Contra Cresconium

Certainly, by a certain interlocution, he shows what was being done through him, namely, that Salvius should either be restored to the chorus of bishops of Primian's communion or driven from his sees, so that Restitutus, whom Primian had ordained against him, might possess all the places held by Salvius without an adversary; and yet, in the same interlocution, he expressed that Salvius was suffering persecution. For thus it is read in the same records: "Seranus the proconsul said: 'The dispute of bishops ought to be heard by bishops according to the law; the bishops have judged. Why do you not either return to the chorus of antiquity with satisfaction, or, as you have it written, turn your backs to the persecutors?'" What does this seem to you? Does it please you to call this Salvius just, to whom the proconsul, before whom he was accused with Restitutus, your bishop, standing against him, even gives counsel from holy Scripture, that he should turn his back to the persecutors, since it is written in the Gospel: "If you are persecuted, flee"? You see clearly what appearance Salvius shows among his own, either of a martyr or a confessor, who, with Restitutus persecuting him, deserved to hear this from the proconsul, and yet not only according to us, but also according to you, he is judged impious and sacrilegious.

Now, after the proconsul's sentence was presented to the people of Abitina—through which neighboring city your party had earned the enforcement of the judgment, because nearly all the people of Membresitana loved Salvius—what the same people of Abitina did to a man of the most advanced age, it is painful to relate, because they did not do it in the official records; but since the memory is so recent, and the testimony of the cities is clearer with all the evidence, I will touch briefly on what I learned there while traveling. For because Salvius, trusting in the crowd that favored him, had tried to resist, in order to defend his see to whatever extent possible, even after the proconsul's judgment, he was eventually captured when defeated, no longer to be led to the judge, where the sentence had been pronounced between the parties. But he was to be paraded in a miserable triumph. For they tied dead dogs around the neck of the captured old man and danced with him as much as they pleased. If I wanted to exaggerate this by speaking of it, would I not perhaps show that this punishment is scarcely comparable to the torments of the Etruscan kings, by which they joined dead bodies to living ones? Would not the old man, who wished to be considered a bishop, have to be expelled from the company of the living and the dead by the judgment of all, if, presented with two punishments, one of which he had to undergo, he would not rather cling to human corpses than dance with canine ones?

Now consider those words of mine which you thought you had refuted—or rather, not those words themselves, but what I shall say in their place. For behold, I do not say: 'If it is not lawful to inflict persecution, Optatus inflicted it,' but I say: 'If it is not lawful to inflict persecution, Restitutus inflicted it'; nor do I say: 'If one who suffers persecution is to be regarded as innocent, Maximianus suffered it,' but I say: 'If one who suffers persecution is to be regarded as innocent, Salvius suffered it.' I recite the official record; I repeat the words you do not wish to hear: Restitutus inflicted it, Salvius suffered it. Which of these two will you answer is a Christian, if not Restitutus, and which a sacrilegious man, if not Salvius? Therefore it must lie rejected and be spurned as disproved, both what you said—that there is no just persecution—and what you said: 'Who does not wish to consent to a will that has been produced, the one who suffers persecution or the one who inflicts it?'—because there is also a just persecution, such as Salvius suffered and Restitutus inflicted. Salvius suffered, and for you Restitutus is praiseworthy, Salvius is blameworthy. For you will not say that it was done in secret, nor could this have been hidden from Primianus, since it happened in that city where he himself presided as bishop, and in so great a city, before so great a judge, that it could not remain hidden even from other cities.

Or if this too is to be counted among hidden matters, why do you refuse to be ignorant of what the whole world did—if indeed Caecilianus did anything wrong during the time of persecution (which, of course, it is unthinkable that he did)—if Primianus could be ignorant of the persecution which Salvius suffered at the hands of the man whom he himself ordained against him, and in that city where he holds primacy over his colleagues? Therefore, whether you wish it or not, you will confess, lest you be forced to condemn Restitutus, Primianus, and the Donatist party, that not only the unjust can suffer persecution, but also that the just can inflict it. Or if you think that what is done justly should not be called persecution, then you will be unable to prove that either you have suffered persecution from us or your followers from ours; rather, we will show that we suffer it from your clergy and circumcellions, who, with hard and insipid hearts, neither understanding nor enduring what we advise them for their salvation, rage against us with such fury that I cannot sufficiently count, recall, or worthily express in words what they do to us.

