Contra Cresconium

Here you must answer, if you are willing to answer anything true. And how will what is written be fulfilled: "A bad son calls himself just, but does not wash away his own end"? Let him convict the bad son, let the Maximianists condemn and persecute, let them be reconciled to those condemned and persecuted: let him be thus refuted, or thus confounded, or thus corrected. How, you ask, is the whole world full of your communion, when there are so many heresies, none of which communicates with you? On the contrary, the world is full not only of heretics, but also of other evil men, and the world is full of holy and faithful servants of God, just as the sea is full of bitter waves and also full of sweet fish. In a few, you say, truth is often found; to err is the lot of many. And lest you seem to contradict your own words about that great sterile fecundity, to which it was said: "Many are the sons of the deserted woman rather than of the one who has a husband," you have adduced testimony from the Gospel: "Because few are saved." Therefore solve the question: how does the Lord himself say: "How narrow and strait is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it," and yet the same Lord says elsewhere: "Many from the east and west will come and recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven"? How also in the Apocalypse is shown a multitude of them, which no one can number, from every nation, tribe, and tongue?

of those who wear white robes and carry palms, who endured persecution for the sake of Christ’s faith, how the same ones are both few and many. For neither of these statements is true and the other false, since both are uttered by divine truth, except that the same good and true Christians, who are many in themselves, are likewise few in comparison with the evil and false. Thus we say that many grains, with which great granaries are filled, are few in comparison with the chaff; and likewise—to speak of the very testament of God, which was made to Abraham concerning his seed, which is Christ—we say that many stars, which we cannot count, with which so great a heaven gleams on all sides, are few in comparison with the sand of the sea. Perhaps the stars signify spiritual Christians, but the sand of the sea carnal ones, through whom and from whom even heresies and schisms arise; yet the world is full of both kinds, because the same Lord says: “This world is a field,” and you yourself, with truth wringing it from you, said: “The whole world is daily turning to the name of Christ.” Therefore throughout the whole field, that is, throughout the whole world, there are grains, throughout the whole world there are tares, because He who cannot be deceived said of both: “Let both grow together until the harvest.

Let them therefore restrain themselves, the impious deserters, in the face of such great abundance of grain growing throughout the whole world, and let them not boast about the fewness of certain separated tares. But if they do boast, even in this very matter those same Maximianists proceed against them in divine judgment, set in place to confound them in everything and, if they are wise, to correct them—those Maximianists whom, far fewer in number, they persecuted with the confidence of their own multitude, and by persecuting converted some of them back to their communion, and thus left the others, most righteous, as very few indeed. You say, "The East does not communicate with Africa, nor Africa with the East." Not indeed, but in the heretical tares separated from the Lord's threshing-floor; in the Catholic grains, however, and the inner chaff, the East does communicate with Africa and Africa with the East. For different heretics here, and different ones elsewhere and elsewhere, contend with the Catholic unity diffused everywhere. For everywhere is that unity from which those have gone out who could not possibly be everywhere, saying, according to what was predicted about them: "Behold, here is Christ; behold, there; some in this place, others in that," showing their own little particles of their presumptions or rather amputations, and with impious pride denying the root from which they were broken off.

To this Church, therefore, which with abundant successes, as it spreads throughout the whole world, from every nation, tribe, and tongue brings forth a multitude of candidates and palm-bearers, as is written in the Apocalypse, which no one can number—to this Church, I say, with which the Donatist party manifestly does not communicate, your forebears ought to have proved whatever true records they had concerning the traditors. If they had done so, they themselves would be in that Church, while those whom they had accused would be outside it. But as it is, since we see that the accused remained in that Church, what good are we to think of the accusers, whom we see outside it? And thus in that fourfold division of mine, where I said, when records concerning the traditors are produced on both sides, either both are true, or both are false, or ours are true and yours false, or ours are false and yours true—since you see that in the first three cases you are most easily defeated, you have vainly chosen this last as if it were a way of escape for you. For although you should note how shamelessly it is said, yet even if those human records of yours were true, they ought to have been proved to that Church which is proved by divine records.

Tell me, I beseech you—but do not cast a fog over the unskilled, so that, since you cannot convict the accused traitors, you may again wish to accuse the dialectical arts—tell me, therefore, I ask you, has this case of yours, with your true documents, been brought to the judgment of the transmarine churches founded by apostolic labor, or has it not been brought? If it has been brought, did you win in that judgment or were you defeated? If you say you won, why did you not communicate with those churches in whose judgment you won? If, however—and your communion, alienated from them, itself sufficiently indicates this—you were defeated, why do you litigate with us over a lost case, whether good or bad, holding as your greatest crime that you drench the Christian world with the crime of the traitors, whom you were utterly unable to convict in the judgment of the transmarine churches even when producing true documents, because in that case, in which it could not take part, the world chose to believe the judges, not the defeated accusers?

You are not, therefore, guilty because you lost a good case, as you would put it, in a transmarine court, but because you do not hesitate to charge the crime of the guilty—and, to yield to you excessively, even of the judges—against so many innocent Christian peoples spread far and wide through so many nations; to whose communion, like the Lord's grain, you ought to have clung, and, as you say, those men who were traditores and those whom you consider bad judges, according to the evangelical scriptures and with Cyprian even warning, you ought to have tolerated like chaff until the time of winnowing, lest by abandoning the threshing-floor you should perish. But if that case of yours, with its true documents, which you yourself have chosen, was not brought to the judgment of the transmarine churches, how could so many bishops established in their own congregations have been lawfully condemned by them on a case unknown and not at all referred to them? Or how ought African Christians—I do not say those who thought them innocent, but even those who knew them to be traditores—because of the tares which they saw in the Church, to separate themselves from the manifest innocence of the grains growing so far and wide and ignorant of these things, so that, not stained by another's crime which they tolerated for the sake of unity, they should be condemned by the crime of violated unity itself?

What, then, does it profit you for the case to have chosen this from among those four propositions, that your documents are true, but those we bring forward against you are deemed false? Behold, even here you are defeated, because with your true, as you think, documents, the traditores could not be convicted where they ought to have been, whether those same documents were concealed by your people, or the traditores themselves hid from the judges by some cunning, or they were hidden by the corrupt judges themselves. Look at the seed of Abraham, which in the testament of God grows among all peoples like the stars of the sky and like the sand of the sea, and dare to say, dare to believe, dare, if there is any fear of God in you, to think whether so abundant a harvest throughout the whole world could perish because of some African tares hidden for whatever reasons. You exaggerate the persecutions which you say you suffer, you who, in such sacrilegious and manifest obstinacy against the peace of the holy Church, are spared with wonderful leniency while rebelling, and you say in the first parts of your letter that the Emperor Constantine, when the crime of Caecilian became manifest, also condemned him by his own sentence to live in exile at Brixa. In this, who would doubt that you are either deceived or deceiving, when you also mentioned that Felix of Aptunga was convicted of tradition by some Ingenuus in the proconsul's court?

Behold, I insert the sentence of the proconsul Aelianus, by which Felix was cleared and acquitted. If you wish to read the whole proceedings, take them from the proconsul’s archive. Aelianus the proconsul said: From the declaration of Caecilianus, who says that the acts are false and that many things have been added to the letter, it is clear with what intention Ingentius did this, and therefore he will be received into prison; for he is necessary for a stricter interrogation. But that Felix, a religious bishop, is free from the burning of divine instruments is manifest, since no one has been able to prove anything against him, that he handed over or burned religious scriptures. For the interrogation of all those written above makes it manifest that no divine scriptures were either found, or corrupted, or burned. This is contained in the proceedings: that Felix, a religious bishop, in those times was neither present, nor lent his conscience, nor ordered any such thing to be done.

I also insert the rescript of the Emperor Constantine to Probianus, attesting to the same thing and showing how troublesome the accusers of innocent men, your predecessors, were to him. The Emperors Caesars Flavius Constantinus and Maximinus and Valerius Licinianus Licinius to Probianus, proconsul of Africa. Your predecessor Aelianus rightly, when Verus, the deputy of the prefects, was then detained in our Africa by ill health, and he was performing the functions of the same, among other things also referred this case or ill-will, which seems to have been stirred up against Caecilianus, bishop of the Catholic church, to his own examination and order. For when he had already caused Superius the centurion and Caecilianus the magistrate of the Aptugnitani and Saturninus, a former curator, and Calibius the younger, curator of the same city, and Solus, a public slave of the above-written city, to be present, he provided a suitable hearing, so much so that, when it was objected against Caecilianus that the episcopate seemed to have been conferred upon him by Felix, to whom betrayal and burning of the divine scriptures seemed to have been objected, it was established that Felix was innocent concerning him. Finally, when Maximus contended that Ingentius, a decurion of the city of Ziquensis, had falsified a letter of Caecilianus from the duumvirs, we saw the same Ingentius himself suspended by the acts which were at hand, and for that reason not tortured at all, because he asserted that he was a decurion of the city of Ziquensis.

Therefore we desire that you send the same Ingentius himself, under suitable prosecution, to my court of Constantine Augustus, so that, with those who are presently active and do not cease to make daily appeals both hearing and being present in person, it may be made known and manifest that they have vainly sought to stir up ill will against Bishop Caecilian and to rise up violently against him. For thus it will come about that, such contentions being set aside as is proper, the people may, without any dissension, devote themselves to their own religion with due veneration. I also insert the words of Constantine from his letter to Eumalius the vicar, where he testifies that he himself judged between the parties and found Caecilian innocent. For when he had related in what he spoke above how the parties were brought to his judgment after the episcopal judgments: "In which," he says, "I perceived that Caecilian was a man endowed with all innocence and observing the due offices of his religion and serving it as was fitting, and it clearly appeared that no crime could be found in him, such as had been fabricated against him in his absence by the pretense of his adversaries.

Why have you not inserted the decree of Constantine by which you claim he was condemned and placed in exile at Brixia, most eloquent man? How much more fitting it would have been to insert that than some unknown matter about the Council of Serdica, which is shown to have no relevance at all either to you or to the case that lies between us and you! For if it was at Brixia that Caecilianus was, as you most slanderously call it, in exile, preferring to be absent from the church rather than to disturb the peace, what need is there for me to say? In the meantime, you recite no sentence of the condemning emperor, yet you think it proper not only to hear or say, but even to write, that Caecilianus was condemned by the emperor, though I do not say this rashly. Nevertheless, according to your own words, I see Caecilianus in exile, condemned by the emperor: at least answer by whose accusation and in what manner, and question me as you did in your letter after many empty things, similarly empty, when you said: "Who, when a will is produced, is less in agreement? He who suffers persecution, or he who inflicts it?" These are certainly your words. Therefore, look at Caecilianus suffering persecution and, as you yourself said, placed in exile; look also at your own people, as the emperor himself testifies in his own words, not ceasing to make daily appeals against Caecilianus; and with those same words of yours, answer me as I question: Who, when a will is produced, is less in agreement—he who suffers persecution, or he who inflicts it?

But after carefully reading everything, you will find that Caecilianus also suffered persecution at the hands of your people before the emperor. Yet you will not find that he was condemned by the emperor; on the contrary, you will even find that he was acquitted. Moreover, if—as you have chosen to make much of—the documents concerning the charges of betrayal which you present are true, while those we present are false, even in this the truth of God overcomes you, for just as it foretold, so it renders the Church fruitful and growing throughout the whole world, because the true documents concerning the crimes of others do not prejudice it, even if the reputation of such matters does or does not pass to the more distant overseas bishops, through whom it might reach more remote regions.

or they were not shown as they should have been, or they were not believed by those to whom they could have been shown, or they were believed and concealed and never reached others. Nor can any single person, much less such a great number of Christians established among so many nations, be guilty of participation in another's crime, if he either knew nothing of its true evidence or was deceived by feigned innocence through false evidence. If, therefore, as I had begun to say, in this matter which you have chosen as your great point—that the testimonies you bring forward about the traditores are true, while those brought against you are false—you are of no avail against the Catholic Church spread throughout the whole world, nor against the providence of God, by which, to use your own words, the whole world daily turns to the Christian name. How much more do you fail in your accusations, since this very tradition, whose name you shrink from as if horrified, those who made this schism have separated themselves from the body of Christ and have handed themselves over to the devil. Much more plausibly, as I said in those letters and now say, we charge you, who only hear us speak the names and crimes of the traditores, while we show both the ecclesiastical records in which they confessed themselves and the municipal records in which they are recorded as having done this.

