Contra Cresconium

Book 1. When I was unaware whether my writings could reach you, Cresconius, I nevertheless did not despair that they would, because your writings, although long after you wrote them, were still able to reach me at some point—those which you thought you should write against what I had set forth, when Petilianus of Cirta, your bishop, was attempting to establish the repetition of baptism and was not pressing our communion with the weight of evidence but was accusing it with the lightness of curses, and I responded as briefly as I could in part. For not his entire letter had then come into my hands, but only a small earlier part. Why this happened, what need is there to inquire, since when the whole later reached us, I did not hesitate to respond to the whole? Therefore, if I did not reply to these letters of yours which you sent to me, you might perhaps consider it insulting; but if I do reply, I again fear you might consider it contentious. But if you, upon finding my letters not addressed to you, merely because they seemed to refute a bishop of the Donatist party or the Donatist party itself, thought it your duty, since you were conscious of some ability in yourself, to undertake and express contradiction, because you are of that communion although bound to no clerical office by any function, how much less was it permitted to me, by the burden of my office, to remain silent either against Petilianus or against you yourself, when he was attacking the church for which I serve, and you, in a similar work, were even addressing me by name, preparing, composing, and writing a discourse!

In the first parts of which you labored to make eloquence appear suspect to men. For, as if praising my manner of speaking and then again as if fearing that by this manner I might deceive you or anyone by false persuasion, you proceeded to an accusation of eloquence itself, also adducing a testimony against it from the holy scriptures, where you think it is said: "from much eloquence you will not escape sin," although it is not said "from much eloquence" but "from much talkativeness." But talkativeness is excessive speech, a vice contracted from a love of speaking. For the most part, however, those who love to speak also do not know what they are saying or how they are saying it, whether with regard to the soundness of their opinions or to the sound and order of words themselves, which is learned through the art of grammar. Eloquence, on the other hand, is the faculty of speaking that fittingly explains what we feel, and it is to be used when we feel rightly. In this way, heretics have not used it. For if they had felt rightly, not only would there be nothing evil, but there would even be something good that they could have explained eloquently. In vain, therefore, have you accused eloquence by the mention of these examples. For neither is a soldier not to be armed for his country because some have taken up arms against their country, nor are good and learned doctors not to use medicinal instruments for health because the unlearned and most wicked abuse them for destruction.

For who does not know that, just as medicine is useful or useless depending on whether the things sought are useful or useless, so eloquence—that is, skill and ability in speaking—is useful or useless depending on whether the things said are useful or useless? I do not think you are ignorant of this either. But, I believe, when you saw that I was considered eloquent by some, in order to deter the attention of a reader or hearer from me, you thought that eloquence should be accused, so that anyone terrified by you would no longer attend to what I was saying, but would judge that I, as an eloquent speaker, was by that very fact to be shunned and fled. See, therefore, whether what you have done is not of that evil art which, as you recalled concerning Plato, some have rightly judged should be expelled from the city and from the society of the human race. This is not eloquence—which I wish had come to me for explaining what I feel as I desire!—but a certain sophistic and malicious profession, which sets itself the goal of speaking for all and against all things, not from conviction, but from contentiousness or advantage. Concerning this, sacred Scripture says: "He who speaks sophistically is hateful." From this, it seems to me, the Apostle Paul forbids the youth Timothy, where he says: "Do not contend with words; for it is useful for nothing except the subversion of the hearers." And lest anyone think he forbade him the faculty of speaking correctly, he immediately added: "Strive to show yourself a workman approved by God, not blushing, handling the word of truth rightly.

Doubtless, then, this feeling has stolen into your mind because of a zeal for contradiction—not because you actually think this way, but because you wished to divert us from the attention of one willing to learn. You have called us eloquent and have censured eloquence. For how am I to believe that you did this sincerely, when I know how you are accustomed to praise the eloquence of Donatus, Parmenianus, and others of your party? What could be more useful than such eloquence, if it flowed in so broad a stream for the sake of Christ’s peace, for unity, truth, and charity? But why speak of others? In yourself, have you not revealed that you were a censurer of eloquence not from conviction, but from contentiousness, when you attempted both to persuade by eloquence in everything else you wrote, and to accuse eloquence itself eloquently? For when you say that you are both unequal to us in the art of speaking and not thoroughly instructed in the examples of Christian law—to what, I ask, does this pertain? Surely I did not compel you to write in reply to my works, and is this not the voice of one refusing and excusing himself? If, therefore, you are not thoroughly instructed, why do you not rather keep silent, or speak in such a way that you show you desire to be instructed?

You say that I am insistent and always provocative, so that your people might debate with me for the purpose of discerning the question of truth; but that your people act more prudently and patiently, who in the church teach the people only what is commanded in the law and do not care to answer us, knowing that if divine law and so many proofs of legal scriptures cannot persuade us of what is better and truer, human authority can never recall us, after our errors have been discussed, to the rule of truth. What, then, did you think, that you speak against us while they are silent? For if they do well, why do you not imitate them? If badly, why do you praise them? You say that I believe, with intolerable arrogance, that I alone can finish what has seemed to others as if inexplicable and has therefore been left to the judgment of God, although a little earlier you said that I want to finish this after so many years, after so many judges and arbiters, what could not be finished before emperors with so many learned disputants from bishops of both sides. Surely I alone am busy with this? Surely I alone desire that this question be finished by debate? For I think that if you had wished to blame only our people for having attempted it, you would not also admit that your people were engaged in that attempt. Since, therefore, you can no longer reproach that attempt, that will and insistence, at least on account of your people, I do not wish to be a stranger to such a good work. What do you accuse? What do you reproach? Or do you envy? This is not rashly to be believed of you.

It remains, therefore, that you blame in me, out of a zeal for contention, what you will be compelled to praise in your own people. But indeed, that what has not been ended among so many and such great men should be presumed capable of being ended by one man alone is intolerable arrogance. Do not, I beg you, think that this is to be attributed to me alone; we are very many who insist that this be ended—or rather, that it be made known that it is already ended. For those who said it was not ended are the ones who refused to consent to that ending and concealed it from you, so that even you, deceived by their authority, believe it is not ended. Our people, however, from the moment it was ended, have at no time ceased to make that ending known, as far as they could act publicly and privately, lest anyone persisting in a most pernicious error should complain at the final judgment about the negligence of the ministers of God concerning him. We do not, therefore, wish to retract from the beginning a case long since ended, but to demonstrate how it was ended, especially for those who do not know this, so that when the defenders are convicted of error, either they themselves, corrected, may be freed, or at least, with them refuted and remaining in open obstinacy, those who are more desirous of truth than of contention may see what they should follow.

This does not happen without fruit, as you suppose. For if you could see how far and wide that error had spread throughout Africa, and how few parts of it remain that have not yet been corrected and passed over into Catholic peace, you would in no way consider the labor of the assertors of Christian peace and unity fruitless and vain, even if, wherever the diligence of this medicine has been applied without effect, it suffices for rendering an account to God that it did not cease to be applied. For just as a wicked tempter to sin, even if he does not persuade, justly incurs the punishment of a deceiver, so a faithful preacher of righteousness, even if he is rejected by men, far be it that he should be defrauded before God of the reward of his office. For a certain thing is applied to an uncertain one; by "uncertain" I mean not the reward of the doer, but the disposition of the hearer. For it is uncertain to us whether the one to whom the truth is preached will assent, but it is certain that the truth ought to be preached even to such persons, and it is certain that a worthy recompense awaits those who preach it faithfully, whether they are received or spurned, or even suffer any temporal adversities on that account. The Lord says in the Gospel: "When you have entered, say: Peace to this house. If those who are there are worthy, your peace will rest upon them; if not, it will return to you." Did he make it certain that those to whom they preached peace would receive it? Yet he made them certain to preach it without hesitation.

The Apostle Paul also says: "The servant of the Lord," he says, "ought not to quarrel, but to be gentle to all, teachable, patient, correcting those who think differently with modesty, lest God should give them repentance to know the truth and they should come to their senses from the snares of the devil, having been taken captive by him into his own will." Observe how he who did not wish him to quarrel nevertheless wished him to correct those who think differently with modesty, lest the servant of the Lord should take the prohibition of petulance as an occasion for laziness. But because many, either favoring their own sins or not finding what to answer and yet not acquiescing to the truth, bear heavily and with annoyance even that correction which is made with modesty, they call those who deal with them diligently and do not dissemble in refuting their error quarrelsome and contentious. For falsehood, which fears being exposed and refuted, accuses the diligence of truth by the name of those vices which truth condemns. Yet should one therefore desist from this persistence? See how the same apostle binds Timothy, lest because of men to whom the preaching of truth is unpleasant, any sluggishness in preaching should steal upon him: "I testify," he says, "before God and Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and before his manifestation and his kingdom: preach the word, insist opportunely and inopportunely, argue, exhort, rebuke with all long-suffering and teaching.

Who, hearing these things, if he serves God faithfully, if he is not a deceitful worker, would desist from this diligence and persistence, who would dare to be idle under such a testimony? Let not your eloquence, therefore, clamor against us in this matter; we proclaim entirely, with the help of our Lord God, the utility, piety, and sanctity of Christian unity; we proclaim it to the willing in a timely manner, to the unwilling in an untimely manner, and with as much strength as we have, we show that this question between us and the Donatist party was long ago settled, both for those on whose behalf and against whom we are able. Let those who, either by stubborn cunning offer patronage to falsehood, or by envious boastfulness supply a herald’s service to truth, recognize in themselves the name and crime of contentious animosity. The Apostle Paul expressed both of these kinds of contentious persons: the first in Alexander, of whom he says: "Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm; the Lord will repay him according to his works. Avoid him, for he greatly opposed our words"; the other, however, in those of whom he says: "Some indeed, from envy and contention, announce Christ, not chastely, thinking that tribulation is stirred up by my chains." For these undoubtedly announced the same thing that Paul did, yet not with that spirit, not with that will, not from charity, but from envy, as he said, and from contention, wishing in proud feeling to excel in that same announcement and to be preferred to the Apostle Paul.

He, not taking that amiss, but rather rejoicing that he saw them proclaiming what he desired to become more widely known, said: "What of it? Provided that Christ is announced in every way, whether by chance or by truth." For it was not by the truth of their own heart, since it was not from sincere intention but from rivalrous contention, that they nevertheless announced the truth, that is, Christ. You, therefore, since you cannot be the judge of the inner heart of us, take heed only as to whether we resist the truth or desire to refute those who resist the truth. For without doubt, if we persuade the truth and refute error, even if we do this not from the truth of our own intention but seeking the profit of this world and human glory, lovers of the truth ought to rejoice, because even on this occasion the truth is announced, as the apostle who says: "And in this I will rejoice." But if—which is most known to God, and which could have been known even to you yourself, as far as human capacity allows, if you were to live with us—we are engaged in the labor of this dispensation out of the pious concern of charity, I think our ministry is by no means justly reproached, if we contend with a fervent spirit for the truth against any adversaries of the truth whatsoever.

For if anyone who has taken care to initiate or return a verbal altercation with another is considered by you to be contentious or hot-tempered and a lover of quarrels, see what you think about the Lord Jesus Christ himself and his servants the prophets and apostles. For did not the Lord himself, the Son of God, hold discourse about the truth not only with his disciples or the crowds who believed in him, but also with enemies who tempted, disparaged, questioned, resisted, and cursed him? Was he not even willing to dispute with a single woman about a question of prayer against the opinion or heresy of the Samaritans? But, you say, he foresaw that she would believe. What of it? How many times did he speak against the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees—not only those who would by no means believe, but also those who would most vehemently contradict and persecute him—right in their faces! Did he not, of his own accord, ask them what he wished, when he wished, in order to convict them by their own response? Did he not answer without any ambiguity when they, questioning deceitfully in order to tempt him, fell silent when refuted? And when he did this, none of them is recorded to have been converted to follow him. And surely he knew, because he was prescient, that nothing he said to them, against them, or in opposition to them would benefit their salvation.

But perhaps he has strengthened us by his own example, since we are unable to foresee the future faith or faithlessness of men, lest, if we have at any time spoken to those who are excessively harsh and excessively perverse without the fruit of their salvation, we should grow weary and desist from the persistence of preaching, having been grieved to labor in vain. What of the fact that even the devil himself, whom not only God but even men cannot doubt will in no way be converted to righteousness, was nevertheless ensnaringly tempted by the Son of God and, as he set snares of questions from the holy Scriptures, Christ refuted him by responding from the holy Scriptures, and did not deem it unworthy to hold a colloquy with Satan concerning the divine utterances—what, after all, did he foresee except that, although it profited the Jews and the devil nothing, it would profit the Gentiles who were to believe? We also read that prophets were sent to men so disobedient that God himself, who sent the prophets, foretold concerning those to whom he sent them that they would not obey their words. I pass over the fact that, by the prophetic spirit by which they discerned the future, they could certainly have known this as well—that their words were going to be despised by those to whom, nevertheless, they did not remain silent with vehement persistence. The Lord says most plainly to the prophet Ezekiel: "Go and enter the house of Israel and speak my words to them," for you are not sent to a people of an unknown language, to the house of Israel, nor to many peoples speaking diverse or difficult languages whose words you cannot hear.