Therefore, when a madman attacks a physician and the physician binds the madman, either both are persecuting each other, or, if persecution is only that which is done wrongly, then the physician is certainly not persecuting the madman, but the madman is persecuting the physician. Thus your savagery and most violent audacity, through your Circumcellions, the henchmen of your clerics, known to all, had to be restrained by the laws that were passed against you, and in a way bound, so that you might be warned and admonished, at least by that very terror, to consider and correct the error in which you were and the sacrilege by which you were dividing yourselves against the unity and peace of Christ—just as, by your own terrors, through the orders of secular authorities, Felicianus and Praetextatus, when they were harassed (which Salvius, with a heart too hard and perverse, refused to do), corrected the schism they had made from you and returned to your communion and fellowship. The whole matter would be corrected, however, if all of you were to return to the Catholic root. But whatever was done against you that exceeded the moderation of Christian love is no more to be imputed to the Catholic Church than I would impute to Primianus or Restitutus what the Abitinians did to Salvius.

But as for the fact that, after you had exaggerated the persecutions which you said the Donatist party had suffered, and while remaining entirely silent about what had preceded from your side and saying many things that are not proven on our side, you then subjoined a testimony from the Psalms and said: "Is it not of those who do such things that it is said: 'Their feet are swift to shed blood, and they did not know the way of peace'?" — these very same things and many others far more serious were said by your bishops at that Council of Bagai against Felicianus and Praetextatus. And certainly those men shed no one's fleshly blood, they made no violent physical assault upon you; but those who said these things against them judged that they were far more wickedly shedding spiritual blood through the sacrilege of schism. Hence, if after such grave and bitter things said against them you made peace with them without any dishonoring of their rank, without any rescinding of their baptism, there is no reason to despair that you might also be able to come to agreement with us.

For the whole Christian world ought to allure you much more to make peace than Praetextatus and Felicianus did, because, if those whom you condemned with such atrocity of accusation did not pollute you, much less does the unity of so many Christian nations pollute you, whose crimes of some Africans you have (not) demonstrated, and the crime by which you separated your society from the society of that Church, for which so many and such great divine testimonies are recited, pollutes you greatly; to which divine testimonies you have dared to contradict with human temerity, although you yourself, in some way, have been compelled by the same force of truth to confess that the whole world is daily turning to the Christian name. You have dared, I say, to resist the testament of God, when the apostle says: No one makes void or supersedes a man's confirmed testament. Promises were made to Abraham and to his seed. You have not feared to make this testament void, to supersede the testament of God with the party of Donatus, and, when in the same testament God says to Abraham: Your seed will be as the stars of the sky and as the sand of the sea, you, making this void and superseding it with the party of Donatus, for which you recite no testimony, say: In a few, truth is frequently found; to err is the lot of many.

not understanding how it was said by the Lord that few enter through the narrow gate, when he also said that many from east and west will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and in the Apocalypse thousands of candidates are shown from every nation, tribe, and tongue, which no one could number. These are certainly many in themselves, and yet the same are few in comparison with the far greater number who are to be punished with the devil. Yet these grains, destined for the divine granaries for eternity, united throughout the whole world by the bond of love, endure the heat and threshing of this age—whether from the scandals and violences of heretics or from their own chaff, as it were, of many who do not live rightly—to be purified by the final winnowing. But for you, nothing answers all this more readily than the case of the Maximianists. For if truth is often in the few and error belongs to the many, allow that the Maximianists, as much as they are inferior to you in number, so much do they surpass you in truth. You do not do so: therefore do not boast of your fewness in comparison with the multitude of catholic peoples, just as you do not wish the Maximianists to boast of their fewness in comparison with your multitude.

Now, as for what you recount about the African traditors, are you unaware, or do you not perceive with the heart of any ordinary person, how vain and inept a narrative it is in a conflict where truth is sought, when proof does not follow? I would not waste effort in refuting it, even if I did not have, in the case of the Maximianists, such an easy shortcut without any detour. The sacred scriptures are: "The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting: from Zion the beauty of his glory." The Gospel harmonizes with this prophetic testimony, where the same Lord says of himself: "It was necessary for Christ to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and for repentance and remission of sins to be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." For what is said there: "He called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting," is said here: "among all nations," and what is said there: "from Zion the beauty of his glory," is said here: "beginning from Jerusalem." For Christ not only suffered there, but also rose there, ascended into heaven from there, filled the one hundred and twenty men gathered on the day of Pentecost with the Holy Spirit sent from heaven there, received there in one day three thousand, and on another five thousand, believers converted into his body, and from there the Church spread and spreads, fructifying throughout all Judea and Samaria and into the other nations of the world.

