Contra Epistulam Parmeniani

II. AGAINST THE LETTER OF PARMENIANUS. BOOK ONE. I have indeed often discussed many things against the Donatists, to the best of the abilities which the Lord provides, partly by writing and partly also by preaching. But now, since a certain letter of Parmenianus, once their bishop, has fallen into our hands—a letter which he wrote to Tychonius, a man indeed endowed with keen intellect and abundant eloquence, but still a Donatist, when he thought that Tychonius was erring in that which he was compelled to confess as true—it has pleased the brothers who requested, or rather commanded, that I should reply to this same letter of Parmenianus, especially on account of certain testimonies from the Scriptures which he does not accept as they ought to be accepted. For Tychonius, battered by all the voices of the sacred pages, awoke and saw the Church of God spread throughout the whole world, just as it was foreseen and foretold long before through the hearts and mouths of the saints. Having perceived this, he undertook to demonstrate and assert against his own people that no sin of any man, however criminal and monstrous, can prescribe against the promises of God, nor can the impiety of any persons whatsoever, however great, who are established within the Church, nullify the faith of God concerning the Church that was to be spread to the ends of the earth—a faith which was preserved in the promises of the fathers and is now exhibited.

Therefore, when Tyconius argued this vehemently and copiously, and blocked the mouths of his opponents with many great and clear testimonies of the holy Scriptures, he did not see what consequently had to be seen—namely, that those Christians in Africa belonged to the church diffused throughout the whole world, who, of course, were not separated from the communion and unity of that same world by these men, but were themselves connected to the whole world through communion. Parmenianus, however, and the other Donatists saw that this was the consequence, and they preferred to adopt the most obstinate attitude against the most evident truth that Tyconius was asserting, rather than, having conceded it, be overcome by the African churches that enjoyed the communion of that unity which Tyconius asserted, from which these men had separated themselves. And Parmenianus at first thought to correct him by letter; but later, according to their council, he is said to have been condemned. Therefore, we have decided to respond in this work to the letter of Parmenianus which he wrote to Tyconius, rebuking him for preaching the church diffused throughout the whole world, and warning him not to dare to do so.

Let us therefore first consider what sort of thing this is, that he says the Gauls, the Spaniards, the Italians, and their allies—by which he clearly means the whole world—are like the African traditors through a commerce of crimes and a fellowship of offenses. For a man who brings forward so many and such great proofs from the holy Scriptures, he himself speaks without proofs and wants to be believed without proving anything, inviting him, of course, to imitate himself, because he too believed certain of his fellow bishops who spoke against so many churches established throughout such a breadth of all lands, and who were nothing but talkers. What could be found more rash than such credulity? For he says that certain men, whom he himself asserts to be most faithful witnesses, came as envoys to those same provinces; then, by a second arrival of the most holy priests of the Lord, as he himself says, the charges were published more clearly, more fully, and more truly. O man who thinks that he himself should be believed more than God! Tyconius brings forth the thunder of the divine testament, which was made in the promise to Abraham, the promise to Isaac, and the promise to Jacob, whose God declares Himself, saying: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; this is my name forever.” And this man opposes the narratives of his fellow priests. What was said to Abraham? “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” What was said to Isaac? “And in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because your father Abraham heard my voice.

What was said to Jacob? "I am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; do not be afraid. For the land on which you sleep, I will give it to you and to your seed. And your seed will be like the sand of the earth and will be filled in the sea and in the south wind and in the north wind and in the east. And all the tribes of the earth will be blessed in you and in your seed." Lest they think this was said about the Jews, let the apostle explain what the seed of Abraham is in which it was said that all nations would be blessed: "Promises," he says, "were made to Abraham and to his seed." He does not say "and to his seeds" as if to many, but as if to one, "and to your seed," which is Christ. Therefore, that all nations would have the blessing in Christ was promised with such authority, exhibited with such truth, and those who wish to be called Christians contradict this. And against these things, what do they oppose? "Certain most faithful witnesses," he says, "who served as legates came to those same provinces; then, by a repeated arrival of the most holy priests of the Lord, it was clearly, more fully, and more truly published." What, I ask you, what was published through those faithful witnesses, whom you wish to be more faithful to God? Was it that through the African traditors the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, was not permitted to reach all nations and there dried up where it had reached? Tell your colleagues now that the testament of God is to be believed less than they, and in saying these things you boast that you have preserved the testament itself from the flame, which you are trying to erase with your tongue.

But let each choose what pleases him, and if, against the heavenly thunderbolts, the earthly smoke of falsehood has any power, let him, abandoning heaven, vanish into the winds. For if Parmenianus were not partial to his own chair, he would rather believe the scripture of God than his own colleagues. For God says to Jacob: "I will not leave off until I do what I have spoken with you." But it is certainly much more credible that these men, having already been condemned by a just judgment, were not admitted to communion in those regions where God was already fulfilling what he had promised to our fathers, and that for this reason they boasted such things about the holy priests of God, by whom they had not deserved to be received, so that they might stir up the weak minds of the peoples deceived by them with false rumors and, having ensnared the rashly credulous minds with the pride of their own name, tear them away from the peace of the whole world. What is found more insane than this stupidity, or rather madness? Among so many nations of the world, God has in large part fulfilled, and still fulfills, until he comes to all completely, what he promised, who said: "I will not leave off until I do what I have spoken with you," and these men already believe those who announce that what God promised is not being fulfilled, and therefore that from the parts of the world where it had already been fulfilled, the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, has perished, and the promises of God have been made void, because they themselves were not admitted to the communion of those among whom the world already held this as fulfilled, and it is not said to them: "Only God is truthful, but every man is a liar.

You say these things about your own people, because "he who speaks a lie speaks from his own." Therefore you lie as men, because you are angry as men. This is not said to them, but moreover it is believed of them that Christ perished from the whole world, which they had already begun to possess. And those who believe these things, when they shamelessly said, "We are Christians," dare to say, "We alone are." Parmenianus also says that it is proven from this that the whole world was criminal with the crimes of betrayal and other sacrileges, because, when many such things were committed at the time of the persecution, no separation of peoples was afterwards made in those provinces. As if it could not have happened that partly the wicked lay hidden and were not accused, so that they could be condemned without any rashness, and partly they were also betrayed and condemned, and because they were refuted by clear evidence, they ceased from disturbing and dividing the churches, and thus it came about that, while some were not accused, certain uncertain crimes were for the sake of peace left to God, and certain others, however, were so manifested and convicted that they were condemned, so that no condemned person could deceive the peoples with feigned innocence, and the bond of unity would by no means be broken. For not even in Africa would this so monstrous evil of severance have occurred, unless the false faction of pretenders had prevailed more than the true reason of those who convict.

Let those who wish read what and with what evidence the venerable bishop of the Catholic communion, Optatus of Milevis, of blessed memory, relates and how many things he proves—whether concerning Lucilla, a very wealthy and at that time very factious woman, whom the holy Caecilianus, while still a deacon, had offended for the sake of church discipline, or concerning the other members of her faction, whether thieves of church silver or those who grieved that they had not attained the episcopate and who, because Caecilianus had been preferred to them, harassed him with whatever plots they could, or concerning the Numidian bishops, whom this faction had summoned for the destruction of Caecilianus, so that after he was deposed another might be ordained in his place. These men, coming with their then primate Secundus of Tigisis and with others to whom Secundus himself had granted pardon for confessed crimes of traditio, as if consulting peace—as the ecclesiastical records testify—judged the absent Caecilianus, without any delay for a more thorough investigation, with no opportunity for a defense preserved, to be a traditor, so that, evidently, the charges of traditio merely brought against him in his absence might harm him, while they themselves, present, had granted pardon to confessed crimes among themselves.

woman, or concerning the ordination of Silvanus by the traditors, or concerning the false accusations against Caecilianus. For they ordained another bishop to sit in the chair with which the whole Christian world—in transmarine and far-distant lands, and even in the more serious-minded parts of Africa, which were more robust against deceptions of this kind—was in communion, so that they could, on the basis of their own deed, contradict the promises of God, that all nations might be blessed in the seed of Abraham, and so that they could call even those parts of the world polluted by African traditors which had never even heard the name of Caecilianus, or at least had heard of his life—which, however, these men never proved guilty of any crime—as if they had heard of an innocent man. Moreover, against the whole world saying, 'What you charge against your fellow citizens, I could neither come to know, nor ought I to condemn an unknown man,' they bring forth the testimony of the apostle saying: 'Not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to those who do them.' For it was not enough for them to condemn so many and such great Christian peoples unheard; they also dared to bring forth, against the apostle himself, his own words indeed, but not his meaning. For if this is what it means to consent to evildoers—to be with them in the church—then the apostle himself also consented to false brothers, among whom he testified that he was in danger, and whom, though they preached the gospel not chastely but out of envy and without charity, he nevertheless allowed to preach.

But if there is nothing else in consenting to those who do evil except to approve and praise their evil deeds, then by the example of the apostle the whole world would not consent to the crimes of the Africans, even if it tolerated them for the sake of the Church's peace, having known about them; yet these men do not prove that the world knew about them, even if they could have proved them to be true. Therefore Parmenianus speaks in vain when he says that the traditors condemned in Africa were received into the fellowship of sanctity by the overseas provinces. For this is what we ought not to believe, lest with sacrilegious rashness we condemn the whole world founded in the unity of Christ on the basis of their false accusation, rather than love it on the basis of God's true promise. For what is more credible: what God said, "In your seed all nations will be blessed," or what these men say, "In the seed of the African traditors all nations are cursed," so that what iniquity has committed prevails over what truth has promised? Why, then, do we not rather believe that those who were received into communion by the overseas provinces either could not be oppressed by slanderers while innocent—which can be more plausibly argued with many proofs—or, certainly, when they could not be convicted, even if they were evil, they were believed innocent and received without any contamination of those who received them?