And if I had sent you to such people, perhaps they would have listened to you; but the house of Israel will not listen to you, because they are unwilling to listen to me. For the whole house of Israel has a restless and hard heart. But I have set your face strong against their face, and I will strengthen your struggle against their struggle. Behold, a servant of God is sent and ordered to speak to those who were not going to listen to him, with the very lord who sent him and ordered him to speak foretelling that they would not listen. For what reason, to what good, with what profit or effect is he sent to the struggle of preaching the truth against those who will struggle and will not obey? Will anyone dare to say that the holy prophets of God have fallen into the reproach you have cast at me, when you said: if you know that the matter in question cannot be finished by you, why do you take up useless labor, why do you expend empty effort, why do you contend superfluously and without fruit? Or is it not a great error to wish for what you cannot accomplish, when even the law warns, saying: do not seek things higher than yourself and do not search into things stronger than yourself, and again: a passionate man stirs up quarrels and an angry man aggravates sin? Certainly you would not say this to Ezekiel, who is sent by the word of God to bring struggle to men who will not obey, but will oppose, will resist, will speak against, will act against. For if you did say it, he might perhaps answer you with what the apostles answered to the same Jews: whom ought one to obey? God or men? This I myself would have answered you.

If you demand that I show where God has also commanded me to do what you forbid, remember that the apostolic letters were written not only for those who heard them at the time they were written, but also for us—for they are not recited in church for any other reason. Also consider what the apostle says: "Or do you wish to receive proof of the Christ who speaks in me?" and recall not what Paul said, but what Christ spoke through him, which I mentioned a little earlier: "Preach the word, insist opportunely and inopportunely," etc. Also consider how, when he explained to Titus what a bishop ought to be like, he said that he must also be persistent according to the teaching of the faithful word: "so that he may be able," he says, "both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. For there are many who are not submissive, vain talkers and seducers of the mind, especially those from the circumcision, who must be refuted." He says, therefore, not only those from the circumcision, but especially such people; yet he established by undoubted command that vain talkers and seducers of the mind must be refuted and confuted by the bishop in sound doctrine. Hence I recognize that this also has been commanded to me; I do this to the best of my ability; I persist in this work, as much as the one who commanded it helps, with perseverance. Why do you obstruct, why do you clamor, why do you forbid, why do you reproach? Ought you to be obeyed, or God?

Unless perhaps you think that the proofs I have brought from the holy scriptures are to be received in such a way that, as you praised your own people for doing, only those things which are commanded in the law are taught to the people in the church. For there, perhaps, you think that those who hold different opinions are to be rebuked and refuted, so that each teacher corrects the error of his own people only by debating and preaching, but if he undertakes to do anything of the sort with those who are outside, then he is to be regarded as passionate, contentious, or quarrelsome, because, you say, even Ezekiel himself and the other prophets were sent with the word of God to their own people, that is, Israelites to Israelites. To these points I also reply. I have already mentioned above that the Lord Jesus himself, who offered himself as an example for the disciples to imitate, did not disdain to assert the truth and to answer from the law not only to Jews, but also to Pharisees and Sadducees and Samaritans, and even to the devil himself, the prince of all deceit and error. But lest you think that this was permissible for the Lord but not for his servants, hear what is read in the Acts of the Apostles: "But a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, came to Ephesus, powerful in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and, fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught most truly what pertains to Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John; and he also began to act confidently in the synagogue.

When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him in and explained the way of the Lord to him more accurately. And when he wished to go to Achaia, the brethren, having exhorted him, wrote to the disciples to receive him. When he came, he greatly helped those who had believed there; for he vehemently refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. What do you say about this man, what do you think? Would you not perhaps accuse him of being contentious and quarrelsome, a stirrer-up and promoter of brawls, were you not pressed by such great authority of the holy book? Or because he was a Jew who had believed in Christ, was he therefore bound to refute publicly the Jews who resisted the Christian faith and denied that Jesus is the Christ, while we, because we were never of the Donatist party, are therefore not bound to refute the Donatist party resisting Christian unity? Was the apostle Paul ever a worshiper of idols, or was he ever in the heresy of the Epicureans or the Stoics, with whom, nevertheless, he was neither ashamed nor reluctant to discourse concerning the question of the living and true God? Hear what is written on this matter in the same book: "But Paul, while he waited for them at Athens, was stirred in his spirit within himself, seeing the city given over to idols. So he disputed with the Jews in the synagogue, and with the Gentiles and the worshippers, and in the marketplace every day with those who were present.

But some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him, and some were saying: "What does this sower of words mean to say here?" Others, however: "He seems to be an announcer of foreign demons." Behold the apostle Paul with the Stoics and Epicureans. He did not refuse to converse with diverse heresies, not only different from him but also opposed to each other, disputing with them not only outside the Church but also outside the synagogue, nor did he cease from preaching Christian truth, terrified by their insults or as if avoiding quarrels and contentions. For see what sacred scripture subsequently testifies: "And having seized him," it says, "they led him to the Areopagus, saying: 'Can we know what these things are that are said by you? For you bring some unfamiliar things to our ears; therefore we wish to know what these things mean.' For the Athenians and the foreign guests had no other leisure than to say or hear something new. But Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said: 'Men of Athens, I see that you are superstitious in all things. For walking about and examining your statues, I also found an altar on which was written: To an Unknown God. Whom, therefore, you worship in ignorance, this one I announce to you,' and other things which it would be long to recount all.

Yet this suffices for the question we are now discussing. Consider, I beg you, a Hebrew from among the Hebrews, an apostle of Christ, standing and speaking not in a synagogue of the Jews nor in a church of Christians, but in the Areopagus of the Athenians—that is, of the most contentious and impious Greeks. For there arose the most loquacious philosophical sects. Some of these, like the Stoics who have been mentioned here, contend more over the opposition of words than of things, which the apostle forbade Timothy, saying it is useful for nothing except the subversion of the hearers. For concerning these, as you know, Cicero says: "A controversy of words has long tormented the Greeklings, more desirous of contention than of truth." Yet our Paul undertook to address and correct these men, nor was he terrified by the name of the place itself, which resounds from Mars, whom they call the god of wars. There he spoke intrepidly to those who would believe in peace; there, girded with spiritual arms, he attacked pernicious errors, and feared neither the contentious as if he were most gentle, nor the dialecticians as if he were most simple.

You know indeed how greatly dialectic flourished among the Stoics, although even the Epicureans, whom ignorance of the liberal arts not only did not shame but even delighted, boasted that they rather both held and taught certain rules of disputation by which anyone using them would least be deceived. For what else is dialectic than skill in disputation? I thought this needed to be opened up because you also wished to cast it up against me, as if it were not compatible with Christian truth, and therefore your teachers judged that I, as a dialectical man, should deservedly be fled and avoided rather than refuted and convicted. And since they did not persuade you of this—for you have not been reluctant to write and dispute against us—you nevertheless have accused me of dialectic. By this you would deceive the unlearned and praise those who were unwilling to join battle with me in disputation. But you, evidently, do not use dialectic when you write against us. Why then have you thrown yourself into such great danger of disputation, when you do not know how to dispute? Or if you do know, why do you, a dialectician, accuse dialectic, being either so rash or so ungrateful that you either do not restrain the inexperience by which you are overcome, or accuse the learning by which you are aided? I examine your speech, this very one which you have written to me; I see that you set forth some things copiously and ornately, that is, eloquently, and some things you discuss subtly and acutely, that is, dialectically. And yet you reproach eloquence and dialectic.

If they are harmful, why do you do them? If they are not, why do you accuse? But let us not be tormented even by a verbal controversy. When the thing itself is understood, we need labor less over what men have chosen to call it. Accordingly, if that man is to be called eloquent who not only speaks copiously and ornately but also truthfully, and likewise if that man is to be called a dialectician who not only argues subtly but also truthfully, then you are neither eloquent nor a dialectician—not because your diction is meager and unadorned, nor because your argument is dull and coarse, but because you abuse eloquence and skill themselves in defense of falsehood. If, however, eloquence or dialectic can rightly be so named not only when employed in truth but also when a bad cause is handled eloquently or vigorously, then you are both eloquent and a dialectician, because you both speak vain things fluently and argue false things acutely. But I shall see about you. The Stoics were certainly the greatest dialecticians. Why did the apostle Paul, lest they compare with him, not most cautiously avoid them, and do you praise your bishops because they are unwilling to have discourse with us as with dialecticians? Or if Paul was a dialectician and therefore did not fear to compare himself with the Stoics, because he not only argued acutely, as they did, but also truthfully, which they did not, then beware of ever charging anyone with dialectic as a crime, since you confess that the apostles used it. For when you charge me with this, I do not think you are deceived by ignorance, but that you deceive by cunning.

The name is Greek, dialectic, which, if usage permitted, might perhaps be called in Latin "disputatoria," just as the most learned men of both languages have called grammar "litteratura" in Latin. For just as grammar is named from letters, since in Greek letters are called "grammata," so dialectic took its name from disputation, since disputation is called "dialoge" or "dialexis" in Greek. And just as a grammarian was called in old Latin a "litterator," so one who is called "dialecticus" in Greek is much more commonly and tolerably called "disputator" in Latin. I think you will not deny that the apostle is a disputator, even if you deny that he is a dialecticus. Therefore, to disapprove in a Greek word what you are forced to approve in a Latin one—what else is that than to set a trap for the unlearned and to do injury to the learned? Or if you deny that the apostle is even a disputator, who so constantly and so excellently disputed, you know neither Greek nor Latin, or, what is more credible, you deceive those who do not know Greek with the Greek word and those who do not know Latin with the Latin. For what is it—I will not say more ignorant, for you are not ignorant of these things—but altogether more deceitful than, when you hear and read so many and such varied discourses of the apostle asserting truth and convicting falsehood, to deny that he is accustomed to dispute, since this cannot happen except by disputing?

If you admit that this was done by him, because you are compelled to admit it by his writings, yet you contend that these should be called not disputations but sermons or letters, why should I argue with you any longer in this manner, so that those who are ignorant of these matters may approve whomever of ours they wish and disapprove whomever they wish? From the divine Scriptures themselves, to which you must yield, I teach this; I set forth the very words themselves, the very terms for things. You have in this same testimony, which I recalled from the Acts of the Apostles, it is written thus about Paul himself: "He disputed, therefore, with the Jews in the synagogue and with the Gentiles and worshippers in the forum"; you have in another place, although he was dealing with the Christian people gathered together as brothers in the church, it is written thus: "But a certain young man named Eutychus, sitting in the window, overcome by heavy sleep, while Paul was disputing"; you have also in the Book of Psalms: "Let my disputation be sweet to him"; and in the prophet Isaiah: "Come, let us dispute, says the Lord," and in many other places of the divine Scriptures read where you find this word and inspect the Greek codices in the same testimonies of the holy Scriptures, and you will see whence dialectic is named, so that you do not, with foolish rashness, accuse of crime what all just men do even with God, to whom it is said: "Come, let us dispute, says the Lord," but rather imitate with wise piety.

For one who disputes discerns what is true from what is false by means of disputation. Those who cannot do this but still wish to appear dialecticians capture the assent of the unwary through insidious questions, so that from their responses they may draw conclusions whereby they either mock those deceived into open falsehood or persuade the deceived of a hidden falsehood, which very often they themselves also take to be truth. But one who is a true disputant—that is, a discriminator of truth from falsehood—first conducts this within himself, lest he himself be deceived by not discerning correctly, which he cannot accomplish without divine assistance; then, when he brings forth what he has done within himself for the instruction of others, he first considers what certain things they already know, so as to lead them from these to what they did not know or were unwilling to believe, showing these to be consequent upon those things which they already held by knowledge or faith, so that through those truths concerning which they perceive themselves to agree, they are compelled to approve other truths which they had denied, and thus the truth which was previously thought false is discerned from falsehood, when it is found to be consistent with that truth which was already held.

If that true disputant does this at length and in a diffuse manner, he does it eloquently and is then judged by another name and augmented by a term, so that he is called a speaker rather than a disputant, just as the Apostle copiously expands and diffuses that passage: "In all things," he says, "commending ourselves as ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulations, in distresses, in stripes, in prisons, in seditions, in labors, in vigils, in fasts, in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in the word of truth, in the power of God; through the weapons of righteousness on the right and left, through glory and ignobility, through infamy and good repute; as deceivers and truthful, as unknown and known, as dying and behold we live; as coerced and not killed, as sad but always rejoicing, as needy but enriching many, as having nothing and possessing all things." For what more abundant and ornate, that is, more eloquent, than this apostolic style could you easily find? If, however, he does it in a compressed and constrained manner, they have been accustomed to call him a disputant rather than a speaker, as the same Apostle does concerning the circumcision and foreskin of father Abraham or the distinction between law and grace, which some, not understanding—indeed, slandering—have accused him of saying: "Let us do evil, so that good may come.