which he foretold to his disciples, and as he was about to ascend into heaven: "You will be," he said, "my witnesses in Jerusalem and throughout all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." This Church, then, beginning from Jerusalem and spreading itself through all nations with such evident fecundity that it compels even you yourself to confess that the whole world is daily turning to the Christian name by the providence of God—this Church, I say, which is called from the rising of the sun to its setting by the Lord God of gods speaking, could in no way have been polluted by the African traditors, whom it utterly did not know, if the sacrilegious shoots of Maximianus did not pollute the plantations of all his colleagues, simply because they did not impose hands on him in ordaining, although they praised him when condemned by Primianus and condemned Primianus, although they, established in his schism, received a delay in order to return. Moreover, because I said: "We charge you with tradition much more probably," you respond that I have in this way confessed that you have probably charged us with it. You also teach a rule of speech, by which the comparative degree "increases what was placed before, not disproves what was said before," and you add that just as "well" and "better," "badly" and "worse," "probably" and "more horribly," so it is with "probably" and "more probably." From this you seem to gather and say: if we more probably, then you probably.

Hence, in that more extensive work of three books, I have responded to you in its proper place, perhaps sufficiently or more than sufficiently, and I have shown from those writings where we learned our words how the comparative degree does not always increase what it compares, but sometimes disapproves of what it is compared with. Hence the phrases: "better gifts for the pious," and "I pray for better auspices." Read carefully, and you will find more examples yourself. But do you not wonder, I ask you, in this case of the Maximianists, on the basis of which I have now decided to respond to you on all points, that I have not lacked an example of this expression? For in that most brilliant and eloquent sentence of the Council of Bagai, they say: "A more wholesome cause was found, lest a pestilent virus creep through all the members, so that a wound might be cut away with a brief pain." Certainly, according to your rule, they ought to have said "wholesome," not "more wholesome"; for that was not wholesome, but pernicious—that a pestilent virus should creep through all the members. Therefore, the cause was "more wholesome" in that the wound was cut away with a brief pain, even though it was not wholesome, but on the contrary, it was destructive that a pestilent virus should creep through all the members. Thus we more plausibly charge you with tradition, even though you implausibly charge us with it.

Now that which I said about Silvanus, your bishop of Cirta—that he was a traitor—the municipal records attest, there at Cirta, drawn up by Munatius Felix, the curator of the republic. For as we read written there, after the library was opened, empty bookcases were found there. There Silvanus brought out a silver box and a silver lamp, saying that he had found them behind a chest. To him Victor of Aufidius said: "You would have been dead if you had not found them." But Felix the curator, when he had said to him, "Search more carefully, lest anything remain here," Silvanus said: "Nothing remains here; we have thrown all this out." When these records were recited before the acts of Zenophilus the consularis and were inserted among many other documents of witnesses, the consularis asked: "What office did Silvanus then hold in the clergy?" Victor replied: "When the persecution arose under Bishop Paul, Silvanus was a subdeacon." To this most evident document of public records, in order that it be less believed, you seem to oppose something great, because you recall the sentence which he pronounced against Caecilianus as if punishing traitors, and you argue that it could not have happened that he was a traitor who appeared so severe an avenger of betrayal: as if something more severe seemed to those most wicked elders when they raged with such persistence to kill Susanna, while their conscience was pierced by the very crime which they pretended to wish to punish in her. But let us omit such things. What of Felicianus?

Was it not that he now condemns in Primianus what he himself committed with Maximianus, but with a better judgment, more corrected, not more shameless? If Silvanus had wished to do this, he would have condemned not a false tradition in Caecilianus, but a true one in himself, by a salutary correction, and would have passed over to the innocence of Caecilianus—even if not as a bishop, yet with his depravity corrected—just as Felicianus was able to pass over to Primianus, whom he had similarly condemned, like Silvanus condemned Caecilianus, as innocent, yet without any stain upon Primianus or himself, and even with his episcopal honor intact. Nor should you take what I said—that I do not know what traditors your predecessors accused, and if they accused them truthfully, they ought to have convicted them—as if they should have done this among themselves. For you answer that they did do it, and therefore judged that ours had lost their baptism. Read first carefully what you are writing against, and either understand what is being said, or do not twist what you understand into something else. I said that they ought to have convicted them not among your people, but before the transmarine churches, to whom those innocent ones who were accused by your people seemed innocent. For the Maximianists also seem to themselves to have convicted and condemned Primianus, but not before those who, being situated farther away and more removed from favor or ill will, could render a judgment about him that would easily be proven to the whole Donatist party. As it is, they condemned him with a hundred, and left him to be acquitted by more than three hundred, before whom they themselves incurred the danger of condemnation.