What of the fact that, even if through evil brothers—such as the apostle tolerated in the unity of the Church, such as the martyr Cyprian laments in his letter on the lapsed—if, therefore, through such brothers, even those placed among the judges, some wickedness had been committed, so that the traditors could not be excluded and convicted, and the Christian world were deceived by the feigned innocence of these men, it would in no way have lost its own innocence. As for what was said about Ossius of Corduba, once a Catholic bishop, it must be demanded that they prove not only that he was such a man as they claim, but also that his being such was manifest to those with whom they assert he communicated. For unless they prove this, they claim in vain that they knew what he was like, because he could not harm those who were ignorant, from whom these men, by separating themselves while innocent, cannot themselves be innocent because of the sacrilegious iniquity of the separation itself.

For this is more credible—if indeed Ossius, condemned by the Spaniards, was absolved by the Gauls—that it could have happened that the Spaniards, deceived by false accusations and beguiled by the cunning fraud of snares, pronounced sentence against an innocent man, and afterwards peacefully, in Christian humility, yielded to the judgment of their colleagues, by whom that man’s innocence was proven, lest by defending their earlier sentences with stubborn and spiteful perversity they should rush into the sacrilege of schism, which surpasses all crimes, with the blindness of impiety, just as these wretched men did, and not even belatedly, after being so often divided and cut asunder, do they perceive what they have done. Thus it is sufficiently clear why they have become incurable: namely, lest they be compelled to condemn their own earlier sentences, which they rashly pronounced against the absent Caecilianus, if they were to acquiesce, in consideration of truth and peace, to the transmarine judgment, where they were overcome by the present Caecilianus—they would have gained a greater victory if they had overcome human animosity at least after the judgment than if they had overcome the man in the judgment itself. For that victory is loftier and fuller of a higher triumph than if it were reported not only of one conquered man, but of an entire subjugated city, as Scripture says: “Better is he who conquers anger than he who captures a city.

They therefore wished to conquer a man whom anger was conquering, and because they could not conquer the man, they were overcome by both the man and anger: by the man, because they were defeated in judgment; by anger, because even when defeated they did not rest, with a most depraved heart either hearing or reading the apostle’s sentence which says: “For if I rebuild the very things I have destroyed, I set myself up as a transgressor.” Which words, of course, if the apostle himself understood them with such a sinister mind, he would neither become a Christian nor an apostle, nor would the preacher build the churches which as a persecutor he had previously destroyed. Nowhere, therefore, have these men so openly revealed why, even when defeated, they refused to be corrected, as when they detest the Spaniards because, after their own sentences had been pronounced differently, they yielded to the later discussion and judgment of their colleagues. For as much as this was done out of Christian gentleness, so much was that out of diabolical contention, and therefore it is not surprising that peace was preserved by this humility, and broken by that pride. Hence, what they did is rightly returned upon them; for they taught such things to their successors, for the Maximianists also, for no other reason, refused to yield to the council of three hundred and ten of their own colleagues, by whom Primianus, whom they themselves had first condemned, was judged innocent, except out of lost pertinacity, opposing the apostolic sentence to the unskilled and saying: “For if I rebuild the very things I have destroyed, I set myself up as a transgressor.

For they had destroyed Primianus along with a hundred colleagues, and therefore they refused to rebuild him with the three hundred. Thus, while they pretend to beware of building up a man whom they had destroyed, they destroyed themselves in another, greater schism by a greater sacrilege. But yet, if Parmenianus were alive, he would no longer dare to reproach the Spaniards and call them traitors, because they bent their own judgment to the judgment of their colleagues, lest he himself offend his own colleagues, many of whom, after Primianus had already been condemned by them, passed over, corrected for the better, to the council of the three hundred, choosing rather to go against their own hasty sentences than against the peace of unity, even within the Donatist party. And especially would Parmenianus spare Praetextatus of Assura and Felicianus of Musti, who, even after being condemned by three hundred and ten of their fellow bishops, returned to the very same men by whom they were condemned, out of zeal for concord, and were received by their condemners, out of the same zeal, without any loss of their own honor, for the sake of peace; nor did anyone think that those who had been baptized by them outside, in schism, ought to be rebaptized. Or perhaps, because those who correct their own sentences displease Parmenianus greatly, and he, not understanding the Apostle, calls them traitors, would he detest these men because they wished to return inside rather than remain outside, and, having joined to himself some like-minded associates, would he even create Parmenianists, just as many fragments have already been made from that great fragment throughout all Africa?

Thus, thus it must be: those who have preferred the swelling of their own animosity to the most holy bond of Catholic peace are cut and chopped into pieces and perish. For what Parmenianus accuses is not so much to be feared as what he confesses is to be observed. For when he said that through Ossius the Spaniard assistance was given to Caecilian, so that the number of holy and undefiled men was forced into their communion, and that the integrity of the servants of God had wholly resisted this impiety, he voluntarily confessed that his own people had themselves approached even Constantine and that by his decision the case was examined by bishop-judges, over whom Miltiades, bishop of the city of Rome, presided. In that judgment, as the ecclesiastical records testify, because these men were defeated and innocent Caecilian was found, they accuse the same Miltiades of the crime of traditio. I ask when they learned of this. For if it was before the judgment, they ought not to have prejudiced themselves so as to begin their case before such a judge and to undergo such a judgment by the emperor's decree, whom they themselves had approached. But if they claim that they learned that he was a traditor after the case was argued and the sentence pronounced, are men so utterly insane that they believe those who have been defeated in court against the judges before whom they were defeated?

And yet in all these things, with great recklessness, they accuse the Italians, Gauls, and Spaniards, while passing over so many other provinces and peoples from whom they are separated by a nefarious sacrilege—to whom, of course, the crimes of the Italians, Spaniards, and Gauls could do no harm, even if they were spoken truthfully. For they already accuse the other lands with a blind habit, or rather frenzy, and are angry at them because, when there were two parties in Africa—one, they say, of the traditors and the other of the innocent—the traditors preferred to join themselves to the innocent rather than to themselves. This vain accusation is refuted most briefly and most truly as follows: because, when they had heard that there were two parties in Africa, one of traditors and the other of the innocent, they believed that party to be innocent which had won its case before the neighboring ecclesiastical judges. Therefore, those always remained innocent who, not knowing how these things were done in Africa, nevertheless believed what they ought to have believed peacefully and religiously; from such innocent persons, separation could in no way be innocent.

Parmenian also admits that at the town of Arelate both judges and parties from Africa convened, namely Caecilian and the Donatists. There he believed everything that those who, being defeated, could do nothing but complain about the judges, yet he does not deny that they again came to Constantine, and because there too they were overcome by the final judgment, he even accuses the emperor himself of being corrupted by bribery. Considering all these things, let anyone who judges without partisanship choose whom to believe: whether the judges delivering sentences, or the litigants against whom the sentences were pronounced and who are unwilling to end the dispute. And certainly the whole world believed the judges. But those who agree with the Donatists and defend them admit that they believe those who, whatever their case may have been, could not, however, prevail in so many overseas hearings, and they accept with credulous vanity their murmurs and accusations against the judges. In this matter, if they claim to be innocent and are unwilling to rashly believe that those whom they see defeated were overcome by the truth, how much more innocent are those who are unwilling to rashly believe anything evil about the judges themselves, about whom it is inevitable that those who are defeated will complain! For not only does the one who lost a good case complain about an unjust, slow, or negligent judge, but even the one who was most justly defeated murmurs against the innocent judge with that same blindness with which he litigated against an innocent adversary.

Therefore these men are not wicked because they are unwilling to believe anything rashly about defeated men, but because in the madness of schism they have cut themselves off from those innocent men who far more reasonably refuse to believe anything of the kind about those very judges. For there exists some church of those seven, most noble in the name of Christ, and, if you please, the most eminent Philadelphia, which by its mystical name in the Greek tongue signifies brotherly love. Let us therefore hear its voice, and let not its chaff speak, but its grain. So if it should say to these men: 'What do you reproach in me, brothers, what do you accuse? How far I am removed from Africa by earthly distance, you have been able partly to know, partly to hear. What was done there then, whether by traitors or by accusers or condemners of traitors, or by calumniators or oppressors of the innocent, I am wholly ignorant. But that Lord of ours, who bought the whole world with the price of his blood, whose holy commerce the prophet so long before sang, saying: They dug through my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones. But they themselves considered and beheld me, they divided my garments among themselves and over my garment they cast lots, between you and us he did not set empty and bare spaces devoid of Christians; he filled all these with the sanctification of his name. For in that same psalm of the passion it is declared not only how many, but also at what price he bought.

For there a little later it is said: "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the nations of the gentiles will worship in his sight, for his is the kingdom and he will rule over the gentiles." Therefore, concerning your case, I might perhaps be compelled to judge if I were either nearby or so far removed that no other Christians, marked by the same name and pacified by the same unity, lived between us and you. Many nations of the gentiles lie between us, purchased along with me by the blood of him in whose sight they worship together with me. Through them the report about you has reached me; they themselves, from their proximity, were able to examine your case. If this has not been done, you have been negligent; for you would not have come even to us if you had not been neglected by the others. But if some judgment has been rendered, forgive me; I do not dare rashly to believe you when you have been defeated, and by that same rashness to condemn your judges. Another consideration occurs to me that moves me greatly: if you had been innocent and oppressed, you would at least love us, your brothers, who have done you no harm. But since you nevertheless tear to pieces with curses and pursue with bitter hatred us, who are well aware that your case was rightly entrusted to your neighbors by the law of the Church, and who know before God how they have judged, and since you even attempt to rebaptize, as if Christ had lost his inheritance among us because of you, what good can we think about that case of yours?

For you who do not hesitate to condemn brothers who are very far away on the basis of rash suspicions, you show how justly you yourselves have been condemned by your neighbors. For why should I not believe that a man could rightly be condemned by a neighboring judge after a hearing, when he does not hesitate to condemn me, a brother so far away, without a hearing, charging me with the greatest crime, because I was not able to be present before those judges to whom the case was brought, and I believed them rather than the defeated litigants? If I had not rather believed those judges, even if those who were defeated were innocent, I could not be innocent. For we would be involved in a great offense if, when we could not see into human hearts, and we did not hold to ecclesiastical discipline, we were unwilling to believe those judges beyond whom the case could not proceed and through whom the report could reach us. Do you, who tear yourself away from these innocent ones by an impious division, call yourself innocent? For if you were, since you see in the holy scriptures that the harvest of your Lord cannot be separated from the tares and chaff before the final segregation and winnowing, you would choose rather to be strong in enduring evils than impious in abandoning the good. — For how many churches throughout the world, far removed, do we think these are, and how very just are the voices which I have figured in Philadelphia!

