Contra Cresconium

in his words we do not find nor understand that light admits no division except in the saints predestined for the kingdom of God, who can in no way be divided from the church, and we accept that a broken branch does not sprout with the shoot of eternal salvation, but we recognize the dryness of a stream cut off from its source in the fact that those who are separated from unity are emptied of the Holy Spirit, not in the sacrament of baptism, which both good and evil can possess, whether openly outside as well as secretly inside, separated from the sanctity of the church. But, as no one doubts, consider what Cyprian thought about the fecundity of the church itself, spread throughout the whole world, in what he adds: Thus, he says, the church of the Lord, bathed in light, extends its rays throughout the whole world: yet it is one light that is diffused everywhere, and the unity of the body is not separated. It extends its branches over the whole earth with an abundance of fertility, and spreads its flowing streams more widely: yet there is one head and one origin and one mother, rich in the successes of fertility. This church, promised in the holy scriptures, restored throughout the whole world, Cyprian loved, held, and commended, which lost schismatics or heretics, desiring to distinguish and separate themselves from the wicked, abandoned with impious seditions.

who tried to wash away their impious outcomes with vain excuses, holy scripture foretold: a bad son calls himself just, but does not wash away his outcome, because neither on account of the bad, who seem to be inside, should the good, who truly are inside, be abandoned. Here, what blessed Cyprian thought, learn from the letter he wrote to the presbyter Maximus and the others, whom he congratulates on returning to the church from schismatic and heretical error: for even if, he says, there seem to be tares in the church, yet our faith or love ought not to be hindered, so that because we see tares in the church we ourselves should withdraw from the church. We must only labor that we may be wheat, so that when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's granaries, we may reap the fruit for our work and labor. The apostle says in his letter: 'In a great house, there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthenware ones. And some indeed are honored, some dishonored.' Let us give our effort and labor as much as we can, that we may be a gold and silver vessel. Moreover, it is granted to the Lord alone, to whom the iron rod is given, to break the earthenware vessels. A servant cannot be greater than his master, nor can anyone claim for himself what the Father granted only to the Son, so as to think that he can already carry the winnowing fan or winnowing fork to the threshing floor to winnow and purge, or separate all the tares from the wheat by human judgment.

This obstinacy is proud and this presumption is sacrilegious, which a depraved madness takes upon itself. And while certain people always take upon themselves more than gentle justice demands, they perish from the Church, and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their own swelling, they lose the light of truth. You see, brother, that according to the divine scriptures Cyprian taught this, even on account of the wicked who, though they are spiritually separated from the good by life and morals, nevertheless appear to be corporally mixed with them in the Church until the day of judgment, when they will also be corporally separated to their deserved punishments: that the Church is not to be abandoned as grain is not abandoned on account of chaff or tares, nor a great house on account of dishonored vessels. You see, you hear, you perceive, you grasp, you understand with how great a crime, on account of those who displease you, whether rightly or when you are deceived, you separate yourselves from the Church which is spread throughout the whole world, to which, according to the divine scriptures, Cyprian bears so great, so firm, so clear and luminous a testimony.

Therefore, pay close attention to my brief reasoning on this entire question. If those coming from heretics are rightly received into the Church, so that their own error is corrected but the divine sacrament is not annulled, we rejoice for those living well there as the Lord's grains. But if, as you think and boast that Cyprian favors you in this opinion, they do not have baptism, then certainly, when they are simply admitted to the Church according to the same Cyprian, they merit the mercy of God on account of the merit of unity itself and are not separated from the Church's gifts. And whoever admits them simply according to the earlier custom, which Cyprian did not keep silent about, and lives rightly and peacefully, is counted among the same grains destined for the granary; but those who either knowingly contend contentiously against the truth in receiving them, or live with depraved and perverse morals, are tolerated among the tares and chaff due to the flames. Yet on their account, God commands that the Church, which is spread throughout the whole world with abundant successes—that is, the Lord's grains, which grow together until the harvest or are threshed together until the winnowing—not be abandoned, as Cyprian testifies. And through this, if in the communion of sacraments the evil stain the good, when in the times of Cyprian or before Cyprian heretics were received without baptism, as you think, say that the Church perished and show from whom you were born.

If, however, as truth also teaches through Cyprian, when for the sake of the Church’s peace even known tares are tolerated, they do not stain the wheat, and a bad son calls himself just, but does not wash away his own end, because he ought not to have left the Church on account of the wicked. I say again, behold, I do not allow you to dissemble from this most invincible reasoning: if those who do not share in the sins of the wicked, merely because of the communion of the sacraments, are lost by the wicked, then when in the past those coming from heresy to the Church were admitted without baptism, they certainly ruined the good by their contagion. Already then, therefore, the Church which Cyprian held and preached, and from which Donatus later departed, did not exist. But if that contagion did not ruin the good, then the contagion of those whom you accuse could not ruin the Christian world. Do not slander as separated ones, and return corrected to the Church. It is necessary for you to accuse Caecilian and his associates, against whom Secundus of Tigisis then convened and held a council; it is not necessary for me to defend them. Accuse them with all the strength you can. If they were innocent, your windiness will harm them no more than it does the wheat; if they were guilty, the wheat ought not to have been abandoned on account of those tares, which did them no harm. Accuse as much as you can. I win if you do not prove your case; I win if you do prove it; I win, I say, if you do not prove it, with you yourself as judge; I win if you do prove it, with Cyprian as witness. What do you want them to have been?

If they are innocent, why do you, being tares, bring false accusations against the Lord’s wheat? If they are guilty, why do you separate yourselves from the Lord’s wheat on account of the tares? The Church stands forth, clear and conspicuous to all—indeed, a city that cannot be hidden, set upon a mountain, through which Christ rules from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth, like the seed of Abraham, multiplied as the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea, in which all nations are blessed. This Church the blessed Cyprian also commends, saying that it is suffused with the Lord’s light, extends its rays throughout the world, and spreads its branches over the whole earth with abundant fertility. This Church would either not be accused in its wheat, or would not be abandoned on account of the tares. Answer one of these for yourselves, and learn the other from Cyprian’s admonitions. For these are his own words, as he testifies and says: “For even if tares are seen to be in the Church, our faith or our love ought not to be hindered, so that because we perceive tares in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church.

You say that the church of the whole world has perished through the contamination of the wicked Africans, and that its remnants have remained in the Donatist party as if in grain separated from tares and chaff, thinking in open opposition to Cyprian, who says that good men do not perish in the church through the admixture of evil men, nor can those same evil men be separated from the admixture of good men before the time of divine judgment. Therefore, according to your error or rather madness, you are compelled to accuse not only Caecilianus and his ordainers, but also those churches which we read of equally in the apostolic and canonical scriptures—not only the church of the Romans, from which you are accustomed to ordain a bishop for a few of your people from Africa, but also those of the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Thessalonians, Colossians, Philippians, to which the apostle Paul writes most openly; the church of Jerusalem, which the first apostle James ruled with his episcopate; the church of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians; the churches of Smyrna, Thyatira, Sardis, Pergamum, Philadelphia, Laodicea, to which the Apocalypse of the apostle John is addressed; so many other churches of Pontus, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, to which the apostle Peter writes; and whatever else Paul testifies that he filled with the gospel from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum—to say nothing of other such broad and immense parts of the earth, into which the church has been extended and grows from these apostolic labors and plantations.

You are certainly compelled to accuse those churches, which I have named from the divine and canonical scriptures, situated so far from Africa, as if they perished because of the sins of the Africans, rather than correct the error which drives you to such great wickedness through nefarious dissension. But we, in order to more easily refute this error of yours, are not compelled to defend even the Africans themselves, whose false charges you dare to pour out upon other nations as well; not even them, I say. For they have fellowship in the kingdom with those transmarine churches, if they were innocent; but if they were guilty, they could not, like tares among the wheat, harm even in Africa those who refused to separate themselves from the unity of the Church on account of them, even when known. For to pass over how many believed them innocent, to whom their crime, even if there was any, could nevertheless not be demonstrated—and certainly you cannot say that these were stained by unknown sins of others—but, I say, to pass over these, even those who either knew or believed them to be guilty, though established in African churches, when they saw that they could not be convicted among the transmarine churches nor their crimes demonstrated to the far-flung members of the Church, if they wished to separate themselves on account of those whom they knew to be evil from the communion of so many nations, to whom they could not prove them, as if from fear of pestilential contagion, they would be held back not by me, not by you, not by Donatus, not by Caecilianus, but by the one whom you have dared to name.

Cyprian would say those words which he wrote to Maximus: If tares are seen in the Church, yet our faith or our love ought not to be hindered, so that because we perceive tares in the Church we should withdraw from the Church itself. We must only labor that we may be wheat, so that when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's granaries, we may reap the fruit for our work and labor. The Apostle says in his epistle: "But in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthenware ones. And some indeed are honored, some dishonored." Let us give effort and labor as much as we can, that we may be a gold and silver vessel. For the rest, it is granted to the Lord alone to break earthenware vessels, to whom also the iron rod is given. A servant cannot be greater than his Lord, nor can anyone claim for himself what the Father has granted only to the Son, so as to think that he can either carry the winnowing fan or winnowing fork to the threshing floor for winnowing and cleansing, or separate all the tares from the wheat by human judgment. That is a proud obstinacy and a sacrilegious presumption which a perverse madness assumes for itself. And while some always assume more for themselves than mild justice demands, they perish from the Church, and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their own swelling, they lose the light of truth. By these words of Cyprian, those who feared God in the Church would be restrained, who wished to separate from it because of known evil men; by these words you are condemned, who, separated, accuse even the good.

With these words Cyprian holds us in the house of God, whose beauty he loved, even if—something you could never do—we were able to know as accused and pointed out by you the traditores and any other evil persons, so that we do not abandon that house on account of vessels made for dishonor. With these words he also, once you are corrected, may introduce you, pacified, into Catholic peace, so that you do not, offended by any sins of others, whether true or false, hurl such great evils against the Church of Christ, which is fruitful and growing throughout the whole world through the Scriptures; so that you do not accuse the wheat on account of the tares; so that you do not abandon the grain on account of the chaff; so that you do not remain outside the great house on account of dishonored vessels. Behold how much the blessed Cyprian, whom you have recalled, has helped us. If he thought otherwise in any matter concerning rebaptism, for such great merits of his most ardent charity the Lord undoubtedly revealed what was to be corrected, because he remained in that vine as a branch so rich with the fruit of peace and love that, even if something in him were found to be purged, it would certainly be purged by no other means than by the sickle of martyrdom. Therefore, although these things might be more than enough to convict your error and, if you wish, to correct it, yet, lest anyone think that you have set down something in your letter that I could not refute, or in which I could not show that you have given no adequate response to my letters against Petilianus, let us examine the rest in the following volume.

BOOK THREE.- If I did not have to attend to the minds of the slow-witted, who cannot understand that in the two previous volumes I have responded in many ways to the entire case contained in your letter, brother Cresconius, so that even those matters which remain there are already resolved and frustrated, the end should already have been placed upon this work. But because there are many whom it is fitting for us to serve, who do not think that everything has been refuted unless each point is also treated individually in its own place, I shall briefly run through the remaining parts of your discourse in order, to be refuted. Whatever you thought should be inserted from the letters of the venerable martyr Cyprian and of certain Easterners, that it pleased them to reject the sacrament of baptism given among heretics and schismatics, does nothing to hinder our case, if we retain that church which Cyprian did not desert, even when many of his colleagues were unwilling to consent to this opinion. For even in that same council he said: judging no one nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he thought differently; and he concluded the same letter to Jubaianus thus:

We have responded to you, dearest brother, to the best of our modest ability, prescribing or prejudging nothing to prevent each bishop from doing what he thinks best, having free power of his own judgment, and so forth. Therefore, for the present, count us among those whom Cyprian was unable to persuade, yet from whom he did not separate his communion even when they held a different opinion on this matter. But your predecessors, to whom you gave such testimony—that they were separated from the communion of the Easterners because the latter rescinded their own judgment, by which they had decided that it was necessary to agree with Cyprian and that African council on this question of baptism—acted against Cyprian. For they ought to have maintained the unity of communion with their colleagues who held different opinions on this question, as we read that Cyprian did in his letters. They reply that he spoke in that way deliberately, lest perhaps, deterred by fear of excommunication, they would not dare to speak freely what they thought, not because he would have remained in communion with them if they had held different opinions; by which they openly say that Cyprian lied.

If he was saying, “Judging no one and removing no one from the right of communion if he should hold a different opinion”—which the written records of the council indicate that he said—and yet, if any one of those to whom he was saying this were to show that he held a different opinion, he was not going to communicate the sacraments of Christ with him, then without doubt he was lying, promising such things deceitfully and not truthfully; and what is worse in that lie, he was deceiving the simplicity of the brethren with a double heart, especially since what was said was also being written down. For whoever from that council had held a different opinion, where could he be condemned or excommunicated by their mouth, when he would recite the very beginning of that council in his own defense? Who, then, thinks more tolerably about Cyprian: we, who say that he could have been mistaken as a man in the obscure question of baptism, or you, who say that in promising Christian communion he, a bishop, intended to deceive not just some one brother, but the entire episcopal fellowship? And if it is impious even for you to believe that about him, then your predecessors acted against his opinion when they separated themselves from the communion of the Easterners because they held a different opinion on this matter.