For they ought to have persuaded so many more of their own judgment, so that they themselves would be inside with them, while Primianus would be outside, if, once condemned, he had rejected penance. But if they could not persuade this to such a greater number of colleagues and to so many churches of their communion spread throughout all Africa, they should either rescind their judgment with sounder counsel, in which, as men, they could have been deceived about a man, or, if they had learned of his true crimes without any doubt, which yet they could not persuade to so many others, they should, knowing him to be guilty, tolerate him more wisely and patiently, than separate themselves by an impious schism from so many innocent people who were ignorant of these matters. For they would hold that most full saying of the blessed Cyprian, full of charity and piety, in which he says: "For even if tares are seen in the Church, our faith or charity ought not to be hindered, so that because we see tares in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church." This would indeed profit them, if, purified in the bosom of the Catholic Church, they tolerated the tares which they could not separate before the time. But what we say they ought to have done in this fellowship of your error, which you consider the true Church, your predecessors ought to have done in that clearly true Church, in whose unity they were, so that they would not separate from it. For just as any man of your party, completely ignorant of Primianus's case, nevertheless...

Although he believes that a man condemned by a hundred Maximianists is simply innocent, because he proved himself to so many more, so also in the Catholic communion, one to whom the case of Caecilian is unknown not unreasonably persuades himself that the man is innocent who, not only throughout Africa but also throughout so many lands of Christian peoples, was able either to become known as innocent to so many more bishops than the rest, or to be hidden as guilty from them, among whom he either deserved acquittal from those who knew him, or did not deserve condemnation from those who did not know him, or, if acquitted by a corrupt judge contrary to what he deserved, could not be shown to others who had not judged. You, therefore, by a sacrilegious separation, separate yourselves from the unity of so many and such great innocent peoples, who, since they could not be judges in this case, either did not know that there were any judges at all in this matter, or did not know whether anything or what was judged concerning it, or believed the chosen judges rather than the defeated litigants.

Hence it is shown, even in that matter where from my fourfold division you chose the last—for you could choose no other—how easily you are overcome. For I said that if documents of the crimes of traditio were produced on both sides, either both are true, or both false, or ours true and yours false, or ours false and yours true. And when I had demonstrated our easiest victory in the first three cases, in the fourth also you are defeated, either because you did not understand, or, as I rather believe, lest it be understood by others, you attempted to conceal it with some shadows, thinking that a dispute about the type of argumentation should be discussed; hence we will perhaps treat of this with you elsewhere, if need be, so as not now to waste time on unnecessary matters. Now attend, whether I can demonstrate this also in that clear mirror of yours, that is, in the case of the Maximianists. For when all those by whom and among whom these things were done are dead, it may at some time happen that a question of communion arises between your descendants and theirs. They will say that Primian was condemned by nearly a hundred or more bishops of their ancestors, and they will produce the sentence written first at Carthage, then another at Cebarsussi against him; your party will recite the Council of Bagai. They will demand that the crimes of Primian, which are contained in the sentence of their ancestors, be shown to be refuted.

Would not your people much more justly say: "These crimes which you charge against a man already dead, if they are true, prove that you brought them to our ancestors, that you showed them to be true to them. But if you tried to do this and could not accomplish it, then alien crimes, even if true, could not stain our ancestors themselves, since they were not demonstrated to them; how much less if you did not even try to show them! Whence, therefore, could the guilt of that case pass to us, which did not even involve those who lived with Primian at that time, being unknown and unproven? So we convict you of schism by clear truth, seeing you separated from your brothers on account of alien crimes, which were not demonstrated to our ancestors at the time when they ought to have been demonstrated." If the congregations and clergy of those places from which came the three hundred and ten who established the Council of Bagai against the Maximianists will say this most justly—if, I say, Africans will rightly say this to Africans, very many Numidians and Moors to a few Byzacenes and provincials—how much more justly does the whole world say this to Africans concerning the crimes, even if they were true, of some unknown traditors in Africa, especially since the Catholic Church in Africa itself is so great, united by the bond of unity with the other nations.

Yet it cries out nonetheless: "The evidence even of others' crimes, which you now try to show me, does not make guilty the peoples of the nations to whom, when it should have been shown, it was not demonstrated—either because you could not, or because you did not care. If I separate myself from these peoples, who are innocent in this matter, on account of others' crimes, I cannot be innocent of the sacrilegious crime of schism. Therefore, even if you are very powerful and now teach me that these things are true: we condemn dead traditores, but we do not abandon the living innocent." Since, then, I said: "But if your evidence were true, you ought to have proved it to the Church, that is, the Catholic Church, so that you would be inside, and those whom you convicted would be thrust outside," what is it that you wanted to reply: that the separation was made because we had been thrust outside, while your people remained in the plenary and Catholic Church? If the Maximianists say this to you in so many words, what will you reply except that they are not even worthy of refutation, but only of ridicule—those who dare to affirm that the plenary Church with bishops now fewer than a hundred is set against such a number and multitude, over which more than three hundred preside, when throughout all the regions of Africa where the Maximianists exist, the communion of Primianus is also present, while in many other and much larger parts of Africa, no one finds a single Maximianist except perhaps a traveler by chance?

