your salvation among all the nationsPs 67:1-2 (66:2-3).

10. 36. Next, if the authority of the holy bishop Cyprian and glorious martyr delights you—which indeed, as I said, we distinguish from the canonical authority—why does it not delight you in this, that he both held the unity of the world and of all the nations by loving it, and defended it by disputing; that he judged most arrogant and most proud those who had wished to separate themselves from it as though just, deriding them for taking upon themselves this, which the Lord did not concede even to the Apostles, that they should gather the weeds before the time, or that it had been granted to them, as it were, to bear the chaff and purge the threshing-floor, that they should try to separate the chaff from the wheatSee Matt 13:28-30; that he showed that no one can be stained by another's sins—which all the authors of impious sedition take to themselves as the sole cause of separation; that in that very point in which he thought otherwise, he decreed that colleagues thinking differently were neither to be judged, nor to be removed from the right of communion; that in that very letter to Jubaianus—which was first recited in the council whose authority you say you follow for rebaptizing—although he confesses that in the past those who had been baptized elsewhere were so admitted into the Church that they were not baptized again, whence he judges that they had been without Baptism; yet he places so much usefulness and wholesomeness in the peace of the Church that, on account of it, he does not believe them to be separated from the gifts of the Church?

10. 37. In which matter, as I know your wit, you most easily perceive your whole cause utterly overthrown and extinguished. For if, by sharing the Sacraments with sinners, as you think, the Church which had been in the world perished (for you separated for this reason), it had already perished wholly before, when, as Cyprian says, those were admitted into it without Baptism: and so not even Cyprian himself had a Church in which to be born; how much more your author and father Donatus, much later? But if at that time, when those were admitted into it without Baptism, there was nevertheless a Church which bore Cyprian, which bore Donatus too, it is manifest that the just are not contaminated by another's sins, when they share the Sacraments with them. And through this, the separation by which you went out from unity, by what excuse you can wash it away, you do not have; and there is fulfilled in you that oracle of holy Scripture: The evil son himself calls himself just, but he does not wash away his going-outSee Prov 30:12.

10. 38. But he is not so equaled to the merits of Cyprian, who, on account of equal Sacraments, does not dare to rebaptize even heretics themselves, just as he is not equaled to the merits of Peter, whoever does not compel the Gentiles to live like Jews. But that not only stumbling of Peter, but also correction, is contained in the canonical Scriptures: but that Cyprian thought otherwise about Baptism than the form and custom of the Church held, is found not in the canonical, but in his own and the council's letters; but that he corrected this opinion is not found—yet it is not incongruous to judge of such a man that he corrected it, and that perhaps it was suppressed by those who were too greatly delighted by this error, and were unwilling to lack so great a patronage, as it were. Although there are not lacking those who contend that Cyprian thought this not at all, but that it was fabricated under his name by presumptuous men and liars. For the integrity and knowledge of the letters of one bishop, however illustrious, could not be guarded as the canonical Scripture is guarded, by the letters of so many tongues, and the order and succession of ecclesiastical celebration—against which, nevertheless, there were not lacking those who fabricated many things under the names of the Apostles: in vain indeed, because that Scripture is so commended, so celebrated, so known; but what it could do against letters not founded on canonical authority, the attempt of impious audacity demonstrated even from this, that it did not omit to raise itself even against those which are strengthened by so great a mass of recognition.

10. 39. We, nevertheless, for two reasons, do not deny that Cyprian thought that: both because his style has a certain proper face by which it can be recognized; and because there our cause is shown the more invincible against you, and the presumption of your separation—namely, lest you be stained by another's sins—is overturned with all ease, when it appears in the Letters of Cyprian that the Sacraments were shared with sinners, when those were admitted into the Church who, according to your opinion, and as you wish, his opinion, did not have Baptism, and yet that the Church did not perish, but that the Lord's grain, scattered through the whole world, remained in the dignity of its kind. And through this, if, disturbed, you flee to the authority of Cyprian as to some harbor, you see what reef your error strikes there; but if you now do not dare even to flee thither, you are shipwrecked without any struggle.