Whether, however, he be a speaker or a disputant, speech is not without disputation, since even in the breadth of eloquence truth is distinguished from falsehood, nor can disputation exist without speech. For whenever the very constraint of discourse is expressed in words and language, whether he uses it continuously or by questioning the one with whom he is dealing compels him to answer what is true and from this leads him to another truth which was sought, where dialectic is said to reign supreme. For when someone is convicted by his own responses, if he has answered badly he has nothing to impute to the disputant but to himself, and if he has answered well he blushes to resist further, not the disputant but himself. In this manner the Lord, when he frequently argued against the Jews and convicted them, caught and confined by their own responses, they had not heard you nor learned to be reviled by you; for they would perhaps more willingly and invidiously call him a dialectician than a Samaritan. For how do you think they were twisted and confused, when, wishing to catch him in a word, they first asked whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, laying a two-headed trap, so that whichever he chose he would be caught: if he answered that it was lawful, as though he were guilty against the people of God; if, however, he said it was not lawful, as though he would be punished as an adversary of Caesar? Thereupon he asked for a coin to be shown to him and inquired whose image and inscription it bore.

But when they had answered, "Caesar's"—for the open truth compelled them to answer thus—their master immediately, drawing them bound and captive by their own response, said: "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." I ask you, were those men dialecticians, who strove to overcome by deceitfully entrapping with their preceding questions, or was he rather the one who, by the wisdom of his questioning, elicited the true response from them from that very fact that they had answered, and compelled them to confess that truth which they thought was dangerously spoken by him? If you say that they were dialecticians, because they questioned deceitfully, slanderously, maliciously, seeking to catch him in his words—for you wish us to appear as such—why then did the Lord answer them? Why did he lead them, by giving a reasoned response, all the way to confessing the truth? Why did he say to them, "Why do you tempt me, hypocrites?" and not add "dialecticians"? Why did he demand that a coin be shown to him, so that he might express his truthful judgment even from the mouth of the deceitful, and did he not rather say: "Depart; for I will not speak with you, because you propose captious questions, because you wish to deal with me dialectically"? He said nothing of the kind, nor did he set us such an example against captious questioners and cunning trappers of our words, but rather that we should compel even enemies of the truth, by vigilant questioning and invincible reasoning, to bear witness to the truth. Let your people do this for us.

If we are malicious and dialectical. Or do they indicate that they are afraid, lest we do this to them instead? But if you call Christ a dialectician, you will be praising dialectic, which you had cast at me as a crime. Lest you do that, I see what perhaps you are about to say: that neither they nor he did anything dialectical in that conversation. If, therefore, neither those who speak captiously and insidiously, so as to deceive in word those with whom they deal, nor those who convict such persons by their response, act dialectically, tell us at last what dialectic is, and how much evil it has, how much it harms. Teach how it is to be fled, whose name you invidiously throw at the ignorant, show the crime to those who ask. You do not wish to admit that he acts dialectically who, by skillfully and rightly questioning men turned away from the truth, leads them through their own responses to the truth, lest you confess that Christ also acted dialectically with the Jews; likewise, you do not wish those to act dialectically who, by ensnaring captious questions, strive to deceive the respondent, lest it be shown to you that the Jews acted thus with Christ, whom he nevertheless did not avoid by keeping silent, but rather overcame by speaking, and thus you are forced to admit that your bishops, whom you consider learned and wise, do not rightly refuse to have a discussion even with dialecticians, in order to teach invincible truth.

I see you are in great distress, trying to define a dialectician in such a way that he is neither a skilled disputant—lest you be forced to praise what you have censured—nor a crafty captor of words, lest it be said to you: "As Christ acted with such men, so let a Christian act with him." Accordingly, if you wish to be relieved of this concern, define a dialectician as one with whom the legal experts of the Donatist party refuse to hold a conference. For what else is to be suggested to you, a man who casts dialectic in our teeth and for that reason boasts of his own bishops, that they are unwilling to hold discourse with us? But perhaps you find something to say about the Jews, although they cunningly and craftily put forward the snares of interrogations, yet they were not dialecticians. About the Stoics, certainly, nothing can be said; they were not only dialecticians, but also surpassed the other philosophical sects in this art or faculty. For a Stoic, as you recall with me, was that Chrysippus, about whom the Academic Carneades held this opinion: that when he had to dispute with him, he thought his heart needed to be purged with hellebore, but that he would easily overcome the others even after a meal. Therefore, if the books of the Stoics have taught us to dispute dialectically, let your bishops bring forward the teaching of Paul against us. Yet let them allow us to confer with them, just as that man did not reject the Stoics themselves then.

This art, which they call dialectic, which teaches nothing other than to demonstrate consequences, whether true from true or false from false, Christian doctrine never fears, just as the apostle did not fear it in the Stoics, whom he did not reject when they wished to compare themselves with him. For it too admits, and it is true, that no one is driven by a disputant to a false conclusion against his will, unless he has first consented to the false premises from which that same conclusion, whether he wills it or not, is produced. And so, whoever takes care that false things which he does not want do not follow from his speaking, let him willingly avoid the false things that precede. But if he has adhered to true premises, let him embrace whatever consequences he perceives, which he considered false or about which he doubted, once admonished, if he is a more peaceful friend of truth than of the most contentious vanity. I would have done too little unless I demonstrated what I am saying in this very disputation that is being conducted between us. Behold, in that very question concerning baptism, you proposed, asking of me where it is fitting for you to be baptized, whether among us or in the party of Donatus. And because your intention is that a man ought rather to be baptized in the party of Donatus, you attempted to prove this intention from the fact that we do not deny that baptism exists there as well. You certainly see that you wished to do this, so that from what we concede we might be drawn to what we did not concede—that is, so that, because we concede that baptism exists there, we might be compelled to concede that a man ought to be baptized there as well.

Consider diligently, if this is consequent, and answer yourself. For I think that with this already set before your eyes, you perceive, by the liveliness of your intellect, how you gather not consequences from consequents. For indeed we say that baptism exists there, but we do not say that it is beneficial; rather, we say that it is even harmful. But when it is asked where one ought to be baptized, I believe it is asked because of what the Lord says: "Unless a man is born again from water and spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven." Therefore, since baptism is to be received for this benefit, when it is asked where it is to be received, it is not asked where it exists, but where it is useful for attaining the kingdom of heaven. However, it would follow that it ought to be received wherever it is known to exist, if it were taught that all who have something good also have it for their good. But since so many have so many goods to their own detriment, who does not see that when it is asked where something is to be received, it is not asked where it exists, but where it is beneficial? For just as, if you granted me that gold is good, and you also granted that thieves have gold, I do not think you would wish that from these two concessions I should conclude that one who wishes to have gold ought to be in the company of thieves, so, when I also grant that baptism is good, and I also grant that the Donatists have baptism, you ought not, from these two concessions, conclude as if it follows that one who wishes to have baptism ought to be in the communion of the Donatists.

Now from this I do not doubt that many things also occur to you yourself, which, although they are good and established for some useful purpose, are nevertheless not useful to all who possess them, but only to those who use them well. For when the same light bathes both healthy and diseased eyes, it is an aid to the former, a torment to the latter; the same food nourishes some constitutions and harms others; the same medicine heals some and weakens others; the same arms protect some and hinder others; the same garment is a covering for some and an entanglement for others. So too baptism avails some for the kingdom, others for judgment. Here I see what might move you. For perhaps you say that in all these things I have mentioned nothing of a sacrament: but baptism is a holy sacrament, and therefore it does not follow that, if it could be proved of gold, of light, of food, of arms, of garments, that they are suitable for some who possess them and unsuitable for others, although they are good and established for some useful purpose, then immediately baptism also benefits some and harms others who possess it. It remains, therefore, still to inquire whether even those goods which pertain to the law of God are not profitable to all who possess them. With this question proposed, our intention is that not even these themselves profit all who possess them. See how we prove this intention of ours from your own agreements.

You grant that the apostle Paul is to be believed in everything — I hold on to that one point. You also grant that the same apostle said: "The law is good, if anyone uses it lawfully." From these two points it follows that the law is good, but only for those who use it lawfully. Therefore, if anyone has used it unlawfully, the law itself does not become evil, but it certainly harms the wicked. Perhaps you will say that no one can both be in the law and use the law badly; for by the very fact that he lives contrary to the law, he is shown not to be in the law. I, on the contrary, say that it is possible for someone both to be in the law and not to use it lawfully. This I also prove from your own concessions. For you grant that the aforementioned apostle cited a testimony from the Psalms against those who boasted in the law and lived contrary to the law: "As it is written," he says, "because no one is just, no one is understanding, no one is seeking God; all have turned aside, all have become useless at the same time; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; they acted deceitfully with their tongues; the venom of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and unhappiness are in their ways. And they have not known the way of peace. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

And lest they think that these things were said against those who were not in the law, he immediately added: "But we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are in the law," so that every mouth is stopped and the whole world becomes guilty before God. Likewise, in another place he says: "What then shall we say? Is the law a sin? Far from it; but I did not know sin except through the law; for I was unaware of lust, unless the law said: 'You shall not lust.' But having taken the opportunity, sin through the commandment worked in me every lust." Likewise, a little later: "Sin," he says, "having taken the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. Therefore the law is indeed holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. What then? Has what is good become death for me? Far from it; but sin, in order that sin might appear, through the good worked death in me." Do you see how, having praised the law, he accuses those who are in the law, as many as, by using it badly, had evil through the good? Likewise, the same apostle says that a certain knowledge from the law, which he claimed both he himself and others had, is useless and harmful without charity: "Concerning sacrifices of idols," he says, "we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but charity builds up." Therefore, even that knowledge, although it pertains to the law of God, if it is in someone without charity, puffs up and harms. What?

Concerning the body and blood of the Lord themselves, the unique sacrifice for our salvation, since the Lord himself says: "Unless someone eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he will not have life in himself," does not the same apostle teach that even this becomes harmful to those who use it badly? For he says: "Whoever eats and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." Behold how divine and holy things harm those who use them badly; why is this not also the case with baptism? Why are heretics not good in a good baptism, just as Jews are not good in a good law? I have certainly now proved, with you conceding, since you believe Paul and concede that the testimonies I set forth from the scriptures were spoken by Paul, I have therefore proved by your own concessions that certain lawful goods also harm those who do not hold and use them lawfully; why is it not also the case with baptism, that although it is good and lawful, it does not benefit all who have it? Why do you conclude, as if it were most certain and most consistent, that a man must be baptized in the party of Donatus, because we also concede that baptism exists there, and do you not consider that we can say that the baptism of Christ is indeed there, just, holy, and good, but penal, contrary, harmful, and hostile to the enemies of the body of Christ, which is the Church, which according to divine promises is spread throughout all nations?

Can you find here anything to say, unless it is that baptism is not to be counted among those goods pertaining to the law of God, which men can have and yet not be good, but that the law itself, and knowledge, and the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ are such goods as men can have and yet be evil, while baptism is such a good that whoever has it is necessarily good? If you wish to say this, you will speak falsely, and therefore consider what other falsehood follows. I do not recall this so that from that falsehood of yours I may lead you to other falsehoods, but so that when you recognize this consequence to be false, you may free yourself from it and correct what precedes it. What then precedes? That all of you who have the good of baptism are good. This is evidently false, from which it follows that those were good, of course, who made schisms, saying: "I am of Paul, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ," whom the apostle rebukes, saying: "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" But it is false that these were good, except for those who said "I am of Christ," and yet they were baptized with the holy baptism of Christ. Why then did this falsehood follow? Because the falsehood preceded: that all who have the good of baptism are good.

Therefore, let both be rejected, and both statements corrected, so that, since it is evident that those who made schisms were not good and yet were baptized with a good baptism, it may also be evident that not all who have a good baptism are good. And on this account, we are not compelled to concede that anyone should be baptized in the Donatist party, even though we concede that the Donatist party, which we call evil, has a good baptism. Again, to detain me by that agreement to what I do not consent, you set down that it is written: one God, one faith, one baptism, one incorrupt and true catholic church. All these I concede, even though they are written somewhat differently. But what does it matter, since I concede all these as I have said? However, what you attempt to infer from them is not inferred, namely, that those who are not in the one church cannot have the one baptism, which is utterly false. And it is better because you yourself set down something by which I can remind you of what I wish. For certainly you proposed these in my concessions, from which you lead me to your intention: that there is one God, one faith, one baptism, one incorrupt and catholic church. Since these agree between us, you think that from these it can be shown what does not agree, that among those who are not in this one church, this one baptism cannot exist.

But I say that it can be so, if it is not changed, if the same observance is maintained, and that it does not thereby happen that there is not one baptism, because it also exists among those who are not in the one Church. This I prove from those things which you placed in the same statement about the one God and the one faith. For we find that the same God is worshipped even by the ignorant outside the Church, and it does not thereby happen that He is not God; and we find that the faith by which it is believed that Christ is the Son of the living God is also confessed by those who do not belong to the members of the Church, and it does not thereby happen that it is not one faith. So also, when we find the same baptism observed by those who are outside the Church in baptizing people, we ought not to think that it is not the same baptism. Perhaps you might say that it cannot happen that even outside the Church the same one God is worshipped, or that the same faith by which we confess Christ as the Son of God—whence Peter was called blessed—is also found in those who are not in the Church. This, therefore, remains for me to prove. You have in this very sermon of the blessed Paul, which I recalled above from the Acts of the Apostles, when he spoke about God, because he had found inscribed on an altar 'To an Unknown God': 'Whom you worship ignorantly,' he says, 'this one I announce to you.' Did he say: 'Because you worship outside the Church, He is not the God whom you worship'?