With what face, then, do you dare, against the Church promised from the rising of the sun to its setting by the voice of truth and fulfilled, to call the party of Donatus the plenary Church, when it is nothing but Africa, while that Church is with so many nations and also with Africa? (But, of course, 'That Church cast this one out.' Do not, I beg you, cast that voice out: the forehead is on a man's face, not under his shoulder. So did that Church cast this one out? Do you not see, if that Church is cast out, of which God says to Abraham: 'In your seed all nations will be blessed,' of which it is read as predicted that in the last days there will be a manifest mountain of the Lord and all nations will come to it, of which it is sung as predicted: 'All the ends of the earth will be remembered and will turn to the Lord, and all the countries of the nations will worship in his sight,' of which it is proclaimed that it will bear fruit and grow throughout the whole world, which the Lord himself says is spread through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem—do you not see, I say, if this Church is cast out, it is cast out with the law of God, with the prophets, with the Psalms, with the apostles, with the Gospel itself, with the entire Testament, and with the heir himself?

If you attend to this impiety, if you shudder at it, if you tremble, see where you are and return within, since you have not cast out, but rather you yourselves have gone out. See what headstrong blindness does. It is said that Maximian cast Primian out, and it is laughed at; it is said that the Donatist party cast out the labors of the apostles, which bear fruit and grow throughout the whole world, and it is not abhorred. Lest you be deceived or deceive, since you affirm that I said, not noticing or pretending not to have noticed what I have so often recalled, that the Lord's grain is not what I asserted the Catholic Church to be, in the way that divine Scripture does not assert it—that only the grain is stored in the granary, while now the Church, like a threshing floor, is threshed with the chaff. This is what presses and oppresses you and, unless you correct yourselves, destroys you, because you have shown yourselves to be the chaff of this threshing floor; you said you could not tolerate it, you impudently pretended to be the purified grain, and thus from that threshing floor, turbulent with vain calumnies, like the lightest dust of threshing, you have gone out, lifted into the void, before the final time of winnowing. Finally, that most arrogant and false cry is yours, not ours: "What has chaff to do with grain?"—which Jeremiah says about the dreams of the vain and the revelations of the prophets, and as if it were said about us and you, Parmenian wrote it. Ask Maximian too; he will say nothing else about himself.

For there is no other tumor of impious pride among all who cut themselves off from the unity of Christ than to boast that they alone are Christians and to condemn the rest, not only those to whom their quarrel is known, but even those to whom their name has never been heard. Now as for that which you seemed to yourself to have said so elegantly, that when I had said concerning the testament of God: "Let it be recited, from wherever it is produced," you thought you should reply that this already contains a confession of guilt, and that I therefore said: "Let it be recited, by whomever it is produced," because it is established in my mind that it was burned by our people and preserved and produced by yours. Indeed, if, trusting in the truth, you wished to have a codex of the law produced by Maximianus, from which you might recite Dathan, Core, and Abiron, who were swallowed up alive by the opening earth, to whom the sentence of Bagai compared that man, would it not be recited more firmly against him because it is found in his codex? Therefore, what I said: "Let the testament be recited, from wherever it is produced," is not a confession of guilt, but confidence in the truth. For what is more advantageous, what more splendid, than that, if it can be done, what is read against you should be produced by you? Not because I do not have it on my side, but the conviction is easier and more certain, so that you have against you what, if you are corrected, may become for you.

But since it has pleased you to repeat your empty charges against the whole Church, I answer you also on this point. Just as in Africa you are the Donatist party, from which the Maximianist faction is seen to have split—for it is not present throughout the whole of Africa where you are, while you are not absent from the regions where it exists—and just as other schisms have arisen from you, such as the Rogatists in Mauretania Caesariensis, the Urbanists in a certain part of Numidia, and several others, and where they were cut off, there they remained; and from this it is evident that they left you, not you them, because you are also present in the lands where they are, while they are found, except perhaps as travelers, only where you are—so too the Catholic Church, which, as Cyprian says, extends its branches throughout the whole world with an abundance of fruitfulness, everywhere endures the scandals of those who are cut off from it by the vice of pride, some here, others there and elsewhere, who, displaying their own parts, say: "Here is Christ, there is Christ," to whom He Himself gave warning not to be believed. For they do not show the way of which it was prophesied in the Psalms: "That we may know your way on earth, your salvation among all nations," but rather the regions of their own communion: "Here, there." For where they fall, there they remain, and where they are separated, there they wither.