But you, a clever examiner and weigher of words, teach us what the comparative degree means, and exult as if victorious, claiming that I could not say, "We charge you with the tradition more probably," unless I were confessing that you charge us with it probably. For if we do so more probably, you say, then you do so probably, and you teach this: because "probably" and "more probably" are related as "truly" and "more truly," and because that degree increases what was stated before, not disproves what was said earlier. You add other words by which we may understand this more clearly, and you say: just as it is "well" and "better," "badly" and "worse," "horribly" and "more horribly," so you show "probably" and "more probably." From this you think it can be inferred that, if I charge you more probably with something false, it follows that you confirm that you have charged us probably with something true. Here, do I not say that in an ecclesiastical question or dispute you are trying to teach us artificial grammatical rules, what the comparative degree means, because it increases what was stated before, not disproves what was said earlier? For I see how ineptly I would throw this back at you, which you refused to see when you thought that an anticategoria, as if from the art of rhetoric, should be thrown back at me—a type of question where it is said, "I did not do it, but you did," which I also demonstrated in prophetic authority.

Consider, however, more carefully, lest you happen to find in the authors of Latin speech, whom the artificial rules of grammarians serve, that this degree which is placed before does not always increase, but sometimes is set above in a contrary sense. An example of this usage occurs to me for the moment from the epistle which the apostle wrote to the Hebrews. For when he was speaking of the blessing of the land, which, having received rain, yields fruit, he then added: "But producing thorns and thistles, it is reprobate and nearest to a curse, whose end is in burning." Lest he should seem to have wished that for those to whom he was speaking, he says: "But we have confidence concerning you, dearest brothers, for better things, and things adhering to salvation." You certainly note how he here distinguished 'better things', not because the things were good which he had said above about producing thorns and thistles and deserving burning, but rather because they were evil, so that, by avoiding those, they would choose and desire better things, that is, good things contrary to such evils. But perhaps you think the apostle is to be heard in the same way as he himself says of himself, as a man unskilled in speech, though not in knowledge, and therefore you think that not the authority of words in him, but of things and opinions, is to be followed, contending that 'good' ought to have been placed where he himself placed 'better'. What if I, too, now accustomed to these letters and having forgotten those which I learned as a boy, said: "You charge tradition.

We bring this very thing against you much more plausibly, as if I were saying 'plausibly', using a comparative for a positive, not because you plausibly, but rather because you implausibly, just as he said 'better things', not because those things were good, but rather because they were bad? Why do you so rashly conclude from this that I confirmed 'you plausibly', because I said 'we more plausibly'? Moreover, you would not have reproached me for erring according to the grammarians in my word, if you had at least been willing either to read attentively or to recall from memory the authors of those very words. For the letters are childish, but it was not said by an inexperienced child: 'The gods gave better things to the pious, and error to their enemies. They tore apart limbs, stripped bare, with their teeth.' How then are 'better things' for the pious, as if those things were good, and not rather great evils, for those who tore apart limbs, stripped bare, with their teeth? Now you certainly see that, just as he could wish better things for the pious, although those things, in comparison with which he wished, were not good, so too I could say: 'We bring the charge of tradition against you more plausibly', even though you did not bring it against us plausibly. But let me pass over that. For when something is called 'probable', it does not consequently follow that it is true, since things are called 'probable' which can and usually happen, and therefore are approved, that is, are accepted and believed, even if they have not happened. But what is true, when it is shown, is necessarily probable, and certainly more probable than that. Consult the book where you learned your words: you will certainly find that I do not deceive you.

Therefore, even if I were to grant that your side has more plausibly charged our side with the tradition of the scriptures, I would not thereby contend that you have charged us truly, and I would rightly say that we charge this more plausibly, since we are accustomed to hear from you only the name of 'traditors,' but never to have them shown and proven by any records, whether ecclesiastical or public, as having confessed; whereas from us both public records are produced, in which your people handed over the scriptures, and ecclesiastical records, in which they were left to God as judge, having confessed. But I do not overlook such an obvious help from you, by which, even unknowingly, you greatly favor us by teaching the rules of the comparative degree, because what is placed before is increased, not that what was said before is disapproved. For according to this rule of yours, based on certain words of yours in your letter, we have obtained our case without any difficulty. For you said, in the early parts of your letter, as if accusing our obstinacy, that so many legal documents cannot persuade us of what is truer and better. From this I conclude, according to your own rules, that we already hold the true and the good, if what is truer and better cannot be persuaded to us. Therefore, since we do not rescind, as I shall speak according to you, your truer and better baptism, why do you rescind our true and good one? Likewise, when you said: 'We too wish that Christ be the origin and root and head of the Christian,' you immediately added: 'But we ask through whom this is better done.

By saying this you have certainly conceded that good can be done through a bad minister, but better through a good one. Since, therefore, we do not annul the baptism which you claim is given through your minister as through a good one, why do you annul the baptism which you contend is given through our minister as through a bad one? For you said: we ask through whom it is better done, and your rule is that this step, which is placed before, increases. Hence, if through your minister, as you think, it is better done, then through our minister it is also well done, and consequently, when you rebaptize someone baptized by us, you annul by a sacrilegious presumption what you concede, by this rule of yours, to have been well done. I fear I may press too hard upon your modesty, if I show how lightly and scurrilously you have thought to mock certain words of mine, which I placed in translation, as if witty and facetious: "forehead" for modesty, "mouth" for speech, "trident" for a threefold discourse, "three-headed beast" for error raging with three calumnies against the innocence of so many peoples. Rather, leave childish things to children. For it does not move me that you say a trident, because of its three prongs, does not befit a bishop, since it is also a fisherman's tool and thereby apostolic, for the Lord made his apostles fishers of men. For our Scripture also says that God has wings and arrows, yet we do not worship Cupid.

You also reproach me for not having kept the gentleness I promised at the beginning, because, moved by the mention of the Manichaeans, I said: just as the Lord says that Satan cannot cast out Satan, so the error of the Donatists cannot overthrow the error of the Manichaeans, as if I had compared Petilianus to Satan and not the error from whose snares I desire him to be freed. It is well that the Apostle has fortified us against such calumnies in that very place where he admonishes us to be gentle, patient, and modest when we correct someone who dissents. For after he had said: "But the servant of the Lord ought not to quarrel, but to be gentle to all, teachable, patient, correcting those who think differently with modesty," he immediately added: "lest God give them repentance to know the truth and they come to their senses from the snares of the devil, having been captured by him according to his own will." Behold apostolic gentleness! Those with whom he commanded us to act calmly, patiently, and modestly, he himself calls captured by the devil, yet he did not lose the gentleness he commended, because he was unwilling to be silent about the truth which he taught.

But you yourself see whose side you are on, who, by denouncing my words as abusive and savage, are trying to stir up to quarreling those whom you do not wish to come together for debate—for I do not wish to say that you also take delight in quarreling. For you reproach me more sparingly and modestly, but as if indirectly, with things that do not pertain to me at all. For what judgment would I make about the most pestilential and, for all Christians, anathematizable vanity of the Manichaeans, if I were accustomed only to say such things and did not also attest to it in many and manifold written books? Not even then would there be any room for your slanders against me. For the Catholic Church would not be surprised to be falsely accused by you, when the whole Christian world, with all its churches—even those first propagated by apostolic labor—is accused by you of false crimes. But since, against the Manichaeans, who once deceived me as a young man, anyone who wishes can read my many writings, no one is so foolish as to believe your words about me rather than his own eyes and understanding.

But you say, "The letter of your leader, in which he wrote something about you when he did not wish you to be ordained, is held by not a few of our people." I would care very little for that letter, even if the clear judgment of the one by whom it is said to have been written were not read, condemning that calumny and falsehood on our behalf; how much less does the Catholic Church care for it, whose case we are conducting against you, which, relying on so many divine testimonies, no human testimonies about any man, whether true or false, take away the truth that it rejoices in! Cease with such things: I am one man. The case between us concerns the Church, not me—the Church, I say, which has learned from its Redeemer to place hope in no man. Although, even concerning myself, if you knew my manner of life, you would not rightly be believed by my enemies. For the estimation of men, I have a great abundance of witnesses who know me; but for the sight of God, only my conscience, which I bear fearless against your accusations, yet I do not dare to justify myself before the eyes of the Almighty, and I expect from Him more the overflowing bounty of mercy than the supreme scrutiny of judgment, thinking of what is written: "When the just king sits on the throne, who will boast that he has a pure heart, or who will boast that he is clean from sin?

But what does it matter to the issue, the question that is being debated between us, what sort of person I myself am, when in the Lord's threshing-floor I am either chaff if I am bad, or grain if I am good? Yet if you were grains, you would not shun the chaff mixed in, as even Cyprian himself admonishes, before the time of winnowing. Therefore, if we find in our midst a man known to be evil, we rightly charge it against you; for your entire defense consists in this, that you separated yourselves lest you perish by the contagion of others' sins. Hence you boast of having made a new kind of threshing-floor, either one that has only wheat, or one in which only wheat appears, which has no need of a winnower, but of a scrutinizer. For even your Parmenianus, comparing your splendid purity with our impurity, as it were by contrast, dared to insert the sentence of the prophet Jeremiah, where he says: "What has chaff to do with wheat?"—which he said, as the reading itself indicates, against those who equated their own dreams with divine oracles. Yet your arrogance and dreadful pride are declared in the letters of Parmenianus, where he proclaimed you, contrary to the divine scriptures and contrary to the warnings of Cyprian, before the final winnowing, which the world awaits, as wheat purified of chaff.

What, then, could have been procured for you more fittingly against this most deceitful arrogance than the case of the Maximianists? Whatever you are accustomed to say against us as though we were traditors, you have said more grievously against the Maximianists, whom you received when condemned, at the time they were condemned. You make us odious on account of the emperors as though they were persecutors: you yourselves, before judges whom the emperors themselves sent, inflicted persecution on the Maximianists. You contend that the baptism of the Church cannot be given outside the Church: you did not annul the baptism which the Maximianists gave while in the crime of schism, when you received those to whom they gave it. If these things had to be done for the sake of the peace of unity, you find no grounds on which to accuse us; if, however, they ought not to have been done, you do not accuse us unless you have condemned yourselves. I do not want you to spread yourself over many things; for I too could briefly recall to memory those things which have been said against you. But think only of this, place the case of the Maximianists before your eyes. If you are able to answer us concerning this, proceed to the rest; if, however, you are not able, it is better for you to be quiet than to kick against the goad.

BOOK FOUR. Although I have already responded to your letter, Cresconius, with three not insubstantial volumes, in which you thought to defend the letter of Petilianus against my replies by which it was refuted, yet I have decided in this shorter work to treat with you solely concerning the case of the Maximianists, and from this one matter to show that everything you set forth in that letter was said in vain and emptily. For the benefit of God, which He has deigned to provide both as a convenience for our own management and as an aid for your correction, if you should come to your senses, is not to be despised.

who, unknown to you and not through our doing, so dominated the minds of your bishops that, although they accused the Christian world of being stained by the sins of others through communion in the sacraments—sins that were in fact false and unproven—they were compelled in the case of Maximianus to admit that those whom they had condemned had not been stained by sins while they were established in one communion of the sacraments, those to whom, as if they were innocent, they granted a delay for returning, even if not to the ordainers of Maximianus, yet to those established in his faction who were condemnors of Primianus; and who, although they refused to acknowledge the baptism of Christ even as given in those churches which the labor of the apostles propagated and founded, contending that baptism could not be given outside the one church and blaming us because we did not rescind baptism given by those whom we denied were in the true church, they received those baptized in the sacrilegious schism of Maximianus and did not dare to rescind baptism in them; and who, although they accuse us of the crime of persecution on the basis of the laws of Christian emperors by which their perversity is ordered to be corrected, they approached judges sent by those same emperors and gravely accused Maximianus and his associates before them, they entered into the proconsular records the council by which they condemned them, and they obtained most effective orders by which those men were driven from their sees.