Moreover, Parmenianus dares to complain that Constantine ordered those who, having been defeated before ecclesiastical judges and unable to prove their claims even before him, were still being carried away with sacrilegious fury into the schisms of the holy Church, to be led to the field—that is, to execution—and he accuses the emperor of having ordered this with monstrous cruelty, at the suggestion of Ossius of Hispania, relying, as always, on his own suspicions, condemning the unheard. As if it were not more humane and more plausible for another to believe that it was rather done at the suggestion of Ossius as a bishop, so that the emperor might be swayed toward a milder coercion, even for a crime of the most monstrous kind, that is, sacrilegious schism. For what do these men not justly suffer, when they suffer by the judgment of God, who presides from on high and warns them to beware of eternal fire through such punishments, both by the merit of their crimes and by the order of authorities? Let them first prove that they are not heretics or schismatics; only then may they utter a free voice concerning their unworthy punishments, only then may they dare, when they suffer something of this kind, to call themselves martyrs for the truth.

Otherwise, if anyone who suffers punishment from the emperor or from judges sent by him is immediately a martyr, then all prisons are full of martyrs, all judicial chains drag martyrs, in all mines there are afflicted martyrs, martyrs are deported to all islands, in all penal places martyrs are struck by the judge's sword, all martyrs are thrown to the beasts or burned alive by the orders of judges. But if, as the apostle says, power exists only from God, and the minister of God is an avenger in his wrath against the one who does evil, he does not carry the sword without reason. Do you wish not to fear power? Do good, and you will have praise from it. For if anyone who suffers is good, praise comes to him from the power of the one who acts; but if he is evil, what he suffers deservedly due to his iniquity, he should not attribute to the cruelty of power. And yet, what do these people suffer that is comparable to what they do, except that the multitude of men has no heart in their breast, but only in their eyes? For if blood flows from mortal flesh, whoever sees it shudders; if souls cut off from the peace of Christ and separated by the sacrilege of heresy or schism die, because it is not seen, it is not mourned; indeed, a death more foul and more lamentable and, to speak plainly, more true, is by custom laughed at, while the authors of so many deaths publicly insult and deign not even to confer with us in speech for the sake of revealing the truth.

and if they suffer any temporal trouble through the most certain and most just order of powers, while they themselves, with private bands of madmen, commit far graver acts everywhere and daily, bound by no royal or ecclesiastical law, they call us persecutors of bodies, but do not call themselves slayers of souls, though by private license they spare not even bodies. But because, through Christian gentleness, a gouged-out eye in a brawl is punished much more severely than a blinded mind in a schism, they speak out and speak against us, and do not speak with us; and when truth compels them to fall silent, iniquity does not permit them to be silent. Or is it perhaps not lawful for the emperor, or those whom the emperor has sent, to judge concerning religion? Why then did your legates come to the emperor? Why did they make him judge of their case, not intending to follow what he would judge? But to what end are these things said? Surely, even if they maintain that it does not pertain to the emperor to decree anything against those who follow perverse practices in religion, does it follow that, if he does so and punishes them, they will be martyrs? For in this way this cry will be open to all heretics, against whom, by the hidden command of God through the manifest command of men, many very severe measures have been established to restrain them, and not only to heretics somehow at least whitewashed with the Christian name, but even to pagans themselves.

For certainly they too are impious with a false religion, whose statues have been ordered to be overturned and broken by recent laws, and their sacrifices also prohibited under threat of capital punishment. If, therefore, any one of them were condemned for such a crime, is he to be considered a martyr, because he suffers the penalties of the laws for a superstition which he thought was a pious religion? Certainly no one who is in any way a Christian dares to say this. Therefore, not everyone who is punished by an emperor in some question of religion becomes a martyr. For those who hold such opinions do not see that they are advancing to the point where they might claim that even the demons themselves can claim the glory of martyrs for themselves, because they suffer this persecution under Christian emperors, so that throughout almost the whole world their temples are overturned, their idols broken, their sacrifices abolished, and those who honor them, if caught, are punished. But if it is most insane to say this, then it is not the suffering that makes the justice certain, but the justice that makes the suffering glorious. And therefore the Lord, lest anyone cast clouds of obscurity over the ignorant in this matter and seek praise for their merits in the condemnation of their own, did not say in general: 'Blessed are those who suffer persecution,' but added a great distinction by which piety is truly separated from sacrilege. For he says: 'Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice.

They in no way suffer for righteousness who have divided the Church of Christ and, while they try with a feigned righteousness to separate the chaff from the grain before the time and attack its grains with false accusations, they themselves have rather been separated from it like the lightest chaff blown about by various gusts of rumor. "But," they say, "we did not do this." Let them see, therefore, that they must first free themselves from this question, and then dare, if they suffer any troubles or penalties from Christian emperors, either to bring them forward as a complaint or to claim them as a glory. On this matter, that is, the question of the schism itself, if I were to say nothing else, what has been said above would suffice. Or will they perhaps say, even if they are convicted of sacrilegious dissent, so that for that madness, if they have suffered anything, they are not martyrs, yet it should not pertain to the power of the emperors to restrain or punish these things? In this matter I ask what they mean: is it because nothing should be cared for by such powers concerning a vicious or false religion? But we have already said much about the pagans and about the demons themselves, that they suffer persecutions from the emperors. Or does this also displease them? Why then do they themselves, where they can, overturn temples and, through the furies of the Circumcellions, either do such things or not cease to avenge them? Is private violence more just than royal diligence? But I pass over these things.

I ask this: when the apostle enumerates manifest works of the flesh—which are, he says, fornications, impurities, luxury, service to idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies, drunkennesses, revelries, and things like these—what do these people think, that the crime of idolatry they suppose is justly avenged by the emperors, or if they do not even wish this, why do they justly admit that the force of the laws is exerted against sorcerers, but refuse to admit it against heretics and impious dissensions, when these are numbered among the same fruits of iniquity by apostolic authority? Or is it that such powers of human constitution do not permit the punishment of these things? For what reason, then, does he who is called the minister of God bear the sword, as an avenger in wrath against those who do evil? Unless, as some of them, indeed the most unskilled, are accustomed to understand this, it was said about ecclesiastical honors, so that the sword is understood as the spiritual vengeance which works excommunication, when the most provident apostle, by the consequent context of the reading, sufficiently reveals what he is speaking about. For there he added: for this reason you also pay tributes, and then subjoined: render to all what is due: to whom tribute, tribute; to whom tax, tax; to whom honor, honor; to whom fear, fear.

Therefore, it now remains that by these arguments of theirs they forbid Christians to pay taxes, even though the Lord, responding to the Pharisees—who thought in such a way and whom these men imitate—after inspecting a coin, said: "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." But these men, disobedient and impious in both respects, render neither Christian love to God nor human fear to the emperors. They are so blind and insane that, although they expelled their own Maximianist schismatics from the basilicas by means of the authorities sent by the Catholic emperors, and compelled them to yield by the great force of orders and assistance, they accuse the Catholic Church if Catholic rulers order anything of the kind to be done on its behalf. As for the Maximianists themselves, before they were Maximianists—that is, when they were still held together in the single fellowship of the Donatists—let them recall and keep silent about what that Rogatus the Moor suffered at the hands of the barbarian king Firmus, how savage and bitter it was, and let them not dare to complain if they suffer anything of this sort either from the Primianists on account of their own schism, or together with the Primianists on account of the Donatist schism, not for the sake of sacred religion, but because of sacrilegious animosity.

For perhaps they say that they have suffered more grievous things from Catholic emperors than those men did either through the kings of the barbarians against the Rogatists, or through the judges of Catholic emperors against the Maximianists, or even do through the fury of the Circumcellions against whomever they can. As if the question were whether they suffer more grievous things than they do—which indeed I would in no way concede. For many of their most savage and bitter deeds are counted, indeed cannot be counted, which, even if they were fewer or afflicted those against whom they are committed less, would by that very fact certainly be more grievous, because they are not commanded by established authorities, but are committed by extraordinary furies. For not so many are the things which they did against the Maximianists through judges of human establishment. In that kind of action let them place, if they wish, even those things which were done by them through the barbarian Firmus for persecuting Rogatus Maurus, and let them count him, although a most savage enemy of the Romans, among the legitimate authorities. But these are not so many as the many things done daily by the furious bands of drunken youths to whom they appoint leaders, who at first armed themselves only with clubs, but now have begun also with iron, who wander and rage under the well-known name of Circumcellions throughout all Africa, committing acts against all order of laws and authorities.

When their crimes are reported to them, they pretend to be ignorant of such a kind of men, or that they have nothing at all to do with them—contrary to which they affirm with the most shameless mouth, against the knowledge of all men; nor do they accept even this voice of the whole world, which would much more probably and truly say that it does not know what has been done in Africa either by the Donatist party or against the Donatist party, if it is permissible that in Africa itself the Donatist bishops either do not know the deeds of the Donatist Circumcellions or say that they have nothing to do with them. But, as I had begun to say, the question is not whether they suffer more grievous things than they do, but whether such a thing is permitted against heretics and schismatics. For if they say it is not permitted, why do they themselves do it? But if they admit it is permitted, even if they show—which they cannot do in any way—that they suffer more grievous things from Catholic emperors than they themselves have done to their own schismatics either through the judges of those emperors or through the kings of the barbarians, or than they do to every kind of man through the madness of the Circumcellions, neither is this to be wondered at, if princes can do more than judges sent by princes; if Roman emperors can do more than barbarian kings, and if deservedly a robber suffers more grievous things by the laws than he himself commits against the laws. Hence deservedly the masters of the Circumcellions suffer more grievous things by just constitutions than the Circumcellions do. And yet such is Christian gentleness, that the punishments they suffer are incomparably less than their crimes.