Hence the very Church from which these fragments are cut off extends even into those lands where each of those fragments lies in its own region; but in that one Church, wherever it spreads, those individual fragments are not present, although occasionally the wind of pride scatters very rare leaves from their dryness into foreign parts. Therefore this Church, which—to use the same words of his—extends its branches throughout the whole earth with abundant fertility, will by its growth reach even many barbarian peoples outside the Roman world. And I think you have both investigated and discovered this, so that you said: "I pass over the native religions of barbarian peoples, the rites of the Persians, the stars of the Chaldaeans, the superstitions of the Egyptians, the gods of the magi, so that all these may be nothing, because by the providence of God the whole world is daily turning to the Christian name." You spoke these true words, and thus the promise made to Abraham is fulfilled: "In your seed all nations will be blessed." He said "all nations," not "all men of all nations." Hence it is necessary that not only by the fecundity of the growing Church, but also by the intermingled multitude of its enemies, through whom its piety can be exercised and tested, the whole world be filled up to the end of the judicial separation.

Thus this testament is recorded, and to his son Isaac, the Lord saying: "And I will establish my oath, which I swore to Abraham your father, and I will multiply your seed as the stars of the sky, and I will give to you and to your seed all the land, and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed in your seed." And likewise to his grandson Jacob: "And your seed will be as the sand of the earth and will spread over the sea and to the south wind and to the north wind and to the east, and all the tribes of the earth will be blessed in you." (Now "over the sea" — as one who reads knows that Scripture usually means the western part by this.) If you had wished to consent to this testament when it was produced, you would not have remained only in the south. Therefore, as you say, the Novatians, Arians, Patripassians, Valentinians, Anthropians, Apellians, Marcionites, Ophites, and the rest — to use your words — the sacrilegious names of nefarious plagues, not sects, do not communicate with us. Yet wherever these are, there the Catholic Church is, just as in Africa where you also are; but not wherever the Catholic Church is, are you or any of those heresies present. Hence it is clear which is the tree extending its branches through the whole earth with an abundance of fertility, and which are the broken branches, not having the life of the root, each lying and withering in their own places.

But if they do not persist in unbelief, as the apostle says of the Israelites, they will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again, not so that they receive the sacrament of baptism again, which they have not changed, having been taken from the tree, but so that they revive in that root of charity and unity, from which, separated, they wither in the sterility of animosity; just as you thought Praetextatus and Felicianus should be grafted in again, whom Maximian had cut off with himself, and you did not reject the baptism of those cut off. You would truly do something for them if you did not return them to your fragment, but both you and them to the Catholic root. Now as to what I should reply to that which I seemed to you to have said on your behalf, because I said that baptism does not benefit those who depart from unity, yet it is proved to be in them by the fact that it is not restored to those returning? For you affirmed that you also say this, that baptism which our ancestors received in the church did not benefit them when they did not return to the church. If you said this, nothing else would be sought between us except what is the church where baptism benefits. But you do not say that baptism is in us and does not benefit, but you say that it is altogether not present, which we received from those who lost it by departing. Hence you could not and will not be able to answer that which I set forth, that baptism is proved to be in those departing by the fact that it is not restored to those returning.

For if Felicianus lost baptism by withdrawing from you, why was he not baptized again when he returned, so that what he had lost might be restored to him? Finally, if Maximianus himself returns to you, he is not baptized, which he certainly ought to be if he had lost baptism. For these are your own words: that in his schism, those who were held by the sentence of condemnation lost both baptism and the Church at the same time. Therefore, just as the Church is restored to them when they return, let baptism be restored; let those who return be baptized, I say, if they lost baptism when they departed. Because you do not do this, you yourselves admit that baptism remains in those who depart from the Church, but does not profit them. Therefore, they give it as they have it, that is, so that baptism may be present even in those who receive it from them outside the Church, yet not profit them. Hence, just as it is not restored to those who return because they did not lose it, so it is not to be given to those who had received it, but action must be taken with them so that through the Church it may profit both parties, which could be present outside the Church but not profit. And thus I said nothing in support of your error, and you did not respond to what I said.