Therefore, if it must now be believed entirely that fifty bishops of the Eastern provinces held that view, which seventy Africans or even somewhat more held against so many thousands of bishops to whom this error was displeased throughout the whole world, why should we not rather say that even those few Easterners corrected their own judgment, not, as you put it, rescinded it? For just as it is praiseworthy not to be moved from a true opinion, so it is blameworthy to persist in a false one; the first praise is never to hold a false opinion, the second is to change it, so that either from the beginning the true opinion remains, or the false one is changed and the true one succeeds. Nor does it now pertain to our question what the greater part of the Christian world, together with the Easterners, thought. For if this is true, if this is what we must hold and preserve, which we hold and preserve concerning baptism, then we charge you with two evils: one, that you err in the question of baptism; the other, that you separate yourselves from those who think truly on this matter. But if, to speak according to you, this is the truth in that question which you yourselves think, then you are certainly stained by that crime, that you have withdrawn from the Church, for the sake of whose peace, as Cyprian both did and advised, you ought to have tolerated even those who thought differently.

Then you exclaim that I said: "you make no distinction between the faithful and the faithless, the pious and the impious seem the same to you." I did not say that, but I clearly said that from which you wished to exclaim, as if I were saying this, and to say what I did not say: "whether," I say, "someone receives the sacrament from a faithful or a faithless dispenser." In that statement I did not make no distinction between the faithful and the faithless, nor did I command that the pious and the impious should seem the same to anyone, but that the same sacrament can be possessed by the pious and the impious, which you do not deny, since you at least concede that one should not be baptized after secret impious persons. Therefore, you join together without cause and say: "it is of no benefit to live with good morals, because whatever is permitted to the just, the unjust can also fulfill," which is both false and not said by me. For good morals distinguish the life of the good and the evil and lead to different ends, nor can the unjust fulfill whatever is permitted to the just, because the just fulfills the law of Christ through love, from which the unjust is alien; yet he can fulfill something that the just also fulfills, such as baptizing himself, if nothing else, certainly when he is hidden, just as they can also preach the commandments of God like the just, but not live according to them like the just, about whom it is said: "do what they say, but do not do what they do.

But suppose an unjust man is not exposed and is known to some good men, yet cannot be separated from the church by some sedition or faction. Listen to Cyprian: tolerate the tares, be the wheat. How well those words seemed to sound to you, which you repeated in various ways on one point: "What," you ask, "could be more unjust than this precept: let a stained man purify another, let a filthy man wash, let an unclean man cleanse, let an unbeliever give faith, let a criminal make an innocent man?" I answer briefly: Christ is neither stained nor filthy nor unclean nor an unbeliever nor a criminal, who loved the church and gave himself for her, cleansing her with the washing of water in the word, making us certain of his own goods, lest we be corrupted by the evils of others. For behold, when a wicked minister is hidden, from whom you do not rescind the baptism given, can not all those words of yours be turned back against you, because a stained man purifies, a filthy man washes, an unclean man cleanses, an unbeliever gives faith, and a criminal makes an innocent man? "No," you say, "not he himself, but his good reputation, though empty and false." Hence you do not want me to exclaim: O crime, O portent, not, as someone said, to be exported to the farthest lands, but rather to be driven away beyond all heaven and all earth, if it could be done. I do not say this of you yourself, whom I wish corrected, but of this error, from which I desire you to be corrected.

Is it so that, for cleansing a man, when good ministers lack true life, then the false reputation of evil ministers suffices, which accomplishes what a good life would accomplish, so that, for sanctifying a man, when the iniquity of the minister lies hidden, falsehood serves God? All this is to avoid saying what we say: whether a person receives the sacrament from a faithful or a faithless dispenser, only God sanctifies. Next, you recall my words, that I said: "Let Christ always give faith, let Christ be the origin of the Christian, let the Christian fix his root in Christ, let Christ be the head of the Christian." I said it plainly and I say it still, nor could you answer it at all. For you seem to have almost succumbed to such a weight of truth, when you added: "This we also urge, this we wish." Then you again posit a man in whom the recipient is to place his hope: "But we ask," you say, "through whom this is better done." And because we too say that a man cannot be baptized without a minister, you ask me whether it is better that the minister be unjust or just. To this I reply that it is better that the minister be just, so that the weakness of man, for whom it is laborious and difficult without an example to do what God commands, may be more easily raised to a good life by the imitation of a good minister; whence the Apostle Paul says: "Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.

When it comes to a man being baptized and sanctified, if what is received is so much better as the one through whom it is handed over is better, then there is as much variety in the baptisms received as there is diversity of merits in the ministers. For if, as is believed without controversy, Paul was better than Apollos, then according to that vain and perverse opinion of yours, he gave a better baptism, and if he gave a better baptism, he certainly begrudged those whom he congratulates for not being baptized by him. Moreover, if among good ministers, when one is better than another, the baptism given by the better one is not better, then in no way is the baptism given even by a bad one bad, when the same baptism is given. And therefore, through unequal ministers, the gift of God is equal, because it is not theirs, but His. Therefore, we do not, as you vainly charge, make no distinction between a believer and an unbeliever, but we distinguish human merits, not divine sacraments, which you, led by the force of truth and forgetful of heretical contention, have said are for us and for you not different, but one and the same.

How can you say: "This also we urge and desire, that Christ always gives faith, that Christ is the origin of the Christian, that the Christian fixes his root in Christ, that Christ is the head of the Christian," when you defend the letters of Petilianus, where, most openly, when he was commending the merit of the baptizer and showing how much human justice avails for conferring baptism, he tried to demonstrate for the sake of his cause: "The conscience of the giver is attended to, which cleanses the receiver. For he who knowingly receives faith from a faithless man does not receive faith but guilt." And as if it were said to him: "How do you prove this?" he added in sequence: "For every thing consists in its origin and root, and if it has no head, it is nothing." What, I ask, because you have fallen into the defense of a rash falsehood, do you attempt to cast clouds over clear matters? The man openly says that the origin, root, and head of a man being regenerated through baptism cannot be other than the one by whose ministry he is baptized. And you say: "This also we desire, that Christ be the origin and root and head of the Christian, but we ask through whom this is better done." This is one thing that you say, another that Petilianus said; what you say, even if it were true, is not what he said.

Therefore, if you also wish that Christ be the origin, root, and head of the Christian, resist Petilianus, not me, since neither the planter nor the waterer is anything, but God is the one who gives growth. When I had set this down in my writings from the Apostle, you wished to respond in such a way as to say: It is indeed God’s to give growth, but just as a faithful and diligent farmer is sought for planting and watering, so also in the sacrament of baptism only a faithful and most just worker is employed. As if, indeed, what an unfaithful farmer has planted does not sprout because of his unfaithfulness. The strength of the seed, the fertility of the soil, and the temperateness of the sky have received this efficacy from the divine, that for producing fruits they merely await a planter or waterer as a worker, regardless of the mind with which he works, the intention with which he labors, whether he faithfully loves the master of the field or seeks his own gain, not the master’s. You also add a prophetic testimony, saying: I will give you shepherds according to my heart, and they will feed you, feeding with discipline. I know this has been fulfilled: such were the apostles, and such even now, though very few given the breadth of the church, are not lacking. But what is also said through the prophet Ezekiel against evil shepherds you ought to have sought out, read, and considered. For there it says: I will feed, not the shepherds.

Therefore, both through good shepherds and through bad shepherds, when He dispenses His word and sacrament, He Himself feeds, because He says of Himself: that there be one flock and one shepherd. For it is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man, and: cursed is everyone who places his hope in man. This, which I recalled in that letter, you show that you understand in such a way that you say you inquire all the more into the just and faithful man through whom this sacrament is celebrated, because you have hope and trust in God, not in man, and that the faith and justice are God’s, which you always attend to in His ministers. You speak truly, because we have nothing of all good things that we have not received, and therefore faith and justice come to us from God. But when you say that God cannot give this to you unless the man through whom you are baptized possesses it, you certainly place your hope in man, whose participation in justice you do not know, and if he does not have it, then you attend to his reputation, and when you find a false good reputation about a hidden evil man, you believe it suffices for your sanctification. I implore you, if you have trust in God, not in man, and therefore you inquire all the more that the man through whom this sacrament is celebrated be just and good and faithful, because faith and justice are God’s, is the falsity of reputation also God’s, which, if an evil minister has a good one, you say suffices for your sanctification? I would rather that you trusted in man, from which I most vehemently forbade you, than that you trust in the falsity of that very reputation.

For a man, whatever he may be, insofar as he is a man, is a creature of God, but no falsehood is a creature of God. Moreover, if he is cursed who places his hope in a man, how much more so he who places his hope in the falsehood of human opinion, so that he falls into that other thing which is written: "He who trusts in false things feeds on winds," that is, becomes food for evil spirits! If, you say, baptism given by anyone and in any manner ought not to be rescinded, why did the apostles baptize after John? How much more vehemently is it proposed: "If the apostles baptized after John, why does not also someone better or equal baptize after any saint whatsoever?" so that from this you may be forced to understand that the baptism of John does not pertain to this question! And, you say, to the Jews baptized by Moses, Peter said: "Repent, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ." If for that reason the Jews were already baptized because Moses had baptized their parents through the Red Sea so long before, those who are born of baptized Christians are today baptized without cause; and yet you say and write these things, you are heard and read, and you are thought to be responding to our writings, as if to have been able to respond were the same as having been unwilling to keep silent.

Nor did you refute that point, which you thought should be passed over, at the beginning of this letter, as you imagine, which I stated: if those who wished to be Paul's were in error, what hope then remains for those who wished to be Donatus's? For who does not see that this division arose from this, and that even today this plague persists, while hope is placed in the righteousness of a man, so that the baptism of Christ is acceptable only if someone is baptized by a righteous man? Against this error, Paul himself cries out against those who had already begun to create schisms because of the diverse merits of men: "I thank God that I baptized none of you, lest anyone say that I baptized in my name." What else does he imply but that the baptism of Christ belongs only to Him in whose name it is given, and therefore it does not become better when given by a better man, nor worse when given by a worse one? In vain, therefore, do you subsequently exult and say: "It follows that I conclude that all those things which were written in the discourse of the blessed Petilianus, or of anyone else, were rightly said." For the very words which you conclude as if rightly said do not prove themselves to have been rightly said, because neither is the conscience of the giver, which cleanses the recipient, considered when the stain of the giver is hidden.

When you were defeated, you should have yielded to the truth; instead, you appealed to his false reputation, as if to an unfortunate judge deceived by a lie, because conscience is not regarded when his reputation is considered, and just as no one can be cleansed of a false reputation, so no one can be cleansed of a bad life, and no one receives the Christian faith from a man, whether faithless or faithful, but from Him of whom it is written: "cleansing their hearts by faith." For if someone hears from a faithful man what he ought to believe, he indeed imitates him, but he is not justified by him. For if a minister justifies the impious, it follows that faith is rightly placed even in the minister; for the apostolic sentence is clear and certain: "the faith of one who believes in him who justifies the impious is counted as righteousness." Therefore, if a minister does not dare to say: 'believe in me,' let him not dare to say: 'you are justified by me.' Now as for what follows: "every thing consists in its origin and root, and if something has no head, it is nothing," if the origin, root, and head of the baptized is the baptizing minister, then Christ is not; if Christ is, then the minister is not. Finally, when the minister is secretly evil, what origin, what root, what head does the baptized have? Is it his false reputation? This is what Cresconius says, but the truth contradicts it.

Therefore, if at that time Christ is the origin, root, and head, He is also that when the minister is good, lest—which is most absurd—the condition of one baptized through a hidden evil be better, when Christ is the head, than that of one baptized through a manifest good, if then the minister is the head. I have said this also concerning the good seed; for it follows: nor does anything regenerate well unless it is regenerated by good seed. But what follows from the letter of Petilianus which you have set forth, where he says: "Since this is so, brothers, what perversity can there be, that one who is guilty of his own crimes should make another innocent, when it is written: a good tree makes good fruits, and a bad tree makes bad fruits. Do they gather grapes from thorns? And again: every good man produces good things from the treasury of his heart, and a bad man brings forth bad things from the treasury of his heart," these things sufficiently and clearly convict Petilianus of having referred all this only to the man through whom baptism is administered, so that he himself is understood, if he is innocent, to make innocent the one he baptizes; he himself is the good tree, whose fruit is the one who is baptized; he himself is the good man, from whose heart's treasury the sanctification of the baptized proceeds. And therefore, when this man is secretly evil, tell me, by whom is that one made innocent? tell me, of which tree will he be the fruit? tell me, from whose heart's treasury will the baptized be sanctified?

or if at that time he deserves to have not a human minister of baptism but Christ as the author of his innocence, as the tree from which good fruit is born, then he falls more fortunately into a hidden evil minister than if he had fallen into a manifestly good one. But if this is said most absurdly and insanely, then it is the fruit of Christ that is sanctified by his baptism, no matter through the work of which minister he is baptized—unless perhaps you are going to resort to your advice, when he encounters the stained and hidden conscience of the minister, so that you show him a tree falsely good, namely the reputation of a bad man, whose root if you seek, you will find the cunning of a deceiver, from which if good fruit can be born—which God forbid—then Christ lied when he said: "A bad tree cannot produce good fruit." But because Christ spoke truly, let a good man, as a good tree, have good fruit, a good work, just as a bad man, as a bad tree, has bad fruit, a bad work; but he who is baptized is born not from any man's tree, but from the spirit of Christ, if he wishes to be fruit that is not corrupted by the wind and a tree that is not uprooted. Since this is so, when you have said: "Therefore it follows that I conclude all those things that were written by the holy Petilianus or in the speech of anyone else were rightly said," I think that I rather conclude that all those things were not rightly said.