10. 40. Further, Cyprian either did not think at all what you recite him to have thought; or he afterward corrected this by the rule of truth; or he covered this, as it were, a blemish of his most candid breast, with the abundance of love, while he both most copiously defended the unity of the Church growing throughout the whole world, and most perseveringly held the bond of peace: for it is written: Love covers a multitude of sins1 Pet 4:8. There was added to this also that, like a most fruitful shoot, if there had been anything in him to be amended, the Father purged it with the pruning-knife of passion: For the shoot, says the Lord, which in me bears fruit, my Father purges it, that it may bear more fruitSee Jn 15:2. Whence, unless because, clinging in the spreading of the vine, he did not desert the root of unity? For even if he handed over his body to be burned, but had not love, it would profit him nothingSee 1 Cor 13:3.

10. 41. Attend yet a little to the Letters of Cyprian, that you may observe how inexcusable he showed him to be, who wished to separate himself from the unity of the Church (which God promised and rendered in all the nations), as if for the cause of his own justice, and that you may better understand how true is the sentence recalled by me a little before: The evil son himself calls himself just, but he does not wash away his going-outSee Prov 30:12. He sets down, in a certain letter which he wrote to Antonianus, a certain matter quite necessary to that of which we now treat; but it is better that we insert his words. "Certain of our predecessors among the bishops," he says, "here in our province thought that peace should not be given to adulterers, and wholly closed the place of repentance against adulteries: yet they did not withdraw from the college of their fellow-bishops, nor break the unity of the Catholic Church by the hardness or obstinacy of their censure, so that, because among others peace was given to adulterers, he who did not give it should be separated from the Church. With the bond of concord remaining, and the undivided sacrament of the Catholic Church persevering, each bishop disposes and directs his own act, about to render an account of his purpose to the Lord." What do you say to these things, brother Vincent? Surely you behold that this so great man, a peaceful bishop, and a most brave martyr, busied himself with nothing more vehemently than that the bond of unity not be broken. You see him in travail, not only that the little ones conceived in Christ be born, but also that those already born be not shaken from the bosom of the mother and die.

10. 42. Further, attend to the very matter which he recalled against the impious separators. If those who gave peace to penitent adulterers communicated with adulterers, were not those who did not do this stained by the college of those? But if—as the truth holds, and as the Church deservedly holds—peace was rightly given to penitent adulterers, those who wholly closed the place of repentance against adulterers were surely acting impiously, who denied health to the members of Christ, and withdrew the keys of the Church from those knocking, and, by hard cruelty, contradicted the most merciful patience of God, who therefore permitted them to live, that, by repenting, they might be healed by the offered sacrifice of a contrite spirit and a troubled heartSee Ps 51:17 (50:19). And yet so monstrous an error and impiety of theirs did not stain those merciful and peaceful men, sharing the Christian Sacraments with them, and tolerating them within the nets of unity, until, brought to the shore, they should be separated; or, if it did stain them, then already the Church was destroyed by the communion of the evil, nor was there one to bear Cyprian himself. But if—which is certain—the Church remained, it is certain too that no one, in the unity of Christ, can be stained by another's sins, not consenting to the deeds of the evil, lest he be polluted by sharing those very sins, but, for the sake of the fellowship of the good, tolerating the evil like chaff until the final winnowing on the Lord's threshing-floor. Since these things are so, where is the presumption of your separation? Are you not evil sons; you call yourselves just, but do not wash away your going-out?

10. 43. Now if I should wish to recall those things too which Tyconius, a man of your communion, inserts in his writings—who wrote more against you, for the Catholic Church, separating himself in vain from the communion of the Africans, as though traditors, by which one thing alone Parmenian smothers him—what could you answer, except what the same Tyconius said about you, and which I recalled a little before: What we wish is holy? For that Tyconius writes, a man, as I said, of your communion, that a council was held at Carthage by two hundred and seventy bishops of yours: in which council, through seventy-five days, with all past things set aside, a sentence was refined and decreed, that to traditors guilty of an immense crime, if they were unwilling to be baptized, communion should be given as to those whole. He also says that Deuterius, a Macrian bishop of your communion, mingled with the Church a gathered people of traditors, and, according to the statutes of that council made by two hundred and seventy of your bishops, made unity with traditors, and that Donatus continually communed 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 communed with traditors without Baptism, up until the persecution made through Macarius.