All these deeds of theirs, they try to obscure with clouds for the inexperienced, not only by the holy scriptures and the many certain proofs of earlier events, when they separated themselves from unity, but also by their own most recent deeds and examples, they are most evidently overcome. Therefore, I will deal only with this, and from this I will respond to all parts of your letter, as the Lord helps me, without any difficulty, indeed with great ease. And first of all, that you, contradicting yourself, eloquently wished to disparage eloquence, as if it were the enemy of truth and rather the patron of falsehood, so that in that way you might show me, as if eloquent, to be avoided and shunned by the inexperienced: if in truth my eloquence were as great as you, though accusingly, attribute to me, would you not be compelled to praise eloquence when the decree of the Council of Bagai is recited, by which, as is written there, it struck Maximianus, the rival of the faith, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother Church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, with the thunderbolt of its sentence from the bosom of peace? Moreover, if that subject matter were set before me, when could I say: although the noxious offspring of viperous seed, the womb of a poisoned belly long concealed, and the moist coagulations of conceived crime slowly warmed into the limbs of asps, yet the conceived poison could not be hidden by a fading shadow. For even if late, did the pregnant vows of crimes give birth to their public crime and parricide?

when would I constrain myself to seek out these words, when would I roll forth in expressing them? when would I stir up the mind of the reader or hearer into hatred of the guilty with such force, such sound? Is it for that reason that these things, which were said against certain persons, are less truly said? Is the faith of such a great council diminished or its authority weakened by this eloquence? Surely that which seemed more eloquent was chosen precisely because all wished it to be their own, that one voice of three hundred and ten might resound through their silent mouths. Behold the eloquence which you have censured, which you have denounced as seditious and, even by its Greek name, maliciously artful, to be shunned and avoided—this eloquence so charmed all your bishops that in their plenary council each was unwilling to offer his own opinion, but they all made their own that one which could be spoken more eloquently and more ornamentally by one man. Therefore let it be permitted to us, without ill will, to dispute against the errors of men not altogether without polish, if it was permitted to so many and so great bishops of yours to condemn those very men so eloquently and ornamentally.

Moreover, you reproach with the vicious name of contentiousness and animosity that zeal for contending on behalf of truth, because we often wished to confer with your people, so that, with error removed, fraternal charity might rejoice in the bond of peace. Would it not, I ask, have been better for the cause of truth and unity to be conducted with peaceful words and in more tranquil places among bishops, rather than being litigated in the forum by bishops through advocates? This is what was done on the part of your bishop Primianus of Carthage against Maximianus and against those who were condemned with him at the Council of Bagai, before the legate of Carthage and before four or more proconsuls. Certainly, in a conference of disputation, this is to be guarded against, that it break out into a lawsuit, and it can and usually is guarded against by modest and gentle persons; but when a controversy is turned over in the forum with advocates struggling on both sides, then without doubt it is a lawsuit. Nor do I reproach this in your people, if they were compelled to this not by a love of litigating but by the necessity of consultation; nevertheless, I admonish you, a man endowed with a good mind, that you notice, that you perceive, that you understand that those who did not shun the forensic uproar and judicial quarrels by which they would convict and expel the accused whom they had already condemned in council, but rather undertook and exercised them, could have conferred with us much more easily in a peaceful manner, unless they preferred to cover up a bad cause with an excuse rather than to finish it with a disputation.

Now, as to the fact that, before you come to my discourse in which I refuted Petilianus, you ask of me in the meantime from whom it is fitting for you to be baptized—whether from one whom I also affirm possesses baptism, or from one whom your party contends does not possess it—this question too has been removed, so far as you are concerned, by the case of Maximianus from the empty loquacity of the ignorant; for among the Maximianists themselves it still remains. For your people, having condemned Maximianus for the sacrilege of schism—whom their own Primianus had condemned as his deacon, and by whom, with many colleagues conspiring against him, Primianus had been condemned—immediately condemned along with him the twelve ordainers of that same Maximianus by the same sentence. Out of these, two, Praetextatus of Adsuritum and Felicianus of Musti, when they had accused them in a proconsular court, and had shown them to have been condemned by the Council of Bagai, the same sentence having been alleged through their advocates, and when, with the proconsul ordering it, they had tried to drive them from the places they held but had been quite unable to do so, they later received them in such a way that they communicated with them with their honors intact, and, with their peoples having been brought back into peace, they rebaptized none of those whom they had baptized in schism.

There is extant a decree of the Council of Bagai, cited before the proconsul, with the advocate Nummasius pursuing the case, when he was acting to have the church of Membresitana handed over to the communion of Primianus, Salvius having been expelled, who had held it from ancient times, where he had obtained the episcopate in the Donatist party. But he was sought to be expelled for this reason, because he was recited as condemned by the Council of Bagai among the twelve ordainers of Maximianus, whom the same Nummasius, erring in number, calls eleven. This petition of Nummasius was later recited by Titianus, expressly and by name acting before the same proconsul against Praetextatus and Felicianus. The words of that advocate are these: "But its own institutions delight iniquity," he says, "and it does not abandon itself once it has fallen headlong. For the same Maximianus fosters the audacity he has begun and joins others to himself in madness. Among them is a certain Felicianus, who, having first followed the right path, is now darkened by the contamination of this depravity, and, placed in the city of Musti, believed that walls consecrated to almighty God, a venerable church, should be retained as if by some siege. This Praetextatus also imitates in the parts of Adsuritanum. But when the power of your equity became known to the fellowship of priests, you ordered, as the records testify, that, all contradiction having been set aside, the churches vindicated for the most sacred priests ought to be restored from profane minds.

Then a little later, to show what had been ordered, the same advocate recites the petition of Nummasius which I mentioned above, in which, when Nummasius had said to the proconsul, "Read the judgment of the episcopate," that decree of Bagai was recited, in which Maximianus is condemned in these words: "Maximianus, 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 the sentence has hurled him from the bosom of peace. And because the gaping earth has not yet swallowed him up, it has reserved him for a greater punishment above. For a sudden death would have gained him the profit of a swift funeral; now he is gathering the interest of a heavier debt, since he, though dead, stands among the living." Then, concerning his twelve ordainers, the Bagaitan sentence is pronounced thus: "Not only does a just death condemn this man for his crime; the chain of sacrilege also drags many others into the fellowship of the crime, of whom it is written: 'The venom of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of curse and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Tribulation and calamity are in their ways, and they have not known the way of peace. There is no fear of God before their eyes.' We would indeed be unwilling to cut them off as if 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 treatment, a more healthful course has been found, lest the contagious poison creep through all the members, so that the wound, once born, may fall away with a brief pain.

Therefore, know that the accused of a notorious crime—Victorianus of Carcabia, Marcianus of Sullectum, Beianus of Beiana, Salvius of Ausafa, Theodorus of Usula, Donatus of Sabrata, Miggo of Elephantaria, Praetextatus of Adsuritum, Salvius of Membresita, Valerius of Melzita, Felicianus of Mustita, and Martialis of Pertusa—who, by a baleful work of perdition, glued together a sordid vessel with collected filth, and also the clerics once of the Church of Carthage, who, while participating in the crime, provided panderage to an illicit incest, have been condemned by the truthful voice of a universal council under the presiding judgment of God. After the condemnation of these, among whom are read Praetextatus of Adsuritum and Felicianus of Mustita, with whom, as I said before, they reconciled after obtaining proconsular orders against them, they granted a delay to the others established in the same schism of Maximianus, even the condemnors of Primianus, only because they had not been present at the ordination of Maximianus, a delay defined by a fixed term of day in the same Council of Bagai, which is contained in these words: "But those," they say, "whom the plantings of the sacrilegious shoot did not pollute—that is, those who, with a shamefaced fidelity, withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus—we have permitted to return to mother Church. For as much as we are purged by the death of the guilty, so much do we rejoice in the return of the innocent.

And lest the narrow time for those returning should deprive them of the hope of salvation by the pressure of the restricted day, for those who acknowledge, to whom it is permitted, with the preceding statutes remaining in force, we open the door of acknowledgment to all until the eighth day before the Kalends of January next, so that those who return may have the foundations of complete honor and faith. But if anyone is unable to enter through lazy sloth, let him know that by his own will the way to all forgiving approaches has been removed for him. For the pronounced sentence will remain concerning them, and fixed penance for those returning after the appointed day.

From all these things, therefore, since you do not deny that some have returned to your communion, and the matter is of such recent memory—with the very persons involved still living, and the knowledge of it being most widespread and clear—and since both those to whom a delay was granted (inasmuch as the words of that same council sufficiently indicate that they are invited to return to Mother Church, and they rejoice over them as over the return of the innocent) and those whom they condemned along with Maximian without any delay interposed, baptized outside your church throughout that entire time—whether up to the day of the delay, when they were in communion with Maximian and established in his schism, or even after the day of the delay had passed, when the advocate Titianus specifically demanded that Praetextatus and Felicianus be expelled from the basilicas, with whom Primian later made peace while they retained their full honor—how dare you now say that one baptism cannot be given except in one church, when you have acknowledged, received, and not dared to rescind the baptism given by these men in sacrilegious schism, without any controversy? And yet you cannot claim that you granted nothing to those whom you received in that same baptism.

If, therefore, I ask what you have conferred, you will undoubtedly reply: so that they would not perish by the very sacrilege of schism, so that they would not have the baptism of Christ not as a reward but as a judgment, not for salvation but for perdition, as is the mark of military service in deserters, we conferred peace, we conferred unity, we conferred fellowship with the Church, so that they might merit receiving the Holy Spirit through whom charity is diffused in our hearts, without which no one attains the kingdom of heaven, even if imbued with all legitimate sacraments. You would reply these things truthfully, if you held the true Church. Nevertheless, for your admonition it suffices that you understand that you will receive this in the true Church, which you believed those whom the Maximianists baptized in their sacrilegious schism, who returned with them to you from there, received in your communion, and thus you also, having received the baptism of Christ, are to be punished if you do not hold the unity of the Catholic Church, just as you would undoubtedly not doubt that those baptized in the schism of Maximianus were to be punished, if they were not joined to your communion, in whom, when they came to you from there, you judged that the baptism was not to be rescinded. You see, therefore, that even this, which troubled you about the sacrament of baptism, has already been resolved in the case of the Maximianists.

Now let us examine those points by which you believed you had refuted my letter. First, as to your question why I call you Donatists, adding that Donatus was not the author and founder of a church which had not existed before, but rather one of the bishops of the church derived from Christ and ancient, you do not observe that Maximianus says this about himself and his own followers, yet you call his entire communion by his name. Nor do you distinguish the schism he made from yourselves or from other sects by any term other than either Maximianists or Maximianenses or whatever else is derived from the name of Maximianus, or, more simply and without fear of the schoolmaster's rod, you call it the party of Maximianus. What will you say to this except that Maximianus made a schism from your communion, but that Donatus did not make a schism from the Catholic communion? But Maximianus does not say this; rather, he affirms that Primianus and all of you made a schism from the party of Donatus, in which he himself remained, and he recites the decrees of councils: first, that which was held at Carthage by forty-three bishops, by which Primianus was pre-condemned; second, that which was held at Cebarsussi by a hundred or more of your bishops at that time, by which he was fully and more completely condemned. To one producing such documents, what will you reply, except that the Council of Bagai is of greater authority?

In which three hundred and ten condemned the same Maximianus and his associates, when Primianus was not pleading his case among them as one to be purged, but was sitting with them as a most innocent judge, was pronouncing sentence against Maximianus and his twelve associates, in whose presence he had been ordained. And after granting a delay, he was recalling so many others, by whom he himself had been condemned, to their own peace as if they were innocent? In this conflict of yours, what do you want us, as mediators, to judge, since we are held by the communion neither of Maximianus nor of yours? What, I ask, do you want us to judge from this, except that against the two councils by which Primianus was condemned, the later council of Bagai, which condemned Maximianus, ought to prevail, on the grounds that we consider it, of course, to be more firmly established? For how could a later council judge concerning earlier ones? Behold, in this we favor you; we have another case with the Maximianists, if we have dared to decide. We favor you, I say. A third judgment at Bagai was rendered for Primianus against Maximianus and his colleagues, by which later judgment earlier ones could deservedly be annulled, although we read or hear of no voice of appeal from Primianus from the two earlier judgments to the third, except that, absent, he was first pre-condemned and then condemned a second time. But also against Maximianus and his associates, absent, that most eloquent sentence of Bagai was pronounced.

And those forty-three at Carthage testified that they had conducted themselves more modestly, cautiously, and diligently in this matter, because they sent legates to the same Primianus not once, but a second and third time, so that if he himself was unwilling to come to them, he would permit them to come to him. When he refused both, as they write, and treated those who were sent with a shameful rebuff, they felt that necessity had pressed upon them to provide for the church, and thus, not yet daring to precipitate the final judgment, but consulting by way of a preliminary ruling, they left room for him, if he trusted his cause, to respond and purge himself at a subsequent, more solemn council; and when he was unwilling to come to that, they then thought it necessary to condemn him without any suspension of the sentence. But in the decree of the Council of Bagai we read not only of no legates having been ill-treated by Maximianus, but not even of any legates having been sent to summon him; yet we see that an altar was raised against an altar and a bishop ordained against that bishop who sat in the see where he had been ordained, in such a way that he was not deserted by the assembly of his own people nor was his communion severed by the many other bishops, and that this provoked such indignation at the sacrilegious schism committed that the condemnation of Maximianus himself and of his ordainers could no longer be delayed.