Now let us see what you next wove together in your letter: how the case of Optatus and the Maximianists—or rather, to become more learned from you, the Maximianienses, as your people have taught—have instructed you. And as for Optatus, concerning whom I am able to recite nothing in writing, I easily yield whatever opinion you may hold. This one thing I know: if the things that were, I will not say demonstrated, but at least said about him are true, then neither was he himself good nor did he have a good reputation. Hence, whoever were baptized by him could be washed clean neither by his conscience, according to Petilianus, nor by his reputation, according to you. But if false evils about him, as often happens, were spread by envious rumor, see how rightly we should not readily believe what you have never been able to prove to us about the traditores whom you accuse, because even about good men a bad rumor often lies. Therefore, if it is not their innocence, nor, finally—what is true and firm—God’s grace and our own conscience that makes baptism valid for us, let at least your own sentence make it so.

You, when speaking about Optatus, said: "I neither acquit nor condemn Optatus." If I—or rather, not only I, but the whole African Catholic Church, and even more so the transmarine Church so widely and far-flung—were to say this about Caecilianus and his ordainers: "I neither acquit nor condemn them," do you think it is too little for those whom these men had baptized, none of whom ever saw Caecilianus, that what you believe suffices concerning Optatus for those whom he even baptized with his own hands? Or is it because you recite the council of your ancestors concerning Caecilianus, but no council concerning Optatus is recited by us, that you think none of us is permitted to say: "I neither acquit nor condemn Caecilianus"—which you were permitted to say about Optatus? But a later transmarine judgment was rendered in favor of Caecilianus, at the insistence of your people before the Emperor Constantine. Or if ecclesiastical judgments that were made earlier cannot now be overturned, what are you going to do about your own bishop of Carthage, Primianus, against whom a hundred—more, indeed, than concerning Caecilianus—first judged, and, with his episcopate abrogated, set up Maximianus in his place? Does not Primianus rely on a later judgment, which was rendered in his favor at the town of Bagai, according to which judgment he does not wish to be doubted, but extorts acquittal from all of you? Hence we too, according to the later judgment concerning Caecilianus, absolutely and unhesitatingly acquit him.

Yet it is enough for the case, if we say about him what you said about Optatus: "We neither acquit nor condemn Caecilian." Let those—whether yours or ours—who have judged him see to it; let them render an account of their own sentences, let them bear the burden of their own work, whether evil or good. Allow us at least to doubt concerning the deeds of others, lest we be forced to condemn in ourselves those sacraments about which it is not lawful to doubt. But I have already said: think what you will about Optatus; for there is no way to convict a man who did not commit his deeds in the official records, yet committed them in such a way that he was considered, held, and died as a chief among the satellites of Gildo. Are we even permitted to babble anything to you about Felicianus and Praetextatus, associates of Maximianus, whom your three hundred and ten bishops, together with the others similarly named, condemned by one and the same sentence of the Council of Bagai, and whom, not long afterward, they received as bishops together with all those whom the condemned had baptized, just as they were?

Therefore, whatever you have said against us or against our people, as if sparing and passing over them, without names, without witnesses, without any evidence at all—partly blaming things that ought not to be blamed, partly failing to prove things that ought to be blamed—it is superfluous to attempt to clear. Pay attention to these men, these men again: Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assura; look at them a little more carefully. I will explain their whole case in its proper place, if the Lord permits, so that even if you wish to be an excessive enemy of the truth, you will not be able to defend or deny the lie of your people. But for now, I choose to proceed according to what they have told you; I do not yet examine how (un)true what they said is. I do not yet show with what astonishing blindness of shamelessness they lied. Certainly, when you read in my letter about those whom I called Maximianists—both condemned by your council and received back—you were, as you write, greatly disturbed, since at that time—to use your own words—you did not know what the truth contained. Finally, immediately, as you relate, you inquired more diligently from your bishops, and with them teaching you, you learned both the decree of the council and the sentence pronounced against those who were condemned, and the whole order of events; and because you believed that I too was ignorant of what had happened, you urged me to learn what the truth contained, and then you narrated everything. See, in this matter I am setting down your own words from your letter; for they are very necessary for me.

Since, as you say, when the error of Maximianus was trying to associate as many bishops as possible with itself, a council was convened by our people, and a sentence was pronounced against all those who had persisted in his schism—a sentence which you also testify that you have read. And when that sentence was confirmed by the consent of all, it was nevertheless decided, you say, by a decree of the council that a period of time should be granted, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be considered innocent. And so it happened, you say, that not only those two whom you mention, but also many others, were purified and returned innocent to the Church, whose baptism therefore ought not to be rescinded, because, having been restored within the appointed day, they were not held by the peremptory sentence, nor, when they were baptized, were they separated from the Church, since they were not yet separated by the defined limit of the fixed time. But those who, even after the aforesaid day, persisted obstinately with Maximianus, were retained by the sentence of condemnation and at the same time lost both their baptism and the Church. These words of yours, certainly, my Cresconius, you recognize as expressed from the context of your letter.

Therefore I ask of you: if they had not yet been separated from the Church, how was a sentence pronounced against all those who had persisted in the schism of Maximianus—a sentence which, although confirmed by the consensus of all, was yet, as you say, by decree of the council, given a period of delay within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be considered innocent? By these words you show that those who had persisted in the schism of Maximianus, if anyone within the period of delay wished to be corrected, would be considered innocent. Therefore he would be corrected, if he wished to be corrected, from that schism in which he had persisted with Maximianus. Hence, before he was corrected, he was in the schism in which he had persisted, although, because he was corrected within the agreed time, he had not persisted in it obstinately. For a little later, in subsequent words, you distinguish thus: “But those who, even after the aforesaid day, persisted with Maximianus—persisted obstinately—were held by the sentence of condemnation and lost both baptism and the Church.” By saying “persisted obstinately,” you show that even those who were corrected had persisted, but not obstinately; against all of them together that sentence was pronounced, which, confirmed by the consensus of all, yet, as you say, by decree of the council allowed that period of delay. How, then, were they in the Church who, before they were corrected, were persisting with Maximianus in schism? But if they were not in the Church, because they were in schism, how were they baptizing?

Then how did it happen, as you say, that not only those whom I have mentioned, but also many others, after being purged and declared innocent, returned themselves to the Church, if they had not been separated from the Church? To whom did they return, from whom they had not departed? Or if they had departed, tell me, please, by what right did they baptize before they returned themselves to the Church? For that reason, you say, their baptism ought not to be rescinded, because, having been restored within the prescribed day, they were not bound by the peremptory sentence. Restored to what? Wake up, I implore you: tell us, to what were they restored. You will surely say: “to the Church,” to which you said they returned themselves. Is anyone restored to the Church who was not separated from the Church? Does anyone persist in schism for even a few days without being separated from the Church? Does anyone, after any length of time, however short, return himself to the Church without having been separated from the Church? I think, my dearest friend, that you not only failed to consider your words when writing them, but also did not read them after they were written. Yet what could you do, since necessity forced you in this work to defend the sentence pronounced against Maximianus and his associates—not as your own, but as spoken by others—in whatever way you could? For even if you did not use these words, I would recite the very decree of the Council of Bagai, where it is written: “But those whom the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute the plantings—that is, those who, with the modesty of faithful shame, withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus—we have permitted to return to mother Church.

Therefore, even if I were not to find such words of yours, I would certainly say here, I would cry out here for the truth: how are they permitted to return to mother Church who have not departed from mother Church? Or if they have departed, by what right were they able to baptize before they returned, unless it is that in the business of mending this schism you have forgotten your own vanity, whereby, after the bishops who have maintained an unbroken succession from the apostolic sees down to these times, you judge that not one man, not one house, not one city, not one nation, but the whole world must be rebaptized? Or certainly because the honor of this deed has always shaken even the hearts of those who do it, when so many peoples were returning to your communion from the communion of Maximianus, it pleased you to restore so many, indeed, but it shamed you to rebaptize so many. Yet you would do this, however much anyone might detest and shrink from it, for the sake of the salvation of men, which, the more numerous it was, the less it ought to have been despised, if you ever did this from a regard for truth and not from a prejudice of error. You certainly see that in this return of the Maximianists to your communion it is made manifest that what we say about baptism is true. For if there is any understanding in men, either of saying or hearing anything, that he who baptizes before he returns to the Church certainly baptizes outside the Church, and yet that baptism is not to be annulled, just as it was not annulled by you in those cases.

with which unchanged, neither in his own name nor in anyone else's, but in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, each one baptizes. Next, beyond the sacrament of baptism, which remains intact either for the punishment of the perverse or for the salvation of the upright or corrected, I wish to say something about the very expiation or cleansing of those corrected. For you remember what you said against us, that we receive those coming to us from you from the sacrilegious error of heretics without any expiation. You tell us now, concerning those returning to you from the schism of Maximianus, when they were received even in their own honors, by what expiation, I ask, were they cleansed? Or were they not stained by such nefarious fellowship by participating in that great crime? Pay attention to what that truthful mouth of your bishops resounds, thunders, and confesses in that illustrious council: "Maximianus," it says, "a rival of the faith, an adulterer of truth, an enemy of mother Church, a minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, was struck from the bosom of peace by the thunderbolt of sentence, and because the gaping earth has not yet swallowed him, it has reserved him for a greater punishment for the gods above. For a sudden death would have gained him a shortened penalty; now he collects the interest of a heavier debt, since he, dead, stands among the living." So then, in the schism of this man, as you yourself said, persisting, before they returned to your church within the time of delay, as you also said, had they contracted no stain, great or small, from his fellowship?

But hear what follows next, hear, I say, what the author or dictator of that sentence connects: "Not only," he says, "does the just death of his crime condemn this man; it also drags many into the fellowship of crime by a chain of sacrilege, concerning whom it is written: 'The venom of asps is under the lips of those whose mouth is full of curse and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and unhappiness are in their ways, and they have not known the path of peace.' We would indeed not wish to be cut off as from the joint of our own body. But since the pestilent putrefaction of a festering wound brings more comfort in excision than in the remission of healing, a more salutary remedy has been found, lest the pestilent virus creep through all the limbs, so that the wound, once born, may fall away with a brief pain. Therefore, know that Victorianus of Carcabiana, Marcianus of Sullectum, Beianus of Beiana, Salvius of Ausafa, Theodorus of Usula, Donatus of Sabrata, Miggen of Elephantaria, Praetextatus of Assura, Salvius of Membresita, Valerius of Melzi, Felicianus of Musti, and Martialis of Pertusa, guilty of a notorious crime, who with a foul work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel with collected dregs, but also certain clerics once of the church of Carthage, who, while participating in the crime, provided panderings for an illicit incest, have been condemned by the truthful mouth of a universal council under the presiding judgment of God.

But what heavier things could you say against them, what heavier things are you accustomed to say against us? "But," you say, "they were corrected from this so great evil within the time of the delay." I will see whether they were corrected, because they would truly have been corrected if they had returned to the true Church. But if yours is the true Church, tell us how they were cleansed from such an enormous crime. For if they were not cleansed, then according to your own judgment you are all stained by their crime; but if they were cleansed, you concede that they could be cleansed by the mere return itself, on account of the charity that covers a multitude of sins, and you accuse us with empty calumnies when those from your side, corrected, come to us. Unless perhaps, as the words of the council indicate, they had already perpetrated the sacrilege of schism, but before the day of the granted delay they had not yet been polluted by that same sacrilege, and therefore were not thought to need cleansing. If this is so, who would dare to oppose you, who have received such marvelous power over men? They sin when they wish, and they are polluted when you wish. We are reciting nothing obscure or less known and common. That sentence is the one which, by merit of such great eloquence, is in the hands of all, is on the lips of all who are studious of such reading, from which now at least you see how truly I said that they should not first rejoice in it as eloquent, lest later they lament it as defamed. Pay attention to what it contains, hear what it blares forth.

Maximian," he says, "a rival of the faith, an adulterer of the truth, an enemy of mother Church, a minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, the thunderbolt of condemnation hurled from the bosom of peace." If, therefore, anyone knowingly communicated with him in the sacrament of the altar for a single day, would he not, according to that most boastful severity of yours, be so polluted by such a great evil as to become his equal? What, then, were they, or what did they become from that moment, who not only approached the altars with him, but even themselves, after he was ordained bishop, set up altars against your Primian and brought him to them? But why should I ask you about these things? Let the sentence itself speak, whose words shine so brightly that, if you wished to hide it, the darkness of any hiding-places would be broken through by its excessive splendor. Let us see with what a thunderous condemnation it rises up against the associates of Maximian. "Not only does a just death," he says, "condemn this man for his crime; it also drags many into the fellowship of the crime by the chain of sacrilege, concerning whom it is written: 'The poison of asps is under the lips of those whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.'