10. 44. But you say: Who is this Tyconius to me? He is that Tyconius whom Parmenian restrains by writing back, and deters from writing such things: yet he does not refute those very things which he writes; but, as I said above, presses him with one thing, that, when he said such things about the Church diffused throughout the whole world, and that another's sins stained no one in its unity, he nevertheless removed himself from the contagion of the Africans, as though traditors, and was in the party of Donatus. But Parmenian could say that he had lied in all those things; but, as the same Tyconius recalls, many were still living through whom these things could be shown to be most certain and most open.

10. 45. But about these things I am silent: contend that Tyconius lied; I recall you to Cyprian, of whom you yourself made mention. Plainly, according to the writings of Cyprian, if anyone in unity is stained by another's sins, the Church already perished before Cyprian, nor was there whence Cyprian himself might arise. But if it is sacrilegious to think this, and it is certain that the Church remains, no one in its unity is stained by another's sins; in vain do you evil sons call yourselves just—you do not wash away your going-out, you do not purge it.

Chapter 11

11. 46. Why, then, you say, do you seek us? Why do you so receive those whom you call heretics? See how easily and briefly I answer. We seek you because you were lost, so that we may rejoice over you found, over whom, when lost, we grieved. But we say that you are heretics—yet before you are converted to Catholic peace, before you are stripped of the error in which you are ensnared. But when you pass over to us, you first surely leave what you were, lest you pass over to us as heretics. Baptize me, then, you say. I would, if you were not baptized, or if you were baptized with the baptism of Donatus or Rogatus, not of Christ. The Christian Sacraments do not make you a heretic, but the depraved dissension. The good which remained in you is not to be denied on account of the evil which proceeded from you, which you have to your own evil, if you do not have there whence is the good which you have. For from the Catholic Church are all the Lord's Sacraments, which you so have and give as they were had and given even before you went out thence. Yet you do not for this reason not have them, because you are not there whence are the things which you have. We do not change in you the things in which you are with us; for in many things you are with us; for of such it was said: Because they were with me in many thingsSee Ps 55:18 (54:19): but we correct those things in which you are not with us, and we wish you to receive here those which you do not have there where you are. But you are with us in Baptism, in the creed, in the other Lord's Sacraments. But in the spirit of unity and the bond of peace, in the Catholic Church itself, finally, you are not with us. If you receive these, then the things you have will not begin to be present, but will then profit. We do not, then, as you think, receive your people, but by receiving we make ours those who depart from you, that they may be received by us; and that they may begin to be ours, they first cease to be yours. Nor do we compel the workers of the error which we detest to be joined to us; but we wish those men to be joined to us for this reason, that they not be what we detest.

11. 47. But, you say, the apostle Paul baptized after John. Surely not after a heretic? Or if perhaps you dare to call that friend of the bridegroom a heretic, and to say that he was not in the unity of the Church, I want you to write this too. But if this is most insane either to think or to say, it is now for your prudence to consider why the apostle Paul baptized after John. For if after an equal, you all ought to baptize after one another. If after a greater, you too ought to baptize after Rogatus. If after a lesser, Rogatus ought to have baptized after you, when as a priest you had baptized. But if the baptism which is now given is therefore equally valid in those to whom it is given, although those through whom it is given are of unequal merit, because it is Christ's, not theirs by whom it is ministered, I think you now understand that Paul gave the baptism of Christ to certain men for this reason, that they had been baptized with the baptism of John, not of Christ; for it was called "the baptism of John," as the divine Scripture testifies in many places—as the Lord himself says: The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or from menMatt 21:25? But the baptism which Peter gave was not Peter's, but Christ's; and which Paul gave was not Paul's, but Christ's; and which those gave who, in the time of the Apostles, announced Christ not chastely, but through envySee Phil 1:15, was not theirs, but Christ's; and which those gave who, in the time of Cyprian, seized estates by insidious frauds, and increased their interest by multiplying usuries, was not theirs, but Christ's. And because it was Christ's, therefore, although it was not given through equals, yet it equally profited those to whom it was given. For if anyone is so much the better baptized, the better the one by whom he was baptized, the Apostle does not rightly give thanks that he baptized none of the Corinthians except Crispus and Gaius and the house of StephanasSee 1 Cor 1:14-16: for they would be so much the better baptized, the better Paul was, if they were baptized by him. Finally, when he says: I planted, Apollos watered1 Cor 3:6, he seems to signify that he evangelized, the other baptized. Was Apollos better than John? Why, then, did he who had baptized after John not baptize after this one, except because this baptism, given through anyone whatever, was Christ's; but that one, given through anyone whatever, although it prepared the way for Christ, yet was John's?