Since these things are so, you are not, however, moved by such considerations on behalf of Caecilian. Against him, who remained and presided over the people, Maiorinus was ordained with an altar set up against an altar. Against him, not two judgments, as against Primianus by the Maximianists, but one judgment is brought forward, hastened by a rush of dreadful rashness. He, unlike Primianus, did not refuse to come to his colleagues, but rather invited them to come, which even they themselves could not keep silent about in the decree of their own council, which they issued against him. On his behalf, not one, as on behalf of Primianus, but four later judgments are recited. His adversaries, not absent like those of Primianus, but present, were refuted before those judges whom they had agreed would judge, before the emperor Constantine himself, before whom they first accused Caecilian, before whom they later complained about the bishops who judged, from whom he wished that very case to be heard, as if they had not judged rightly, to whom they again appealed from a second episcopal judgment, so that they were overcome even by him, after one and another episcopal judgment, judging between the parties, and their fourth conviction was not lacking.

For when, in the case of Caecilian’s own alleged crimes, his accusers had been found to be false, and they had brought against him a charge concerning the traditio of his ordainer Felix of Aptunga, Felix himself was also cleared by a proconsular judgment, at the very order of Constantine himself that his case be examined—Constantine, whom they were wearing down with constant importunities. The Maximianists did not inflict such evils against Primian, nor were they so often defeated, nor were they defeated in person, nor were they defeated before judges whom they themselves had chosen; and yet, what is manifest, they themselves made a schism from your communion, and you refuse to notice that your own people made a schism from the catholic communion; with what impudence of the most empty animosity, I am utterly at a loss. For if you wish everything that you say about Caecilian and his ordainer Felix to be true because about seventy bishops judged on this matter, why do you not wish what is said about Primian to be true, when in that case first forty-three, and later a hundred bishops judged, and the earlier preliminary decision was confirmed by the later judgment? But if, on the other hand, you consider those charges against Primian to be false because the Council of Bagai is cited later in his favor against his enemies, why do you not confess that the charges brought against Caecilian are utterly false, in whose favor so many later judgments are cited?

If Caecilian, against whom judgment had once been given by those seventy judges, ought not to have found a place for purgation before other judges, then neither ought Primian, whom so many more than seventy—those who confirmed the first judgment—had condemned in a second hearing. But if, for one condemned twice, a third judgment, because it was rendered in his favor, suffices most fully, why do you contend with some iron forehead that for one condemned once, a second, third, fourth, and fifth judgment should not suffice for acquittal? Or if perhaps the number moves you, so that you consider the Council of Bagai to prevail against the hundred by whom Primian was condemned, because there were three hundred and ten in it, why do you refuse to consent to the far greater number of bishops throughout the whole world? But as for the charge you bring against Caecilian of that unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, concerning which the Lord says: “It will not be forgiven, neither here nor in the future age,” we too could teach that Felician of Musti, whom you today have as a bishop along with Primian—one of the ordainers of Maximian and condemners of Primian himself, and by whom you did not rebaptize those baptized in that sacrilegious schism—we could charge him with a sin that is against the Holy Spirit, which you have charged as the sacrilege of schism, as was declaimed in the sentence of the Council of Bagai.

Just as you think that those whom you accuse of having handed over the divine scriptures to be burned by the persecutors have sinned with that unforgivable guilt against the Holy Spirit, because those same scriptures were spoken by men of God acting through the Holy Spirit, so also we could not only object the same thing to your own traditors, whom the records convict, but we would also show that we have objected this to Felicianus, as I said, in the crime of sacrilegious schism, because unity of love and peace is preserved in the Holy Spirit, as the apostle says: "bearing with one another in love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," which indeed he violates who commits schism. But we do not object this guilt of an insoluble and eternal sin, which is committed against the Holy Spirit, either to you, whom we do not despair of being able to be healed when you live corrected, or to your people who handed over the sacred books to be burned by fire, except that they had an unrepentant heart, separated from unity until the end of this life. Nor do you show that you have objected this to Felicianus and Praetextatus, with whom you later communicated, who are read to have been condemned by the truthful mouth of your plenary council, dragged into the chain of sacrilege with Maximianus to the fellowship of crime, and after the day of delay are proven to have been received, not indeed as already condemned, but as if innocent, with the delay being extended to others.

But as for the fact that the derivation of the name, so that they are called Donatists from Donatus, does not please you, and you think that the rule of Latin speech should rather be declined, I do not reject your admonition; however, seek out grammarians as judges, before whom you may contend with the Maximianists about this art and convict them. For I do not even wish to call them Maximianists now, lest I offend your so learned ears, who certainly, as far as I judge, will not yield to me as easily as you do, so that they would call them Claudianenses or something else, whom they called Claudianists, when they received them into communion with Primianus, among other crimes with which they both pre-condemned and condemned him, they set them down. And at the same time recognize that this rule of declination has not pleased me alone, as you reproach, but perhaps you alone have yielded to me in that matter, which does not pertain to the case, with such great ease. But as for the fact that you thought I should be argued against more vehemently, because, when I said: "the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics," calling it a heresy which you prefer to think of as a schism, we nevertheless receive them into communion not expiated from sacrilege, you who argue against us so gravely in this case, answer how your people expiated the sacrilege of Felicianus and Praetextatus, with whom they later communicated, joining them to themselves as bishops as they had been before and restoring them, and not rebaptizing any of those whom they had baptized in the sacrilege of schism.

Or were they not stained with sacrilege, as some of you foolishly claim, saying that they sinned not against God but against man? Indeed, sacrilege is so much graver a sin as it cannot be committed except against God; whence you thought I should be pressed in your disputation for no other reason than that we receive those who pass from you to us, except that I called your error sacrilegious. Read, then, the Council of Bagai. Surely these are the first words there: "With the will of Almighty God and of Christ His, our Saviour, coming from all the provinces of Africa, we held a council in the holy 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, to cut off sacrilegious schisms." Do you hear, do you note, do you attend? "To cut off sacrilegious schisms," they say. Therefore, was only Maximianus held by the charge of sacrilege in that schism, with a wicked perversity not against man but against God, when this sentence was pronounced? Read a little later what they say about his associates, among whom the names of those in question are written: "Not only does a just death condemn this man for his crime; it also drags many into the fellowship of the crime by the chain of sacrilege.

What is it, most eloquent man? What do you have to say to me? Read what follows; see among the many whom that chain of sacrilege drags into a partnership of crime, Praetextatus and Felicianus bound. I see bishops who are sacrilegious: what will you do, if you do not prove them purified? Surely you are compelled to yield to the truth, by which we say that your people, when they come to us, are purified by the very bond of fraternal peace, and that charity covers their sins, as it is written: "Charity covers a multitude of sins." What about those whom, separated from your communion and bound to Maximianus in the fellowship of that sacrilegious chain, they baptized, and whom you received along with them in that same baptism into peace and concord? Will you answer anything except that you rightly approved the same sacraments in them, which we also approve in you? For you will be more consistent with yourself if you answer that and do not contradict the words of your own letter. In that letter, when you tried to show that not heresy but rather schism has occurred between us and you, you said that we and your people have one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance. For you could not have accused the repetition of baptism more gravely than with these words, when those seduced by us are rebaptized by your people, in whom you both perceive and say and write that the same sacraments exist.

By what audacity of crime, then, is it not preserved in those whom the Christian world baptizes in holy unity, what was preserved in those whom Praetextatus and Felicianus baptized in sacrilegious schism? Therefore, you have already settled our case, which we have with you, by your own judgment, when you received into the concord of the altar, without any degradation, without any repetition of baptism, those who were struck by your condemnation, who most urgently warned the peoples not to approach you, who even decreed that baptism should be administered after you, together with those whom they baptized while established outside your communion in the sacrilege of schism, and you believed that they were expiated from that crime of sacrilege by nothing other than the holy fire of charity. This would truly happen, if you yourselves held the same charity in true unity. But let us still see, also from the words of the letter of Petilianus, which you wished to defend against me, how you extricate yourself in this case of the Maximianists, concerning which alone I have now decided to argue against your writings. He certainly set down these his own words: "The conscience of the giver, given in holiness, is what is attended to, which washes the conscience of the receiver." To which I said: What if, I ask, the conscience of the giver is hidden and perhaps stained, how will it be able to wash the conscience of the receiver? You, because this unavoidable question is not at all resolved in the words of Petilianus, have attempted to resolve it with your own words, and you said not against me, but against him whom you wished to defend.

He indeed says: the conscience of the giver is regarded, which cleanses the conscience of the recipient; but you, having admitted that a hidden conscience cannot be seen, have said that it is regarded in such a way that it is not the conscience itself that is seen, but what is known about it in public repute. From this it is gathered that it is no longer true that the conscience of the giver cleanses the conscience of the recipient; but rather, according to you, his repute cleanses it—which repute certainly deceives the observer when it speaks well of a most wicked man, chaste of an adulterer, religious of a sacrilegious man. For it cleanses only when it lies. For if repute speaks the truth about a hidden criminal, then it does not cleanse, but stains the one who has received baptism from him. And so this repute, which you wished to employ as the patroness of so bad a cause, see what it is like: when it is false, it cleanses; when it is true, it pollutes—so that, by your marvelous argument, the water is not false for it only when it itself is false. But why is it necessary to speak longer about this, when Felicianus today sits among your bishops—he who, when he had been separated from them and was bound to Maximianus in the chain of sacrilege, baptized whomever he baptized, and no one rebaptized after him?

I ask of Petilianus what sort of conscience that man had then, and I read the decree of the Council of Bagai, where it is written: "Not only does a just death condemn this man for his crime; he also drags many into the fellowship of crime by the chain of sacrilege, of whom it is written: 'The venom of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of curse and bitterness.' For among these, Felicianus is also numbered, to whom, with such lips and such a mouth, you did not spit out the water, you did not cut it off, you did not destroy it, and because it was consecrated by the evangelical words 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' through whatever tongue and conscience, you acknowledged and received it not as false, but as true. But I ask of you, concerning this Felicianus, whose conscience was so evil when he baptized while in the chain of sacrilege, what was then in public repute? And I recite the same council again, where it is written: 'Therefore, know that Victorianus of Carcabiana and, among others whom it is tedious to recount, Praetextatus of Assura and Felicianus of Musti, guilty of a notorious crime, who by a deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel with collected dregs, were condemned a little later by the truthful mouth of a plenary council.'

What do you say to this? If one separated from your communion does not baptize, I read that he baptized when dragged into the fellowship of Maximian’s crime. If one who sins against God does not baptize, I read that he baptized when bound by the chain of sacrilege. If the conscience of the giver, which washes the recipient, is what matters, I read that he baptized when venomous with the bites of asps. If the public reputation of the giver is what matters, so that his conscience can wash, I read that he baptized when accused of a notorious crime. Felicianus still remains in the body; with him are all those baptized by him in the sacrilege of schism, yet they were received into your communion and rebaptized by no one. Against Petilianus, one stained with a sacrilegious conscience baptized; against you, one accused of a notorious crime baptized.

By what reasoning, I ask, do you defend yourselves, except that, as we also say, convicted by your own deeds you sometimes declare that neither the conscience nor the reputation of the giver cleanses the conscience of the receiver, but rather the faith of the receiver himself, and the grace of God, not of man, in the giver; and that if the interrogation concerning a good conscience is not present in the receiver, and that faith itself wavers either wholly or in part, it is the morals of men that ought to be corrected, not the sacraments destroyed—which you confess are not other or similar, but entirely the same? Just as you judged that the life and will of those whom Felicianus and Praetextatus baptized in the sacrilegious schism should be corrected, lest they remain in that sacrilege of schism, and not that the baptism, though administered by the most unworthy through the most unworthy, should be violated. Therefore, in vain did you wish, with your slanderous mouth, to accuse our conscience as if it were publicly exposed and condemned by the crime of incense-offering, betrayal, and persecution, so that from this you might prove that we cannot give baptism, since you make false claims and, however that matter stands, certainly the conscience condemned by the crime of the sacrilege of the Maximianists was able to give the baptism which you feared to rescind, and which is shown even by you yourselves to be able to be given even by persecutors, since you, having most bitterly persecuted those same Maximianists, not only baptize those baptized by them, but contend that you alone ought to baptize.