Crushing and unhappiness in their ways, and they did not know the path of peace." Then a little later, after he had enumerated by name all the ordainers of Maximian, among whom are also read those I am dealing with, Felicianus and Praetextatus, he adds what they did so that such great things might be worthily said about them: "Who," he says, "by a deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel with collected filth," meaning to be understood that they were present, that they ordained Maximian by laying on of hands. He also adds concerning the clerics of Carthage: "But also the clerics," he says, "of the church of Carthage, who, while they take part in the crime, provided panderage for an illicit incest." I ask you, Cresconius, do I exaggerate this crime with any words of mine? If I had wished, perhaps I would not have lacked sufficient words, if not such as these, yet of some kind. I therefore ask of you, before these two, whom I am for now dealing with, had returned to the concord of your communion, placed in that chain of sacrilege, under whose lips was the venom of asps, with a mouth full of curse and bitterness, with swift feet for shedding blood, how did they baptize? Was there in them a conscience of those giving holily which would wash away that of the recipients? Did not even a false good reputation commend them, which in those straits provided you not with a way out, but with a way to hurl yourself headlong, when such a notable council proclaims them "guilty of a notorious crime"?

Then, as you believed your bishops' false reports, how are those who return before the day of the delay received in their honors along with those whom, while they were outside the church with Maximianus, the schismatic had baptized in the chain of sacrilege? From what source are they cleansed of such great sacrilege, from what source are they loosed from that chain, from what source are their lips, their mouth, cleansed of the venom of asps, of the curse and bitterness, from what source are their feet washed of the shedding of spiritual blood, on which they swiftly ran, from what source are their hands cleansed of the deadly work of destruction, from what source is the affection of the soul, not the members of the body, purged of unlawful incest? Surely, to defend this case, whether you wish it or not, you are compelled to come to the patronage of the truth, which says that the baptism of Christ, given not only through secret but also through manifest evil men, and not only by the converted but also by the perverted, has the unshaken firmness of its own strength, and that it can indeed be present in them, but cannot benefit them unless they are corrected, and that those who are corrected are also purified by fraternal prayers through charity covering a multitude of sins. Behold, before I show how shamelessly your bishops lied to you about the reception of Maximianus, according to that very lie of theirs and your own account, how your entire case has been overturned, I think that you ought not now to inquire, but to recognize, and not to prepare contradiction, but rather to consider correction.

Now at least you see how truly I spoke those words, which you vainly and mendaciously tried to answer, and how rightly I said: if those baptized in the nefarious schism for the unity of the Donatist party are not rebaptized, why is that law of inheritance not acknowledged for the true and full unity of Christ?—since you yourself admit that those who persisted in the schism of Maximianus deserved the sentence by which they would not be held if they had returned to the church within the day of the delay. Hence it is clear that, before they returned, they baptized in the schism in which they persisted, along with those who were received into your communion. You see how the dead baptized, because it had been said of those who persisted in the schism of Maximianus before they returned to you, by the sentence of the Council of Bagai: "The shores are full of the corpses of those perishing like the Egyptians." As for what I said: "When it was recited among them for decision, they shouted with the widest mouth; but now, when it has been recited by us, they fall silent"—behold, they would fall silent much better now, when they speak such things by which they become more entangled. You see how true it is what I said: "They ought at last to realize how much is to be tolerated for the sake of peace, and to return to the church for the sake of Christ's peace, which did not condemn the unknown, if for the sake of Donatus' peace it pleased them to recall the condemned.

This is far more true according to your own account, since you said that even those who had been expressly named, concerning whom it had already been stated, "Know that they have been condemned by the presiding judgment of a universal council that is truthful," were recalled after a delay was granted. For after those words, when that delay was established, how did it not please them to recall the condemned? Or how can things that could not be proven about Caecilian in that later transmarine judgment be unknown to us who were born so much later, or even to the whole Christian world, when those things that were done concerning the Maximianists both in Africa and in our own times, you, being an African as you say, after so many years still do not know, and as we will be able to teach you, still do not know, because you believed your lying bishops? As for your accusation that I, by way of *anticategoria*, tried to retort against your forebears the charge of tradition that was committed by our forebears, blaming me for doing this, as if it were a matter of the kinds of causes or questions in a school, and not of truth being sought in the Church—would you say this to the prophet Elijah, who, when it was objected to him by a most wicked king that he himself was overthrowing Israel, replied: "I do not overthrow, but you and your father's house overthrow"? For what is it to us by what name this kind of retorted objection is called by the Greeks in rhetorical art, when we find it in prophetic authority?

When, therefore, someone says, "I did not do it, but you did," it is necessary to speak the truth, not to fear speaking it. And you, if you are worth anything, ought to consider most vigilantly how you can show that your predecessors did not do what they are shown to have done by their own read confessions, not to deter the inexperienced with a Greek word, lest they hear us. And indeed you have not proved that our predecessors were traitors—for just because you said there are many letters by which this can be shown, you are not thereby to be thought to have already shown it—but concerning your own predecessors, the council of Secundus of Tigisis, held with very few at Cirta after the persecution concerning the handing over of the sacred books, in order to ordain a bishop there in place of the deceased, is extant. Hear what was done there; for I have taken care to write below what was necessary: "In the consulship of Diocletian for the eighth time and Maximian for the seventh time, on the fourth day before the Nones of March, at Cirta, when Secundus, bishop of Tigisis, of the first see, had taken his seat in the house of Urbanus Donatus, he said: Let us first examine ourselves, and thus we shall be able to ordain a bishop here. Secundus said to Donatus of Masculitanum: It is said that you handed over. Donatus replied: You know how much Florus sought me out to make me offer incense, and God did not deliver me into his hands, brother; but since God has forgiven me, therefore you also keep me for God. Secundus said: What then are we to do about the martyrs? For they did not hand over. That is why they were crowned. Donatus said: Send me to God; there I will render an account. Secundus said: Step aside.

Second from Marinus of Aquis Tibilitanis said: "It is said that you also handed over." Marinus replied: "I gave the little papers to Polius, for my codices are safe." Second said: "Pass to one side." Second said to Donatus of Calama: "It is said that you handed over." Donatus replied: "I gave the medical codices." Second said: "Pass to one side." And in another place: Second said to Victor of Russiccade: "It is said that you handed over the four Gospels." Victor replied: "Valentianus was the curator; he compelled me to throw them into the fire. I knew they were spurious. Forgive me this offense. And he forgives me, and God." Second said: "Pass to one side." And in another place: Second said to Purpurius of Liniata: "It is said that you killed the two sons of your sister at Mileum." Purpurius replied: "Do you think you can frighten me as you did the other? What have you done, you who were caught by the curator and the council to give up the scriptures? How did you free yourself from them, except that you gave or ordered something to be given? For they were not letting you go just like that. For I have killed and I kill those who act against me; therefore do not provoke me to say more. You know that I deal with no one." Second the younger said to his uncle Second: "Do you hear what he says against you? He is ready to withdraw and make a schism, not only he himself, but also all those whom you accuse. I know that they are going to dismiss you and pass sentence against you, and you will remain alone as a heretic. Therefore, what does it matter to you what anyone has done? He has to render an account to God.

Secundus said to Felix of Rotaria, Nabor of Centurionis, Victor of Garbe: "What do you think?" They replied: "They have God to whom they may render an account." Secundus said: "You know, and God knows; sit down." And all replied: "Thanks be to God." These traitors, who together with others at Carthage pronounced sentences against Caecilianus and his associates, among whom was Silvanus of Cirta, concerning whose betrayal I will soon insert the records—you will defend them, of course, with a splendid argument. For you will surely say about these many what you thought to dictate as something great about Silvanus alone, thinking that by this you clearly demonstrate the false charge of betrayal brought against him, because you inserted his sentence, which he pronounced in the council among the other bishops against Caecilianus and others of his communion, as if it were impossible that traitors would condemn a traitor. For you see these things more prudently than the apostle Paul. For he used to object to certain people absurd things, not considering that what he said could not happen: "You who preach not to steal, steal; you who say not to commit adultery, commit adultery; you who abhor idols, commit sacrilege;" and especially that: "For in that wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you do the same things that you judge." Therefore, these traitors, whom Secundus, terrified, forgave when they confessed, he had with him in the Carthaginian council, and they pronounced sentences against those who were absent and had not confessed, while they themselves, being present, were not condemned for their own confession.

this council would not have survived nor endured in the memory of posterity, unless it were written down by others, while it was preserved by those who were preparing to defend themselves with it, if anyone later should have charged them with the same crimes that were there remitted. It was also in Secundus’s own interest that it appear that he, lest a schism occur—which peaceful men are accustomed to guard against above all—had remitted all those matters by divine judgment; which he ought much more to have done at the Carthaginian council, where nothing had been established against the absent. Only Lucilla, then a very powerful and wealthy woman, inflamed with furious hatred, vehemently insisted that another bishop be ordained in place of Caecilian, as though he were condemned. This was later recalled in the judicial inquiry of the consularis Zenophilus, through a certain Nundinarius, a deacon of Silvanus of Cirta, then your bishop, who, with his aforementioned bishop, whom he had endured as an enemy, could not come to agreement as he wished. He had indeed accomplished this among his colleagues more by terror, lest he betray everything, than by supplication, so as to deserve pardon.

From the records of that trial I have inserted these few details: In the consulship of Constantine Maximus Augustus and Constantine the Younger, most noble Caesar, on the Ides of December, at Tamogadi, Victor the grammarian having been brought in and produced, with Nundinarius the deacon also present, Zenophilus the consular said: "What is your name?" He replied: "Victor." And a little later in another place: Nundinarius replied: "Let the acts be read." Zenophilus the consular said: "Let them be read." And Nundinius the notary read: "In the consulship of Diocletian for the eighth time and Maximian for the seventh time, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of June, from the acts of Munatius Felix, perpetual flamen and curator of the colony of Cirta: When they had come to the house where the Christians were gathering, Felix, perpetual flamen and curator, said to Bishop Paul: 'Produce the scriptures of the law and whatever else you have here, so that you may obey both the command and the order.' Bishop Paul said: 'The readers have the scriptures, but we give what we have here.' Felix, perpetual flamen and curator, said to Paul: 'Show the readers or send for them.' Bishop Paul: 'You all know them.' Felix, perpetual flamen and curator, said: 'We do not know them.' Bishop Paul: 'The public office knows them, that is, Edesius and Junius the notaries.' Felix, perpetual flamen and curator, said: 'The matter remains with the readers, whom the office will point out. And you, give what you have here.'

With Paul the bishop presiding, and Montanus and Victor of the Castle of Memor the presbyters present, with Mars and Aelius and Mars the deacon in attendance, Marcuclius, Catulinus, and Silvanus and Carosus the subdeacons, and Januarius, Marcuclius, Fructuosus, Miggen, Saturninus, Victor, Samsuricus, and the other fossores presenting, Victor Aufidii countersigning in the inventory thus: two gold chalices, likewise six silver chalices, and so forth. And in another place: after the library was opened, empty bookcases were found there. There Silvanus produced a silver capitulata and a silver lamp, which he said he had found behind a chest. Victor Aufidii said to Silvanus: you would have been dead if you had not found them. Felix, the flamen perpetuus and curator of the public treasury, said to Silvanus: search more carefully, lest anything remain here. Silvanus said: nothing remains here, we have removed all of this, and so forth. And in another place: a copy of a document handed to the bishops by Nundinarius the deacon: Christ and his angels are witnesses, that you have communicated with traitors, that is, Silvanus of Cirta is a traitor and a thief of the goods of the poor, which all you bishops and presbyters and deacons and elders know, and concerning the four hundred folles of Lucilla, a most noble woman, for which you conspired together, that Maiorinus should be made bishop, and from that the schism arose. For also Victor the fuller, in your presence and that of the people, gave twenty folles so that he might be made a presbyter, which Christ and his angels know, and so forth.

And in another place: "When these had been read, Zenophilus the consular said: 'From the acts and letters which have been recited, it is evident that Silvanus is a traditor.'" Again in another place: "Zenophilus, a man of consular rank, said: 'What office did Silvanus then hold in the clergy?' Victor answered: 'When the persecution arose under Bishop Paul, Silvanus was a subdeacon.'" Have you, brother Cresconius, anything to say to these things? I think that the forehead has not so far perished from human affairs that you still think a sentence pronounced against Caecilian and his colleagues as alleged traditors should be recited for the purgation of Silvanus, unless you rather remind us to say something similar from the Apostle's epistle, as I recalled a little while ago: "He who preaches that you should not betray, betrays," and: "In judging another, you condemn yourself; for you do the same things that you judge." But, you say, afterwards, when he refused to communicate with Ursatius and Zenophilus who were persecuting him, he was driven into exile. On the contrary, he who was already a traditor also wished to remain a heretic, so that he might have a false honor in the Donatist party, which he could have none in the Catholic Church, given that the public records of his own betrayal had been disclosed in a public trial. You will surely say that these things are false, and on behalf of your elders, as much as you can, you will bring forth other things against ours. This indeed you may perhaps not be able to do, not finding anything to bring forward. But suppose you have found something, suppose you have brought it forward: is the shamelessness of a thief so great that you contend that what you have brought forward ought to be believed more than what is brought forward by us?