11. 48. It seems to be said invidiously, There was baptizing after John, and there is no baptizing after heretics: but this too can be said invidiously, There was baptizing after John, and there is no baptizing after drunkards. For I better recall this vice, which not even those in whom it reigns can hide; and how many there are everywhere, who, even blind, does not know? And yet among the works of the flesh, of which those who do them will not possess the kingdom of God, the Apostle sets even this, where he also enumerates heresies: But manifest, he says, are the works of the flesh, which are fornications, uncleannesses, luxury, the slavery of idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkennesses, carousings, and things like these, which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of GodGal 5:19-21. By this reasoning, then, although there was baptizing after John, there is no baptizing after a heretic, by which reasoning, although there was baptizing after John, there is no baptizing after a drunkard; since both heresies and drunkennesses are among those works, the doers of which works will not possess the kingdom of God. Does it not seem to you, as it were intolerably unworthy, that, although there was baptizing after him who, drinking wine not soberly—nay, not drinking wine at all—prepared the way for the kingdom of God, there is no baptizing after a drunkard, who will not possess the kingdom of God? What is answered here, except that that was the baptism of John, after which the Apostle baptized with the baptism of Christ; but this is the baptism of Christ, with which the drunkard baptized? Between John and a drunkard there is much difference, by contrast: between the baptism of Christ and the baptism of John there is much difference, not by contrast, but yet much. Between the Apostle and a drunkard there is much difference: between the baptism of Christ which the Apostle gave, and the baptism of Christ which a drunkard gave, there is no difference. So between John and a heretic, by contrast, there is much difference; and between the baptism of John, and the baptism of Christ which a heretic gives, there is much difference, not by contrast. But between the baptism of Christ which the Apostle gave, and the baptism of Christ which a heretic gives, there is no difference. For the form of the Sacraments is recognized as equal, even when there is a great difference in the merits of men.

11. 49. But grant pardon, I erred, when I wished to convince you by a baptizing drunkard; it had slipped my mind that I have to do with a Rogatist, not with any Donatist whatever. For you can perhaps, among your so few colleagues, and in all your clergy, find no drunkard. For you are those who hold the Catholic faith not from the communion of the whole world, but from the observation of all the divine precepts and all the Sacraments: in whom alone he will find it, when the Son of man comes, when he will not find faith on the earth; because you are neither the earth, nor on the earth, but, heavenly ones, you dwell in heaven! And do you not fear, nor attend, that God resists the proud, but to the humble gives graceJas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5? Nor does that very passage of the Gospel prick you, where the Lord says: When the Son of man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earthLk 18:8? For immediately, as if foreknowing that some would proudly arrogate this faith to themselves, he said to certain men, who seemed to themselves just and despised the rest, this likeness: Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a publicanLk 18:10, and the rest. Now answer yourself what follows. Yet inspect more diligently your own few, whether no drunkard baptizes there. For this plague so widely lays waste souls, and dominates with so great liberty, that I greatly wonder if it has not penetrated even your little flock; although, before the very coming of the Son of man, the one good shepherd, you already boast that you have separated the sheep from the kids.