But behold: in their council, three hundred and ten Donatist bishops condemned the Maximianists; yet those men, through the stubbornness of their perversity, refused to yield the basilicas. The judges were approached, and their council was recorded in the proconsular acts. Then it was ordered that those who had been condemned by so great a number of bishops should give way as to the places. Those who yielded easily did not suffer much; but those who attempted to resist—how they were afflicted, who does not know? Yet if the savagery of those resisting had been so great as to reach the point of injuries against the judges, would they not have suffered far harsher penalties under Roman laws? So too then, when after the conclusion of the case in which these men cut themselves off from the Catholic Church, proceedings consequently began to ensure that they would not hold the basilicas—and they did hold them, resisting imperial orders, and resisting in such a way that that most notorious force of the Circumcellions prevailed, adding also that, when the emperor’s envoys carrying gifts of the Church were traveling through Africa, they were harassed by the most turbulent and savage seditions—such laws were brought against them that they were not even permitted to retain those basilicas which had not been built by the unity, but by those already separated and established in their own schism. In this matter, the royal power has already avenged its own injuries. For what can the enemies of justice justly possess?

Nor is it found that any decree was issued in their favor except by the apostate Julian, to whom Christian peace and unity were exceedingly displeasing, since the religion from which he had impiously fallen was itself displeasing to him. Indeed, these Donatists, as the judicial records which they adduced to prove what they had obtained bear witness, supplicated him in such terms that perhaps some have consented more mildly to the worship of idols out of fear than these men praised him in their frenzy. For they said that before him alone justice had a place. What else, then, are they found to have said, except that either Christian sanctity is not justice, since it had no place before him, or that the honor of demons is justice, since it held the first place before him? But who is ignorant of how vehement the laws of other emperors were enacted against them? Among these, one general law against all who wish to be called Christians and do not communicate with the Catholic Church, but gather in their own separate conventicles, contains this: that either the ordainer of a cleric or the ordained person himself be fined ten pounds of gold, and the place itself where the impious separation gathers be confiscated to the treasury. There are also other general decrees by which the capacity either to make wills or to confer anything by donations is taken away from them, or to receive anything from donations or wills.

For in a certain case, when a man of noble rank had petitioned the emperors because his sister, who had belonged to the Donatist party, had upon her death bequeathed a great deal to some persons of her own communion and especially to a certain Augustinus, their bishop, it was ordered by that general law that everything should be restored to the brother; where mention was also made of the Circumcellions, if they should violently resist in their usual manner, by what kind of forces and supports they should be repelled. For they are so well known, so proven by many conflicts, that neither the emperor’s suppliant nor the emperor himself could be silent about them. Since these things are so, and since they are condemned by both divine and human laws, yet such is Christian gentleness that not only do they hold the basilicas which they built after their separation, but they have not even restored all those which the unity held from the beginning. And although they themselves, the Maximianists, were forcibly expelled from the basilicas belonging to the Donatist party by judges sent by Catholic emperors, yet from many places which the Catholic unity formerly retained, they are not expelled even by the laws of those same Catholic emperors. Finally, if anything at any time has been done somewhat immoderately against them, exceeding Christian lenity, it displeases all the fruitful harvests of the Lord’s field, that is, those Christians who are praiseworthy in Christ, who, whether with a hundredfold or sixtyfold or thirtyfold fruit, grow up throughout the whole world in the Catholic Church.

Therefore, let them most abundantly accuse the tares or chaff of the Catholic crop along with us, but let them not refuse to bear it most patiently along with us. For he who did not wish to root out the tares before the time and separate them from the mixture of the wheat said, "Let both grow together until the harvest." And when he explained the covering of that same parable to his disciples who were seeking understanding, he did not say, "The field is Africa," but he said, "The field, however, is this world." Therefore, throughout the whole world this crop is sown, throughout the whole world the tares are oversown, throughout the whole world both grow until the harvest. Was Donatus, then, a greater reaper, or had the time of harvest arrived at the time when these men separated themselves from the whole world, when the same Lord, lest anyone be allowed to interpret as he wished, said most clearly: "The harvest, however, is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels"? For such reapers cannot err, so that they neither gather wheat in place of tares nor store tares in place of wheat. But these men, when they flee as if from tares, have shown themselves to be tares, preaching in most manifest sacrilege against the Lord's sentence, so that, while he says, "Let both grow together until the harvest," these men contend that throughout so great a field—that is, the whole world—only tares grow, while the wheat has diminished and remained only in Africa, thus doing sacrilegious injury to Christ, our King and Prince.

For it is written: "In a broad people is the glory of the king, but in the diminution of the people is the ruin of the prince." But now it is time, as I think, to attend diligently to those very testimonies of the Scriptures, which by interpreting them badly they deceive the unlearned, and to open them according to the understanding of Catholic truth, as far as the Lord grants. BOOK TWO. What force, then, but blindness and vanity of mind compels men, with eyes closed, as it is said, to hurl as if at another what immediately returns upon the one who hurls it and afflicts him with a reciprocal blow, leaving untouched the one he had wished to wound, just as these Donatists do with almost all the testimonies of the Scriptures, which, when they think they are bringing forward against us, seem to warn us what sort of people they are, as the Scripture itself convicts them? For what else does it do, that which Parmenianus thinks is either for himself or against us, that which is written: "Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil, who place light as darkness and darkness as light, who place what is bitter as sweet and sweet as bitter"? O most foolish blindness! For what is so good and so joyful as brothers dwelling together in unity? That which they call evil and place as bitter, who have separated themselves from all brothers, because they were unwilling either not to stir up their vain suspicions, not to say factious calumnies, or to tolerate them when stirred up.

If they truly hated the true chaff and were not themselves chaff, they would not separate themselves from the Lord's wheat sown and growing throughout the whole field, that is, this world, on account of it. Let them cry out, therefore, as much as they can: "Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil." We reply: "This is true," and we add another: "Woe to those who have lost endurance, while they set light as darkness and darkness as light." For what is more luminous than the promises of God, who in our times has exhibited what he foretold thousands of years before, that in the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, all nations would have a blessing, and what is more dark than the presumptions of men, who, on account of rashly alleged and never proven charges of traitors—which, even if they were true, would never prejudice God from fulfilling what he promised—say that the Christian name has perished from so many nations throughout the world and has remained only in Africa? And they call this presumption of theirs light, while they strive to cover the promises of God, already illuminated by the very effect of events, with the darkness of lies, and moreover they cry out against us with their own deeds, saying: "Woe to those who set light as darkness and darkness as light." Was Optatus light, and did all Africa call him darkness, or rather did all Africa perceive him to be darkness, and did these men call him light, who do not set light as darkness and darkness as light? "But," they say, "Optatus was displeasing in our communion to all good men.

Therefore you did not call him light, and yet you communicated with him. So choose what you want: either darkness does not harm light in one communion, but it is enough for light to disapprove of darkness and, if it cannot expel it, to tolerate it for the sake of unity, and thus there was no reason for you to be separated from innocent brothers, whom you certainly could not prove to be evil, even if you claim to have known them, by the dark sacrilege of schism; or, if it is not enough for light to disapprove of darkness which it cannot expel—that is, if it is not enough for the good to disapprove of the evil whom they cannot exclude or correct—then one Optatus, most notorious and open in Africa, stained the Donatist party more easily than any African traditor stained so many nations throughout the world, even if I do not say accused of false charges, but, what is most shamelessly denied, unknown. Therefore, receiving the scriptures with a perverse heart, they do not make them harmful to us, but to themselves, when they think that this is written: "Woe to those who say that what is worthless is good and what is good is worthless," so that the chaff and the grain tolerate each other until the time of winnowing, so that, when they misunderstand: "Woe to those who say that what is worthless is good and what is good is worthless," it is fulfilled in them: "Woe to those who have lost their endurance.

If, however, they understand that this was said against those who, thinking that what is evil is good, commit evil deeds, or those who consent to such persons by praising and approving them—two kinds which Scripture mentions in one place, saying: “Because the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does iniquitous things is blessed”—they will understand correctly and will not be disturbed, even when they find evil persons among themselves, except that they tolerate them for the sake of Donatus’ party whom they ought to have tolerated for the sake of Christ’s unity, and through this obstinacy of their animosity they are forced, wretchedly, to bear in their schism those whom they know, and to accuse in the whole world those whom they do not know. Therefore, whoever either corrects what he can by arguing, or excludes what he cannot correct while preserving the bond of peace, or, what he cannot exclude while preserving the bond of peace, he disapproves with equity and endures with firmness—this man is a peacemaker, and from that curse of which Scripture says: “Woe to those who say that what is worthless is good and what is good is worthless, who set light as darkness and darkness as light, who set what is bitter as sweet and what is sweet as bitter,” he is completely free, utterly secure, entirely untouched.

They again bring up something similar with their usual blindness. "The Scripture speaks of you," they say: "Whoever judges the just as unjust, and the unjust as just, is abominable before God." Why does this abomination not rather fall upon those who dared to condemn the entire Christian world—an unheard-of thing—in which, among such a vast multitude of people, there were and are without any doubt many innocent of their crimes? In this way, therefore, they have judged what is just as unjust, and what is unjust as just, when they held Optatus Gildonianus—the ten-year-long groan of all Africa—in communion, honoring him as a priest and colleague. Or if they disapproved of him in their hearts but tolerated him for the sake of peace, let them learn that no peacemaker's patience, when it does not consent to evil, can be stained by any evils; and thus let them realize in what ruin they lie who, because of false—or even true, for this is not now the question—crimes of the Africans, do not preserve the unity of spirit in the bond of peace with the whole world. If they were to say, "We do not know whether there are good Christians among so many nations of transmarine lands," they would speak most shamelessly. For God bears witness to his own wheat, which, though sown throughout the entire field with the tares oversown by the devil, he nevertheless foretold would grow until the harvest; hence, even if we know the men themselves less, we still know that they exist because we hold with the most certain faith that God could not lie.