You say it is written in the law: "I do not want the oil of a sinner to anoint my head." This is neither written as you claim nor to be understood as you think. But is not the oil of a sinner the oil of the sacrilegious Praetextatus and Felicianus? You also say it is written: "He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?" This you neither attend to carefully nor understand from the very context of the reading what it means. Nevertheless, consider what that most eloquent Bagaitana sentence sounds: "Indeed," it says, "the desired brotherhood of peace and concord is joined, as it is written: 'Justice and peace have kissed each other.' But the truthful wave has cast shipwrecked members upon the rough rocks of some, and, much like the example of the perishing Egyptians, the shores are full of corpses, for whom in death itself there is a greater punishment. After the avenging waters have wrung out their soul, they do not even find burial. These, therefore, are not only dead, but, what is more serious, unburied. How could they baptize? How did the washing profit those who were baptized by these dead men, whom, received in the same font, you did not wash again, if, as you think, that is to be understood?

For in my letter, to which you seem to be responding, you think that I have only excepted the worshiper of an idol as a defendant of the gravest sin, and you insist vehemently, in order to prove that no sinner is excepted in what you claim is written: "I do not want the oil of a sinner to anoint my head." Look at Felicianus and Praetextatus: were they not sinners, when they were said to be dragged along by the chain of sacrilege with Maximianus in so great a council? Dare to assert, dare to contend, dare at least to say that they were indeed sinners, but secret ones, whom I read there as defendants of a notorious crime. Although even if they had sinned lightly, even if they had lain hidden, you are trying to extort by this testimony, which you set forth about the oil of a sinner, in this suggestion of yours, that no sinner is excepted. Where will you be, if it is so, whither will you flee, in what hiding places will you be able to conceal yourselves along with your sacrilegious ones, along with your defendants of a notorious crime, along with your unburied corpses?

You say that when it is objected to us by what license we claim the right of baptism, we do not discuss the merit of actions or the innocence of life, but we say that it is permitted to anyone, and as if we were defendants in prejudged crimes, while we wish to show that even sinners possess the faculty of baptizing, we openly confess that we have sinned. As if, on account of our merits, we must speak against God, so that we make baptism as just as we are just, when no man ought to presume concerning his own justice, and it is especially from this that we prove baptism to be of Christ, not of men, because it is not made variable by the variety of human merits. I would discuss this more fully, were I not rather to use the shortcut given by you. For, having accepted the baptism which the Maximianists gave, and not having destroyed it—the asps, vipers, parricides, Egyptian corpses, and whatever else was declaimed against them in the Council of Bagai with grandiloquent speech, so that our case might be made very easy—you yourselves have sufficiently judged that baptism does not consist in the merits of those by whom it is administered, nor in those to whom it is administered, but by its own sanctity and truth on account of Him by whom it was instituted, to the destruction of those who use it badly, to the salvation of those who use it well.

I am surprised, however, that they could also persuade you to make mention of Cyprian in your disputation, whose very letters, which you claim to be his, concerning the destruction of baptism that is given among heretics or schismatics, overturn your entire case. But this we ought to press against the Maximianists or others who do not accept baptism given either among you or among us; you, however, have already finished that case with marvelous ease, you have already accepted baptism given in the sacrilegious schism of Maximian together with Praetextatus and Felicianus among their peoples, you have already acted against the letters you claim to be Cyprian's and against whatever others held this opinion, without any hesitation. For as to what you say, that the Easterners were separated from the communion of your party because, later agreeing with us, they preferred to rescind their judgment which they had concerning baptism, if this was done by a few Easterners—and it certainly matters whether it can be shown—they indeed corrected their judgment. And you, having accepted the baptism that was given in the schism of Maximian, have rescinded your own former opinion; yet you are at peace with yourselves and do not wish to be with the Easterners.

But evidently you thought you had found an opportunity to expand your eloquence, when, in response to what I set down in my letter—that whether one receives the sacrament of baptism from a faithful or a faithless minister, all his hope is in Christ—you exclaim and say: "O the splendid authority of the priest! O the praiseworthy precepts of a good father's justice! You make no distinction, you say, between the faithful and the faithless; the pious and the impious seem the same to you; it is of no benefit to live with good morals, because whatever is permitted to the just man, the unjust man can also fulfill. What could be more unjust than this precept: let the stained purify another, let the filthy wash, let the unclean cleanse, let the faithless give faith, let the criminal make innocent?" These are certainly your words, by which you criticize my opinion, although I have by no means agreed to this nor written it, because there is a great difference between the faithful and the faithless, not with regard to the sacrament, if each possesses it, but with regard to merit, since one possesses it for salvation, the other for punishment; nor can the unjust man fulfill whatever is permitted to the just man, because even if the unjust man can baptize, he cannot, however, enter the kingdom of heaven unjustly; nor does anyone who administers baptism purify, wash, cleanse, or make innocent anyone, but rather the grace of God who gives it and the good conscience of the recipient do so. But consider for yourself whether there was no difference between Primianus and Felicianus, when Primianus sat among the three hundred and ten.

from whom it was said that there was asp venom under his lips and that he had swift feet for shedding blood, and that there was affliction and unhappiness in his ways, and that he was ignorant of the path of peace, and that there was no fear of God before his eyes—whether then he was not stained, unclean, and filthy, who glued together a filthy vessel with collected filth, not an unbeliever having asp venom under his lips, not a criminal guilty of a notorious crime. And yet he now sits with Primianus as your bishop, and those whom he then baptized, never afterwards washed, you now have with you. And you still fight against the truth, and you do not concede 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. To these words of mine placed in that letter against Petilianus, you add your own words and say: "This we also urge, this we wish, but we ask through whom this is better done," and you do not notice that Petilianus does not urge this, to whom I then responded and whose letter you are trying to defend and affirm against my reply. For he openly said: "The conscience of the giver who gives in a holy manner is what is attended to, which washes the receiver. For he who receives faith from a faithless person does not receive faith but guilt.

Tell me what place you leave for Christ to wash the conscience of the baptized, or from whom the baptized person receives faith, when you say that the conscience of the giver is to be regarded, which washes that of the recipient, and that one who takes faith from a faithless person does not receive faith but guilt. You indeed seem to yield to such a weight of truth and say that you are urging and wishing this, that Christ gives faith and that Christ washes the Christian for entering a new life, but you ask through whom it is better done, since it ought not to be done without a minister. Petilianus, however, did not say: 'the conscience of the minister is regarded, through which Christ washes the recipient' or 'through which Christ gives faith', but he wanted the conscience of the giver itself to wash the conscience of the recipient, nor did he say: 'whoever takes faith through a faithless person does not receive faith but guilt', so that he might seem to take it from Christ even though through another, but he said outright: 'takes from a faithless person', and to this, as if to prove it, he added: 'for every thing consists in its origin and root, and if it has no head, it is nothing', making the minister himself, whose conscience he said is regarded—not through which Christ washes, but which washes the recipient—the minister himself outright the origin, root, and head of the baptized.

Therefore, at this point I am not responding to Petilianus, whose words you have not defended, but to you, who, in support of your own opinion, have said something else—not what he said. For you, as you write, wish and urge this: not that, as he said, the conscience of the giver, if holy, washes the recipient or gives faith to the recipient, nor that it is itself the origin, root, and head of the believer, but that through it Christ washes, through it Christ gives faith, through it Christ is the origin of the Christian, through it the Christian fixes his root in Christ, through it Christ is the head of the Christian. For you ask through whom what is conceded to be done by Christ is better done, where you, as far as I see, do not deny that this can be done even through a bad minister, but you say it can be better done through a good one. For what else is it that you say: "This we also urge, this we wish, but we ask through whom it is better done"? And so Christ washes even through a stained, unholy conscience of the giver, but better through a clean, holy conscience; Christ gives faith even through a bad minister, but better through a good one; Christ becomes the origin of the Christian even through an unfaithful dispenser, but better through a faithful one; the Christian fixes his root in Christ even through a reprobate tenant, but better through an upright one; Christ can be the head of the Christian even through Felicianus, but you think better through Primianus.

Therefore, on this matter there is little or perhaps no disagreement between us. For I too say that it is better for the divine sacraments to be administered through a good minister than through a bad one, but this is better for the minister himself, so that his life and conduct may accord with the things he administers, not for the recipient, who, even if he has fallen in with a bad minister dispensing the truth, receives security from his Lord, who warns and says: "Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do." I add also that it is better for the one to whom the sacrament is administered to more easily imitate the probity and sanctity of a good minister by loving them, but the things administered are not therefore truer and holier because they are administered through a better minister. For they are true and holy in themselves because of the true and holy God to whom they belong, and therefore it can happen that one approaching the fellowship of the people of God finds one person by whom he is easily baptized, and chooses another whom he may salubriously imitate. For it is certain that the sacrament of Christ is holy, even if administered by a less holy or unholy man, but that he himself is punished by the sanctity of that same sacrament if he receives it unworthily, if he uses it badly, if he does not live in a manner fitting and congruent with it.

For I ask of you: if it so happens that the one whom Primianus baptized in your communion lives very wickedly, while the one whom Felicianus baptized in the schism of Maximianus lives very righteously, to which of them do you think the kingdom of God lies open—to the one whom, according to you, a good man baptized, though he is evil, or to the one whom, according to the Council of Bagai, a sacrilegious man baptized, though he is religious? But perhaps you will say, and say truly: 'No one can be religious while placed in schism.' I agree. Nevertheless, it is possible for someone in your communion, baptized by Primianus, whom you believe to be religious, to be a sacrilegious person, whether openly or in secret. Moreover, if that man whom Felicianus baptized in the chain of sacrilege were to be corrected by abandoning the sacrilege of schism and entering into ecclesiastical communion, would you dare to say that the baptism in him would become better, even though you would not dare to deny that the man himself could have become better? For you yourselves judged this by the very fact, since you received all those whom Felicianus and Praetextatus baptized in the sacrilege of schism, which you condemned and detested, when they returned to you, without any destruction or repetition of baptism.

But as for what you said: "But we ask through whom it is better done" — you placed the comparative degree for the positive, saying: "we ask through whom it is better done," as if you were saying: "we ask through whom it is well done," intending it to be understood that through a bad minister it is done badly. I do not press you on the word, but rather I advise you that you ought to have said: "we ask through whom it is done" rather than "we ask through whom it is well done," as if it could happen that Christ does not give faith well, that Christ is not well the origin and head of a Christian, that the root is not well fixed in Christ. For either it is not done, or, if it is done, it is without doubt well done. Nevertheless, we discuss these matters lest, on account of bad dispensers — not of their own sacraments, but of the Lord's sacraments, who must of necessity be mixed in until the time of winnowing on the Lord's threshing-floor — the unity of the grain itself be abandoned. But to make a schism from the unity of Christ, or to be in schism, is certainly an evil and a great evil, and it can in no way happen that Christ gives to a schismatic not faith, but a sacrilegious error. Nor can a schismatic fix his root in Christ, nor can Christ be the origin or head for a schismatic, and yet if a schismatic gives the baptism of Christ, it will have been given; if he receives it, it will have been received — not for eternal life, but for eternal punishment, if he persists in that sacrilege, not by turning the good he has into evil, but by having the good with his own evil as long as the evil man has it.

Perhaps you ask me to prove this. What else shall I say to you but what I have undertaken in this work? Read the decree of Bagai, look at Felicianus and Praetextatus. Schismatics gave it, schismatics received it; both were received and gathered by you, and neither were they degraded nor were they rebaptized. Surely now you do not ask whether it is better done through a just minister or through an unjust one, since the baptism given by Primianus, according to you a just man, is not better than that given by the unjust Felicianus. Certainly now you are compelled to understand how the Apostle said: "Neither is the planter anything, nor the waterer, but God who gives the increase," and you recall that you said in vain: "Just as the planter and waterer is sought only as a diligent and faithful farmer, so also in the sacrament of baptism only the most just worker is approved." Behold, Felicianus was neither diligent nor faithful nor most just, but rather negligent of his own salvation, unfaithful, and most unjust, when, associated with Maximianus and, as your three hundred and ten with one most eloquent voice proclaim, placed in the chain of sacrilege, he administered baptism, which you did not dare to annul.