But he says: "Whom you worship ignorantly, I proclaim to you." What does he wish to provide for them, except that they might worship the same God, whom they were ignorantly and uselessly worshipping outside the Church, wisely and salutarily within the Church? Thus we also say to you: "The baptism which you observe ignorantly, we proclaim its peace to you, not so that when you come to us you receive another, but so that you may usefully possess that which was already with you." Concerning faith as well, when the apostle James was speaking against those who thought that what they believed was sufficient and were unwilling to do good works, he says: "You believe that there is one God? You do well; and demons believe and tremble." Surely demons are not in the unity of the Church, yet we cannot therefore say that what they believe is something else, since they also said to the Lord Jesus Christ: "What have we to do with you, son of God?" Whence also the apostle Paul says: "If I have all faith so that I move mountains, but do not have charity, I am nothing." But I do not think anyone is so foolish as to believe that he who does not have charity belongs to the unity of the Church. Therefore, just as one God is worshipped ignorantly even outside the Church and is not therefore not the same, and one faith is held without charity even outside the Church and is not therefore not the same, so also one baptism is held ignorantly and without charity even outside the Church and is not therefore not the same.

For there is one God, one faith, one baptism, one incorrupt Catholic Church—not the one in which alone one God is worshipped, but the one in which alone one God is piously worshipped; nor the one in which alone one faith is retained, but the one in which alone one faith is retained with charity; nor the one in which alone one baptism is had, but the one in which alone one baptism is had in a salutary manner. Therefore, you have set before us, with us agreeing, one God, one faith, one baptism, one incorrupt and Catholic Church; but not only have you not accomplished from these what you wished, but you have also greatly helped us, so that from these we might admonish you of what we wished. See, then, what a probable reasoning we follow, who correct what schismatics or heretics have corrupted, when they come to us from them, but what they have held just as they received it, we recognize and approve, lest, disturbed by human faults, we do any injury to divine things beyond what is just, since we see that even the Apostle, upon finding the name of God on an altar of the Gentiles, by whom idols were worshipped, confirmed it rather than denied it. For neither is the royal brand in a man to be changed or disapproved because a deserter, having obtained pardon for his error and the order of military service from the king, impressed the same brand by which he would gather satellites for himself; nor are the marks on sheep to be changed when they are joined to the Lord's flock, because a runaway slave impressed the Lord's mark upon them.

If you shrink from these as deceptive, because they are not ecclesiastical examples—although you know that similitudes taken from sheep and from soldiers are given in the scriptures—I wish to say something from the prophetic scriptures which are called the Old Testament, since in the books of the New Testament neither we nor you find an example of this matter. Certainly you do not dare, I think, to deny that the circumcision of the foreskin was observed by the ancients as a figure of the future baptism of Christ. If a Jew then wished to be circumcised among the Samaritans, could he be circumcised again? Would not that man’s error be corrected, while the seal of faith, once recognized, would be approved? And now there are some heretics who call themselves Nazarenes, but are also called by some Symmachians, and they have the circumcision of the Jews and the baptism of Christians; and accordingly, just as if one of them comes to the Jews, he cannot be circumcised again, so when he comes to us he ought not to be baptized again. To this you will say: ‘The circumcision of the Jews is one thing, the baptism of Christians another.’ But since that shadow was the figure of this truth, why could that circumcision exist among the heretics of the Jews, while this baptism cannot exist among the heretics of the Christians?

Produce, then, someone from the canonical scriptures who, coming from heretics, was baptized again. For what the apostles commanded, that certain men after John’s baptism were baptized in Christ, is a far different case. For John was not a heretic—that friend of the Bridegroom than whom no one greater arose among those born of women. It is, therefore, a far different case. Otherwise, if Paul baptized after John, when both were in the unity of Christ, how much more ought your bishops, because they claim to be in the unity of Christ, to baptize after their colleagues, in which colleagues they rightly reproach some habits, since Paul did this, who could reproach nothing in John! Therefore, that is a different case, a different rationale, which it is long to discuss now, and we have already said much about it in our other works. Prove, then, from the canonical scriptures someone coming from heretics who was baptized again. For we also produce what was said to Peter: "He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again." But you also say: "Peter had not been baptized among heretics." Hence, because you cannot produce from the scriptures, whose authority is common to us, someone coming from heretics who was baptized again, nor have we received anyone in that way, as far as this matter pertains, our case is equal.

We have shown many things belonging even to the law of God among those who are not in the Church, which none of you dares to deny; but why you are unwilling to allow the same for baptism, I do not at all see, nor do I trust that you can demonstrate it. In this matter, we certainly follow even the most certain authority of the canonical scriptures. For it is not to be considered of little moment that, when among bishops of an earlier age, before the Donatist party began, this question fluctuated and had various opinions among colleagues while unity was preserved, it was decided throughout the universal Catholic Church, which is spread over the whole world, to observe what we hold. For you also bring forward the council of Cyprian, which either was not held or was rightly overruled by the other members of the unity from whom he was not separated. For we are not therefore better than Bishop Cyprian, if indeed he judged that heretics should be rebaptized, because we do not do this rightly, just as we are not better than the Apostle Peter, because we do not compel Gentiles to Judaize, which he is shown to have done, as the Apostle Paul attests and corrects, when similarly among the apostles a question about circumcision, as later among bishops about baptism, wavered with no small difficulty.

Therefore, although a certain example of this matter is not produced from the canonical scriptures, nevertheless the truth of those same scriptures is held for us even in this matter, when we do what the whole Church, which the authority of those scriptures commends, has already approved; so that, since holy scripture cannot deceive, whoever fears being deceived by the obscurity of this question should consult that same Church concerning it, which holy scripture demonstrates without any ambiguity. But if you doubt that holy scripture commends the Church which is spread throughout all nations with the most abundant multitude—for if you did not doubt, you would not still be in the Donatist party—I will burden you with many and most manifest testimonies drawn from that same authority, so that from your own concessions, if you are unwilling to be excessively obstinate, you may be led even to this point, after I have first shown that in my letter, to which you wished to reply on the contrary, you were able to answer nothing that pertains to the truth.

For the present, let this suffice, since I have deemed it necessary to say many things against those who, because of excessive obstinacy, wish to divert judges from examining their principal bad cause by means of a prescription, when they say that they should in no way speak with us. For I have proved, both from the holy scriptures and by as clear a reason as I could, that neither any amount of eloquence nor any kind of dialectic is to be feared by the assertors of truth, so that the assertors of falsehood may be refuted and convicted by disputing with them. In this I have also demonstrated that point, which you said moved you beyond my letter, namely, how it does not follow that, if we concede that baptism exists in the Donatist party, we also concede at the same time that anyone ought to be baptized in that same fellowship, because, just as the reprobate people of the Jews could have a good law, so a reprobate society of heretics can have a good sacrament. Moreover, what is properly given in the Church, which is not given at all outside it, will be shown without difficulty in its proper place. For we would not be acting rightly with heretics, whom we confess to have baptism, so that they may come to the Catholic Church in every way, unless by coming they received something which they could not receive elsewhere, and which, unless they receive it, they possess in vain and to their peril.

Whatever other things, even good and pertaining to the law of God, they have been able to receive anywhere—for whatever this is, which can be found according to the Scriptures and the most certain reason, and can be given or received only in the holy Church—this will pertain to the sealed fountain, the well of living water, the paradise with the fruit of apples, which you have been able to mention, but you have shown that you did not understand what it is, since you suppose that this is said about visible baptism. Although this is holy and by no means to be omitted, because it excels by its most sacred signification, yet many receive it not only among the good, who are called according to the purpose and are conformed to the image of the Son of God, but also among those who will not possess the kingdom of God, among whom, as the apostle says, drunkards and the avaricious are numbered. I think that, if you lay aside obstinacy and reflect, you yourself will easily answer that I speak the truth, so that you do not seek the sealed fountain and the well of living water except where those who displease God are divinely not permitted to approach.

BOOK TWO. In the rather lengthy discourse of the previous volume, I think that we have at last persuaded you that your bishops are not to be praised in this matter nor approved: that concerning the cause of the dissension which divides our communion, they are unwilling to hold a conference with us. For by this, as if by a kind of prescription, they think themselves most safe in a very bad cause, which, unless I am mistaken, I have thoroughly cut away with true and certain reasons and especially with examples from the divine Scriptures, by which I have most clearly taught that holy preachers and assertors of truth have held discourse even against present adversaries, and not only those who were from the same people as they were, but also against foreigners and strangers, and—what is especially the source of the vain fears you instill in the unlearned—against those who were most professed in dialectic, so that the most contentious person is not considered the most diligent preacher, nor is the litigator thought to be the energetic disputant, pressing on according to the apostle’s precept, opportunely and inopportunely, so that by sound teaching contradictors are refuted, vain talkers are confuted, the restless are rebuked, the faint-hearted are comforted, the weak are taken up, while against all resisters the word of evangelical salvation is defended with patience and preached without diffidence.

I also showed how you should not think that a man must be baptized among you simply because we agree that baptism can both be held and given by you, even as we say that it is held perniciously and given perniciously, since those holy things, which even the wicked can use, are treated all the more uselessly and punitively by them the holier they are. Hence, when they come to the holy Church, they themselves are to be corrected, not the good things violated, which even the wicked have not changed. Listen, therefore, Cresconius, while I briefly demonstrate that you have said nothing throughout your entire letter by which you refuted mine, unless perhaps that you taught me to derive or decline names, so that I should say Donatiani rather than Donatistae from Donatus—which you nevertheless concede is at least a Greek declension, namely that Donatistae are named from Donatus as evangelistae are from evangelium, a declension you say delights you, so that your preachers of the gospel have borrowed a similar declension of the word. See, therefore, whether perhaps they themselves first wished to be called thus, because they have Donatus in place of the gospel. For just as they are named from Donatus, so all the saints do not wish to depart from fellowship with the gospel, and therefore they delight in being called Donatistae just as evangelistae, and you rather do them an injury when, writing in Latin and approving only the Latin rule, you say they are better called Donatiani from Donatus, as from Arius and Novatus are called Ariani and Novatiani.

For when I was writing, this name was already being propagated to me by certain unknown persons, and I did not take care to change it, since I considered it sufficient for the distinction I wished to make. For if Demosthenes, the most famous of orators, who had as great a care for words as our authors had for things, yet when Aeschines objected to him some unusualness of expression, he denied that the fortunes of Greece depended on whether he had used this word or that word, and whether he had stretched out his hand this way or that way, how much less ought we to labor over the rules for deriving names, when, whether we say this or that, what we say is understood without ambiguity, we whose greater intention lies not in the polishing of speech but in the demonstration of truth! But if any one of our people first inflected this name, it seems to me in no way that he had in view the similarity by which evangelists are named from the gospel; but because through Donatus—not only the Donatus of Carthage, who is said to have especially strengthened this heresy, but also the greater Donatus of Casis Nigris, who first set up altar against altar in the same city—a great scandal arose, perhaps he wished to call them Donatists from Donatus, just as scandalists are named from scandal.

But in that matter, in which nothing of our case is diminished, I show myself very accommodating, and when I am dealing with you I already call you Donatianists, but when I am with others, I rather follow custom, which rightly rules over these sounds; only remember that I, to whom you have attributed such eloquence, do not yet know how to decline nouns, and announce to your people that they may be secure, so that they no longer fear me as a dialectician, since you see that I still need a grammarian. But if the discipline of disputation, whether you wish to call it dialectic or something else, teaches soberly enough that when the matter is settled, one should not labor over the name—just as I do not care whether it itself is called dialectic, yet I do care, as much as I am able, to know and to be able to dispute, that is, to discern truth from falsehood in speaking, because if I do not care for this, I will err most perniciously—so I do not care whether you are more learnedly and literately declined as Donatists or Donatianists, or finally whether a name should be imposed upon you for the sake of distinction when we speak, from Donatus—whether the one who first sacrificed outside the Church or the one who most strengthened this dissension—or from Maiorinus, who was first ordained bishop of your party against Caecilianus. But unless I carefully demonstrate that you are heretics and therefore, lest you deceive, to be most cautiously avoided, I will incur no small blame of negligence under the burden of my office.

Although you think that what has happened between us ought to be called a schism rather than a heresy, and, as dialecticians rarely dare to do, you even distinguish these by definitions—where I will not be able to show sufficiently how much you help our case unless I insert your own words from your letter. "What does it mean," you ask, "that you say: 'the sacrilegious error of heretics'? For heresies are usually made only among those who follow different things, and a heretic is only a worshiper of a contrary or otherwise interpreted religion, such as the Manichees, Arians, Marcionites, Novatians, and others, whose diverse opinions among themselves stand against the Christian faith. Among us, for whom the same Christ was born, died, and rose again, one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance, a schism has been made, not a heresy, is said; since heresy is a sect of those following different things, but schism is a separation of those following the same things. Therefore, you see how great an error you incur in this zeal for accusing, when you call what is a schism a heresy." These are indeed your words which I have set down from your letter.