Therefore, when with sacrilegious impudence they said, "We do not know whether there are good Christians in the rest of the world," let them see with what madness they dare to say—for daily they do not hesitate to say—: "We know that there are no Christians there." It is one thing, of course, to say "we do not know whether they exist," another to say "we know that they do not exist": both are faithless and impious. But if he who says, "I do not know whether God has spoken truly" is detestable, what is he who says, "I know that God has not spoken truly"? Certainly I think that I should offend none of them if I place God before Donatus. For however much they love Donatus, they fear God more; finally, however much they themselves love Donatus, we know that God alone is truthful, but every human is a liar. Therefore Christ, who is above all God blessed forever and who most truly said of himself, "I am the truth," when his servants asked him whether he wanted them to go and gather the tares, said, "Let both grow until the harvest." But Donatus says that the tares have indeed grown, but the wheat has diminished. Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says: "The field is this world." But Donatus says that God's field is only Africa remaining. Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says: "At the time of the harvest I will tell the reapers: 'First gather the tares,'" and he explains, saying: "The harvest is the end of the world." But Donatus says that by the cutting off of his own party the tares have been separated from the wheat before the harvest. Let them choose whom to believe.

Christ, that is, truth, says: the reapers are angels; Donatus, however, says that he and his colleagues did before the harvest what he said the angels would do in the harvest. Let them choose whom to believe. Certainly they call themselves Christians: we set before them Christ and Donatus. If they give words to Christ, but their heart to Donatus, let them consider who they are. I spare them, I do not inveigh, I do not exaggerate; I suppress my grief better than I express it. But if they say they give their heart to Christ, then let them believe Christ, who says that throughout the whole world both the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the wicked grow, not Donatus, who says that throughout the world only the sons of the wicked have grown, while the good sons have been diminished to Africa alone. But if they believe Christ, let them have peace not only with the churches of the whole world, but with the Gospel itself, which they boastfully claim to have preserved from the fire, though they do not prove it by their deeds. Now to what end does that which the same Parmenianus thought should be objected to us from the prophet Isaiah pertain: does not the hand of the Lord avail to save, or has it burdened the ear so that it does not hear? But your sins distinguish between you and God, and on account of your sins he turns his face away from you so that he may not have mercy. For your hands are stained with blood and your fingers are in sins; your lips have spoken iniquity and your tongue meditates injustice. No one speaks justly, nor is there true judgment.

They trust in vain things and speak empty words, because they are in labor with grief and give birth to iniquity. The eggs of asps have burst forth, and they weave a spider's web; and whoever was about to eat from those eggs, upon crushing them, finds a stench and a basilisk within. Their web will not serve for clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their own works. For their works are works of iniquity, and their feet run swiftly to wickedness, to the shedding of blood, and their thoughts are the thoughts of the foolish. Are not contrition and misery in their paths, and have they not known the way of peace? Whomsoever Scripture describes in this passage, wherever they may be, even among the good, they do not harm the good, just as chaff does not harm the grain, until the lord of the threshing-floor comes, bearing a winnowing-fan in his hand, and cleanses his floor, stores the grain in the granary, and burns the chaff with inextinguishable fire; just as such a great multitude of evildoers did not harm the good, as we have learned through the prophet Ezekiel, namely those who groaned and grieved over the crimes of the people that were committed in their midst. Hence, because they could not correct them nor ought they in any way to separate themselves from the unity of the people of God, they deserved to be marked by the merit of their most innocent tolerance and to be set free in the devastation and destruction of those lost ones.

Nevertheless, those who cast these accusations against Catholics—why do they not look at themselves? Their bands of raging mobs, armed with iron and clubs, fly hither and thither, and in such frequent massacres, wherever they can, they are never sated in such savagery. Amid the pyres of corpses, with the women who are promiscuously mingled with them, wandering day and night contrary to the order of divine and human affairs, such drunkenness rages that from it they conceive not only a daily madness for attacking others, but also for hurling themselves headlong. Do not their feet run to evil, and are they not swift to shed blood? Does judgment not depart from them, who usurp for themselves even the most unjust licenses of disordered power? Do not shadows fall upon them while they endure the light in false martyrdom? Do they not walk in the middle of the night and by day, since the apostle says: “Those who get drunk are drunk at night”? Do they not fall at noon as if in the middle of the night? This indeed is the case with all heretics, who cannot see the most evident truth established in the light of all nations. Outside its unity, whatever they do, even if it seems done with great skill and diligence, profits them nothing against the wrath of God, any more than spiders’ webs can protect from the cold.

What then do they set forth from this prophetic chapter that cannot be turned back against themselves, unless perhaps concerning the eggs of asps, of which that author of the sentence of the plenary council of three hundred and ten, when they assembled from all the provinces of Africa, was very mindful? This certainly now, if Parmenianus were alive, he would not say, nor would he set forth against us from the prophet Isaiah: "The eggs of asps have burst forth." For he would look to Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assura, joined to his own college, whom, as if for the good of peace—not of Christ, however, but of Donatus—they received back again as though whole from the number of the condemned, who both were eggs of asps and had burst forth. For thus the three hundred and ten of the plenary council describe them with truthful mouth, as their acts, also attested by proconsular acts, testify. For these are certainly the words of their council: "For although the noxious offspring of viperine seed, the moist concretions of a poisoned womb, have long been covered by the hollow, and the damp clots of conceived crime have been vaporized into the limbs of asps by slow heat, yet the conceived poison could not be hidden by a fading shelter. For even late, the public crime and their parricide, the vows of crime pregnant with offspring, have brought forth." These eggs of asps had already burst forth, and already horrible and foul-smelling with venomous offspring, they had been cast out from their communion, but within was Optatus the basilisk, who with a certain royal nod, by which he is said to excel among serpents, would recall even the cast-out asps.

or if these things do not hinder peace, what do they object to the Catholics whom they have been unable to convict, when they themselves have received those whom they condemned with their own mouth? if these things do not hinder peace, they nevertheless hinder peace for the sake of Donatus, which is greatly favored to the injury of the peace of Christ, for which sacrilege whatever they suffer in bodily afflictions is a warning from God to beware of eternal damnation. for they truly shed blood not only bodily through the furies of the Circumcellions, but also spiritually, who attempt to rebaptize the whole world, if they could. or if only he sheds blood who wounds or kills mortal flesh by a wound, but he does not shed blood who destroys seduced souls by the sacrilege of schism, why did they say such things about their own Maximianist schismatics through the same sentence of their plenary council: "their feet are swift to shed blood," when it is clear that no one was killed by them, no one wounded, but on the contrary they themselves suffered many things from them, when they were expelled from the basilicas by judicial authorities? such things as they did to many before the separation of the Maximianists, when they were together in one body, to those who had made earlier schisms from the party of Donatus. for to which of their own schismatics have they ever shown mercy, who wish to be shown mercy too impudently by the whole world, of which they themselves are schismatics, when schisms are most justly punished by the one true unity alone, if such things are to be punished in this way?

And that which is written: "according to the prince of the people, so also his ministers, and as the ruler of the city is, so are its inhabitants," if they understood to what it pertains, they would neither reproach us with it nor themselves swell with empty boasting. For we, so that we may place the hope of men, which is safe and rightly secure in God alone, not in men—since we remember the scripture: "cursed is he who places his hope in man"—do not understand in this passage the prince of the people and the ruler of the city to signify the bishop; not because we cannot look upon countless saints among the Catholic bishops, but lest anyone's hope, as I said, be placed in a man, and if it should happen that he lives in a city where there is not a good bishop, he should think he may become evil with impunity, usurping for his own defense this scripture so perversely understood as it is perversely understood by them, and saying that he cannot be good because "according to the prince of the people, so also his ministers, and as the ruler of the city is, so are its inhabitants." For this error is contradicted by the mouth of truth saying: "do what they say, but do not do what they do." For they say and do not do.

Therefore, if they have peoples with such bishops, who speak good things from the chair of Moses but do not practice what they say due to their own pestilence, and if those bishops do the good things they preach and do not do the evil things they do, as the Lord commands, do they not sufficiently indicate that the saying about the prince of the people and the ruler of the city is not to be understood as these men understand it, because there can be good peoples even where there are evil bishops, just as there could be an evil people where Moses was a good prince and ruler? For they err in the words of the holy scriptures and, as the apostle says, understand neither what they say nor what they affirm; they themselves, rather, suffer great distress according to the perversity of their own understanding, when it is said to them: 'Therefore, as Optatus was, so was the people of Thamugada; and if, as you say, those who disapprove of evil deeds are contaminated by the communion of the sacraments, and even those things which are tolerated for the sake of the peace of unity, then you are all the same, you who communicated both with that colleague of yours and with that people, when all Africa openly declared him to be Gildo's satellite.' I name him often for this reason, because he appeared so manifestly that wherever he is named, no one will answer that they are ignorant of him.

For let them look back and recall how many they have among themselves who are similar, whose malice is equal but whose knowledge is unequal, and let them at last come to the true meaning of these words and understand that there is one prince of the people, our Lord Jesus Christ, whose ministers are the good, and He Himself is the ruler of that city, Jerusalem, which is our eternal mother in heaven. To the dignity of that ruler the inhabitants correspond, not by equality, but according to their own measure, because it is said, 'You will be holy, since "and I am holy,"' according, that is, to a certain likeness of the image into which we are transformed from glory to glory, as by a gift of the Lord's spirit, who makes us conformed to the image of His Son. There is also another evil people, of which the devil is the prince and ruler of its city, which is mystically called Babylon, since the princes and rulers of these shadows—that is, of sinners—the apostle Paul calls him and his angels, and his ministers are like him, because they transform themselves into ministers of justice, just as he transforms himself into an angel of light, and the inhabitants correspond to the worst ruler in their similar deeds. But the open separation of these peoples and cities will occur when this harvest has been winnowed; until that happens, the love of the grains endures everything, lest, while the grains too hastily flee the chaff, they be impiously separated from their fellow grains.