You also add something about the enclosed garden and the sealed spring, not understanding at all in what sense it was said. "If the garden is enclosed," you say, "and the spring sealed, how can someone who is placed outside and separated from the garden—that is, the Church—and from its spring—that is, baptism—give what he does not have?" Ask Felicianus whether he was in the enclosed garden when the door of delay was being opened for his return, as if to that same enclosed garden. Or did he perhaps steal the spring from there, where he would baptize his own laity in the schism of Maximianus? If that is so, where were your people washing their own at that time? Or did they equally put them off with that same delay, until those thieves returned to the garden with the spring? Were these not false prophets then, when by lying about the crimes of Primianus they led the deceived over to their own sacrilege? Were they not rapacious wolves when they dragged those seduced from the flock of Primianus into the particles of their own cutting? Do you deny those tyrannical dominations of yours on others' estates and the bacchanals of drunkenness which I mentioned? Deny as much as you can; I am not afraid that you will on that account regret agreeing with us. I have said nothing of the sort against you such as the Maximianists, condemned by you, deserved to hear.

You deny the madness of the Circumcellions and the sacrilegious and profane cults of the bodies of those who voluntarily threw themselves headlong; yet you do not deny that, when the shores were filled with the funerals of those perishing after the manner of the Egyptians—for whom there is a greater punishment even in death itself, because they did not even find burial—you clung to these unburied corpses. For there lay Praetextatus and Felicianus; or if they have come back to life among you, what do you do about the baptism which the dead then conferred? You say that I did not keep the peace and gentleness which I promised at the beginning of my letter, because I called Petilianus a Satan. I did not compare Petilianus, nor any man in the Donatist party, but the error itself of the Donatist party to Satan, from whose snares I desire the men whom I love to be freed. For read more carefully, and you will find it. Although, even if I said something harsher, read what you yourselves have said, not against the error of the Maximianists, but against the men themselves. Let Felicianus, then, imitate Petilianus, and let him not be angry with me, who desires peace.

I am certainly not angry with you for thinking that you should reproach me obliquely with the Manichaeans on account of the error of my youth. For this reason, I do not so much grieve over my past unhappiness as I rejoice in the eternal glory of my deliverer. And yet, if you please, I advise you to seek out and read what, how much, and in what manner I have written against the most pestilential heresy of the Manichaeans. There you will see with what faith I defended Christian truth against them and with what clarity I destroyed their falsehoods. And do not be incredulous toward me, when you believe that Felicianus faithfully adhered to Primianus, who, in support of Maximianus, uttered such grave charges against him in a condemnatory sentence; and that, on the other hand, the same Felicianus, after being separated from him, perhaps wrote something against that same Maximianus, into whose errors I, as a young lay catechumen, had fallen, not as he, an old bishop, had made an old man, now joined to him, his adversary bishop. Therefore, since you made mention, under the same urban obliqueness, of the letter of our primate, which he wrote in anger against me when he was pressed in a council of bishops to prove what he intended, and since I read that his own sentence, correcting himself and asking pardon for this matter, has been condemned, do you seek whether you can read where Felicianus, after being corrected, condemned what he said, not accusing but condemning, against Primianus, or at least where Primianus himself nullified what he said, condemning, against Felicianus.

If you find that, not even then will the case be equal, because he had instituted an accusation which, perceiving it to be false, he condemned with a plea for pardon, not spurning the humility of correction for the dignity of primacy, but rather prudently recalling what is written: "As great as you are, so humble yourself in all things, and before God you will find grace." But these men had not accused each other before others, but had sat as judges against each other. Therefore, they mutually condemned each other, and when condemned, they made peace. We do not begrudge the Donatist party the peace of the condemned, if they do not also reject the peace of Christ throughout the world. You see now, I think, how vainly you have said that you seem to yourself to have replied to everything that my letter contains. For if you replied for this reason, because you did not wish to remain silent, you did indeed reply, though not to everything. But if you replied in order to nullify what I have said, I see that you have replied to many things, but I see that you have refuted nothing. However, when all that I have said is considered, I think you will very easily understand that it is not for the sake of avoiding contention, which does not exist when truth is sought or when one does not contend for empty glory, but because of distrust in a bad cause that your people are unwilling to confer with us. For if we bring forward this one case of the Maximianists alone, perhaps you now at least recognize that nothing can be contradicted.

Therefore, I did not, as you believe or slanderously claim, arrogantly wish to commend my eloquence as though it were invincible, but rather that those who read might observe that the cause is such that, for asserting or rather demonstrating it, no patron of eloquence need be sought. Behold, I no longer call your error a three-headed beast, since you are a most gentle corrector of words, but I call it a "threefold calumny"; nor do I say that we must resist it as with a three-pronged spear on account of this case of the Maximianists, but I say "by a threefold defense"; nor do I say "pierce them in the forehead" or "constrict them in the mouth," but I say "restrain their impudence and repress their speech." Surely, because the words have been changed and from metaphorical have become literal, the case of the Maximianists has not been changed, by whose summary you are so thoroughly defeated that nothing remains for you, if you ever come to your senses, except, once your stubborn animosity is ended, to be pacified?