Certainly you see that the testimony you cited from the prophet does not pertain to this case: "I will give you shepherds after my heart, and they will pasture you, pasturing with discipline." For Felicianus was not a sacrilegious man after the heart of God, nor did he pasture his sheep in a sacrilegious schism with discipline, and yet he baptized those in whom, when you received them, you recognized that what he gave was not his own but God's. Certainly you perceive how I have recalled from holy scripture that it is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in a man, and that you have replied in vain, so far as this case is concerned, that you inquire all the more that the man through whom this sacrament is celebrated be just and faithful, because you have hope and trust in God, not in a man, and that you always attend to God's faith and justice in his ministers. Behold, in Felicianus, when he was accused of a notorious crime, there was neither justice nor faith, and yet there was baptism; and you say that justice accrued to those to whom it was given by him, when they were gathered by you, but you do not say that baptism was lacking.

Therefore, as for what you next ask of me: if a baptism, once given by anyone and in any way, ought not to be rescinded, why did the apostles baptize after John? You yourself now solve the question, if, as you say, the apostles baptized after John. Why did your people not baptize after Felicianus, whom he had baptized in a sacrilegious schism? And from this at least learn that whatever is read or discussed concerning John's baptism is utterly foreign to this case. But I do not know what you thought, that you would say that the Jews, to whom Peter said, "Let each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," had already been baptized by Moses, when they were born many generations after that servant of God led their ancestors through the Red Sea. Or if they had baptism from Moses because they were propagated from those whom the apostle says were baptized in Moses, dare to say that all who are born from Christian believers already have Christian baptism. This, I think, you see is said with great vanity. But however that matter stands, even if the apostles had baptized after Moses, the servant of God, I would press you to give the reason why your people did not baptize after Felicianus, the sacrilegious Maximianist.

Now, as for the point I raised: if those who wished to be followers of Paul were in error, what hope is there for those who wish to be followers of Donatus? I do not think you have refuted this in the earlier parts of your letter, as you yourself consider in what we have sufficiently discussed above. Therefore, it is not, as you seem to yourself and as if certain you exult, that you conclude that all those things said by Petilianus or by anyone else were rightly said. Indeed, by the very order in which you have briefly run through them, as if recollecting and recalling, I rather conclude in this case of the Maximianists that these things were not rightly said. For neither was there a holy conscience in the giver in Felicianus, when he was dragged along, adhering to Maximianus in the chain of sacrilege, and those who were baptized by him were baptized by a defendant of notorious crime and thus by a manifest faithless person; nor was the origin and root and head for salvation for them a sacrilegious man; nor was he a good tree who was condemned in the fellowship of a sacrilegious schism and still established in the same sacrilege; nor was he good who would bring forth good from the good treasury of his heart, when it was said of him and of his other associates: "with whose curse and bitterness it is full." And yet, when your people made peace with him, they recognized, at times terrified by the force of truth, that the baptism given by such a man was not his own, but Christ's.

Now let us see, in its proper place, how you extricate yourself in your letter concerning the case of the Maximianists. For all who read these letters are undoubtedly waiting either for what you have said on this point where it was said, or for what I have replied. Therefore, as for what you answered to my objections concerning Optatus Gildonianus, I do not wish to discuss it, I do not wish to linger longer in the case of a man whose condemnation by your party is of no concern to me. I certainly suffer the loss of this objection, and this perhaps among posterity, when his memory has been obliterated. But now, as long as there are men who knew his life and character, they will complain that I have said too little about him rather than that I have said something false. For you do not read my letters as I do, you who ask of me what that man, whom I called a raging wave, swallowed up, when you have there Praetextatus and Felicianus. For my words there run thus: "Thus indeed," I say, "do these men insult their schismatics, calling them both dead and unburied. But surely they ought to have wished them to be buried, lest, from the multitude of corpses lying unburied on the shore, Optatus Gildonianus, advancing with his military column like a raging wave, leaping beyond, should later suck back Felicianus and Praetextatus within." When you read these words of mine there, why did you not set them all down, when you attempted to reply to them?

why do you accuse me, as if I had not said what that raging wave swallowed, when you see written there: that it would later swallow back Felicianus and Praetextatus inwardly? For what else do your people usually reply, as if it were a great defense of theirs, when the reception of the condemned Praetextatus and Felicianus is thrown in their faces, except: 'Optatus wanted this. Optatus did this'? This is also testified to by the cities of Mustitana and Adsuritana themselves, which say that, fearing the Gildonian soldier because of Optatus's threat, they compelled their bishops to return to communion with Primianus. But you, because you saw that it could not be shamelessly denied that this was done by him, denied that it was written by me, perhaps thinking that my letter could be unknown rather than that matter. But let it be permitted to your bishops, by some Donatian or Numidian privilege, to be ignorant of their colleague whatever all Africa was shouting, while crimes charged by Africans against Africans, never proven, so often absolved, are not allowed to be unknown to the eastern and western ends of the earth; let the baptism given by Optatus be valid among you, which you were unwilling to condemn in this way.

yet you did not dare to absolve him, and the baptism given in churches founded by apostolic labor—those of the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians, and the others recorded in the sacred scriptures, which you also read, where not I say the false charge against Caecilianus, but perhaps not even his true name has been heard—does not hold; whether Optatus had the conscience of one giving holy baptism in that life of his, which you, as your writings indicate, although you blushed to condemn on our account, yet you feared to absolve on God’s account. In that public reputation as well, where you thought the hidden conscience could be attended to, the conscience of so many and such great Christian peoples is accused, because they were ignorant of the very remote African disputes: could they also have been ignorant of the crimes of those men, namely Felicianus and Praetextatus, whom a plenary council of three hundred and ten condemned?

And still you throw in the face of the Catholic unity some deeds of our people, which are either false or are not sins, or, even if they are true and are sins, cannot stain the fellowship of the good.

For the good do not share in the sins of others, to the commission of which they certainly do not consent, even though, until they are separated from the Lord’s threshing-floor like chaff by the final winnowing-fan, they share with those who commit them not their sins but the sacraments of God, and within the same net, like good fish with bad, until the separation which will take place on the shore, that is, at the end of the world as at the end of the sea, they are not separated from them by bodily segregation but are distinguished by the diversity of life and character; just as the eleven apostles did not share in the thefts of Judas and yet visibly clung with him to the same Lord, heard the same teacher, received the same gospel to be believed, took the same sacraments, mingled with him in bodily congregation, separated by spiritual unlikeness; just as the apostle Paul did not share in the stubbornness and envy, that is, the diabolical vices, of those who did not announce Christ chastely, and yet with them he preached the same Christ, participated in the same sacraments of Christ, and said of them: “whether by occasion or by truth Christ is announced” — for the martyr Cyprian, most loving of unity, understood and wrote that these were not separated by any schism or heresy, but were mingled with the brethren in bodily congregation —; just as the same Cyprian himself did not share in the avarice, robberies, and usury of his colleagues, whom he said, while brothers were hungering in the church, wished to have silver abundantly, estates

are carried away by deceitful frauds, to increase usury by multiplying interest—an evil which he even compared to idolatry—yet he did not flee their physical assembly, stood at the same altars, and partook of the same most sacred food and drink. For they ate and drank judgment not for others but for themselves, whereas he, among such persons, communicated not their sins but the mysteries of Christ, most closely united in gatherings, most widely separated in morals. For this reason those similitudes in the Scriptures and those examples were set forth, that we might learn that the grain is not to abandon the Lord’s threshing-floor because of the admixture of chaff, that the good fish are not to go out through broken nets because of the admixture of the bad, that the vessels of mercy made and cleansed in honor are not to flee from the great house because of the vessels of perdition and dishonor. For there is no reason why the evil are laudably tolerated in the temporal congregation and intermingling of both, except that the good may not be damnably abandoned. And since you, in your own so many and so manifest evils, do the same out of necessity, you can easily perceive, if you wish, that it is only with sacrilegious animosity that you separate yourselves from so many and so great Christian peoples.

Therefore, not only is Optatus, that most notorious figure in the Gildonian association, but any obscure person among you, with your knowledge, if he has done something evil, and you have been unable to separate him from your communion—either because you are not believed when you accuse him, or you dare not accuse him lest you be unable to prove it—then either you must abandon the Donatist party, or you will be just like that man whose sin you do not ignore, even if you live dissimilarly. This is said to you most correctly, not according to the true standard, but according to your own opinion. For who does not know that you are alien to that man’s evil if you do not communicate by consenting to his sin? But from this you will be forced to recognize with how great impiety you cast upon the Christian world either false or certainly unknown crimes of Africans, when you are unwilling to have it cast against you that you know something about another, because you cannot persuade those from whose society you are unwilling to depart. Thus, lest you abandon those whom you consider good, you are forced to endure those whom you know to be evil; and by this, truth convicts all as evil who, on account of others’ crimes—whether true or false, yet unknown to the rest, and not harmful to themselves—have broken the unity of so many nations and abandoned the good. This so great a crime of the Donatist party, that you might in no way excuse it, the case of the Maximianists was procured for you, in which, as in a mirror, you may, if you wish, correct your own depravity when it is seen; but if you do not wish—I do not wish to say anything harsher, since I know you have a heart. For what will you say against these things?

Well, because you yourself write that when you had read about the condemned and received Maximianists everything that I inserted into my letter, you were greatly disturbed. I believe it: I clearly see the reason that ought to have disturbed you greatly. Let us therefore see by what reasoning your disturbance was calmed. You say that you immediately inquired more diligently from your bishops, and that, 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. Then, also believing that I still did not know what had been done, and admonishing me to learn what truth holds, you narrated plainly not what truth holds, but what your people put forward to the incautious and negligent as truth. For you say that when the error of Maximianus was trying to associate as many bishops as possible with itself, a council was convened by your people, and a sentence was pronounced against all those who persisted in his schism, which you also mention that I have read. And when this sentence was confirmed by the consensus of all, it was nevertheless decided by the decree of the council that a period of delay be given, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be considered innocent.

So it happened that not only those two whom I mention, but also many others, were restored to the church as purged and innocent. You think their baptism ought not to have been rescinded because, having been restored within the appointed day, they were not bound by the peremptory sentence, nor were they separated from the church when they baptized, since the defined limit of time had not yet passed and they were not yet cut off. Here, in that very falsity of your account—since I have set down not only the judgments but also your own words—I marvel at your talent, I marvel at a mind that struggles against that talent. Never has it appeared so clearly how much the prejudice of human presumption can accomplish, either in preventing the clearest truth from being seen or in asserting the most shameless falsehood. Do you not perceive that you have set down such openly contradictory statements that it is scarcely credible that one man could have uttered both? You say, indeed, that a sentence was pronounced against all who persisted in the schism of Maximianus, and that it was decided to grant a period of delay, within which if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be considered innocent. How then can you also say that they did not baptize outside the church before they had corrected themselves from that schism? So, when they were with Maximianus, were they not outside the church? Do you notice what you are saying? Do you find a way out, a place to flee, a place to hide?

You certainly see that, while you try to defend the manifest errors of others, you accomplish nothing except to add your own even more manifest errors. Behold, read your own words—they are recalled by me exactly as you wrote them: "When," you say, "the error of Maximianus strove to associate many bishops with itself, a council of ours was convened, and a sentence was pronounced against all those who had persisted in his schism, which sentence you testify that you have read in each case. And when that sentence was confirmed by the consent of all, it was nevertheless decided by a decree of the council that a period of delay be given, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be considered innocent." In saying this, do you not so close your eyes against yourself that you fail to notice that all those who, for that reason, deserved to have the council's sentence brought against them because they were associating with Maximianus, before they corrected themselves within the period of delay, were standing in that same schism? There, therefore, they were also baptizing. I implore you: why do you scatter empty darkness over clear matters, which you then again disperse with no less clarity from your own words? For I say that Praetextatus and Felicianus, the ordainers of Maximianus, baptized in the sacrilegious schism which they committed, and that those baptized by them were received along with them without the baptism being rescinded—the baptism which they had given in schism, which they had administered as sacrilegious men, which they had consecrated with a mouth full of curses, with lips as of asps' venom. For such things are said about them in that sentence which you do not deny was pronounced against all of them.

Here you respond that not only those two whom I mention, but also many others, after being cleared and found innocent, returned to the Church within the day of delay. By this statement you help me, by this statement you affirm the truth with me and dispel that darkness which you were trying to cast. For when you say that they returned to the Church, you undoubtedly confess that they were outside the Church. Where, then, were they before they returned to the Church? There they baptized; therefore the baptism they gave was outside the Church. While you try to extricate yourself from this inextricable entanglement, you become entangled again. For you say that their baptism ought not to have been rescinded because, within the appointed day, being restored, they would not be bound by the peremptory sentence. How, then, do you say that before the day of restoration they were not separated from the Church, when you confess that before the day of delay they were restored to the Church? If we are human beings, if we have any reason, if we have human sense, if we are not beasts speaking to beasts, if we are not wood and stones speaking to wood and stones—it stands out, appears, and shines forth not only from my words but from your own words as well, that in the sacrilegious schism of Maximianus, the baptism given was one which you did not dare to rescind, you who do not hesitate to deny, to exsufflate, and to rebaptize Christians baptized in churches which the apostles propagated by their own labor in the grace of the Lord.