Therefore, what relevance does it now have to the case that these people throw in our faces, that through Isaiah the Lord says about evil sacrificers: "A criminal who sacrifices a calf to me is like one who kills a dog, and one who offers fine flour is like swine's blood, and one who offers incense in remembrance is like a blasphemer"? All these things are said much more fittingly about those who, against the Church of God spread throughout the whole world as promised, have erected the altar of their schism; that sacrilege involves them all, and whoever anywhere offers a sacrifice with such a heart or such deeds that he deserves to hear these things brings ruin upon himself, not upon those good people who, according to the prophet Ezekiel, groan and mourn over the sins and iniquities that occur in their midst, even though they do not physically separate themselves from there; for the Lord gives to each according to his heart. For if in early times evil priests did not harm either good colleagues, such as Zacharias, or good laypeople, such as Nathanael in whom there was no guile, how much more does a bad bishop harm nothing in Christian unity, either good fellow bishops or good laypeople, when already that priest forever according to the order of Melchisedek and our Pontiff, sitting at the right hand of the Father, intercedes for us, who was handed over because of our sins and rose again for our justification. Therefore, that which is most truly said—"The Most High does not approve the gifts of the wicked"—does not harm the good, but rather the evil offerers.

For he did not say: 'The gifts of those who tolerate the unjust for the sake of peace are not approved by the Most High,' although even they were not able to prove those things which they objected at the time when they made the schism. Otherwise, with those excluded, the inheritance of Christ, spread throughout the whole world, would hold these men in Catholic communion. "Offerings," he says, "of the impious are an abomination to the Lord; for they offer them wickedly." It has already been answered above that Christ is not unjust, who offered himself for us and is our mediator in heaven, by whose governance of his Church the good are not harmed by the evil who are either unknown or tolerated for the sake of peace, until he himself comes and separates the tares from the wheat by the reapers sent ahead, and the chaff from the grain by the winnowing fan. Although these men, as must often be said, have brought false accusations, which, even if they were true, would harm nothing of the charity of the good who tolerate everything for the sake of unity within unity, if perhaps they could not even persuade ecclesiastical judges of them when known. Therefore, the offerings of the impious harm those themselves who offer them impiously. For one and the same sacrifice, on account of the name of God which is invoked there and is always holy, becomes for each person what the heart with which he approaches to receive it is like; for he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment for himself. He does not say "for others," but "for himself." Therefore, he who eats and drinks worthily eats and drinks grace for himself.

Let them, then, see whether they worthily partake, who among so many parents and children, husbands and wives, among so many—what is most important—heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ scattered throughout the whole world, have divided them by a nefarious schism, when they could, if they were good and truly accused the wicked, fruitfully tolerate for the sake of Christ's peace what they perniciously tolerate for the sake of Donatus' faction. In Exodus, he says, it is written: "But the priests who approach the Lord God shall be sanctified, lest the Lord abandon them," and again: "And when the ministers approach the altar of the holy one, they shall not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die," and that in Leviticus: "A man who has a blemish or defect shall not approach to offer gifts to God." It is good that they propose these testimonies from the old books. Let them tell me, then, to which saint, with regard to spiritual salvation, a wicked or blemished priest was harmful, whether among the priests or among the people. Where Moses and Aaron were, there were sacrilegious murmurers, whom God always threatened to destroy from His face; where Caiaphas and others like him were, there were Zacharias, there Simeon and other good men; where Saul was, there was David; where Jeremiah, where Isaiah, where Daniel, where Ezekiel were, there were wicked priests and wicked peoples; but each one carried his own burden.

I omit to say with what criminal pride it is asserted that there is no one among their colleagues, or even that they themselves are not without some blemish and defect—not of the body, but, what is worse, of character. When we begin to deal with them on this point, they reply that it matters what kind of blemish and what kind of defect it is, as if Scripture had made a distinction when it says: "A man who has a blemish or defect shall not approach to offer gifts to God." Had no blemish and defect, I do not say Optatus, but Parmenianus himself, or Donatus himself? But these men are so blinded by their love of men and with unchaste heart do not hesitate to equate the adulterers of their own mind with the one legitimate husband, that they contend that what could be said only of the Lord Jesus Christ was also perfect in Donatus. Who will give to my eyes a fountain of tears? What groan befitting this crime is wrung from a stricken breast? But let them meanwhile consider whether at least Optatus had any blemish or any defect; they are not so blind as to answer that his life was entirely immaculate and free from every defect. Why, then, did he approach to offer gifts to God, and why did the rest receive from him with joined hands what a blemished and defective man had offered? Let them consider in their other members whether drunkenness is no blemish; but first let them read to what criminal deeds the apostle Paul has joined drunkards; whether avarice is no blemish, which the same apostle so detests that he compares it to the service of idols.

Those, however, who think most rightly understand that any human being, although it may not be absurd to say that he lives most justly for the sake of human society, cannot yet be without some vice as long as the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and: "he who is born of God does not sin," and: "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." For although, insofar as we are born of God, we do not sin, yet there still remains in us also that which we are from Adam, because death has not yet been swallowed up in victory, which is promised even in the resurrection of the bodies, so that we may be in every way blessed and immaculate and incorrupt, who are already sons of God according to faith, but according to form what we shall be has not yet appeared. For we are saved not yet in reality, but in hope. But hope which is seen is not hope. For what does one see, what does he hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with patience. But as long as we wait with patience for the redemption of our body, let us not dare to say that we are free from every vice, lest pride itself be the most monstrous vice, and let us at last wake up and see that in the priests of that time, when bodily vices were avoided, that one was prefigured who, though he was God, became man for our sake, the only truly immaculate lamb and priest without vice.

And so even then the priest alone entered the holy of holies, while the people stood outside, just as now that priest after the resurrection entered into the secret places of the heavens, to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father, while the people whose priest he is still groan outside. For with the bishop the people are inside and pray with him and, as if subscribing, respond 'amen' to his words. So much so that then, when without any stain and without any vice, because minds could not, the bodies of priests were sought, that one alone was prefigured, not these proud and impious ones, who with a fornicating soul do not jealously guard the spouse, but dare to show themselves off in place of the spouse. In the Gospel, he says, it is written: God will not hear sinners; but if someone worships the Lord and does his will, he will hear him. And here the answer is straightforward. For if two pray at the same time, one a sinner and the other one who worships the Lord and does his will, undoubtedly he hears that one, he does not hear that one. What then does this testimony mean for itself, or how do they think it is to be adduced on their behalf, when by these words the good among the wicked are made most secure, and no cause of bodily separation exists, so that men are separated even from the good by spiritual discord in a nefarious schism, since the wicked among the good can be unheard because of their unfaithfulness and the good among the wicked can be heard because of their faith?

For God, who is the inspector of the heart, does not err, so as to hear or reject one person in place of another. Or do they say these things in order that it be understood that a wicked bishop is not heard when he prays for the people? Even if that were so, the people, if they are good and faithful, ought not to be anxious about it. For that Scripture makes them secure, which says: "Brothers, I write this to you, that you may not sin; and if anyone has sinned, we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins." Let them hear with what truthful and pious humility it was spoken, if they have ears with which to hear. For John had said: "I have written this to you, that you may not sin." If he had continued so as to say: "and if anyone has sinned, you have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and He Himself is the propitiation for your sins," he would have seemed to separate himself from sinners, as if he no longer needed the propitiation which is made through the mediator sitting at the right hand of the Father and interceding for us. That, of course, would be said not only arrogantly, but also falsely. But if he had even said it thus: "I have written this to you, that you may not sin; and if anyone has sinned, you have me as a mediator before the Father, I intercede for your sins," just as Parmenianus in some passage placed the bishop as mediator between the people and God, who among good and faithful Christians would endure him, who would not look upon him as an antichrist rather than as an apostle of Christ?

And yet these worn-out vessels bear the smoky pride of those men and cannot contain the Holy Spirit, so as to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace and to be secure in all their prayers concerning the one mediator. For all Christians commend one another to each other in their prayers. But the one for whom no one intercedes, but who himself intercedes for all, is the one true mediator, whose type was prefigured in the priest of the Old Testament, and there no one is found to have prayed for the priest. The apostle Paul, however, although he is a principal member under the head, yet because he is a member of the body of Christ and knew that not through a figure into the inner parts of the veil to the holy of holies, but through the expressed and fulfilled truth into the inner parts of heaven to a sanctity not imaginary but eternal, the greatest and truest priest had entered for us, he himself commends himself even to the prayers of the church and does not make himself a mediator between the people and God, so that all the members of the body of Christ pray for one another, because the members are solicitous for one another, and if one member suffers, all the members suffer together, and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together; and thus the prayer of all the members still laboring on earth for one another ascends to the head which has gone before into heaven, in whom is the propitiation for our sins.

For if Paul were the mediator, then certainly his fellow apostles would also be, and thus there would be many mediators, nor would the reasoning by which Paul said: "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" hold true for him. In whom we also are one, if we preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace and do not abandon the good because of the bad, but endure the bad for the sake of the good, lest, when we wish to defend what we have abandoned in rash presumption without knowing them, we be compelled by a greater crime to condemn the unheard. What of the fact that in the Scriptures we find Balaam, a prophet not from the people of Israel but a foreigner hired by an enemy to curse the people of God, turned by the Lord to blessing, whose words of blessing we all hear and read, and although he had something else in his intention, yet the words of his prayer are good and are heard by the Lord on behalf of the people. Hence it is not surprising that good words spoken in prayers on behalf of the people, even if spoken by evil bishops, are nevertheless heard not for the perversity of the leaders but for the devotion of the peoples. However, what is written in the Gospel: "God does not hear a sinner; but if someone worships the Lord and does his will, he will hear him," was not said by the Lord, but by that man who already had his bodily eyes restored, but the eyes of his heart were not yet open, so that he still thought the Lord himself was a prophet. For later, having recognized him as the Son of God, he humbly adored him.