If it is a matter of communion—not with the sins of others, but with divine sacraments—then communion was held with the condemned, and it was said of other sacrilegious persons, who were in communion with the condemned Maximianus, that the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute the plantings; if it is a matter of persecution, you persecuted the condemned, you restrained the bold with persecutions; if it is a matter of baptism, you accepted baptism given in a sacrilegious schism. Why are divine testimonies, not understood, still brought forth in vain, so that truth may not be known and error may not be shunned? It is written: "If anyone thinks himself contentious, we have no such custom." But neither was Restitutus, who contended with Salvius of Membresita over cells and small fields, in order to expel him from the places, with forensic clamor and controversy, considered contentious by you; how much less should one be thought contentious who faithfully disputes not for the sake of usurping or taking away, but for sharing the heavenly inheritance with those who think otherwise! It is written, you say: "Say nothing into the ears of a fool, lest he mock your sensible words." Do not speak to us into our ears as if in secret, if you do not think us prudent, just as Christ did not speak into the ears of the Pharisees, but nevertheless brought forth what he said in their hearing to refute them. Show us openly, so that if we are not corrected, we may be refuted, how the Christian world would be stained if you came to unity, when the condemned Felicianus does not stain you.

It is written: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him.” Does it not follow there: “But answer him against his folly, lest he seem wise to himself”? Do this as well; do not consent by your answer to what you think is our folly, but answer in such a way that it can be refuted. Answer, I say, how you received the baptism that the Maximianists administered in their sacrilegious schism without any destruction, and yet you destroy the baptism given in the churches that Christ propagated through the apostles. Therefore, as to what you thought at the end of your letter should be briefly run through, in order to refresh the reader’s memory, of all that you had said more extensively above, receive in the same order that you should not deceive either yourself or others. For it is not arrogance either to seek or to assert the truth; and what you never thought could be defined has not only been defined by the prudent and God-fearing, but you yourselves have also finished, by receiving the Maximianists, the whole thing that you thought was without end. And we call you not to contention, but to conference—you who have struck down the Maximianists even with forensic lawsuits, and in those who were baptized in the schism of Maximianus, although they ought by no means to have been baptized there, you have nevertheless acknowledged the baptism of Christ and declared that the font of the Church, to which no one except a good person approaches, must be understood otherwise, by accepting the baptism that the sacrilegious had given outside.

:and you are compelled to confess that our ancestors or the holy Church which we hold could not be polluted by the alien crimes of thurification and tradition, even though they have never been proven by you, since you said that the associates of Maximianus, to whom you were granting a delay for returning, did not pollute the plantings of that same sacrilegious shoot of Maximianus; hence we, born so much later, can much less belong to the same origin of traditors and thurificators, if the fellowship of those then living could not stain our ancestors. And although you are accustomed to cast persecutions at us, however savage against the truth, yet in some part you corrected the Maximianists by persecutions, and you received them, even though it was not granted to those already condemned, yet after the end of that delay you received them, and you did not rescind the baptism which they had given outside your communion to those to whom you were opening the door of return by the delay, even after that delay was known and approved.

Since you see that nothing could be said by you which this one case of the Maximianists does not refute and convict, forgive me if perhaps I offended you by some word uttered too harshly; and if I, an African in Africa, admonished by my letters, sought out so late such a great case of the Maximianists arising in the capital of Africa, and, when sought, you could not find it because your people gave false reports, as you now perceive, fear God, do not besmirch so many Christian peoples spread so widely throughout the world in Christian unity with the unknown crimes of unknown Africans, and for the sake of the peace of Christ return to the Church which did not condemn the unknown, since for the sake of the peace of Donatus it pleased to recall the condemned. FROM THE BOOK OF RETRACTATIONS OF AUGUSTINE, CHAPTER 52 (26) (PAGE 162, KNOELL EDITION). TO CRESCONIUS THE GRAMMARIAN OF THE DONATIST PARTY, FOUR BOOKS. A certain Donatist grammarian, Cresconius, when he had found my letter in which I refuted the first parts, which had then come into our hands, of the letter of Petilianus, thought that he ought to reply to me and wrote this very thing to me. To this work of his I replied in four books, and indeed in such a way that I completed in three books what the entire response demanded.

But when I saw that from the case of the Maximianists alone—whom they condemned as their own schismatics, and then received some of them back into their offices, and did not repeat the baptism administered by them outside their communion—a response could be given to everything he wrote, I also added a fourth book, in which I showed this very thing as carefully and clearly as I could. And when I wrote these four books, the Emperor Honorius had already issued laws against the Donatists. This work begins thus: "When your writings, Cresconius, might be able to reach me, not knowing.