Now pay attention, if you are not obstinate, to how easily you yourself could have ended the matter that is being debated between us. For if for both us and you the same Christ was born, died, and rose again, there is one religion, the same sacraments, and nothing in Christian observance is perverted—is it not perverted to rebaptize? For you have set forth three points. If you had set forth even one, it would have been more than sufficient. But as if you were acting faithfully against the Donatists, lest anyone too clever try to interpret what you had said once and briefly in another way, you took care to immerse and inculcate your opinion even into dull ears and minds: "One religion," you say, "the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance." And still we labor against each other. Now at last restrain dissension, repair the division, end the dispute, love peace. Why do you reproach, why do you hiss, why do you rebaptize? There is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance. For if for us and you there is not one baptism, how is there one religion? But you said "one religion," therefore baptism is also one. If for us and you there is not the same baptism, how are there the same sacraments? But you said "the same sacraments," therefore baptism is also the same. Likewise, if for us and you baptism is diverse, how is there nothing diverse in Christian observance? But you said "nothing diverse in Christian observance," therefore baptism is not diverse either.

This being so, we rightly neither reject nor exsufflate nor repeat what is one and the same and not different, but we acknowledge, receive, and accept it; you, however, impiously dissemble acknowledging, refuse to receive, are unwilling to accept what is one and the same and not different, but choose to reject, dare to exsufflate, and do not fear to repeat. And when in this very matter, because we accept what has not been changed between us, while you reject it, we judge what has been given by you as given, while you demand back what has been given by us as if not given, you follow such diverse practices, yet you disdain to be called heretics. Pay close attention to what you say, what I say. You certainly defined and said: "Heresy is a sect of those following diverse practices, but schism is a separation of those following the same practices." Again you said that for us and for you there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance. If there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance, why then do you rebaptize a Christian? But if in that you rebaptize a Christian, I do not rebaptize, we certainly follow diverse practices, why do you not wish to be called a heretic? I think that by no small sign we recognize heretics, who, although they confess that for themselves and for us there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance, are unwilling to acknowledge us as baptized.

Do you contend with such obstinacy, resist the truth with such dissension, that you separate baptism from religion, from the sacraments, from Christian observance? If you do this, you are heretics in this: that you refuse to let baptism pertain to religion, to the sacraments, to Christian observance. But if you do not do this, you are heretics in this: that you rebaptize those who share with you one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance, even though you admit that baptism pertains to religion, to the sacraments, to Christian observance. For attend diligently to your own definition, in which you said: "Heresy is a sect of those following diverse things," and see whether you do not follow diverse things, either by separating baptism from the religious observance of Christian sacraments, with which we join it among the great things, or by rebaptizing those with whom, in one religious observance of Christian sacraments, baptism also is one—which we detest.

How I wish, if I could, that when some deceived person from among our faithful is caught by your nefarious snares to be destroyed, when they say that someone already baptized among us has not even begun to be a Christian, when they blow upon him as if he were a pagan, when they make him a catechumen, so that they may then prepare to re-baptize or rather to extinguish him—I wish that suddenly from somewhere I could appear with this letter of yours and, reciting this very passage of it in the midst of their bold deeds, hold it out and exclaim: “What are you doing? Behold, hear, see, read: the religion is one for us and for you, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance. In whose name this man was baptized, first ask, and then, if you name a better one in your baptism, give it.” Then perhaps they, if they did not tremble at the very evidence of the facts, would immediately bring forth their counsel, great and acute indeed, and say: “Who is this man to us whose letter you carry? He is our layman; he conquers for us, he is conquered for himself.” Then, if I were present, turning to you I would say: “You at least, I beseech you, tell us, what are these men doing? Behold, they are preparing to rebaptize someone baptized among us. Surely, then, is the religion one for us and for you, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance?” Or would you answer: “But Christ’s baptism is not religion, is not a sacrament, is not Christian observance”? May God avert this madness from your mind.

What, then, would you answer me when I press and say: "There is one religion for us and for you; but for those for whom baptism is not one, there is not one religion; therefore for us and for you there is one baptism. The same sacraments are for us and for you; but for those for whom the same baptism does not exist, the same sacraments do not exist; therefore for us and for you the same baptism exists. There is nothing diverse between us and you in Christian observance; but for those for whom baptism is diverse, certainly there is something diverse in Christian observance; therefore for us and for you baptism is not diverse. Why is what is one disapproved, why is what is the same blown upon, why is what is not diverse repeated?" When I act thus in your presence, when I thus insist, to what tergiversations would you flee? Evidently, in your letter you would accuse those grammarians, you would accuse our dialecticians, but truth would overcome heretics from both sides, showing in them only this to be diverse from us which is manifestly perverse, because we recognize our own sacraments, we correct another's error, but you confess the same sacraments, which you repeat as if they were nothing, with great diversity reproving what you concede is not diverse.

Therefore, although I more approve of that distinction between schism and heresy, which says that schism is a recent disagreement of a congregation arising from some diversity of opinions—for not even schism can occur unless those who make it follow something different—while heresy is an inveterate schism, yet what need is there for me to labor over this, since your own definitions so greatly assist me that, if it were granted to me by you and others of your group, I would more willingly call you schismatics than heretics. For if those who separate from those with whom they share one religion, the same sacraments, and nothing diverse in Christian observance make a schism, then your rebaptism is all the more damnable because, within one religion, the same sacraments, and nothing diverse in Christian observance, baptism cannot be other and different. But since you follow something diverse that is neither nothing nor trivial, having separated from the bond of unity and also dissenting from us about the repetition of baptism, it follows that, according to this very definition of yours, by which you said: "Heresy, however, is a sect of those following something diverse," you are both heretics and appear vanquished. Heretics indeed, because you not only are divided but also follow something diverse in rebaptizing; vanquished, however, because you repeat the baptism given by us, as if it were not the same or as if it were null, which you admit is one and the same and not diverse.

These are indeed your words, that for us and for you there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance. Therefore, if the Donatist party were to subscribe to your letters and then ponder, without insane obstinacy or shamelessness, those things which have been said by you and by me, it would think or say nothing further against us. But since it is you to whom I am replying, I think you now see yourself that I said, not from a zeal for accusation, but to refute a pernicious falsehood: "the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics." In these four words or names, because this pleases you or the art of grammar, I correct and change the first one placed, "Donatistarum," and say "Donatianorum"; but the remaining three, since I think you feel they have been most truly said, do you correct, do you change. Change, I say, and correct the sacrilegious error of the Donatians, or whatever else you may be called, yet you are heretics. For you are heretics, either because you have remained in an inveterate schism, or, by your own definition, because you follow something diverse concerning the Church, which is the Body of Christ, or concerning the repetition of Christian baptism; and it is a sacrilegious error not only the separation from Christian unity, but also the violation and rescission of the sacraments, which, according to your own confession, are one and the same. If you correct and change these things, how do we receive you as you were?

You have therefore spoken at length to no purpose, and, though you are of such keen intellect, you are dulled by the habit of hearing vanity, so that it seems to you that, when they pass from you to us, we receive them just as they were, because in them we approve the Christian tradition, which neither the alienated had alienated nor the perverted had perverted; which sacraments you also, though you are not such as we are, could not but confess as such—not as though they were other similar ones, but altogether the same. I beseech you, tell me, how is a person such as he was, who venerates the church he blasphemed, who holds the unity he did not hold, who has the charity he did not have, who accepts the peace he rejected, who approves the sacrament he spat upon? Or are all things so turned upside down by empty airs that those in whom things that were diverse are corrected by truth are not said to be changed, while those in whom things that were [similar] and the same are repeated in vanity are said to be changed? Therefore, no longer think in this matter not only in a fleshly but even in a childish way, so as to suppose that we receive your people just as they were, who by a conversion of will from error to truth, from division to unity, from dissension to peace, from enmities to charity, from human presumption to the authority of the divine scriptures, do not begin to be ours before they have ceased to be yours.

This conversion of the will suddenly changed not only the sinner at the tollbooth, but also the thief on the cross—unless you think that Christ would have wished a bloodstained and criminal man to be with him in paradise, if that conversion of the heart did not instantly make him innocent, so that on that day, from that place, from that wood, he passed over to the immortal reward of faith, where he had received the penalty of death for his iniquity. For whether toward evil or toward good, the mind is changed in a small moment, but it is not therefore a small thing that it merits. Even in bodily and temporal goods and benefits, any age, however long nourished, is destroyed by a single blow, and a sickness of thirty-eight years was healed as soon as the Lord deigned to command it. Believe certain things, not empty words. When they change and pass over to us from you—far be it that they are the same as they were—; would that you also do this, and believe how true it is in yourself!

You think you have said something great by naming Candidus of Villaregia and Donatus of Macomadia, who from among your bishops were also bishops among us and, with a life proven, attained to the more honorable merit of old age; as if the sacraments and the invocation of the name of God, which take place among you, are themselves hostile to us, when even in those who are outside the Church they are not at all except the Church's. In this question, if I were to labor with my own words, I would be helped by yours. For if you thought that nothing ecclesiastical could exist outside the Church, you would not yourself have said that we and you have one religion, the same sacraments, nothing diverse in Christian observance. With these words of yours I do not entirely agree. For you lack the Christian Church, you do not have Christian charity. I certainly recognize the Christian sacraments in you, and in these I also disapprove and reject that which is diverse, namely, that while you have the same things even in schism, you hiss at the same things in Catholics. The Church fully recognizes in you all that is its own, nor are they therefore not its own because they are also found among you. Among you, indeed, they are alien, but when the Church receives you corrected, to whom they belong, they become even salubriously yours, which you perniciously held as alien. Discord possesses you under the title of peace; therefore let discord be driven out, let peace be introduced. What reason is there that the title be laid aside? He is a bishop, you say, you receive a bishop; a presbyter, a presbyter.

You could also say this to me: "He is a man, you receive a man." For I recognize in him both the Christian sacraments and his human limbs, and I care not by whom they were sown, but by whom they were created. If he wishes to use them badly, he becomes evil by that very fact, because he offends the Creator by misusing His goods; but if he begins to use them well, he will correct himself, not change them. Concerning the reception of bishops or clerics, however, it is another question. For although, when they are ordained among you, the name of Donatus is not invoked over them, but that of God, yet they are received in whatever way seems to suit the peace and utility of the Church. For we are not bishops for our own sake, but for the sake of those to whom we minister the word and the Lord's sacrament; and accordingly, as the necessity of governing them without scandal may require, so we ought either to be or not to be what we are not for ourselves, but for others. Finally, some men endowed with holy humility, because of certain stumbling blocks in themselves by which they were piously and religiously moved, have laid down the office of bishop not only without blame, but even with praise. Would they likewise lay aside the Christian name and faith in a praiseworthy manner, and not rather in a damnable one? Just as in accepting these things there can be just reasons why someone may excuse himself from becoming a bishop, yet there can be no just cause why anyone should excuse himself from becoming a Christian.

Why so, except that we can be saved without episcopacy or clerical office, but we cannot be saved without the Christian religion? Therefore your bishops or any clerics, as far as the ecclesiastical offices themselves are concerned, were received into Catholic unity in the manner that seemed expedient to those who consulted for the salvation of the people through their office, whether to be exercised or omitted. Nevertheless, even concerning those who have administered the same honors among us, can you not say, just as you could have said: "He is a bishop, you receive a bishop," so also: "He is a heretic, you receive a heretic," or: "He is a schismatic, you receive a schismatic," or: "He is a Donatian, you receive a Donatian"? For by these names, it is not a degree of honor distinguished from plebeian rank, but the crime of error distinguished from Catholic truth. Therefore those ecclesiastical gifts, as it were, found even in outsiders who, leaving you and crossing over to us, become ours, are either received or not received for the benefit of the peoples whom we serve by this dispensation. But those vicious and properly your things are healed, corrected, changed, while yet those sacraments, without which a man cannot become a Christian, are so handled even in heretics that, when they come to the Church, what was lacking is added, what was recognized is approved, lest, while we are too offended by those evils which they have brought forth against the Church, we also persecute the goods which they have brought with them in departing from the Church.

For even a broken branch, if it is to be grafted again, as the apostle says, the root is restored to it, not its form changed. But, you say, because I call your people heretics and sacrilegious, which is a nefarious and inexpiable crime, ought or can such persons be forgiven without any expiation? Why then, you ask, do you not cleanse the one coming, why do you not first wash and purify him, and so let him communicate with you? What of the fact that from these words of yours another might far more fittingly say that such persons ought not and cannot be forgiven, and that you have shown yourself to have spoken contradictorily, so that you would say that such persons must be forgiven with some expiation, because the charge brought is inexpiable? How then is what is inexpiable expiated? How can I hope that you will hear what I say, when you do not hear yourself what you say so close at hand, since you immediately contradict yourself by judging that what you have called inexpiable must be expiated? We, however, call your error heretical and sacrilegious, but we do not call it inexpiable; otherwise we would have judged in vain that we should act in whatever ways we can so that, abandoning it, you may be corrected and pass over to the Catholic Church. And do not think, as you write, that I am using your word, as if we were saying that this evil is without pardon and without a physician; we do not say that at all, because those who have repented of this evil deserve pardon, and the physician is omnipotent, who says through the prophet: "If you turn back and groan, then you will be saved.