The Lord himself, when the publican and the Pharisee were praying in one temple, says that the sinner confessing his sins is more justified than the Pharisee boasting of his merits, to whom these men are similar. For although the justified man ceased to be a sinner, yet in order to be justified, the sinner was praying and confessing his sins, and having been heard, he was justified, so that he ceased to be a sinner. Therefore, he would not cease to be a sinner unless the sinner were first heard. For this reason, not every sinner is heard, but yet not every sinner is unheard, as truth bears witness. They also object to what is said in the Psalms: "But to the sinner God says: Why do you set forth my justifications and take up my testament through your mouth? But you have hated discipline and cast aside my words, my precepts behind you. If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you placed your portion. Sitting, you slandered your brother and placed a scandal against your mother's son." But let them sometimes open the ears of their heart and cease to be those who understand neither what they say nor what they affirm. For they attend to the saying to the sinner: "Why do you set forth my justifications and take up my testament through your mouth?" and they do not understand that this is said so that he may know that the words of God which he pronounces with his mouth profit him nothing, if he himself does not do what he says, yet they profit others who hear and act even through evil men.

What the Lord commands, the Lord himself teaches in the Gospel, saying of the Pharisees: "They sit in the chair of Moses. Do what they say, but do not do what they do. For they speak and do not act." And would that they were willing to behold themselves in these words, which they recalled from the Psalm, as in a mirror—how they cast the words of God behind them, who proclaim peace to the peoples and do not love peace; how they hate discipline, who dare to condemn the unheard world and, because they suffer temporal troubles according to the discipline of divine mercy for their deserts—or rather far less than their deserts, given the audacity of such fury—they do not confess that their sins are punished, but boast that their merits are crowned. I do not say that they have run together with a thief, for a robber is worse than a thief, which Optatus was everywhere proclaimed to be. Or do they perhaps not place their own portion with adulterers, who allow drunken herds of their own nuns, mingled day and night with drunken herds of Circumcellions, to wander shamefully?

Do not those who sit and slander their brothers, who because of certain men they could not convict, contend that those spread throughout the whole world in Christ's inheritance are not Christians, and thus place a most pernicious scandal against the son of their own mother—that is, against one still a little child in faith, to be nourished with the milk of the sacraments—while he, as yet unable to follow God the Father, follows a weak man and, enticed by a feigned and shadowy appearance of truth, is cruelly torn away from the bond of unity? But if those in the same party who do no evil are displeased by the evil deeds of the others, and believe that the crimes of others do not harm them—crimes which they groan and grieve over happening among them—why do they perniciously tolerate in the common sacrilege of schism what they could fruitfully tolerate in the integrity of unity? For they can say, if indeed, taught by the events themselves, they ever wake up, they can say that the evils of individuals do not harm the others who neither commit nor approve such things; but that the sacrilege of schism is not an evil of individuals, but pertains to all who do not communicate with Catholic unity, they can very easily be convicted, even if they confess it with the greatest difficulty.

For by the same reason that in their communion the crimes of others do not pertain to others, by that reason schism is the crime of all, because, when they say among themselves that they cannot be stained by the crimes of others, they must at the same time confess that they had no cause to depart from unity, where the crimes of others could not stain them, and therefore they are bound together equally by the most open crime of schism as by a single deadly chain. But Jeremiah prophesied, they say. What did Jeremiah prophesy? That those who abandon God do not have true baptism, they say. For he says: "The sky waited over this and shuddered much more vehemently," says the Lord, "because this people did two wicked things: they abandoned me, the fountain of life, and dug for themselves worn-out cisterns that cannot hold water"; and again: "It has become for me," he says, "like false water having no faith"; and that which is written: "He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit?"; and that in the Psalms: "The oil of a sinner shall not anoint my head"; and again elsewhere: "Flies that cause death destroy the oil of sweetness"; and elsewhere: "For the holy spirit of discipline will flee from a counterfeit and will withdraw itself from thoughts that are without understanding." If all these things are to be understood in the way that they are understood by these men, the reasoning of truth fits neither us nor them.

If, however, I show that it is to be understood in another way, they are disturbed only by their own perversity, and, so that they may not be disturbed, they flee to the Catholic understanding, and where they find an exit for their response, there they are ensnared by the crime of schism. For they themselves certainly have—I do not say: 'they are such', but I say this which they either admit or most insanely deny—they themselves therefore have those who forsake God, who is the fountain of living water, that is, those living wickedly. For God is forsaken not by feet but by the heart. They also have liars and those having no faith, that is, those professing one thing and living otherwise. They certainly have the dead. For if the apostle does not grant delicacies to a more delicate and weaker sex, saying of the widow: 'she who lives in delights, though living, is dead', let them ask whether among them any men, and what is more, any superiors or ministers, live in delights, and thus if they dare, let them declare that they have no dead and are better than that church whose angel, in the figure of its superiors or souls, is said not to live but to be dead, and yet it is numbered among the seven churches, nor is it separated from the body of Christ, but commands for living are even given to it persevering in unity. I pass over what they said in their council against the Maximianists: 'Like the example of the Egyptians perishing, the shores are full of corpses.

Among the number of the dead, Felicianus is now inside, who, while still dead, baptizes; or, if he has already revived, he has with him those whom he baptized while dead in schism. They certainly have sinners. For if anyone who seems great to themselves among them is questioned, they do not deny that they themselves are sinners. For they do not beat their breasts, or if they do so, they do it deceptively—which, if that is the case, then at least at that time they unhappily sin by deceiving their people with feigned humility—or they do not say in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” This is certainly not said about those sins which were forgiven in the regeneration of baptism, but about those which the weakness of human life daily contracts from the most bitter waves of the world, for the healing of which remedies are provided by alms, fasts, and prayers, so that in prayer it is said what is done in alms. For forgiving a sin which another has committed against you, so that God may also forgive you, is a great work of mercy. But if they say this in prayer falsely, not truthfully, thinking they have nothing for God to forgive them, that itself is an inexpiable sacrilege, that itself is impious and insane pride, which is certainly a monstrous sin. For what shall I say about dying flies, when we show that among them, not only those who are about to die, but those already dead, are found in multiple ways, whether they admit it or are convicted?

But as for the feigned ones, whom the spirit of discipline flees and who live wickedly without understanding, let them consider how many such they have among themselves, according to what was said above. For also those who are hidden there as evil—which is certain from the fact that they are often exposed, convicted, and condemned not only for recent deeds but also for an old habit of crimes, which could be concealed for a long time by the most cunning pretense—these are certainly more feigned, who deceive by pretending to be good. If, therefore, these things are to be understood as these people understand them, how will their reasoning be able to stand, as to why among those who abandon God by living wickedly, whether hidden or known, they do not become worn-out pools that cannot hold water, if the sacrament of baptism is to be understood in this passage? Why are their liars and unbelievers believed to give or have not a lying water but a true one? Why does the washing of those who are baptized by their dead ones profit something? Why do their sinners anoint the heads of others with oil? What did the dying or dead flies there deserve, that they do not destroy the oil of sweetness? By what privilege are those who are feigned there protected—that is, those who cover the wolf with the skin of righteousness—so that the spirit of discipline does not flee them? Or if the spirit of discipline does flee them, how is it given through them to those baptized? For here it cannot be said what they are accustomed to say most ineptly and impudently, that someone can be baptized by an evil person if the malice of the baptizer is hidden.

For he who is feigned is all the more feigned the more he lies hidden. Therefore, if the Holy Spirit withdraws from such a one, what hope will there be for the baptized, if the merit of the baptizing man is to be considered in that grace of God? Here they find absolutely nothing to answer, because they deny that they have open wicked men among them. In this, indeed, they are most clearly refuted. But what is that to us? It is enough for us for the necessary point of the case that they cannot deny that feigned good men, that is, hidden evil men, exist among them. For they are refuted by many who, while living among them with depraved and criminal morals and having long lain hidden through that very feigning, were at length exposed and expelled. Therefore, if they are unwilling that we believe that there are still some such there, at least those who were expelled—while they lay hidden in that same feigning and the Holy Spirit fled from them, concerning whom it is written: "For the holy spirit of discipline will flee the feigned"—how were they able to baptize? Why are not at least those who are alive reviewed, so that they may receive baptism, which they certainly could not receive from the feigned, whom the Holy Spirit was deserting? But if they say: "The Holy Spirit, indeed, was absent to the feigned givers for justifying, but was present to the believing receivers for washing, through the ineffable efficacy of its power, being easily able to do both—to flee those and to foster these, to condemn those and to cleanse these"—as they solve this question for themselves, let them at the same time see that it is solved for us.

But what is understood in this sentence of holy scripture—which they themselves, not understanding it and yet putting it forward as if on their own side, thrust upon us to be refuted by their own arguments—we remind that it is to be understood in nearly all such questions, namely, that all sacraments, while they harm those who handle them unworthily, nevertheless benefit those who receive them worthily through such persons, just as also the word of God, concerning which it is said: "Do what they say, but do not do what they do." For what prevents me from understanding "digging worn-out pits that cannot hold water" as being turned to earthly pleasure and being unable to sustain the Holy Spirit, whom who that is in any way a Christian does not know is signified by the name "water" in the Gospel? Likewise, "deceitful water having no faith" can be understood not as false baptism, but as a deceitful and faithless people—not counting the truthful and faithful, but only among those who are deceitful and faithless. For let them read the Apocalypse, where peoples are sometimes signified by the term "waters," and let them not bring a charge against themselves first and more readily than against us. For thus it is said to John: "The waters which you saw, upon which that harlot sits, are peoples and crowds and nations and tongues.

And what is written: “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?”—so that I may for the time being defer a more careful inquiry into these words—I most safely take to refer to the baptisms of pagans, because they worship men who are dead both to righteousness and to this life, in whose name they baptize. For although the priests themselves are also said to be dead through impiety, it is not understood on their account, but on account of their dead gods, in reference to which it is said: “Our God is a living God.” Therefore, even among Christians there are some leaders or ministers who are dead through their own iniquity and impiety, yet He of whom it is said in the Gospel, “This is He who baptizes,” lives, because, as the apostle says, Christ, rising from the dead, no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over Him. As for “the oil of a sinner,” the psalm itself indicates most clearly how it is to be understood. For it says: “The just man will correct me in mercy and will rebuke me; but the oil of a sinner will not anoint my head.” From this it is evident that by “the oil of a sinner” the flatteries of a flatterer are signified, which, having been rejected and detested, he chooses to be corrected and rebuked by a just man, because the just man, doing this not with the deceitful smoothness of flattery but with the truthful harshness of reproof, does it much more mercifully.