Chapter 12

12. 50. Hear, indeed, through me the voice of the Lord's grain, laboring among the chaff on the Lord's threshing-floor until the final winnowing—namely, throughout the whole world, because God called the earth from the rising of the sun to its settingSee Ps 50:1 (49:1), where even children praise the LordSee Ps 113:1-3 (112:1-3): Whoever of you persecutes us on the occasion of this imperial law, not from the love of correcting, but from the hatred of enmity, displeases us. And although any earthly thing whatever cannot rightly be possessed by anyone except either by divine right, by which all things are the just men's, or by human right, which is in the power of the kings of the earth—and therefore you falsely call those things yours which you neither possess as just men, and which you were ordered to lose according to the laws of the earthly kings, and you say in vain, We labored to gather them, when you read it written: The just will eat the labors of the impiousSee Prov 13:22—yet whoever, on the occasion of this law which the kings of the earth, serving Christ, promulgated for the amending of your impiety, greedily covets your own goods, displeases us. Whoever, finally, holds the very goods of the poor, or the basilicas of the congregations which you held under the name of the Church—which are absolutely owed only to that Church which is the true Church of Christ—not by justice, but by avarice, displeases us. Whoever receives one cast out by you for some disgrace or crime, as those are received who, apart from the error by which you are separated from us, lived without crime among you, displeases us. But you do not easily show these things; and if you should show them, we tolerate some whom we cannot correct or punish: nor do we, on account of the chaff, leave the Lord's threshing-floor, nor, on account of the bad fish, break the Lord's nets, nor, on account of the kids to be set apart at the end, desert the Lord's flock, nor, on account of the vessels made for dishonor, migrate from the Lord's house.

Chapter 13

13. 51. But you, brother, as it seems to me, if you do not attend to the vain glory of men, and despise the reproach of the senseless, who will say, Why do you now destroy what you formerly built—you will without doubt pass over to the Church which I understand you to perceive to be true: nor do I seek far for testimonies of this opinion of yours. For you, at the beginning of that same letter of yours, to which I now answer, set down these words: "Since I know very well," you say, "that you have until now been set far from the Christian faith, and, once given to the studies of letters, were a cultivator of quiet and honesty; and since afterward, converted to the Christian faith, as I learned from the report of many, you gave attention to legal disputations." Certainly, if you sent me that letter, these are your words. Since, then, you confess that I was converted to the Christian faith; since I was converted neither to the Donatists nor to the Rogatists, you confirm without any doubt that, apart from the Rogatists and apart from the Donatists, there is the Christian faith. This faith, then, as we say, is spread among all the nations, which are blessed in the offspring of Abraham according to the testimony of GodSee Gen 22:18. Why, then, do you still doubt to hold what you perceive, except because you are confounded that what you now perceive you either at some time did not perceive, or defended something else; and while you blush to correct error, you do not blush to remain in error, which surely was rather to be blushed at?

13. 52. This is that which the Scripture did not keep silent: There is a confusion that brings sin, and there is a confusion that brings grace and glorySee Sir 4:21. Confusion brings sin, when anyone blushes to change a depraved opinion, lest he be either thought inconstant, or held, by his own judgment, to have long erred: thus they go down alive into hellSee Ps 55:15 (54:16), that is, feeling their own perdition; whom Dathan and Abiron and Korah, swallowed by the gaping of the earthSee Num 16:31-33, prefigured so long before as those to come. But confusion brings grace and glory, when anyone blushes at his own iniquity, and, by repenting, is changed for the better; which it irks you to do, overcome by that pernicious confusion; lest there be cast at you by men who do not know what they say that apostolic sentence: For if I again build the same things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressorGal 2:18. Which, if it could be said even against those who, corrected, preach the truth which, perverse, they were attacking, it would be said first against Paul himself, in whom the Churches of Christ magnified God, hearing that he evangelized the faith which he once laid wasteSee Gal 1:23-24.

13. 53. Nor think that anyone can pass over from error to truth, or from any sin whatever, whether great or small, to correction, without repentance. But it is a too shameless error to wish hence to slander the Church—which by so many divine testimonies is established to be the Church of Christ—because it treats otherwise those who desert it, if they correct this very thing by repenting, and otherwise those who were not yet in it, and then first receive its peace; humbling the former more, receiving the latter more gently, loving both, serving both, to be healed, with maternal love. You have a letter perhaps longer than you would wish. But it would be much briefer, if I considered only you in answering: but now, even if it profit you nothing, I do not think it will profit nothing to those who shall have cared to read it with the fear of God, and without respect of persons. Amen.