Therefore, if you have happened upon someone either less instructed in these matters or less attentive to what he was saying, even if he seemed to be of the Catholic communion who said this to you, he himself rather deserves pardon for this thoughtless word, just as you, who, although you are so liberally educated and not moderately learned in the art of words, yet, less attentive to what you are saying, think that what you have called inexpiable is to be expiated, and, what is more monstrous, that it is to be expiated precisely because it is inexpiable. But it is not Catholic to urge that those whom we would assert to be erring inexpiably and incurably be saved by correcting their error. But they do not seem to you to be cleansed when they pass from you to us, because they are not rebaptized, as if men are cleansed from error only by baptism, which ought not to be repeated, since it is one and the same. They are cleansed by the word of truth from Him who says: "Now you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you." They are cleansed by the sacrifice of a contrite heart from Him of whom it is said: "The sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not spurn." They are cleansed by alms from Him who says: "Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you." They are cleansed by charity itself, which surpasses all, from Him who said through the apostle Peter: "Charity covers a multitude of sins." If this one thing is present, all those things are done rightly; if it is absent, all those things are done in vain.

But as to where this comes from, hear the apostle speaking: "Love," he says, "of God is diffused in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who is given to us." Hence it is rightly believed that those who, outside the Church, have received the Church's baptism do not have the Holy Spirit, unless they cleave to the Church herself in the bond of peace through the connection of love. For now is the place to show what we had deferred in the first book: what in the Church, which is the holy body of Christ, can properly be received, which cannot be received apart from her. For concerning those who make schisms, the same apostle says: "But the natural man does not perceive what are the things of the Spirit of God." Read the first epistle to the Corinthians and you will find it. Baptism, therefore, is a sacrament of new life and eternal salvation, which many have not for eternal life but for eternal punishment, not using so great a good well. But holy love, which is the bond of perfection, no one can have who is not good. No one who has it can be either a schismatic or a heretic. Therefore, when anyone comes to the unity of the Church and is truly joined with its members, he receives the Holy Spirit, through whom love is diffused in our hearts, and that same love covers a multitude of sins, so that even the baptism which he first had for judgment he may now deserve to have for reward. How do you deny that he is cleansed, unless because you are utterly ignorant of what spiritual cleansing is?

Therefore, we do not, as you slanderously charge, receive your guilty ones as if into the asylum of Romulus. Those whom the City of God receives it renders innocent, when they have crossed over to it with a truthful heart—the City of which its Founder says: "A city cannot be hidden that is set upon a mountain." For it was not founded by one who, in anger, proudly killed his brother, but by one who, humbly slain, redeemed his brothers. This City the Holy Spirit cleanses and gladdens. Concerning which He cried out, saying: "If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink," not commending visible water, which is given in the sacrament of baptism, which both good and evil can possess—although without it the good cannot be saved. And although this water belongs to the Church, it nevertheless flows forth even outside, since it is also found among those who have gone out from us, but were not of us, just as water in any of those four memorable rivers cannot be denied to be water of paradise, even though it is not only in paradise, because it has also flowed forth from there to the outside.

Therefore, he was not commending this water, but rather the invisible gift of God, the Holy Spirit, under the name of water, when he said: "If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink," as the evangelist clearly testifies by adding: "He said this, however, concerning the Spirit which those believing in him were about to receive; for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified." And certainly, as far as the sacrament of the visible washing is concerned, before he was glorified by rising again, he had already baptized more than John, as the Gospel itself relates. Hence he says to his disciples: "John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, whom you are about to receive not many days hence," up to Pentecost. This Holy Spirit, coming upon them, first gave such a sign that those who had received it spoke in the tongues of all nations, because it foreshadowed the Church that would be among all nations, and that no one would receive the Holy Spirit unless he were joined to its unity. With the abundant and invisible stream of this fountain, God delights his City, concerning which the prophet foretold: "The rush of the river delights the city of God." For to this fountain no stranger approaches, because no one approaches unless he is worthy of eternal life. This is the proper fountain of the Church of Christ, to which it was prophesied so long before: "Let the water of your fountain be your own, and let no alien share with you.

Concerning this church and this fountain, it is also said in the Song of Songs: "an enclosed garden, a sealed fountain, a well of living water." Your people, taking these things only with reference to the visible sacrament of baptism, err so greatly that they are forced, unwillingly, to admit the most absurd things: namely, that Simon Magus, whom we read was baptized by Philip, could have approached that fountain which is proper to the unique dove, of which it was said, "Let no stranger share with you," that enclosed garden and sealed well; that so many false converts, about whom Cyprian speaks groaning, "renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds," could have approached it; that so many avaricious bishops, about whom the same Cyprian testifies, "seizing estates by deceitful frauds, increasing usury by multiplying interest," could have approached it. Indeed, these people are found to have been baptized and to have baptized with a visible baptism; yet to that proper fountain, with which no stranger shares, to that sealed fountain—that is, to the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which the love of God is diffused in our hearts—none of these approaches unless changed, and so completely changed that he is no longer a stranger, but is a participant in celestial peace, a companion in holy unity, full of indivisible love, a citizen of the angelic city.

Therefore, whoever turns to this city, having laid aside the error of heresy or schism, with corrected morals and a pious mind—if they already bore the sacraments, which could flow forth even to the unworthy outside—these are honored in him, because even in others they are not seen as alien, but he is then inundated by that own fountain of the sealed Holy Spirit, from which among you even anyone, however praiseworthy in other respects, is separated solely by the crime of schism or heresy. Therefore, when your people come to us, ceasing to be yours and beginning to be ours, they receive what they did not have, so that they may begin to have it in a wholesome way, which they had in a way all the more pernicious the more unworthily they held it. For they receive first of all the Church itself, and in it peace, unity, and charity through its own and invisible fountain, the Holy Spirit. Without these, undoubtedly, whatever else they might have had among you that could be drawn out of the Church, they would have perished; and they receive with easier pardon what they did not yet have, than if they had already had it and then abandoned it. And this distinction is made among us, so that those who left the Catholic Church are received in one way, and those who come to it for the first time in another. For the crime of desertion weighs more heavily on the former, while the bond of unity, not broken but recognized and retained, relieves the latter. Hence it can happen that those who rebaptized the seduced may themselves pray to the Lord for them as penitents.

if these are reconciled to the church before those are reconciled to the church; just as it can happen that even worshippers of idols, if they have perhaps made apostates of Christians seduced to idols, if the seducers have first become Christians and have obtained some great merit in the church, through them those whom they deceived may return. Through those by whom they had abandoned the Lord, they may be commended and reconciled to the Lord. For what the rightly received sacrament of baptism avails for cleansing the sacrileges of pagans, that the truthfully grasped charity of unity avails for cleansing the sacrileges of schismatics and heretics. Therefore, just as the seducers of faithful Christians who come to Christ are placed before those who return after being seduced—whence these can even become bishops, while those cannot—so those deceived by heretics ought not to be surprised when, upon returning to the Catholic Church, they see their deceivers placed before them when they come to the Catholic Church. For these more excusably seek what they lacked; those more humbly reclaim what they were; we call these more honorably to a place where they had never stood; we recall those more suspiciously from a place from which they had fallen.

Now you see, I think, that I was not wrong to call the sacrilegious error of the Donatists—or, as you prefer, 'Donatians'—heretics. For you dissent from the Catholic Church and you rend asunder the same sacraments which you profess to be one and the same, yet you are not without pardon or incurable before the mercy of God, because, when you lay aside your discordant error and are converted to Catholic truth and peace through His own gift, that is, through His Holy Spirit, through whom charity is diffused in our hearts, you can be cleansed and healed, not so that the Church's sacraments, which you perniciously held outside as alien, may be destroyed in you, but so that you may hold them within as your own in a salutary manner. Now let us see how you show that Petilianus, or anyone else, spoke correctly: "The conscience of the giver, when it is holy, is what cleanses the conscience of the receiver." I said: "What if the conscience of the giver is hidden and perhaps stained? How can it cleanse the conscience of the receiver?" You, in reply, not as a sharp-witted man but as one who speaks at length what your people say, have spoken at length, which can all be briefly stated thus: The conscience of the giver is considered not according to its sincerity, which cannot be seen in him, but according to his reputation, whether true or false, because, you see, he is a man who, even if he is secretly a criminal, it suffices for the receiver that he is of good repute, not yet known, not yet judged, not yet separated from the Church.

See, I implore you, into what a precipice the distress of finding no way out has driven men. Does the stained conscience of the giver then have the power to wash clean the conscience of the receiver, if he has a good reputation, and will it be able to wash as much as a good one, if he has acquired a good reputation by deceiving? Do you attend to what is being said, and do you wish that we now pass over this point, or shall I still turn over this same matter, so that you are compelled to attend more diligently? Petilianus said: "The conscience of the giver, given in a holy manner, is what is attended to, which washes the receiver." I said: "What if the conscience of the giver is hidden and perhaps stained, how will it be able to wash the conscience of the receiver?" You, or rather your followers, said—for you, a man of such standing, when would you have said these things?—: "Although he has a stained conscience, yet for me, who am baptized by him, because it is hidden and I do not know, it is sufficient that I receive from him whose conscience I believe to be innocent, because he is in the Church." For this reason, you say, I attend to the conscience of the giver, not so that, which cannot be done, I judge concerning hidden things, but so that, if there is anything about him in public conscience, I do not ignore it. For this reason it was said by almighty God: "What is known to you, I know; what is hidden, is for me." Therefore I always attend to the conscience of the giver, and because I do not see it, I ask what is publicly known about it, nor does it matter if there is one thing in secret conscience and another in public reputation. For it is sufficient to have known who? The conscience of the one from whom I receive has not yet been condemned.

Here are your own words, which I have set down to show that I have briefly and clearly summarized in my own words what you say: that the conscience of the one who washes is attended to, so that what is known about that reputation may be ascertained. Therefore, good man, it is not the conscience itself that is attended to—it is not the conscience itself, which cannot be seen—but the reputation is attended to, which can even be false, as you yourself confess and concede; for you too have seen that a stained conscience has no power to wash. It is not, then, the conscience of the giver that is attended to as washing the receiver, but the reputation, by which even one who does not give in a holy manner is thought to give in a holy manner, and one who does not wash is thought to wash. Therefore, the good reputation of a bad man washes the receiver, not the polluted conscience of the giver himself. Why, then, was it said: “The conscience of the giver is attended to as washing the receiver,” unless it is because it does not wash the receiver if the conscience of the giver is not holy, if it is stained and unclean? What, then, is attended to in that case? The conscience itself, you say, is attended to when its reputation is attended to, and if the reputation is good, it makes no difference for washing the receiver even when the conscience is bad, but his good reputation washes him. Tell me, I ask you: when the conscience is bad, is his good reputation true or false? Without doubt, it is false. Therefore, when the conscience of the giver is not good and is hidden, however you may seem to attend to it, according to this opinion it is only either a false reputation or a polluted conscience of the giver that washes the receiver.

Both are insane; if such things delight you, choose which is the more insane. Moreover, since truth does not admit that either the false reputation of the giver washes the conscience of the recipient, or that a polluted conscience does so, it remains that we also ask of you what we asked there—since, as Petilianus says, or anyone else among you who agrees, when the conscience of the giver is holy, that is, when it is good and clean, it washes the conscience of the recipient—how the recipient is washed when the stained conscience of the giver lies hidden. For I think you will not now repeat and say that his false good reputation takes the place of a good conscience in washing; it is enough that you have asserted that this is what your people, not you, say. Be ashamed of them, not also of yourself. It remains, therefore, that either God or some holy angel washes at that time. If you say this, then that dreadful absurdity follows, which in that letter of mine I mentioned—I do not say you were unwilling to see it, because you did not touch it at all, but you saw it all the more attentively and acutely the more you feared to touch it. For if you say this—that when a holy man baptizes, his holy conscience washes the conscience of the recipient, but when the conscience of the giver is latently unclean, then God or an angel washes—beware, lest those who believe you when you say this seek to find hidden evil men from whom to be baptized, so that they may be washed much more holily by God himself or his angel.

conscience of the recipient can be cleansed by the false reputation of the giver, you, when you perceived that this absurdity—whether to be laughed at or detested—follows consistently from the preceding words of Petilianus and was also recalled by me in my letter, you cautiously, as if I had said nothing of the sort, thought that such a weighty matter should be passed over in silence, but you fled to something more absurd, namely, that when the stained conscience of the giver is hidden and therefore cannot wash the conscience of the recipient, then the false reputation of the giver washes the recipient, and in him falsehood produces truth. Go now and slanderously accuse the dialecticians, that by the cunning to be avoided of speech they bring it about that if something is false, it is true, and if it is true, it is false. Behold, you yourself introduce something of the kind into the sacraments of Christian regeneration—indeed, something worse and more to be avoided. For they, not in their own deceit nor in the truth of things, but in the perplexity of human speech, say that certain words then seem true when they are false, then false when they are true; which, when they fall into disputation, can be distinguished by the mind, even if they cannot be resolved in speech. But you say that not some word or other, nor some thing or other, but the very purification of conscience by which we are reborn into eternal life can become true in a man through the false reputation of another’s conscience. And lest this be attributed to you, who have learned dialectic, you say that this is the opinion of your people, with whom you have agreed not as a dialectician, but plainly as a heretic.