For either there were traditores both here and there, if you also recite something from the confession of our people, or if you think that something has been fabricated by our people against yours, why do you not grant us to think the same about your people against ours? Therefore, concerning human deeds, whether manifest on both sides or uncertain from either side, let us not quarrel, we who believe in one God, but let us agree in the grace of Christ, which is a certain and divine gift. For when the acts of our ancestors and yours are recited on both sides, contradictory as they are, to us born so much later, if not even doubt is permitted, what is more unjust? But if it is permitted, what is more sufficient? For just as it is uncertain from whom the evil of tradition arose, so it is not uncertain by whom the good of peace is commanded to be rendered. And therefore, whoever rejects the peace of Christ on account of another’s uncertain evil is most certainly evil, since even Cyprian did not abandon the peace of the wheat on account of the certain malice of the tares mingled among them, who, writing to Maximus, said: “Even if tares are seen in the Church, our faith or love ought not to be hindered, so that because we see tares in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church.” He did not say “we suspect, we opine, we think, we conjecture, we believe,” but he said “we see.” O word, by which all doubt would be removed, so that the body of Christ would not be divided!

If you desire only the grain, groan in the labor of the field, rejoice in the hope of the granary, tolerate the wicked in the communion of Christ's sacraments, lest before the time of the shore you break the nets, becoming what you were unwilling to tolerate. I would say these things, if you had proved something about the traditores whom you accuse; nay, at this present time I would not even say these things; for I am not commanded to tolerate those with whom I am no longer compelled to live. But if even now a traditor were shown to me, with what conscience do I abandon so many Christian peoples to whom he is not shown? Then, if I myself now learn what I did not know a little while ago, why do you rescind in me what I knew? For I knew that I had received the baptism of Christ; you yourselves teach that another's crime, when unknown, harms no one. Why, therefore, do you rebaptize today one baptized yesterday, when you teach that another's crime which he did not know yesterday harms no one? He who did not know from whom he received was not guilty of the baptism received: now that he has learned this from you, why does he become guilty of the rescinded baptism? For whether he has consented to your documents or not, he who received the baptism of Christ through the ministry of a traditor, unless you prove that he knew from whom he received, even according to you you will not be able to baptize him rightly.

Now turn your mind away from the zeal for factions and consider: how vast a multitude of Christians in Africa itself do not know who the traditors were; how much more in the rest of the world—unless you prove that such a multitude knew of them when they were baptized, you will either not dare to say they should be baptized, or you will dare to judge hidden things of the heart! And where is that divine sentence which you interposed and which pleases you: "What is manifest is for you; what is hidden, however, is for your Lord God"? Believe the Christian world saying to you: "I know the baptism of Christ; who the traditors were in Africa or anywhere else I do not know. Why do you judge hidden human things in me, so as to rescind manifest divine things in me? Prove to me now that it is another's crime; what you allege, I did not know when I received this baptism. If it is because of those whom you now denounce to me that you wish to baptize me, you ought also to baptize those who, unknowingly, received from adulterers whom you have now denounced." What do you say to this except: "It is not holy, it is not pure, except what I wish and when I wish"?

In this matter, you say, the conscience of almost the whole world is witness. It is answered to you: in this matter there is no conscience of the whole world at all. This, you say, our ancestors received from their parents. It is answered: but they received it from those who were in error or from slanderers; for even the ancestors of the Jews received from their ancestors that the body of Christ was stolen from the tomb. Those who knew through whom and in what places the crime of this betrayal was committed, you say, died not long ago. It is answered: our people also say this on behalf of their own parties. There are also books, you say, in which the order of events has been faithfully and diligently recorded; there are acts, there are letters, and the manifest confession of many is also preserved. It is answered to you that these things are not lacking to our people on behalf of their own parties. Therefore, let us either believe those who were able to persuade their cause to those churches which we read about in the divine and canonical books, or, as you said about Optatus, let us neither acquit doubtful matters nor condemn them, and let us hold to the peace of Christ, whose good is not doubtful, with brotherly love.

But the Easterners, whom you now admit to be ours, you say were not unaware of this crime, and to prove this you insert the beginning of the letter of the Council of Serdica, where the name of Donatus, your bishop of Carthage, is found written. You think and affirm that this was done because, evidently, the Easterners, who sent these writings from their council, were displeased with the crime of the traditors and had withdrawn from their communion, and for that reason they were in communion with your Donatus. Learn, therefore, what you do not know: the Council of Serdica was an Arian council, which has long been known and is in our hands, convened especially against Athanasius, the Catholic bishop of Alexandria, who, more than others, sharply argued and refuted their error arising from that very city. It is not surprising, then, if those heretics tried to enlist Donatus as one of their own, whom the Catholic Church condemned throughout the whole world; although we have the bishops to whom these letters were given without the names of their cities. Either there was some Donatus who was not a bishop in Africa, to whose name Carthage was added by your people, or, as I have said, the Eastern heresy tried to join the African heresy to itself. This is especially credible because the Eastern Catholic Church would never write to the bishop of Carthage, bypassing Rome. At least your bishop should have been written to, whom you are accustomed to send from Africa to a few of your people in Rome.

But thanks be to God that that conspiracy of heretical Easterners with heretical Africans did not prevail, if indeed it was even begun. You have placed the Arians among the heretics, detestable both to us and to you, in your letter. Hence there is no necessity for me to contend with you even on this question. For as to the question you posed to yourself as if it were objected by us: 'If these things are so, how were the Easterners later separated from the communion of your people?' and you answered that in receiving our people again they could not maintain constancy in a condemned cause, is it any wonder that your bishops from such distant lands can tell you whatever they wish with impunity? But even if it were entirely so, what did so many people do, who, though ignorant of these matters, are still judged by you to be rebaptized? Or is it not credible that even these things could have been unknown to the people, when you, who are somewhat more diligent in these matters, would not seek to know what your Africans in Africa did with the Maximianists unless you wished to respond to my letters?

But as for what I said—that even if the tradition of some of the dead in our communion were proven, which we disapprove of and which displeases us, it would not in any way implicate us—how ridiculously you thought it ridiculous and how unworthy of my prudence! So now I wish to know how your prudence refuted it; or is it because you say you do not see how we disapprove of or to what extent it displeases us, since we condemned it in their schism while placed in it, never having known the error? Consider rather how briefly I respond to these things. I am in the Church, whose members are all those churches which we know from the canonical Scriptures were born and established from the labors of the apostles. I will not abandon their communion, as far as the Lord helps me, whether in Africa or anywhere else. If in this communion there were some whom I do not know to be traditors, when you have pointed them out, I will detest them as dead in both flesh and heart, but I will by no means be alienated from the living who remain in the holy unity of the same Church because of the dead. For they themselves did not found this Church, but in it, if they were good, they were grain; if evil, they were chaff. But you, whom such manifest tares or chaff of the Church could not stain, what was the cause of your division except the appetite for a sacrilegious schism? "If it displeases you," you say, "disapprove, flee, and leave the church of traditors; do not follow the footsteps of your erring ancestors.

To this I reply: if those men were not traditores, they are my ancestors; if they were what I am not, they are not my ancestors. I hold to the Church full of wheat and chaff. I do not say that if you were to show me others, who carry their own burden, but if you were to show me myself in it as a traditor, where it is permitted for me to be changed for the better, I have no need to separate myself from it. If I recognize any such persons in the communion of its sacraments, I correct by word and the Lord’s discipline those whom I can, and I tolerate those whom I cannot correct. I flee the chaff, lest I be this, not the threshing-floor, lest I be nothing. Therefore do not vainly beat the air with this opinion. For the apostolic precept which you yourself have set forth admonishes me rather how I should act: do not communicate with the sins of others; keep yourself chaste. For to show how one does not communicate with the sins of others, he added this: keep yourself chaste. For he who keeps himself chaste does not communicate with the sins of others, even though he shares with them, not their sins, but the sacraments of God which they take upon themselves for judgment, while by keeping himself chaste he has made himself a stranger to them.

Otherwise, even Cyprian—God forbid—would have been sharing in the sins of his colleagues who were plunderers and usurers, with whom, nevertheless, he remained in communion of the divine sacraments, concerning whom he says: "Very many bishops, whom it was fitting to be an encouragement and an example to the rest, neglecting divine stewardship, became stewards of worldly affairs; abandoning the chair, deserting the flock, wandering through foreign provinces, hunting for profitable markets; while brothers in the church were hungry, they wanted to have silver in abundance, to seize estates by deceitful frauds, to increase usury by multiplying interest." Did he share in the sins of such men? Did he follow their sect? And yet he stood with them in communion of the same sacraments, because those sacraments were not instituted by them (who did not hold them for salvation by holy morals), but they made them avail for their own punishment by their evil morals.

What is this that you say, that you have set before me from my own person, that I have never handed over the divine testament? For you add: "But he who handed it over created you." Then you weave together what seemed to you to sound well: "From the source the stream is drawn, and the head the members follow. If the head is sound, the whole body is sound, and if there is any disease or defect in it, it weakens all the members. Whatever grows in the stock looks back to its origin." And after this, as if in conclusion, you say: "He cannot be innocent who does not follow the sect of an innocent man." In all these words of yours, you have made my creator, my head, nothing but a traitor, whom indeed you have been able only to accuse, not to convict. But I do not set his innocence as my creatress or source or head. Yet you return to that in which Petilianus erred, namely, that when someone is born in the sanctification of baptism, Christ is the origin and head of the one being born, and that I do not fall into the curse of which it is written: "Cursed is everyone who places his hope in a man," since you do not entangle yourself elsewhere, nor, when you have recoiled, do you fall back into something else.

But you also remind me of a testimony from the scriptures, to which I should still reply to you on these points. For you say that it is written for this reason: "Do not walk in the legal traditions of your fathers," and you do not notice that this was said to the Jews, so that they would not imitate the evil deeds of their fathers, not so that they would be cut off from that people of God. Therefore, if it was permitted to King David, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and the other saints and prophets of God to keep the commandments of God among the despisers of God's law, and to hurl many worthy and true words at those very transgressors of the commandment, and also not to imitate, not to follow, but to detest and flee from those sins of the fathers by which they so offended God under Moses that none of them was worthy to enter the promised land, and to rebuke those who committed such things with the likeness of such fathers, yet not to constitute for themselves another people, as if purified and clarified by a sacrilegious separation—how is it not permitted for us neither to imitate the deeds of certain persons, which you more accuse than prove, nor to be separated from the holy Church, which, as the apostle says, fructifies and grows throughout the whole world? Did the traditors institute any sacraments in which I would be baptized? Did they compose any books for the making or imitating of tradition for posterity, and do we hold and follow their teaching?

If they had done this, and would not allow anyone to share communion with them unless they approved those who read that law, they themselves would separate from the unity of the Church; in whose division, if you saw me, then you ought to say that I am in the church of the traditors. But if they wrote down their own very evil precepts about making a tradition, and yet were not gathered together outside the Church in their own congregation and communion, they would for that reason be counted as tares, on whose account the wheat ought not rightly to be abandoned. Behold, I say again, what you further forbid me to say: you accuse before me those whom, long since dead, my knowledge has not judged. You say in reply: it is permitted to you to judge even today, and judgment can be held not only about the living, but also about the dead. For although the one who sinned is dead, that which he committed never dies. What if, while he lived, he corrected himself and appeased God? Is not that which he committed dead and blotted out, just as Felicianus and Praetextatus, the ordainers of Maximianus, having been given a delay, as you say, corrected themselves from such a great crime? It is strange, however, if one's own sins do not harm men who have corrected the deeds they have done, and yet harm others who have not committed them at all; but if it is about us, add 'who have not even known the deeds.' But you say it is permitted to me to judge even today, because judgment can be made not only about the living, but also about the dead.

Behold, I wish to judge, but you yourselves are unwilling to conduct the case; nay rather, when it was already conducted, and then even undoubtedly terminated, you are unwilling to recognize it, as we demonstrate. But let us suppose that you rather have those whom you can teach. Those whom you have not yet taught, why do you contend that they must be rebaptized, since, even if you had taught them, you ought not to baptize those who were baptized by traitors whom they did not know, just as you do not baptize those who, unknowingly baptized by adulterers, when those adulterers are exposed and convicted? Here you might say: "But judgment has already been passed concerning Caecilian." It is answered to you: Judgment had already been passed concerning Primian by a hundred of your bishops, whom the most iniquitous Maximian had persuaded, before you held the Council of Bagai. But in the first judgment he was condemned in absence; in the second he was acquitted in presence. If after the first, those whom he baptized cannot be rebaptized, how much more after the second! So also Caecilian: in the first judgment at Carthage by Secundus of Tigisi he was condemned in absence; in the second judgment by Miltiades of Rome he was acquitted in presence. You still do not wish us to be certain about him: at least allow us to doubt. For you are overcome not only by him who knows Caecilian to be innocent, but also by him who does not know him to be guilty. You, however, judge that both must be rebaptized—both those who say "We know" and those who say "We do not know what sort of man Caecilian was.