You say, you write—listen to yourself, read yourself—you, I say, you say, you write that a sentence was pronounced by a council assembled from your party against all those who persisted in the schism of Maximianus; you say, you write that this sentence, confirmed by the consent of all, nevertheless decided that a period of delay be granted, within which if anyone wished to be corrected he would be considered innocent; you say, you write that not only those two whom I mention, but many others, after being cleared and found innocent, returned to your church; you say, you write that their baptism ought not to have been rescinded because, having been restored within the appointed day, they are not bound by the peremptory sentence. How so? What, what so great power does such a bad cause have over such a good mind, you man of heart, you man of letters?

Those against whom, for that reason, that sentence was pronounced, because, as you yourself say, they persisted in the schism of Maximianus, before they were, as you say, restored—where were they? There they celebrated the sacraments, there they baptized, and, to use the words of that plenary council more fully, there they "vaporized the noxious offspring of viperous seed with a slow heat," there they "gave birth to the votive offerings of their crimes of public outrage and parricide," there they "gave birth to injustice, conceived labor, and brought forth iniquity," there "the names of those already designated for punishment were marked out, no longer a confused forest of crimes," there "at the end of indulgence, while the line of clemency was being drawn, the case had already found whom it would punish," there "the truthful wave had cast their shipwrecked limbs onto them as onto rough rocks," there "the shores of the Egyptians, filled with corpses, were an example of their perishing, not even finding burial for themselves," there "not only had the thunderbolt of the sentence cast Maximianus, the rival of the faith, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother Church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, from the bosom of peace, nor had just death only condemned him for his own crime, but it also dragged many to the fellowship of crime by the chain of sacrilege," there "was the poison of asps under their lips," there "their mouth was full of curse and bitterness," there "their feet were swift to shed blood," there "was destruction and unhappiness in their ways," there "they did not know the way of peace, nor was there fear of God before their eyes," there "lay the severed limbs," which...

The pestilential rot had so corrupted that there was more comfort in amputation than in the remedy of remission; there were the accused of a notorious crime, Victorianus of Carcabiana and the others with him, twelve in number, among whom were Praetextatus of Adsuritana and Felicianus of Mustitana, concerning whose reception we are dealing, who had been present and had ordained the same Maximianus, that is, with a deadly work of perdition they had glued together a filthy vessel with collected dregs, where the clergy of Carthage provided the pimping for such a crime as if for an illicit incest. Such ministers of the sacraments, not yet corrected, not yet returned and restored to you, baptized in the schism of Maximianus; after such ministers of the sacraments, corrected, returned, restored, your people did not rebaptize. Why does only pugnacity prevail in you? Let truth sometimes be attended to, sometimes be heard. Why are the most empty clouds of a granted delay thrown in? It was not granted to those of whom it was said: know that they are condemned, of whom it was also foretold what they were like, what they did, why it was necessary to condemn them without delay, namely that they, being present, ordained Maximianus with the laying on of hands; for this is what they signified by saying that with a deadly work of perdition they glued together a filthy vessel with collected dregs. But a delay was granted to those who did not participate in the ordination of Maximianus, although they were established in his association and schism.

only because they had not laid hands on him, since they were absent. For by the same council’s sentence, they are distinguished from his condemned ordainers. For after they had said that those—whose names they also recorded—‘are to be known as condemned,’ they say: ‘But those whom the sacrilegious shoot did not pollute the plantings—that is, those who, with a shamefaced modesty of faith, withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus—we have permitted to return to mother church.’ What could be plainer, more distinct, more open? They say that those who, by the deadly work of perdition, glued the foul vessel with collected dregs, are to be known as condemned; but they say that those whom the sacrilegious shoot did not pollute the plantings—that is, those who, with a shamefaced modesty of faith, withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus—we have permitted to return to mother church. And because two of those condemned were later received with their honor preserved, this cannot be defended except by saying that a delay was granted to all.

But let it be granted to all. Surely as many as returned to you from that schism, before they returned, they were there, they baptized there, and coming back to you from there without destruction of their own honor and baptism—if they had any face, they shut your mouths. For when we ask, before they had given themselves back to the Church, as you yourself said, and before they were restored on the appointed day, where were they? What else does the matter itself compel you to answer but: in the schism of Maximianus, on account of which that sentence was pronounced against all? Therefore they baptized there those in whom, as they came to you together from there, you did not dare to rescind the baptism of Christ, because you were compelled to recognize it. Hence by your own fact, your own work, your own judgment, it is rightly and properly concluded against you that the baptism of Christ must be recognized even if it was given outside the Church, and therefore we piously recognize it in your people, while you impiously rescind it in ours.

But perhaps you regret having set down such words, which press this truth too hard, since you said: "It happened that they had returned themselves to the churches and, restored before the appointed day, were not held by the peremptory sentence," so that one might answer you: "How did they return themselves to the churches, how were they restored to the same, if they were not separated from her? Or if they were separated, how did they baptize?" But what else would you say, except what you had heard from those whom you consulted, when you were greatly disturbed by my letters on this matter? And yet perhaps they will accuse and reproach you for having set down such words incautiously. There is something that may especially fortify you against them and console your sadness. For they themselves set down such things in the decree of the same council; so that if they wish to respond to us in this little work of ours, claiming that the words of their layman do not prejudice them, we shall immediately recite their own words: "But those," they say, "whom the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute the plantings—that is, those who withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus with the chaste modesty of faith—we have permitted to return to mother church." For when it is said to them: "Those whom you permitted to return to mother church, before they returned, where were they?" they are similarly pressed as you were a little while ago by the words you set down. For where will they answer that they were, except in the schism of Maximianus? But wherever they wish to contend they were: certainly those who were permitted to return to the church were not in the church.

Therefore they baptized outside the Church, and when both the baptizers and the baptized returned to the Church, they lost neither the offices they had performed outside nor the baptism they had received outside. And you indeed, as far as you could in a bad cause, have spoken cautiously, saying: "Nevertheless, it pleased the council's decree that a period of delay be given, within which if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be considered innocent." But they said that those to whom that delay was given did not need to be corrected, but they speak of them as if they were completely unpolluted and innocent in the fellowship of Maximianus, even as they grant that very delay. For what else is it that they say: "But those whom the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute the plantings, we have permitted to return to mother Church," except: "Those whom the fellowship of Maximianus did not pollute, we have permitted to return to mother Church"? And lest this be insufficient, see what they add: "For as much as we are purified by the death of the guilty," they say, "so much do we rejoice in the return of the innocent." Why then do you say that it pleased that a period of delay be given, within which if anyone wished to be corrected he would be considered innocent, when you see that it was given to the unpolluted and innocent? But clearly you feared that it might be said to you: "Why was a delay given to those whom Maximianus had not polluted?" Therefore you judged that those to be corrected by that delay. They feared that it might be said to them: "Why did you wish to receive the polluted in their offices?" Therefore they said that they gave the delay to the unpolluted.

Therefore you feared each point individually, but one is refuted by the other. For it is said to you: 'How do you judge that those whom your people proclaim as unpolluted are to be corrected?' But to them it is said: 'How do you assert that they are unpolluted, even if they did not lay a hand on Maximianus's head, yet were stained by communion with his schism?' But whose mind, whose strength, whose tongue is sufficient to express such an intolerable grief? That the Donatist party, once torn apart, might be patched up, Maximianus did not pollute his African associates in Africa: but to allow broken branches to return to the very root of unity, Caecilianus polluted so many most distant peoples from Africa. From the day of the Council of Bagai, that is the eighth day before the Kalends of May, to the day of that granted postponement, that is the eighth day before the Ides of January, eight months are counted. In this such a long interval of time, were those to whom the postponement was granted being stained by the association of the condemned Maximianus, or were they not being stained? If they were being stained, how is it said: 'But those whom the plantings of the sacrilegious shoot did not pollute, we have allowed to return to the mother Church'? If they were not being stained, how could the contagion of unknown, not to say false, sins of others stain us and all Christian peoples everywhere? But—you say—the postponement was granted for this reason, that if it passed without their returning, then they would be stained and incur the penalty of condemnation. Therefore it was not the sin of that association that stained them, but the appointed day.

If, therefore, no day were fixed, they would certainly remain undefiled. What has the world done to deserve such ill from you? Why do you declare it stained by the sins of others, when you have appointed no day of delay for it? So great is your power that men become associated with sinners whenever they wish, and are polluted whenever you wish? They were innocent and unpolluted to whom a delay was granted in the party of Maximianus, within whose day, if they returned to you, they would have the foundations of their honor and faith intact; but if that day passed without their returning, then they would be polluted, then criminal, then lost, incurring the penalty of condemnation, then humbled through penance, degraded. O the marvelous reasoning of these preachers—no longer, as the old proverb goes, 'what we wish is holy,' but also 'when we wish and for as long as we wish'! Let one of you happen to pray with us on a ship. He is at once called polluted, a traditor: those who condemn Primianus share altars with Maximianus, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of the mother Church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, and for eight months they remain innocent and unpolluted. Therefore, if any of them returned to your communion on the ninth day before the Kalends of January, you rejoiced in the return of the innocent—those, namely, whom the shoots of a sacrilegious cutting did not pollute.

What have you gained from the eight months from the eighth day before the Kalends of May to the eighth day before the Kalends of January, which you have so sanctified that through them anyone who adhered to the communion of the sacrilegious and condemned Maximianists would neither be polluted nor become guilty? And what offense have you taken from so holy a day as the birthday of our Lord himself, that it alone, by its coming and passing, would pollute the innocent, and that among those who baptized in that schism, through all those days the baptism of Christ would remain holy, but would become unclean through the birthday of Christ? What would human temerity not dare, when it is precipitated into the sentence of nefarious error, which it is ashamed to abandon on account of vanity and not ashamed to defend against truth? But why say more about this, when any most obstinate person, who has grown hard against all voices of reason, must necessarily admit concerning those of whom it is said: they had returned to the Church and were restored before the appointed day—which words you yourself placed—and finally concerning those of whom it is said: 'we have permitted them to return to mother Church'; 'we rejoice at the return of the innocent'; 'and lest the narrowness of time for those returning should deprive them of the hope of salvation by the pressure of the restricted day, we extend the door of recognition until that day, so that those who have returned may have the foundations of complete honor and faith.

than anyone who, if unable to enter through sluggish laziness, should know that the way to all venial entrances has been removed for him' (and after the appointed day, a fixed penance for those returning—which words the three hundred and ten so often hammered into their sentence), it is necessary, I say, that any adversary admit that those of whom these things are said, before they gave themselves back to you, before they were restored to you, before they returned to you, before they entered the door of the delay, were not with you, were outside your communion in that schism by which they had separated from you, and baptized? Then, given back and restored to you from where they had been alienated from you, returning and coming back to you from where they were outside you, they both retained their honors undiminished and brought in with them their baptized ones not to be rebaptized. Why do you still offer the most stubborn patronage to a very bad cause? Yield at last, not to me, but to the truth by which you are convicted. See how true what I said is, which you tried in vain to shake, 'how much is to be endured for peace,' and—to use the same words I used in that letter—'for the sake of Christ's peace, return to the Church which did not condemn the unknown, if for the sake of Donatus' peace it pleased you to recall the condemned.' For if out of these twelve, whom they had condemned without delay along with Maximianus, they later received Felicianus and Praetextatus, how is it false that they recalled the condemned?

If, however, a delay was also granted to them, recognize that those whom they said were condemned, even if none of them later returned, it was nevertheless decided to revoke the condemnation when, after the sentence by which it was said "recognize that they are condemned," a delay was given, by which it was permitted for them to return with the condemnation annulled. These words would suffice, even if it were true that you, as you claim, having been greatly moved by this case of the Maximianists, learned from your bishops; but what are you doing, since it is also false? Look up, if you have it, or inspect the day of the proconsular records on which the petition was presented by Titianus against Felicianus and Praetextatus, that they be expelled from their places, and see how much after the day of that delay this was done. For the day of the Council of Bagai is the consulship of the Augusti Arcadius for the third time and Honorius for the second time, the 8th day before the Kalends of May; the day of the delay, however, is from this up to the 8th day before the Ides of January; this petition of Titianus, however, was presented after that consulship on the 6th day before the Nones of March.