Through you, then, or through your people, this magnificent doctrine was discovered or demonstrated: when the giver has a good conscience in sanctity, then the one being baptized becomes good, then a good tree produces good fruit; but when the giver’s conscience is evil and hidden, then his false good reputation is consulted, so that a man receives true baptism from a deceiver precisely when he has believed a falsehood about him, and thus, lest a tree be lacking to bear the fruit of heretical error, falsehood becomes the mother of truth. All this is so execrable, so astonishingly perverse and insane, in order that what is of God not be said to be of God, so that what is received from God be attributed to men, lest he who said, “The conscience of the giver in sanctity is what cleanses the recipient,” appear to have erred. “Our people prove this from scripture,” you say, “because Judas the traitor, before he was condemned, did everything just as an apostle did.” What does this have to do with Petilian’s fixed and defined statement, “The conscience of the giver in sanctity is what cleanses the recipient,” except that this same Judas is exceedingly against you, when you try to provide patronage for words carelessly uttered by others? For since Judas baptized just as an apostle did, given that he was evil because he was a thief and stole what was entrusted to the coffers under his care, his conscience was certainly not what was attended to, but rather God and Christ, in whom belief was placed.

For neither did the false good reputation of the evil man himself wash those who received it believing it, nor did the falsehood of human opinion generate the grace of divine truth in a person. And that testimony which you placed from the Scriptures: "What is manifest is for you; what is hidden, however, is for your Lord God"—these words refute and convict you. For if what is hidden is to be left to our Lord God, how is the conscience of the giver, not only when it is evil but also when it is good, since it is hidden, attended to so that it washes the recipient? Or if it itself, when it is hidden, is not attended to, what do you bid the recipient attend to then, from which his conscience may be washed? Oh, wake up at last! Now at least say: "Let him attend to God." Why do you fear being humiliated, if you glory not in a man but in the Lord? "There is," you say, "what I fear. For if, when the conscience of the giver is hidden, I say that the recipient should attend to God, and I confess that his conscience is then washed by Him, that horrible absurdity will follow: that men are washed more holily when they have hidden evil baptizers than when they have manifest good ones, if a man washes when the conscience of the giver is good and manifest, but God washes when it is evil and hidden.

Say then what we say, because this is true, this is sound, this is catholic: that Christ cleanses the consciences of those who receive, whether through good ministers of his baptism or through bad ones, since it is written of him: Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her, to sanctify her, cleansing her with the bath of water in the word. You say, "Answer, how do those whom the Church has condemned baptize?" Already, then, we depart from the words of Petilianus, since when he said, "The conscience of the giver in a holy state is what is looked to, to cleanse that of the receiver," and when I asked who cleanses the conscience of the receiver when the giver's polluted conscience is hidden, he could not answer me. For it is just as contrary to the truth to say that his false reputation can cleanse, as it would be to say that the false reputation itself could do so. But if you ask how those whom the Church has condemned baptize, I answer that they baptize in the same way as those whom God has condemned, before the Church judged anything about them. For he who seems to be inside with a perverse mind, while he is outside, has already been judged by Christ himself. For he himself says: "He who does not believe is already judged," and the apostle Paul says: "The Church is subject to Christ." Therefore, the Church ought not to set itself above Christ, so as to think that those judged by him cannot baptize, while those judged by itself cannot baptize, since he always judges truthfully, but ecclesiastical judges, as men, are often deceived.

Both good and bad baptize, so far as visible ministry is concerned, but invisibly through them He baptizes, to whom belongs both the visible baptism and the invisible grace. Therefore both good and bad can immerse, but only He who is always good can cleanse the conscience. And for this reason, even when the Church is unaware, those who have been condemned by Christ because of an evil and polluted conscience are no longer in the body of Christ, which is the Church, since Christ cannot have condemned members. Hence they also baptize outside the Church. For all such monsters are utterly not to be counted among the members of that unique dove, utterly unable to enter the boundaries of the enclosed garden, whose guardian is He who cannot be deceived. Yet if they confess and are corrected, then they enter, then they are cleansed, then they are numbered among the trees of the enclosed garden, then among the members of the unique dove, and yet they are not baptized again. So also when they come from heretics with that same baptism, which is also baptism outside the Church, but not with that same cleansing, which they receive inside, so that what was lacking is supplied, while what has not been changed is approved.

Your conscience, you say, is condemned by the crime of tradition and thurification through your ancestors, and of persecution through you. As for the traditores and thurificatores, whoever they were who committed that wickedness, you believed not the holy scriptures, but the reports of men. If these reports can be false, speaking well of the wicked, why can they not also be false, speaking ill of the good? Concerning persecution, however, I have answered you briefly and again: when I had answered Petilianus, you were quite unable to refute it. For in holy scripture, which deceives no one, the Church of God is called a threshing-floor, and the Lord himself is said to come with a winnowing-fan and to cleanse his threshing-floor, so that he may store the grain in the granary, but burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Therefore, either you have suffered persecution justly, or, if the Christian measure was exceeded, our chaff did it, on account of which the Lord's threshing-floor was not to be abandoned, lest whoever fled from the chaff before the time of winnowing should, separated from the grain, become chaff. But you, when you tried to refute this testimony, which is not mine but that of holy scripture, said that no persecution could be just; in this you are to be forgiven, not knowing the scriptures, from which it might occur to you how justly it is said: "I was persecuting my neighbor who slandered me secretly," and by the Lord Jesus Christ himself in a most excellent prophecy: "I will pursue my enemies and seize them, and I will not turn back until they fail.

and many other divine testimonies, which it would be long to pursue—if, however, you do not slander me on account of this word, so that, because I said 'it would be long to pursue', you accuse me of being a persecutor of divine testimonies. You oppose to me words of the scriptures, so often demonstrated to be of no help to you: 'The oil of a sinner shall not anoint my head'—since even among you, you cannot deny that there are at least secret sinners, who nevertheless baptize and are not excepted by these words; for it does not say 'the oil of a manifest sinner', but absolutely: 'the oil of a sinner'—and: 'They have become to me like lying water having no faith.' Here I marvel at your prudence, how it does not occur to you that the lying water of a hidden dissembler, whose false reputation for purifying another's conscience you believed to be of some use, is not dialectical but plainly sophistical—that which you reproached in me in vain, as if I were a dialectician, you thought would come to your aid: 'If you lie, you speak the truth!' For what else are you trying to assert, when you attribute to a man a baptism which you refuse to acknowledge as belonging to God, and therefore say that an adulterer can give true baptism because, by hiding himself, he lies that he is chaste?

Therefore, at that time, the water speaks truth in baptism, while it lies in the crime, and its water is not false, which you wish to be in the Church according to the promise of so many prophecies spread throughout the whole world, since Jeremiah did not call false water baptism, but false men according to the meaning that is clear in the Apocalypse, where, when John asked what those waters shown in the vision were, the answer was that they were peoples. Concerning that testimony, which is written: "He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?"—which you did not understand, as I placed it in that letter, and how much you have aided me by your words, pay a little attention. For when you thought that by "dead man" in this passage I understood a worshiper of idols, as if I had excluded only those who cannot baptize, you acted as much as you could by repeating that testimony about oil, which would not have any sinner baptize, as the one who said: "The oil of a sinner will not anoint my head," not excluding any sinner. Hence you are more pressed, as I showed a little earlier. For if no sinner is excepted, then baptize again those baptized by hidden evil men, when they have been convicted. Here you will now try to except a hidden sinner, whom Holy Scripture did not except. Therefore, this entire understanding of yours is shown to be false by the truth, since it is also demonstrated to be contrary to your own intention.

For this is not truly said in the Psalm about baptism, but about the flattery of a sycophant, as the preceding words sufficiently indicate; for the whole sentence is connected thus: "The just man will correct me in mercy and will reprove me: but the oil of the sinner will not anoint my head." Therefore he preferred to have his head bruised by one who reproves truthfully rather than to be anointed by one who flatters deceitfully, the words "oil" and "anointing" being used metaphorically to signify the smoothness of a flatterer. But what I myself thought about this testimony in that letter, where it is said: "He who is baptized by a dead man," I shall, I think, sufficiently show by repeating the very words from it. For when I was discussing what answer a Catholic Christian ought to give to this, I said: when he hears, "He who is baptized by a dead man, his washing does him no good," he will answer: "Christ lives and dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him," of whom it is said: "It is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit." But those are baptized by the dead who are baptized in the temples of idols. For not even they themselves think that they receive the sanctification which they imagine from their own priests, but from their gods. And since these were men and died in such a way that they live neither on earth nor in the rest of the saints, they are truly baptized by the dead.

Up to this point I have transcribed the very words from my letter, in which, as I think, you now perceive, if at least you attend carefully at this late hour, that I did not call the worshippers themselves dead, although in another sense they too are dead, but the false gods whom they worship, because they were men and departed from the body as men, neither did they rise again nor did they have any merit of the life which is promised after this life. Therefore, from these gods those who are baptized, as I said, are truly baptized by the dead, that is, those who are baptized in their name, because they themselves think they are sanctified not in the name of their priests, but of the gods concerning whom they hold vain opinions. But Christ rose again and lives; accordingly, he who is baptized by him is not baptized by a dead man, even through a good or a bad minister of corrupt morals who is dead. For he is baptized by him who lives eternally and of whom it is said in the Gospel, which I also mentioned there: it is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.

You did not understand this in my letter, as your words indicate; for I do not wish to say that, understanding too little, you wished to defraud. I am amazed, however, that you either did not notice the words that follow there of mine, or thought they should be dissembled. For a little later I subjoined and said: "For if in this passage I understand 'dead' to mean a sinful baptizer, the same absurdity will follow, that anyone baptized even by a hidden impious man will have been washed in vain, as one baptized by a dead man." For it does not say: "who is baptized by a manifest dead man," but absolutely: "by a dead man." This clarification of my words there—whom would it not rouse from sleep, or rather from death itself? And yet it did not rouse you, and in addition, what I had said against Petilianus, you, speaking as if against me, have even more vehemently confirmed. Just as men, unknowingly, drive an arrow that has been shot in even deeper and more deeply fixed. For you have asserted that "dead" is to be understood only as a sinful baptizer, and that no sinner is to be excepted, and therefore what I say is concluded against you: that not even a hidden one can be excepted where none is excepted. Therefore, rebaptize those who are established to have been baptized by hidden sinners, to whom, as living and knowing, help can be given, so that now they alone are harmed who either are ignorant or have died before, so that, after the evils of their baptizers have later been made manifest, they can no longer be baptized.

I said "baptized," having exposed and condemned the adulterer, those whom it is established were baptized by him while he was hidden; for they were baptized by a dead man. You said that every sinner without any exception is to be understood as one who cannot baptize, adding the testimony about the oil of the sinner. You said it, you wrote it: hear yourself, read yourself. If every sinner, like a dead man, cannot baptize, then neither can a hidden one. For he is not alive because he is hidden, when he is all the more deeply consumed by the falsehood of pretense. He would be called less dead if he at least confessed, but what is written elsewhere happens in him: "From a dead man, as one who is not, confession perishes." Those whom it is clear were baptized by this dead man sunk in such a depth of death, you do not rebaptize; and those baptized by men who in the farthest lands never heard the name of Caecilian or Maiorinus or Donatus, you do not hesitate to rebaptize, if you can, throwing at them: "What does his washing profit one who is baptized by a dead man?"—calling dead men those to whom, from the corpses of Africans, whatever they were, not even a breeze could reach, and not considering dead the one who can hide his own crime, while Scripture cries out: "From a dead man, as one who is not, confession perishes." Is it so, because he is feigned, he is not dead, when rather on account of that very feigning, lacking the spirit of life, he has utterly expired, as Scripture again says: "For the holy spirit of discipline will flee the feigned man"?

Still defend those dead men and say they live, so that you yourselves die the more by that false defense. They are dead, you say. But what was one to do, who came to them for baptism in ignorance? Let him do now, then, when the traitor has been exposed and he has recognized that he was baptized by a dead man. For if his conscience could not be harmed because he did not know, it begins to be harmed now because he does know; just as if a tunic from a robbery were put on in ignorance, it becomes a garment of iniquity from the moment he knows, and he himself becomes a wrongdoer unless he casts it off; and as one who unknowingly marries another man's wife becomes an adulterer from the moment he learns of it, unless he separates. Let him therefore also cast off that baptism which he recognizes he received from a dead man. For he has something he can do: he can still be baptized again. In short, whether he knew or did not know he was baptized by a dead man, what good is his washing to him? The sentence is strict, as you yourself cry out: it excepts no one. He was baptized by a dead man, I say; his washing does him no good. Cleanse the man by baptizing him, you who are alive, or rather cleanse yourselves from this error, lest you perish by holding such opinions. For you argue as if against me, saying that no one is excepted in what is written: "the oil of a sinner" and "he who is baptized by a dead man," and you do not feel that the knot by which you are bound is drawn tighter by your resistance.