Those whom Primianus baptized after the first judgment, by which he was condemned in his absence, are not to be baptized; and those whom Caecilianus baptized after the second judgment, by which he was acquitted while present, are to be baptized. It was not lawful to condemn that condemned man; at least let it be lawful to doubt about this acquitted man. Even if his crimes were certain to us, they would by no means stain us, who are established in the Church, which the Holy Spirit announced as like a threshing-floor with chaff, with sins of others that we have not imitated. And yet, even if they are said to be uncertain to us, we are not only constituted as defendants, but we are also judged to be rebaptizers. Do you act thus? Do you overturn everything in this way? Do you truly think so much is permitted to us, that what you wish is holy, what you wish is unclean? Restrain yourselves; do not advance in evils, lest you perish from goods. Now as for that which I said: that if you are acting concerning persecutions, I quickly reply, if you have suffered anything unjustly, it does not pertain to those who, although they do such things improperly, yet tolerably and laudably for the sake of the peace of unity, you wished to refute this fallaciously, utterly not thinking that your letter would have a reader of sound mind! For you respond as if I had said that persecution ought to be inflicted upon you for the sake of the peace of unity. Which indeed I did not say in that place, but I said: 'if you have suffered anything unjustly, it does not pertain to those by whom those who do such things against you, although improperly, are laudably tolerated for the sake of the peace of unity.

Since this has been stated with the utmost clarity, let those at least whom you wished to deceive attend to the exposition; for I do not think that you failed to understand something so obvious, but rather that you thought, by the brevity of my statement, that it could easily be cast into obscurity, so that, whatever else you might say, you would seem to have answered it. But why I said that the wicked of our communion—that is, the chaff of the Lord’s threshing-floor—when they act unjustly against you, are laudably tolerated for the sake of peace by the good among us—what need is there for me to show and defend this myself, when the blessed Cyprian speaks on my behalf with the utmost openness and candor, saying that even when the wicked are discerned in the Church, the Church is not to be abandoned on their account? This is what I meant by saying that they are to be tolerated for the sake of the unity of peace. For those who persecute you unjustly do not persecute you more than they do us; they give you, for deceiving the ignorant, a false likeness of glory, but to you they give a great wound of sorrow.

Then, recalling also some dead persons whom you claim were killed by our people, as if placed in the field of your eloquence, you amplify the topic at great length, in which you seem to yourselves to be like the martyrs, although we daily suffer incredible deeds from your clergy and circumcellions, far worse than those of any bandits or brigands. For, armed with every kind of dreadful weapon, they wander about terrifyingly, disturbing not only ecclesiastical but also human peace and tranquility; by night attacks they invade the homes of catholic clergy, leaving them bare and empty, and they themselves are seized, beaten with clubs, cut with iron, and cast away half-alive. Moreover, by a new and previously unheard-of kind of crime, they pour and force a mixture of lime and vinegar into their eyes, and although they could have plucked them out more quickly, they choose to torture them more rather than to blind them more swiftly. For at first they used only lime for this crime, but after they learned that those to whom they had done this quickly recovered their health, they added vinegar.

I pass over how many crimes they committed before they compelled the same laws to be established against your error—laws more tempered by Christian gentleness than exerted with the force appropriate to such great outrages. A Catholic bishop from Thubursicubure, named Servus, when he was reclaiming a place invaded by your people and the representatives of both sides were awaiting the proconsular hearing, suddenly, with your armed men bursting into the said town, barely escaped alive. His father, a presbyter grave in age and character, from that slaughter by which he was violently afflicted, departed from life a few days later. Maximianus, a Catholic bishop of Bagai, had, by a judicial sentence pronounced between the parties, recovered the basilica of the fundus Calvianensis, which your people had at some time unlawfully usurped. While he was holding it with clear right, in that very basilica, under the altar where he had taken refuge, with that same altar broken above him and with its timbers and other clubs, and also with iron, he was cruelly beaten and filled that whole place with blood. He had also received a large wound in the groin, from which, with blood flowing more copiously, he would have died immediately, had not their greater cruelty, through the hidden mercy of God, been of benefit. For when, with his limbs exposed from that part, half-dead and moreover lying prone, he was being dragged, the dust secretly blocked the gushing veins.

Then, as he was being carried in the hands of our people, he was violently wrested from them by the same men rushing in again, beaten more severely, and thrown from a high tower at night; he lay softly caught on a bed of ash and dung below, barely holding his last breath, having lost consciousness. There a certain poor man, passing by, found him when he had turned aside to that place to relieve his bowels. He recognized him, however, and, frightened, summoned his wife, whom he had sent far away out of modesty, carrying a lamp. Then they both carried him home, either out of pity or hoping for some profit, so that he might be shown to our people, whether alive or dead, once collected. What more? He was healed by a miraculous cure; he lives; more scars are counted on his body than limbs. Rumor had reported him killed by your people in lands across the sea, and the enormity of that crime and the grave indignation it stirred, with dreadful grief, had moved everything wherever it could be heard. After he himself later followed, his very fresh scars defended that false rumor; for those who then looked at him would scarcely believe him alive, and it seemed that he had not rashly boasted of being killed.

There he found his colleague from Thubursicum, whom I mentioned a little earlier, and several others who had suffered similar or not much lesser things, and no opportunity seemed open to them for returning to their own homes; and because the notorious fury of your Circumcellions, providing a dreadful retinue for your clergy, had become most hatefully known everywhere, a huge wave of ill-will blazed up against you, and from this it came about that all the past laws were revived against you and these new ones were enacted. Yet if the severity of all these laws is compared with the disorderly and lawlessly rampant savagery of your people, it must be called a remarkable leniency. For by these laws, having received such great power, the gentleness of the Catholic Church is commended more than the monstrousness of the heretics is punished; indeed, against us, slaughter, plunder, arson, and blinding are devised, threatened, and carried out more boldly and more madly. I have wished to recall these things, through which it came about that in our times these imperial statutes were passed against you—or rather, against your error. For what could be more in your favor, if you were wise? As for all the savage deeds of your people, which I have either learned from the writings of earlier times or have myself known, by which from the beginning of your division up to this time they have persecuted the Catholic Church—if I wished to unfold them, what tongue, what pen, how much time and leisure would suffice?

When I was dealing with Optatus, and you wished to excuse this rather than to clear it, you said that your people could not be guilty in this matter because no one brought it to them for punishment. The many protests of our people concerning the most violent outrages of your most frenzied followers filled the public archives more quickly than those deeds ever earned any vengeance among you. But perhaps here too it will be said that protests were indeed deposited, but none were brought to them for punishment. So hear certain things which I myself have experienced. When we had learned the case of the Maximianists, whom your people had received after condemning them, and were spreading it with burning zeal wherever we could, they, finding nothing to reply to matters so recent and so clearly manifest, began more frequently and more audaciously than usual to deter us from proclaiming Catholic truth and exposing their falsehood by the violent outrages and raging mobs of the Circumcellions.

And because many, entangled in the snares of their error, with whom we were dealing in order to free them from it, answered us that we ought to deal with this matter with their own bishops, and that they earnestly desired a conference of ours, where they could see by whose assertions truth would overcome falsehood, it pleased us, in the council of all Africa at Carthage, that, with the testimony of public records also adduced, so that we could prove to those who demanded this that we had by no means failed their desire, your bishops should be peaceably convened, each by one of our men who resided in the same place where that bishop was, so that through our conference, with error removed, we might enjoy Christian and fraternal fellowship, unity, charity, and peace, considering that, if they were willing to do this, with the help of God's mercy, whatever there was in our case could be very easily recognized; but if they refused, at least their lack of confidence would not appear in vain to those who had demanded this of us. It was done; they were convened; they refused; with what words, full of what deceit, curse, and bitterness, it would now be long to demonstrate.

Meanwhile, your Crispinus of Calama, when summoned by my colleague Possidius in the same city before the official records, had initially deferred the matter to your council, promising that with his colleagues there he would see what he ought to reply. Then, after no small interval, when the summons was repeated, he again replied before the official records: "Do not fear the words of a sinful man," and again: "Beware of saying anything in the ears of a fool, lest when he hears it he mock your sensible words.

Finally, I conclude this response of mine with a patriarchal pronouncement: 'Let the impious depart from me; I do not wish to know their ways.' When both the learned and the unlearned laughed at this response of his—since it was the utterance of a man who said he did not fear the words of a sinful man, yet did not dare to answer him, and who said he did not wish to say anything into the ears of a fool, as if he were about to entrust some secret rashly to the ears of a fool, when what he said could be heard by many prudent persons, for whose sake the Lord Christ himself spoke to the Pharisees, though they were imprudent, and who said he did not wish to know the ways of the impious, as if those whom he considered impious wanted to teach him their ways, rather than that he himself, if he held to the ways of God, ought to teach even the impious, as it is written: 'Let me teach the wicked your ways, and the impious will turn to you'—when, therefore, this response was understood by many, and it was shown to many how empty it was, insofar as it pertained to the case, and how truly bitter and abusive, insofar as it did not pertain to the case, and thus his, as it is held among you, most learned old age, with yesterday's raw recruit standing against him, could prove nothing and would be laughed at in opposition to the truth, suddenly, a few days later, while Possidius was traveling, another Crispinus, his presbyter and, as is reported, his relative, laid an ambush of armed men, into which our man had almost fallen, had he not, upon seeing them and being warned, fled and turned aside to a certain estate, where that man either dared nothing or did not prevail, or.

If he had done anything, he could not deny it. When this was discovered, he was immediately seized with such blindness: madness. And now he considered it shameful to hide. Then he surrounded the house in which Possidius had shut himself in with his people with armed men, battered it with stones, encircled it with flames, attempted entry from every side. The crowd of inhabitants that was there, mindful of their own danger if such a great crime were carried out in that place, partly begged him to spare the one whom they did not dare to offend by resisting, and partly extinguished the fires that had been set. Meanwhile, with no less fervor and relentlessness, he pressed on with his undertakings. At length the door gave way under the blows; they entered, and after slaughtering the pack animals they had caught sight of in the lower part of the house, they dragged the bishop down from the upper rooms, inflicting blows and insults. Then, lest they rage more severely, Crispinus himself intervened, as if moved by the pleas of others—he seemed not so much to care about their entreaty in his anger as to fear testimony regarding the crime.

After these things became known in the town of Calama, your bishop Crispinus was expected to take action against his presbyter. A protest was also entered in the municipal records, by fear or shame of which he might be compelled to exercise ecclesiastical discipline. When he utterly disregarded this, and the uproar among your people became so great that they were thought—indeed, were actually seen—to be closing the roads to prevent the preaching of the truth, to which they could not reply, then the laws, which were not lacking but had lain dormant in our hands, were set in motion against your bishop Crispinus—more to demonstrate our clemency than to punish their audacity. For otherwise it would not have become known what the Catholic Church, with the help of Christ, could do against its enemies and would not do, not according to heretical presumption with the private fury of the Circumcellions raging, but according to prophetic truth under kings subject to the yoke of the Lord God. Therefore Crispinus was brought before the court, and, although he had denied to the proconsul that he was what he was, he was very easily convicted as a heretic. Nevertheless, the ten pounds of gold which the greater Emperor Theodosius had imposed as a fine on all heretics, he was not compelled to pay, through the intercession of Possidius. Not content with this very mild sentence, for some reason—which was said to have displeased all your people—he thought to appeal to the sons of the same Theodosius. The appeal was accepted.

It was answered: what else, except that the Donatist party already knew that it was subject to that fine in gold along with the other heretics, with whom, on account of communion, it either reckons itself to share in the justice of such persecution or, if it does not reckon itself so, it should not therefore boast itself just because it is restrained by the same penalty by which it sees those heresies it admits to be unjust are also restrained, and finally understand that it is not the penalty but the cause that makes a martyr of Christ; and that we, moreover, are accused of being such savage persecutors that, even after the imperial rescript, Crispinus did not pay that gold to the treasury, the Catholic bishops obtaining clemency for him, and now, amid even these most recent laws threatening your bishops with proscription, he sits secure in his own property, while Catholic clerics, at the hands of your Circumcellions and clerics, pay with their homes, their livelihood, their health, and the light of their bodies.