Therefore, it is evident that nearly the third month is passing since the proconsul was petitioned that Felicianus and Praetextatus be driven from their sees as colleagues of Maximianus, whom he had associated with himself in his madness. For when the aforementioned advocate had said in that same petition what seemed sufficient concerning Maximianus: "Those also," he says, "whom the error of another's presumption had drawn away, he restrained with an equal warning of severity, having first set before them a harbor of repentance, if they wished to return within the appointed time to the path of religion. But iniquity delights in its own institutions and does not abandon itself, once it has fallen headlong. For the same Maximianus nourishes the audacity he has begun and associates others with himself in his madness. Among these is a certain Felicianus, who, though at first he followed the right path, is now stained by the contamination of this depravity, and in the city of Musti, he believed that walls consecrated to almighty God, a venerable church, should be retained as if by some siege. This man is also imitated by Praetextatus in the region of Adsuritum. Do you hear the most clear and manifest words of the advocate, by which he says that these men, concerning whom we are dealing, because the harbor of repentance was set before them.

while injustice delights in its own decrees, once it has plunged headlong and collapsed, they despised them, and they were to be expelled from ecclesiastical places. But if the day of the proceedings could be hidden, it would be clear enough to even the dullest person that proconsular power was not approached against them unless either they had been condemned at that council, as appears more clearly, without any granted delay, or, if a day of delay was given to all, they had refused to be restored to you within that day. But indeed, the day of the proceedings strikes the eyes and ears of even the most obstinate person so forcefully that even after the day of delay had passed, they were not in your communion and adhered to Maximianus, to the extent that the authority of such a terrible judicial order was obtained against them. What is said to this? Why is it still contended with such amazing blindness of impudence against such clear truth? Why do those who refused to hold even the concord of condemned heretics for the unity of the Donatist party still rebel with such madness against the unity of Christ? Why is the baptism of Christ, even recognized with due veneration in heretical schism, still rejected with impious presumption in so many Catholic nations, and violated with heretical repetition?

I do not wish to inquire how long after the day of that petition, in which Felicianus and Praetextatus are so gravely accused by the words of Titianus' advocates, they were received into your communion. It is enough that the same petition, so long after the end of that prescribed delay, proves that they were separated from your communion in the schism of Maximianus, whom you later received, whose honors you diminished in no part, and whose baptism, given even in a sacrilegious schism, you feared to rescind—as indeed was truly to be feared. Would any tongue, however obstinate, stir itself against us in this cause, if it felt itself stirred in a man's mouth and beneath a man's brow? I have plainly erred, I confess, in what I set down in those letters concerning the sentence of the Council of Bagai, because 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." It is true what you said: "Behold, they do not fall silent." For shame, indeed, in such manifest matters, or even impudence itself, can fall silent; madness cannot.

Nor should you take this as said about you, who believed your bishops when they lied, nor about all of them—for you could not, in your agitation, have consulted everyone about this matter—but about those who, knowing how much and when was done against Praetextatus and Felicianus before the judges, dared to tell you what you inserted into your letter: that Felicianus and Praetextatus, restored to your communion before the day of the appointed delay, were not bound by the peremptory sentence. Or if perhaps they themselves were ignorant of these things, now at least, as you read this, let modesty fall silent, let even whatever shamelessness a man may possess fall silent; let only madness, which cries out against such evident truth, remain. And that madness will perhaps be curable, if it is restrained by the sane. Now see how you spoke of me: "A false witness will not go unpunished," when you thought I had lied in this matter of the Maximianists. I do not return this charge against you; for perhaps you spoke what incautious friendship made you believe, not what you fabricated with a deceitful heart. We are human; with what vigilance, after all, can we manage not to stumble in some respect, either in thinking or in speaking? But we ought not to grow deaf to the medicine of correction.

Now attend to how much ease in responding this cause of the Maximianists provides me even in the other parts of your letter. Whatever you thought should be said about the traditors as if they were ours—although it is rather shown that yours did this, which I have demonstrated sufficiently and more than enough in that work of three volumes—nevertheless, see and answer, if you can: whether this crime, whoever committed it, could have polluted Christians in the unity of so many nations, either very remote or far later, if the crime of the sacrilegious shoot of Maximianus could not stain either the African associates, to whom, granting a delay, your three hundred and ten bishops said: “Whom the sacrilegious shoot does not pollute the plantings,” or you yourselves, who not only received those whom you called innocent, but also those already condemned in that sacrilege, with such great concord. You say that the crimes of the traditors were known to the Easterners, when to you, an African, the schism of the Maximianists, committed in the capital of Africa, was unknown before, reading my letter, you were greatly disturbed and consulted your bishops, and when you had consulted, you were least able to hear the truth from them.

whom, if you defend, certainly, lest you say they lied, you concede they were ignorant, and yet you do not allow either us or so many and such great peoples of the East and West at least to be ignorant of the cause of Caecilianus, when these men are ignorant of Praetextatus and Felicianus, whom three hundred and ten, that is, either all or nearly all the bishops of the Donatist party, Africans condemning Africans in Africa, Africans receiving Africans in Africa. You insert the beginning of the Council of Serdica, from which you try to prove that the Eastern bishops, having learned of the crime of the traditors, communicated with the Donatist party, by this one great proof, namely, that among the bishops to whom they write, the name Donatus is found. And yet nothing is read there that they had learned about the African traditors. This council, lest it escape you, is that of the Arians, whom you have already named among other heretics, and it is not usually read with the names of the cities added, because it is not even the ecclesiastical custom when bishops write a letter to bishops. Hence, I wonder if this certain Donatus was not made a Carthaginian in your letters, although they could, in those far-off lands separated from Africa, at that very time when they wished to write, have inquired who was the bishop of Carthage, and have found that it was Donatus. For I omit to say that perhaps the Eastern heretics had somehow attempted to ally themselves with the African heretics.

But you, a prudent man, when you wished to solve the question, when it could be said to you: 'If these things are so, as the Easterners wrote to your Donatus, how were the Easterners later separated from the communion of your people?', you answered and said: because in receiving your people back again they could not preserve constancy regarding a condemned cause. And it is written: he who joins a fornicator is one body. Where you have now harshly accused your own people, if in this cause of the Maximianists they could preserve constancy by execrably condemning the sacrilegious, honorably receiving the condemned. For you do not prove that at all concerning the Easterners; this concerning your own people you hear and read and see and judge. You bid me leave the church of the traditors, whom neither you among us nor your predecessors among our predecessors could convict and demonstrate; whom if you had now demonstrated, I would condemn their crime and offense, but I would not on their account abandon the catholic fellowship of so many nations to whom they are unknown. But see by what consideration you are unwilling for the memory of those dead to be made in our communion, whose deeds we do not know, whose good reputation among their own we have learned through the succession of posterity, when in your communion those live without any degradation whose evils you have perceived, whose sacrileges you have condemned.

Do you dare to say to me, a prudent man: 'He who handed over the scriptures created you,' thus not knowing that He is our creator in that we are Christians, who is our creator in that we are human beings, although you have not even convicted that man, whom you think to be my creator, of the charge of handing over the scriptures. But I do not repay you this injury; neither yours, nor that of your sons or grandsons or great-grandsons, if they are in the Donatist party, do I call Felicianus a creator. Only, since you permit, I warn you, lest your creator, after the name of man, find you a deserter, running with impious vanity. Then you seem to add plausibly: 'A stream is led from the source, and the head follows the members. With a healthy head, the whole body is healthy, and if there is any disease or defect in it, it weakens all the members. Whatever grows in a shoot looks back to its origin. No one can be innocent who does not follow the sect of an innocent, especially since it is written: "Do not walk in the legal traditions of your fathers."' In all these words of yours, I pass over the fact that the comparison you made with the human body is not similar; for it can happen that the foot hurts while the head is healthy, and while the foot is healthy, the head [hurts]. I also pass over the fact that you have forgotten what you said a little earlier; this we also wish, this we urge, that Christ be the head of the Christian, not that you now wish some unknown traitor to be the head of unknown peoples.

... of the Christian scriptures, where you refuse to recognize the baptism of Christ given and received, as if those baptized were created only by that traitor. I also pass over how much it helps me that you yourself placed a testimony from scripture, that it was said to the Jews: "Do not walk in the legal traditions of your fathers," since those who then wished to observe this precept, like the holy prophets and the seven thousand men who did not bow the knee before Baal, nevertheless did not separate themselves from their own people and from the common sacraments. This I say, this I insist upon, whether you like it or not, repeating it, however troublesome I may seem to you: do not make Caecilian, so often acquitted, the head for us who come after, when I do not make Primian, condemned by Felician, or Felician, condemned by Primian, the head for your posterity. Now, regarding the envy of persecution, which you for the Donatist party boast of suffering from earthly powers. Although in that work of three books I have answered you sufficiently and abundantly, I will not now be silent to you about what can be briefly answered from this cause of the Maximianists, even if you thereby commend yourselves to ignorant and imprudent peoples. For thus Maximian himself, and his associates, who could not yield to your persecutions to return to your communion, commend themselves to the vain and ignorant.

But those who think soberly understand that in the case of those who suffer some hardship, it is not the penalties that should be considered, but the causes; and they realize that those who have been justly and rightly condemned by you for the crime of sacrilegious schism have also justly and rightly suffered the disturbances of secular judgments. For I do not even mention what you set forth in your letter, that the Maximianists' basilica—or rather cave—was overturned not by Optatus but by the people. Although even there, even if it is uncertain that your people did it, it is certain that he suffered persecution, yet he was not just but impious. Hence you are already compelled to confess that one should not consider what someone suffers, but why he suffers. But it is not enough for me to demonstrate by this example of Maximianus that one who suffers persecution under the name of Christ, even when shielded and veiled by it, is not immediately just—since even the sacrilegious Maximianus suffered it—unless I force you to admit that religious men persecute the sacrilegious, and just men the impious, not out of a desire to harm, but rather out of a necessity to care for them. Nor do I bring forward examples from the Old Testament, although you said you wished to be taught even by prophetic examples. Those, I say, I do not bring forward, for they were of a different dispensation and time. Already after the revelation and timely commendation of gentleness, your bishops—which indeed we say is just.

But as long as you are forced to say that you defend that cause there and in such a manner, I say that your bishops persecuted your schismatics. Now, therefore, I do not say: "Maximianus suffered persecution, Optatus did it," because you respond that we are ignorant of this, and it was done in such a way that I cannot recite any records from it; although in such recent memory, if the cities themselves were asked, they could not deny this. So I do not say this, but I say: Maximianus suffered persecution, Primianus did it, and I recite the records by which I show that the house which Maximianus was defending as his own, Primianus, by a mandate given through the administration of the exorcist in the name of the church, with the favor of the legate Sacerdos, as the records themselves indicate, took away. But if the judge was of justice, not of favor—I do not deny it, I do not refute it—why then did Primianus, in the acts of the magistrate of Carthage, among other things which he ordered to be pursued insultingly against us, say: "They take away what belongs to others, we leave alone what has been taken away," when he himself had taken away what belonged to another, if the house was Maximianus's? Or if Maximianus had rather usurped it, would he not have left alone what had been taken away? But if this too does not seem to you to pertain to persecution, I say that your bishops and your clergy inflicted persecutions on the Maximianists who remained in those sees in which they had been ordained from ancient times, accused them before proconsuls, obtained orders, and for executing those same orders, earned the assistance of the officials and the aid of the cities.

as those who had already been condemned by the severity of the sentence of Bagai and cut off from the body of your communion by a swift excision, lest the pestilent virus creep through all the members, and who, no longer posing to you any danger of the morbid contagion of their communion, together with their own severed congregations frequented their own conventicles, and retained in perpetual possession the places and basilicas which they had not invaded with the peoples adhering to them, might be terrified, driven out, expelled, and, if they resisted, be produced in court. Read what was said about them or against them by the advocates prosecuting, what charges of sacrilege were brought, with what force of accusation the authorities were stirred up; inquire what was done to Salvius of Membresa, because he could not be forced by the agitations of that persecution to return from the fellowship of the crime, and preferred to commit himself to the examination and to his persecutors in the proconsular court, I believe with the confidence that he knew his adversaries could not use the laws promulgated against heretics before a judge unless they also entangled themselves in them equally. But this thought deceived him. For before Seranus, then proconsul, either influence prevailed more, or perhaps the Council of Bagai was more powerful, which was also recited there against the same Salvius.