This is what I am doing, this is what I insist upon, this is why I press you urgently to change your vain and perverse opinion: that in the oil of the sinner and the baptism of the dead, no dead person, no sinner is excepted, just as you speak for me as if against me. For in this way not even the hidden one is excepted, by which everything you say is overturned, and thus those who taught you such things are compelled to rebaptize all whom they have been able to find in this life baptized by hidden evil men. What are you doing, where are you turning? Your own words are recited back to you. For not only did you fail to refute my words when I spoke them, but, not knowing that you were reading my words, you yourself said the very same thing in other words as if it were your own, and you wrote it down so that it could be heard and considered more carefully, and so that it might be recited to you as often as you please. Listen, then—these are surely your words: "But if," you say, "it pleases you to except only the worshiper of an idol, what about the one of whom it is said: 'I do not want the oil of a sinner to anoint my head'? Is that sinner alone the one who worships an idol, or is it anyone who commits what is not permitted? But if you think that only the worshiper of an idol is a sinner, then will a Christian who does something against the law not be said to have sinned? But if nothing more foolish or absurd can be said, it is clearly foretold that not only the worshiper of an idol, but any sinner among all men, does not usurp the right of baptism for himself." These words which I have inserted are certainly yours.

I did not exclude a worshiper of an idol, but I said that their gods themselves are dead, from whom it profits nothing to be baptized by anyone; for they seem to themselves to be baptized by those gods, in whose name they think they are purified. But you have excluded no sinner. And if in this passage the sinner and mortal man who baptizes is to be understood, then by excluding no sinner you have undoubtedly excluded not even a hidden one: it is openly predicted, you say, that not only a worshiper of an idol, but any sinner among all men, should not usurp the right of baptism for himself. Therefore listen to yourself. You said 'any sinner,' and you excluded neither a manifest nor a hidden one. Accordingly, with what face do they compel baptism after a manifest sinner, when they are unwilling after a hidden one, where they assert that no one is excluded? Flee, then, brother. From an insane understanding to a sound one, so that in this testimony about the oil of the sinner, as the earlier words of the same psalm prescribe, you may understand the flattering smoothness of a now deceitful flatterer. For thus also no one will be excluded, and it will not run into the insuperable difficulties of a bad hidden baptizer.

So too in another testimony, where it is said: "What does his washing profit one who is baptized by a dead man?"—either examine carefully the ancient manuscripts and especially the Greek ones, lest perhaps the words themselves, written differently, from the preceding and following context of the discourse suggest another meaning, or certainly let us understand "the dead," as I have said, as those in whose name the worshippers of idols are baptized, so that you understand each one to be baptized by him in whose name he believes himself to be cleansed. For thus no one is excepted there; for no dead god of the pagans can cleanse those who believe in him. But if in this passage you understand every sinful man as dead, then such consequences follow—which you do not desire—that you yourself cannot find how to live, since John says: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us," so that you would altogether not find a man by whom to be baptized, if you wished to shun every sinner.

Although if you understood "dead" to mean nothing other than heretic or schismatic, so that whoever is baptized among them is baptized by a dead man—concerning which it is said: "What does his washing profit one who is baptized by a dead man?"—you see how rashly this is taken as if it had been said: "who is baptized by a heretic or schismatic." Even so, it would not be against us, who admit that a man gains nothing from Christ's baptism if he is baptized among heretics or schismatics, attributing the baptism by which he is baptized to them themselves, but that it begins to profit him when he passes over to the body of Christ, which is the church of the living God. For then, under the same baptism, which was also Christ's outside but, being placed outside, profited nothing, the cleansing will profit him not from the one by whose hands he was dipped, but from the one into whose members he has been inserted. Nor will I fear that excessively severe sentence of yours, by which you said: "Whoever among all men is a sinner, let him not usurp the right of baptism for himself," except that you do not find anyone who truthfully says in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors," unless he confesses himself to be a sinner. I would like to question individually those who baptize among you, whether they are not sinners at all.

For any one of them can answer me: "I am not a traitor, I am not a thurifer, I am not an adulterer, I am not a murderer, I am not a worshiper of idols, and finally I am not a heretic, I am not a schismatic." But as for "I am not a sinner," I do not know whether anyone, even with heretical pride, can be found who dares to say, dares to think it; I do not know whether anyone is so blinded by the swelling of arrogance that, not to say he professes it aloud, but even silently judges within himself that the prayer in which we say to God: "Forgive us our debts" is unnecessary for him. For we do not ask for the remission of those debts which we trust were once forgiven in baptism, but for those, certainly, without which human frailty does not exist, however much we may keep watch in observing the Lord's commandments. Finally, let anyone who wishes take on the brow of this shamelessness and say: "I am not a sinner; from the moment all things were forgiven me in baptism, no sin can be found in me." I rather believe John and answer much more confidently: "You deceive yourself and the truth is not in you." Nor does this rash and deceitful profession achieve that sins are not found in you, but that those which are found are not forgiven. Therefore, if you have already been baptized, I would like to know whom you found who would say, contrary to the apostle John: "I have no sin." For if you were able to find such a one, how were you baptized by him who was deceiving himself and in whom the truth was not?

But if, not unmindful of any humility, he said he was a sinner, how did he, according to your opinion, usurp for himself the right of baptism? For you said, and you also did not fear to write, that whoever among all men is a sinner does not usurp for himself the right of baptism. But if you are not yet baptized, either correct this most vain opinion or seek angels from whom you may be baptized. But let us suppose that you, being refuted, have corrected it: "Whoever among all men is a sinner by that crime which our people charge, does not usurp for himself the right of baptism." Nor is this against us, because, if even such a one has usurped and given it, I say that he ought not to have usurped it for himself, but I do not say that he did not give it. But he who received, if a good man from a bad man, if a faithful man from a faithless man, if a pious man from an impious man, it will be harmful to the giver, not to the receiver. For that sacred thing judges the one who uses it badly, but sanctifies the one who uses it well. But if he who received also received it unjustly, even then the sacrament is not rescinded, but recognized, which, while it harms the perverse, will benefit the corrected.

For I will think that you have said, not now 'any sinner' (because, unless I am mistaken, you already see how rashly that was said), but: 'a sinner of the kind our people describe, whoever among all men he may be, let him not usurp for himself the right of baptism', just as it is written: 'But to the sinner God says: Why do you recount my justifications and take up my testament by your mouth?' And to show to which kind of sinner he said this, lest all men abstain from preaching his word who neither dare to feel nor to say that they are not sinners, he continues and describes him: 'But you have hated discipline and have cast my words behind you. Your mouth has abounded with malice, and your tongue has embraced deceitfulness. If you saw a thief, you ran to him, and with adulterers you placed your portion. Sitting against your brother, you slandered, and against the son of your mother you placed a stumbling block.' Therefore to such a sinner he says: 'Why do you recount my justifications and take up my testament by your mouth?', as if he were saying: 'You do this in vain; as far as you are concerned, it does you no good; this will avail you for a judgment of condemnation, not for a merit of salvation.

Nevertheless, if even such a sinner, when narrating the justifications of God and taking up His testament through his own mouth, causes those who hear from his mouth to believe, to act, and to make progress, will not those hearers be praised while he is reprobated, justified while he is blamed, crowned while he is condemned, because they have taken care to obey the Lord who says: "Do what they say, but do not do what they do"? For they say and do not do. Therefore, just as this sinner, if he has usurped for himself the right to preach the divine testament, does himself no good, but benefits those who hear and act—not he himself, but what he preaches—so too that man who ought not to have usurped the right of baptism for himself harms himself, who has wrongly usurped a good thing, not the one who has rightly received a good thing. You see not only that you have been unable to refute what I said against Petilianus, but also with how great a light of truth what you yourself said against me is refuted in every way. And you still go on and say that we do not make our cause sound, and that we in some way confess ourselves to be sinners, because, when the right of baptism is objected to us—by what license we claim it for ourselves—we do not treat of the merit of acts, nor of the innocence of life, but we say that it is permitted to anyone. Pay attention, certainly, from what has been said, that we do not say it is permitted to anyone, but that there is a penalty for him who handles the sacred thing unlawfully, and that he is to be corrected.

not the sacred thing which he unlawfully handles is to be unlawfully torn apart, just as we wish men who use the law unlawfully to be corrected, not the law itself to be rendered void; just as we reproach a man who unlawfully takes up God's testament through his own mouth, we do not deny or tear apart the testament itself. Nor do we confess that we have sinned because we disapprove in a sinner what is his own, while we honor what is God's, because we do not wish a believer in God to depend on hidden human things, but we urge him to glory in the Lord, of whom he is certain. For not even the apostle distrusted his own evil conscience, but he did not want the hope of a believer to be placed in a man, and he firmly established it in God, when he said: "Neither the one who plants is anything, nor the one who waters, but the God who gives the increase." Therefore, when we say what is written: "Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory," we do not accuse our own conscience, but you, who wish the hope of those who are baptized to be placed in the morals of men, do not recognize your own pride.

What of the fact that you even dare to make mention of the blessed Cyprian, as though he were the author of your division, he who was so great a defender of Catholic unity and peace? First, be in the Church, which Cyprian is known to have held and preached, and then dare to name Cyprian as the author of your opinion. First, imitate the piety and humility of Cyprian, and then bring forward the council of Cyprian. For we do no injury to Cyprian when we distinguish any of his letters whatsoever from the canonical authority of the divine Scriptures. For it is not without cause that the ecclesiastical canon was established with such salutary vigilance, to which certain books of the prophets and apostles belong, which we dare not judge at all and according to which we freely judge concerning other writings, whether of the faithful or of the unfaithful. Accordingly, when the apostle, whose epistles are in force in canonical authority, says: "As many as are perfect, let us think this; and if you think otherwise in anything, God will also reveal that to you," as long as Cyprian thought otherwise, if his writings which you think should be brought forward on your behalf are indeed his, as long, therefore, as he thought otherwise on this matter than the truth, upon more careful consideration, revealed, until God should also reveal that to him, he did not, with ineffable praise of charity, abandon Catholic unity and peace even with his colleagues, from whom he thought otherwise.

You inserted his words from the letter to Iubaianus into your own letter, to show that he thought those who had been baptized in heresy or schism should be baptized in the Catholic Church. I am not bound by the authority of this letter, because I do not regard Cyprian's writings as canonical, but I consider them in light of the canonical scriptures, and I accept with praise what in them agrees with the authority of the divine scriptures, but I reject with peace what does not agree. And so, if you were to recite what you recalled from his letter to Iubaianus from some canonical book of the apostles or prophets, I would have nothing at all to contradict. But since what you recite is not canonical, with that freedom to which the Lord has called us, I do not accept this opinion of that man—whose praise I cannot attain, whose many writings I do not compare with my own, whose intellect I love, whose eloquence delights me, whose charity I admire, whose martyrdom I venerate—I do not accept, I say, what the blessed Cyprian thought about baptizing heretics and schismatics, because the Church, for which the blessed Cyprian shed his blood, does not accept it. But because you say that he confirmed this opinion with legal proofs, although he could not confirm the legal proofs, but rather whatever he rightly thought he himself confirmed by them. Therefore, leave aside Cyprian's writings and recall those very legal proofs which you say he used.

If I do not demonstrate that your case is in no way helped by these things, you have won. Therefore, I do not accept this statement of Cyprian in this way—although I am incomparably inferior to Cyprian—just as I neither accept nor follow that statement of the apostle Peter, in which he compelled Gentiles to judaize, although I am incomparably inferior to Peter. But you, who set before us the writings of Cyprian as if they were supports of canonical authority, must yield to whatever we are able to bring forth from Cyprian against you, and it is just that you, as the defeated, be silent and at last convert from the error of most pernicious dissension to Catholic unity. Therefore, to be brief, from this very letter to Iubaianus, consider what I bring forward that overturns and consumes your error. For when he—whether the blessed Cyprian or whoever wrote that letter—was trying to persuade that heretics coming to the Church ought to be baptized, evidently because no baptism was to be considered valid which they had received outside among heretics, he set a question for himself and said: "But someone will say: What then will become of those who in the past, coming from heresy to the Church, were admitted without baptism? The Lord, by His mercy, can grant indulgence and not separate from the gifts of His Church those who, having been simply admitted to the Church, have fallen asleep in the Church.

This simplicity suffices for us, to which Cyprian himself bears witness, understanding that the unity of the body of Christ is so great a good that even those whom he believed to be without baptism, once simply admitted into it, would merit indulgence from divine mercy and would not be separated from the gifts of the Church, as he presumed in pious thought. This was the custom of the Church before Cyprian's council; this could not be overcome or removed even by Cyprian's council, so that those coming from heresy—not indeed without baptism, as he says, because the same baptism was present in them even outside, though it did not benefit them—yet, simply admitted, as he also says, would merit indulgence from God's mercy and would not be separated from the gifts of the Church. This simplicity, rather than duplicity, pleased the universal Church spread throughout the whole world. Hear what testimony Cyprian himself bears to this from the letter he wrote on unity: "Pluck," he says, "a ray of the sun from its body; the unity of light does not admit division. Break a branch from a tree; once broken, it cannot sprout. Cut off a stream from its source; once cut off, it dries up.