Those who do these things—what shall I call them but brigands, pirates, some savage tribe of barbarians, when not even they are to be compared with the devil, the teacher of all cruelties? He struck the holy man Job, stripped of all his possessions, with a most grievous wound from head to foot; and yet there remained in that place a spot whole and untouched, nor did he extinguish his eyes, though he had received his entire body into his power. But these things, of course, are not reported to your people, when Crispinus preferred to go to Carthage, to be overcome by his own obstinacy, to refuse the very mild sentence pronounced against him through the intercession of episcopal gentleness, to appeal to the sons of the man by whose law he saw himself ensnared, to rouse the whole Donatist party because he neither wished nor was compelled to suffer alone, rather than to punish the most audacious and invidious crime of his own presbyter by mere degradation. There was a certain Restitutus, a presbyter of yours, in the region of Hippo.

who, having crossed over to the Catholic peace by a manifest will, moved by the reason of truth, before it was ordered by those imperial laws, was seized from his own house by your clergy and Circumcellions, led openly in broad daylight to the nearest fort, and, with a multitude watching and no one daring to resist, was beaten with clubs at the whim of the madmen, rolled in a muddy puddle, dishonored with a rush garment, and after he had sufficiently tormented the eyes of the grieving and satisfied those of the laughing, was then led to another place, which none of our people dared to approach, and was released scarcely on the twelfth day. I myself complained of this to your bishop of Hippo, Proculianus, in the municipal records, lest, if it were necessary to take any action, he should deny that it had been brought to his attention. What he replied, how he dissembled from investigating the case and thought our intention was to be evaded more cunningly even by not replying afterwards, the same records sufficiently testify. But now, how much those who have crossed over to us from you suffer at the hands of your people, when can we sufficiently recount? Finally, not everyone who comes to us from there abandons the truth because of persecution, but many do not come to us from there because they fear suffering persecution from your people for the truth.

Therefore, remove from consideration the pointless grievances of the troubles which you suffer under the royal edicts on account of your error—troubles that are very slight and almost nothing compared to the great madness of your people—and which you even impute to us, though they are done by the earthly powers themselves out of necessity, not by their will, in order to repel the attacks of your people from their own safety. For if those forty men who had conspired to kill the apostle Paul had rushed upon the armed soldiers who were escorting him and had suffered punishment, that would not have been imputed to Paul. I pass over the fact that you also transfer to us, by lying, the voluntary deaths which your own people inflict upon themselves. For I have heard that Marculus threw himself down a precipice. That is certainly more credible than that any Roman authority could have ordered such a thing, since it is utterly unusual for Roman laws, and since this evil is peculiar to your heresy among all the heresies wandering under the Christian name. So what good does it do that your bishops boast, as you yourself recalled, that they have prohibited and condemned this in their councils, when so many cliffs and rocky crags are daily stained with blood from that Marculian teaching? I have therefore said what I have heard about Marculus and why this can seem more credible; but what is true, God knows. As for the other three, whose deaths you likewise objected to me, I confess I have not inquired from those whom I think know what happened or how it was done.

Nevertheless, no good people in the Catholic Church approve if anyone is allowed to rage against a heretic to the point of death. Nor, indeed, if someone, far from death, repays evil for evil with the lust of vengeance through any kind of annoyances, do we approve; we detest it much more if, on the occasion of striving for unity as it were, anyone carries off what belongs to others out of covetousness—not those things which ought not to be possessed by heretics under the name of the Church, but any private property whatsoever. All these things displease good people, and they forbid and restrain them as much as they can; as much as they cannot, they bear them and, as I have said, tolerably endure them for the sake of peace. They judge them not praiseworthy but damnable, and they do not abandon Christ's harvest because of the tares, nor Christ's threshing-floor because of the chaff, nor Christ's great house because of dishonored vessels, nor Christ's nets because of bad fish. Kings, when they are in error, enact laws against the truth on behalf of that error; when they are in the truth, they likewise decree against error on behalf of the truth itself. Thus, by bad laws the good are tested, and by good laws the bad are corrected. The perverse king Nebuchadnezzar gave a harsh law that an idol should be worshipped; the same king, corrected, gave a severe one that the true God should not be blasphemed. For in this, kings, as divine command instructs them, serve God insofar as they are kings, if in their kingdom they command good things and forbid bad things, not only those which pertain to human society, but also those which pertain to divine religion.

You say in vain: "Let it be left to free will." For why do you not proclaim that you should be left to free will in homicides, in debaucheries, and in whatever other crimes and outrages? Yet all these it is most useful and most salutary to restrain by just laws. God indeed gave man free will, but He did not wish good will to be fruitless nor evil will to go unpunished. "Whoever persecutes a Christian," you say, "is an enemy of a Christian." You speak truly, but only if he does not persecute in that person what is hostile to Christ. For the master in the servant, the father in the son, the husband in the wife, when both are Christians, ought they not to persecute vices contrary to Christian truth? Or indeed, if they do not persecute them, will they not be held guilty of negligence? But in all things a measure must be maintained that is suited to humanity, in keeping with charity, so that not all that is within one's power is exercised, and in what is exercised love is not lost, while in what is not exercised gentleness is shown. But where no power is granted by divine or human laws, nothing should be attempted improperly or imprudently.

Now hear what I had deferred a little earlier concerning the Maximianists, so that you may know that your own bishops have lied to you, and that not only what pertains to the question of baptism or to the toleration of others’ sins in the Church without personal contamination, but also what pertains to the odium of persecution—in which, indeed, your people have surpassed all Roman laws and protections against us—is settled in this one case of the Maximianists. For if you have not been too weary to read the memorable sentence of the Council of Bagai of your three hundred and ten bishops, a part of which I inserted above as seemed sufficient, those words most clearly show that the twelve, by whose present hands Maximianus was ordained, were condemned along with him, but that a delay for returning to your communion was granted to those who, while they were in communion with Maximianus and had condemned Primianus, nevertheless were not present when Maximianus was ordained—for not all could or should have been present. I greatly wonder how you allowed yourself to be deceived by some liar or other, when you could have recited those very words, which are not obscure and require not a keen intellect to be discussed but only a mind to be noticed, so that you would not be deceived by him. But because it is possible that you have not read it and have easily believed, out of simple trust, a bishop or bishops who suggested otherwise to you, take it and read it, and pay attention to whether I speak the truth to you.

For they cannot, for the sake of covering up their lie, correct—or rather, falsify—as they please a document which they submitted to the proconsul in a public court, which they so often took care to have inserted into the municipal records as the need of their case required, when they were acting against those men in order to be expelled from the basilicas. Thus certainly begins that sentence: "When, by the will of almighty God and of His Christ, we were holding a council in the church of Bagai—Gamalius, Primianus, Pontius, Secundianus, Ianuarianus, Saturninus, Felix, Pegasius, Rufinus, Fortunius, Crispinus, Florentius, Optatus, Donatus, Donatianus, and the rest, three hundred and ten in number—it pleased the Holy Spirit, who is in us, to establish perpetual peace and to cut off sacrilegious schisms." Then, after it had vomited forth many horrible things against them, a little later it says: "Maximian, an emulator of the faith, an adulterer of the truth, an enemy of mother Church, a minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, the thunderbolt of the sentence has cast out from the bosom of peace." You see, as I think, that Maximian has been condemned without any doubt. Then, after a few but clearly very weighty things which it saw fit to declaim against him, adding his ordainers and condemning them together with him without delay: "Not only does the just death of his crime condemn this man," it says, "but the chain of sacrilege also drags many into the fellowship of the crime.

Then, after he had poured out what he thought should be declaimed to exaggerate their crime, he named them and concluded that they were condemned as follows: "Therefore," he says, "know that Victorianus of Carcabiana, Marcianus of Sullectum, Beianus of Beiana, Salvius of Ausafa, Theodorus of Usula, Donatus of Sabrata, Miggen of Elephantaria, Praetextatus of Adsurita, Salvius of Membraeita, Valerius of Melzita, Felicianus of Mustita, and Martialis of Pertusa, guilty of a notorious crime, who with a foul work of destruction glued together a filthy vessel of collected dregs, and also the clerics once of the church of Carthage, who, while participating in the crime, provided panderage for an unlawful incest, have been condemned by the judgment of the presiding God and by the truthful mouth of the universal council." What could be said more plainly, more clearly, more explicitly? Now hear to whom a delay of time was granted, so that you may see that they are the ones who were not present when hands were laid upon Maximianus at his ordination: "But those," he says, "whom the plantings of the sacrilegious shoot did not pollute—that is, those who, with a chaste modesty of faith, withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus—we have permitted to return to mother church." You see how they do not say that these are condemned, but that they are to be held by the same sentence of condemnation if, after the appointed day has passed, they have refused to return—which day they establish thus: "And lest," he says, "a narrow time for those returning should deprive them of the hope of salvation by the pressure of a constricted day.

for those who acknowledge, as is permitted, while the preceding statutes remain in force, for all up to the eighth day before the Kalends of January next coming, we open the door of acknowledgment, so that those who return may have the foundations of full honor and faith. But if anyone is unable to enter through lazy sloth, let him know that all avenues of forgiveness have been withdrawn from him by his own will. For the pronounced sentence will remain concerning them, and for those returning after the appointed day, a fixed penance will remain. Now surely you see, most eloquent sir, that you ought to turn back against those from whom you heard the lie everything that you thought should be said against us, as if we had lied about this matter. Surely you see that those two, with whom we are dealing, are among the number who, along with Maximianus, were condemned without delay, not among those to whom time for returning was granted. Surely it is clear, evident, and stands out; it can in no way be obscured, hidden, or covered over, what that great eloquence, by which that sentence was pronounced, distinguished, illuminated, and expressed. Why are words still being given? Why is contention waged against the clearest truth for manifest error? Why do men deceive themselves? If they more tightly entangle and wrap themselves in the snares of the devil, which they ought to loosen and break, then hear further, from which they may blush more vehemently and, I hope, with some fruit of correction.

In the aforementioned Council of Bagai, the day and the consulship are recorded not only for when the decree of the council was established, but also for the postponement itself. Therefore, from the eighth day before the Kalends of May in the post-consulship of Theodosius Augustus for the third time and Abundantius, which is the day of the Council of Bagai, up to the eighth day before the Kalends of January, which is the day of the postponement, about eight months are counted. Moreover, a petition is found before the proconsul Herodes—see how much later than the aforementioned statements against Felicianus and Praetextatus concerning the exclusion of the Mustitanian and Adsuritanian places—of which I have subjoined a few parts: In the post-consulship of our lords Arcadius for the third time and Honorius for the second time, Augusti, on the sixth day before the Nones of March at Carthage, in the praetorian secretarium, Titianus said: "Peregrinus, presbyter, and the elders of the church of the Mustitanian and Adsuritanian region pursue the following desire: since the sanctity of the Catholic Church, which the man of venerable memory Donatus asserted from the error of perfidy, nurtured and consolidated the observance of almost the whole world in his name and cult. But when the praiseworthy and admirable purpose of that religion was polluted by the poisons of a certain Maximianus, a gathering of many bishops, conspiring together in God, condemned the man—or rather the pestilence, which displeased the supreme majesty—by its own coercion, even with a pure mind.

those also whom the error of another's presumption had drawn away, it restrained with a warning of equal severity, having first set before them a harbor of repentance, if they wished to return within the time appointed to the path of religion. But iniquity delights in its own institutions and does not abandon itself, once it has fallen headlong into ruin. For the same Maximianus nourished the audacity he had begun and joined others to himself in madness. Among these was a certain Felicianus, who, though at first he followed the right path, was stained by the contamination of this depravity, and in the city of Musti believed that walls consecrated to almighty God and the venerable church were to be retained as if by some siege. This man was also imitated by Praetextatus in the region of Assura. But when the power of your equity became known to the fellowship of priests, you ordered, as the records testify, that, with all effect of contradiction removed, the churches claimed by profane minds ought to be restored to the most holy priests. You see, indeed, that up to the day of this petition, the period of about three months appointed for that delay had elapsed. This conflict, however, is prolonged, as far as we have been able to investigate from the proconsular and municipal records.

To the proconsul Theodorus, that is, up to the eleventh day before the Kalends of January of the following year, on which day the clerics and elders acting under Bishop Rogatus, who had been substituted in the place of the condemned Praetextatus of Adsuritus, alleged the order of the aforementioned proconsul, when those who were outside your communion and enemies of that same communion of yours were being accused in public trials and were being sought to be expelled from places consecrated to the supreme God as sacrilegious. Therefore, whatever their number may have been—although it is sufficiently clear from which group they came—those who did not return to your communion within the appointed day of the delay, how could they have baptized during that entire time when they were alienated from you? How, with those whom they baptized outside your communion, did they not return, having been cleansed by another baptism? In which action we do not reproach you, because you recognized the baptism of Christ as by no means sacrilegious even in a sacrilegious schism, because, with the perversity of men corrected, you approved that which had been right even in the perverse, because you did not confuse human faults with divine seals, because you judged that the gifts of the church, which could also be held and given outside the church to the punishment of those who held and received them, were neither to be condemned in the condemned nor changed in those received back.

Nor do we find fault with this, that you believed that the very same persons, guilty of a notorious crime and after the sentence of their condemnation and after another day of delay had been set for them, yet on account of the weak people who had adhered to them—recalling, I believe, the concern of the head of a household, lest along with the tares the wheat also be uprooted—were to be gathered in without any degradation and were to be cleansed by the very abundance of charity. Nor do we find fault with this, that you persecuted them, while they were still held by the notorious sacrilege of schism, even through earthly powers. For this was done, as the outcome itself showed, with a zeal for correction, not for harm, so that, agitated by those troubles, they would be compelled to think about their own crime and, with the furies of animosity suppressed, to amend. But because we do not find fault with these things, we therefore rightly blame, justly detest, and by every reason convict the crime of your schism, by which you separate yourselves from us—indeed, from the catholic communion of the whole world—by charging us with such things as you yourselves, in the case of the Maximianists, cannot, I think, deny that you have done.

For if baptism is of Christ and therefore in no way to be destroyed, which was given through Felicianus and Praetextatus when, separated from you, they were joined to Maximianus, having been condemned by us along with him for the crime of nefarious schism, how is it not baptism of Christ, or how is it to be destroyed, which is given in the Church, which extends its branches, to use Cyprian’s words, throughout the whole earth with abundant fertility, which is given, finally, in those churches which you have never ceased to recite in apostolic letters, which you have never condemned by any council as you did Felicianus and Praetextatus? If it pleased you to restore condemned persons to full standing for the sake of mending the Donatist party, why does the unity of Christ, diffused throughout the whole world, offend you, which either could not condemn persons unheard, or else neither condemned nor acquitted those unknown to it, or believed innocent those whom it learned had been acquitted? If you, by pursuing the Maximianists who were split off from you through the orders of judges, drove them from their sees, why do you complain of suffering unworthy treatment at the hands of emperors, who send those same judges, when you have split yourselves off by nefarious schism from that Church of which it is written that all kings of the earth shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him, and that He shall rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth?

Behold, I no longer say: "if it is not lawful to persecute, Optatus did it," lest you still say that whatever Optatus did does not pertain to your people, since he did it without their knowledge, when you yourselves do not allow that the most remote lands of Africa (do not pertain to you whatever Caecilianus did without your knowledge). We do not know who the traditores in Africa were, what evil the African bishops did; but I plainly say, if it is not lawful to persecute, your people did it to the Maximianists in such a way that you cannot deny it. If those who suffer persecution are innocent, the Maximianists suffered. Will you now also say: the people destroyed the basilica or cave of Maximianus with none of our people as instigator? Although if it be inquired what communion that crowd belonged to—do not believe they were sent by your people—they will perhaps be found to be your people, or at least mixed with your people aiding them. But what is that to us? For you answer: we did not do it, we did not send them, we do not know who they were. Nevertheless, persecution suffered by him whom you admit to be unjust, since the matter is clear, cannot demonstrate that you who suffer are just. But by whom the Maximianists also suffered persecution, the proconsular records testify.

The advocates were instructed, the courts were approached, and as if against heretics they were stirred up; they demanded protection for those in possession, they cited your Council of Bagai, and they insisted that the condemned be expelled from their sacred sees. Pressure was applied, the case was argued, and in the presence of Salvius of Membresa you showed them to be heretics, you defeated them, you expelled them. Therefore, I see that they suffered persecution, and that you inflicted it. I ask who is just; you will claim it is you. I conclude: therefore, neither is the one who suffers it necessarily just, nor is the one who inflicts it necessarily unjust. You will again accuse me of dialectical arts; yet you will at least silently acknowledge that I speak the truth, and you will choose to correct your own opinion, by which you said that no persecution is just, rather than to call the persecutors of the Maximianists unjust—whom you finally acknowledged, through the proconsular records, to be your own. Not without fruit, indeed, did you persecute the error of your schismatics; for you corrected Felicianus and Praetextatus by that same conflict and troubles. And as for Optatus the Gildonian, who threatened more severe destruction, the people of Musti and Adsur are said to have feared him, as I also heard from them in person, and to have compelled their own bishops to return to the communion of Primianus. But since Optatus did not enforce this by any public records, why should I proceed against you with such arguments, when you are ready to deny whatever you can deny?

The proconsular and municipal records exist, and when they were read aloud, we demonstrated with how much force the aforementioned individuals were pressured by your people to yield their places. We do not blame, we do not begrudge: you did not labor in vain, you did not terrify to no purpose, you did not agitate fruitlessly. Their crushed spirits found their own arrogance displeasing; they were broken, they were reformed, they were corrected and received back after their own condemnation, after the postponement of others, after your persecution. Moreover, they were received just as they had been honored, with no heavier humiliation of penance, neither expiated nor degraded—neither they themselves nor those with whom they were received, whom they had separated from you along with themselves, baptized outside your communion, and whom they had perhaps rebaptized after you. You have nothing now with which to thrust murky falsehoods upon ignorant people concerning matters long past. That your people accused Caecilianus before the then-emperor Constantine, the public records proclaim. That the case was pleaded and brought to its proper conclusion, even to the vindication of Felix of Aptunga, the ordainer of Caecilianus—whom in the Council of Carthage they called 'the source of all evils' and whom, before the same Constantine, as he himself indicates in his writings, they accused with persistent interventions—the proconsular archives attest.

You resist, you cry out, you fight against the most evident truth; you even say that the overseas judges were corrupted by Caecilian, and that the emperor himself was corrupted by some favor or other. Indeed, the defeated accuser is all the more shameless when he also becomes a slanderer of the judge. Yet, among all those lies of yours with which you slander the overseas judges, we at least secure this: that your predecessors first brought this case before the emperor, first accused Caecilian and his ordainer before the emperor, first persecuted Caecilian and his associates before the emperor. Hence, as it seems to you, you stir up the gravest ill-will against us, because, though defeated, you suffer what you would certainly have inflicted as victors—just as if those who, after the innocent Daniel was freed, were themselves consumed by the very lions by which they had wanted him to be consumed through false accusation, wished to accuse Daniel. We also secure this: whatever you may think of the judges before whom Caecilian was acquitted in the overseas trial, whatever you may think of the emperor himself, before whom your predecessors accused Caecilian, and whose judgment they ultimately preferred to the episcopal judgment—even if you feel or pretend that the emperor Constantine was corrupted by favor—nevertheless, all the catholic Christians then living, whether in nearby or far-off lands, spread so far and wide, to whom the report about Caecilian and his colleagues could have come, ought not to have believed the defeated accusers, but the ecclesiastical judges.

For where we cannot all be judges, it is better to trust those who were able to be judges than to dare to judge the judges themselves by trusting defeated litigants, of whom we could not be judges. Therefore, since those who, by their accusations in the presence of Caecilian, when he was acquitted, not only attacked those by whom he was acquitted, but also all catholic Christians established in any nations whatsoever—who either were completely ignorant of that African dissension or, in that matter, preferred to trust the judges, who pronounced at their own peril as seemed right to them, rather than the defeated accusers—and attempted, with the most audacious shamelessness, to besmirch Caecilian with crimes either fabricated or certainly not proven, and to deny that all were Christians, the case of the Maximianists was finally sent to you, in which they themselves condemned, they themselves persecuted the condemned, they themselves received the persecuted back into the same honor, they themselves accepted the baptism of the condemned, so that those who dared to accuse the innocent were compelled to absolve the guilty—not those whom they believed to be innocent, but those whom, as they say, the truthful judgment of the presiding God had condemned by the mouth of their plenary council. Who ever said to anyone: 'Because you believed the judge who acquitted rather than me who accused, you are guilty along with those whom I accused'? And yet this is said to the Christian world, which, if it were said to a single man, would seem not only most unjust, but most insane. O thing wonderfully unworthy!

Africans accused Africans of the crime of betrayal; the accused were acquitted by overseas judges, and the peoples of the nations became traitors because they believed the acquitting judges rather than the accusing accusers. Rightly is the case of the Maximianists served to you, O Donatist: drink the cup from the hand of the Lord who corrects and admonishes. If you understand and acquiesce, this is the mercy of one who reforms, lest you fall into the judgment of one who punishes. It is said to you: proud and stiff-necked one, reconcile with the Christian peoples everywhere whom you have unjustly accused, at least now reconciled with your own condemned ones. Why do you tear apart the baptism of Christ in those churches or from those churches which the apostles founded? You have already received the baptism which your own condemned ones gave before they were reconciled to you. Why do you boast about the persecution you suffer? If it is a sign of justice, the party of Maximian is more just; for it has suffered from you and suffers with you. Hear the divine psalm: Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding. For you call us your persecutors, when we, desiring you to be saved, medically pursue the wounds we wish to heal, from which we are gravely afflicted by your clergy and circumcellions as if by your teeth and hooves while we care for you. Do not be ungrateful for such medicine as you have imitated; you too corrected Felicianus and Praetextatus by persecutions.

And would that you would correct everything, and just as they returned to you, so you too would return to the Catholic mother! Against which, brother Cresconius, you have been so puffed up with audacity that you have even attempted to refute the divine testimonies I recalled and to clamor against the words of God. For I set forth in that letter against which you speak what is in the holy book concerning the seed of Abraham, when God says to that father of ours: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” Which testament the apostle calls, saying: “Brothers, I speak according to a man. Yet no one makes void or supersedes a man’s confirmed testament.” Promises were made to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say “and to seeds” as if to many, but as if to one: “and to your seed,” which is Christ. The fecundity of this seed was promised so abundantly that it was said to him: “Your seed will be as the stars of the sky and as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.

To this multiplication and abundance of the Church, which is spread throughout the whole world, which is believed as it was prophesied, which is exhibited to the eyes of all, even the unbelieving, so that it also shuts the mouths of the pagans, who have remained very few against it, you dare to prefer the Donatist party, saying that you have some people even outside Africa, though they are not visible, and you do not deny that you are accustomed to send one or two, or at most three, bishops from Africa; and you argue vainly against the most evident truth, that the whole world does not communicate with us because either there are still many barbarian nations which have not yet believed in Christ, or many heresies under the name of Christ are alien from the communion of our society. You do not consider, nor at least ask from those who know, how many of those very barbarian nations which you have mentioned are already subject to the name of Christ, and how the Gospel, growing, does not cease to bear fruit among the rest, until, when it has been preached in all, the end comes. For thus the Lord himself says: "And this Gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Unless perhaps even to such an extent your insane pride precipitates you, that you think this which was predicted is to begin with the Donatist party. Not from those churches which the apostles planted, with which the Donatist party does not communicate.

Will he also attempt to rebaptize these very ones, so that he may fill the world, when the Catholic Church is growing everywhere and that man is daily diminishing even in Africa itself? O insane perversity of men! You believe you are praised for believing in Christ what you do not see, and you do not believe you are condemned for denying the Church what you do see, since that head is in heaven, this body is on earth. You acknowledge Christ in what is written: "God, exalted above the heavens," and you do not acknowledge the Church in what follows: "and your glory over all the earth." You acknowledge Christ in what is written: "They have dug through my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones. But they themselves have considered and looked upon me, they have divided my garments among themselves and cast lots for my clothing," and you do not acknowledge the Church in what follows shortly after: "All the ends of the earth will be remembered and will turn to the Lord, and all the nations of the peoples will worship in his sight, for the kingdom is the Lord's and he himself will rule over the nations." You acknowledge Christ in what is written: "God, give your judgment to the king and your justice to the king's son," and you do not acknowledge the Church in what the same psalm testifies: "He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. Before him the Ethiopians will fall, and his enemies will lick the earth. The kings of Tarshish and the islands will offer gifts, the kings of Arabia and Sheba will bring presents. And all the kings of the earth will worship him, all peoples will serve him.

You acknowledge Christ where it is said to the Jews: "I have no will in you, says the Lord Almighty, nor will I accept sacrifices from your hands" — because, of course, the coming of Christ took away all those Jewish sacrifices — and you do not acknowledge the Church in what follows: "For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense will be offered to my name and a pure sacrifice. For my name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord Almighty." You acknowledge Christ in what the prophet says: "He was led like a sheep to the slaughter" and the rest that is read there about him as if in the Gospel, and you do not acknowledge the Church in what he says a little later: "Rejoice, barren one who does not bear, burst forth and shout, you who do not give birth, because the many sons of the deserted woman are more than those of the woman who has a husband. For the Lord has said: Widen the place of your tabernacle and fix your courts — there is nothing to spare — stretch out the ropes farther, strengthen the stakes firmly, extend again and again to the right and to the left. For your seed will inherit the nations, and you will inhabit cities that were deserted. There is nothing to fear — for you will prevail — nor be ashamed that you were detestable. For you will forget confusion forever, you will not remember the disgrace of your widowhood. For I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name, and he who delivered you, the God of Israel himself, will be called the God of the whole earth.

In these same Holy Scriptures, Cyprian learned the Church, so that he might say: "Thus the Church of the Lord, bathed in light, has extended its rays throughout the whole world, and has spread its branches over the entire earth with an abundance of fruitfulness." Against this, Cresconius, you slander such a clear manifestation of divine utterances by fixing your gaze on the remnants of the nations which the Church has not yet occupied; you do not consider how much it has already occupied, from which it is daily spread abroad to hold the remnants. For how can you not deny the future perfection of those prophecies, when you do not hesitate to deny such great progress, to which that perfection itself is owed—I do not say against divine voices, but already against your own? For even from you, by the great force of truth itself, it was wrung out that you said, unknowingly or without attending to what you said, that the whole world is daily turning to the Christian name. Why, then, does the Donatist party not communicate with this Church, which is spreading and expanding throughout the whole world? Evidently, lest it be polluted by sinners. And where is that which Cyprian did not wish to abandon—not that party of yours which, remaining in Africa, slanders the whole world, or which, from Africa, wanders among a few hidden ones—but that Church which "has spread its branches over the entire earth with an abundance of fruitfulness"? Even if in its communion there are not only sinners but they are seen to be such, Cyprian said: "For even if tares are seen to be in the Church, nevertheless our faith or our love ought not to be hindered, so that because we see tares in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church.