Hence also that passage in the Apocalypse: “I, whom I love, I reprove and chastise,” and that in Solomon: “Better are the wounds of a friend than the voluntary kisses of an enemy,” and many such things are found. But the oil of gentleness—that is, the good odor through the good reputation of Christians—those men destroy who, about to live wickedly and to return to the death of their own iniquities, rush in in great numbers so that sins may be forgiven them through baptism and they may return to them anew. For I think they have been compared to flies because of their multitude. But those destroy the oil of gentleness who do not look at the grace of God itself, but at the habits of men, and because, just as grains among chaff are not seen, so the pious living among the crowds of the wicked do not easily appear, they, offended in a fleshly way, are either delayed or altogether recoil from receiving eternal salvation. Moreover, that there is a good odor in the good reputation of Christians living rightly, the apostle teaches, saying: “We are the good odor of Christ in every place.” On the other hand, those to whom it is said: “For the name of God is blasphemed by you among the Gentiles,” certainly destroy the oil of gentleness. Thus, then, these things have other, purer interpretations, which if they follow, they themselves are also freed from the straits of those questions. But their interpretation, if it is not confirmed by us, involves only themselves; if, however, it is confirmed by us, it involves both of us.

What need is there now to discuss more? Unless perhaps that point will move someone, that when Parmenianus wished to prove that carnal men cannot beget spiritual sons, he added a testimony from the Gospel: that which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit—as if we were saying that any man by himself begets spiritual sons, and not through the Gospel, in whose preaching the Holy Spirit works to beget spiritual sons in baptism, even when he flees a feigned minister, as we learned above. And therefore, if the Apostle, when speaking to such sons, had said, “I begot you,” and had not added, “in Christ Jesus through the Gospel,” no believer would piously confess himself born of him. But the Gospel was also preached by the thief Judas without detriment to the believers, and they themselves also concede that, when the Holy Spirit flees feigned men—that is, hidden evil men—spiritual sons are nevertheless begotten through their ministry. For who would endure such madness, that when someone perhaps calls a carnal man a begetter of sons from a wife, he would call an adulterer spiritual? “Far be it,” he says, “that I should think this.” How then could a hidden adulterer, when he was set over them as a leader, propagate spiritual sons, if carnal men cannot do this? Or was it perhaps that then Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or perhaps an angel baptized through his hands?

If, therefore, a man baptizes when the baptizer is manifestly good, but when the baptizer is secretly evil, then God baptizes or an angel, and each one is spiritually born such as the one by whom he is baptized, let those who desire baptism wish that the men through whom they are baptized be not manifestly good but secretly evil, so that they may merit to be reborn more holily by God or an angel baptizing. If they think to avoid this absurdity, let them confess that through any man, when someone is baptized with Christ’s baptism, it is Christ who baptizes, of whom alone it is said: This is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. For that passage from the Gospel: “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone sins, they will be forgiven; and if you hold them against anyone, they will be held.” This would be against us, forcing us to confess that this is done by men, not through men, if, after he said: “And I send you,” he had immediately subjoined: “If you forgive anyone sins, they will be forgiven; and if you hold them against anyone, they will be held.” But since it is interposed: “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’” and then it is added that through them either remission or retention of sins is effected, it is sufficiently shown that they themselves do not do this, but that it is the Holy Spirit who does it through them, as he says in another place: “For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit who is in you.

But the Holy Spirit is present in the overseer or minister of the Church in such a way that, if he is not a pretender, the Spirit works through him both for his own reward in eternal salvation and for the regeneration or edification of those who are either consecrated or evangelized through him. But if he is a pretender, since it is most truly written, "For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from a pretender," the Spirit indeed abandons his salvation and withdraws from his thoughts which are without understanding, yet does not abandon his ministry, through which the Spirit works the salvation of others by his agency. For this reason the Apostle says: "For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me," that is, it benefits those to whom I dispense it, not me who am a pretender. For he who acts unwillingly because of carnal advantages and pleasures, which he would abandon if he could have them otherwise, is certainly a pretender. Therefore he does not say, "If I act unwillingly, I do no good for those towards whom I act," but he only alienates himself from the reward of salvation, not also those to whom even a bad servant dispenses the Lord's provisions. But because the Apostle was not such, but rather such that he acted willingly, that is, he dispensed gratuitous grace with the piety of a chaste heart, the Holy Spirit also worked his reward through him, which, as he himself says, the Lord, a just judge, will give him on that day.

those, however, who announced the gospel not chastely, who indeed announced nothing other than the truth, that is, Christ, yet not with the truth of their own heart but on the occasion of their own advantages, He allows them to announce and rejoices not indeed for them, but for those who were being saved through them, holding the precept of the one who says: do what they say, but do not do what they do. For they say and do not do. For thus the Apostle speaks to the Philippians: some, he says, preach Christ through envy and contention, others indeed through good will; some from charity, knowing that I am placed in the defense of the Gospel; others indeed through obstinacy announce Christ not chastely, thinking that tribulation is stirred up by my chains. For what? In every way, whether by occasion or by truth, is Christ announced? And in this I rejoice, and I will rejoice. Would He permit them to preach Christ, even though they preached the truth of the Gospel not in the truthful chastity of their own heart, would He rejoice in the preaching of such men, unless He knew that for them it was pernicious to announce a chaste thing unchastely, but for those who, hearing good and true things through them, were advancing to salvation, it was salutary?

For where not Christ, who is truth, but falsehood and lying are proclaimed, He most openly forbids, saying in the letter to the Galatians: "If anyone evangelizes to you beyond what you have received, let him be anathema," and likewise to Timothy: "As I asked you," he says, "that you should remain at Ephesus, when I was going into Macedonia, so that you might warn certain persons not to teach otherwise." But those envious, contentious, obstinate, unchaste persons, seeking an occasion to satisfy their own evil will—because the Holy Spirit so fled from their fabrication that it did not abandon their ministry through which Christ was preached by them—He not only permits them to act, but even rejoices that they act. We bring forth these proofs from the holy scriptures, so that it may appear that nothing is more grave than the sacrilege of schism, because there is no just necessity for cutting off unity, since the good tolerate the evil who will in no way spiritually harm them, precisely so that they are not spiritually separated from the good, when the severity of discipline is restrained or deferred by consideration for preserving peace; which severity, however, security exercises when it appears that something can be vindicated by ecclesiastical judgment for wholesome correction without the wound of schism. For we say rather: "The name of the Lord belongs to those who fear him," even though they are mixed among the crowds of those who do not fear him, and that which the apostle says: "The Lord knows who are his," and "Let every one who invokes the name of the Lord depart from injustice.

For if, for the sake of the good of peace, lest before the time when the tares are gathered the wheat also be uprooted together with them, someone is compelled by necessity to be among the unjust, let him nevertheless withdraw from injustice, and let him securely invoke the name of the Lord. For at the same time he both withdraws from the unjust and departs from them and is separated from them in heart, so that he may deserve to be separated from such persons even in body at the end. And that which is written: "There is no fair praise in the mouth of a sinner," is certainly fair in the mouth of the faithful. But just as each one has his own mouth, so each one has his own burden, nor is anyone wounded by another's mouth without the consent of his own heart. However, when the preaching of God proceeds from the mouth of a sinner, it must be asked what kind of sinner the Scripture intended to signify in this passage. For even the publican who was justified was certainly a sinner, more so than that Pharisee. For if his sins were not true, then the confession of sins was false; but if that confession on account of which he also deserved to be justified was true, then without doubt the sins were true. I would say this most truly also about the prayer of holy Daniel, who indeed truthfully says: "When I prayed and confessed my sins and the sins of my people." In the mouth, therefore, of which sinner is fair praise not found, except especially of the liar and the hypocrite, whom the holy spirit of discipline will flee?

Yet when he speaks the truth, it is not beautiful in his mouth, because it is not attributed to him whose partaker he is not; just as the prophecy was not beautiful in the mouth of Caiaphas, the high priest of the priests, who did not know what he said, but prophesied because he was high priest. Nevertheless, in itself, the praise of God is beautiful in the ears of those who hear and in the heart of those who believe. Moreover, Parmenianus even dares to misuse the apostle's saying, as if to insult those whom he denies have baptism and therefore says they cannot give it. "For what do you have," he says, "that you have not received?" To pass over for the moment where and why the apostle says this—which is made clear by the context of his own epistle—if he wishes this to be understood about baptism, and if he who does not have cannot give, and he does not have who has not received, so that the saying "For what do you have that you have not received?" might somehow support him, I ask whether one who has received among them does not have it. If they say, "He has it," I ask whether he loses it if he departs from them. If they say, "He loses it," he must be baptized again if he returns, so that what he lost can be restored to him. But if this is not done, nor does anyone say it should be done, then he had not lost it. Further, if he received it and did not lack it, he certainly has what he received, and therefore the saying "For what do you have that you have not received?" cannot be applied to him according to their understanding. Now turn your mind to the very origin of the schism.

Whatever they may think of Caecilianus, whom we believe innocent, he was without doubt baptized in unity; for that division had not yet occurred. Let us suppose, as they wish, that he himself withdrew from unity; he certainly did not lose what he had received. For if he were to return, he would not be baptized again, in order to recover what he had lost. Moreover, if he had not been deprived of what he had received, he certainly still possessed it. Therefore, not even to him could it be said, according to their perverse understanding: "What do you have that you did not receive?" Much less can this be said to one who received from the Lord through Caecilianus. For why could a man who is not joined to you not receive what he did not have through one who did not lose it when he withdrew from you? How much more shamelessly, then, is it said to the whole world: "What do you have that you did not receive?" Whence the connection of the sacrament itself came into Africa, which through the crime of no traitor could lose the promise of God, who with the clearest pledge says to Abraham: "In your seed all nations shall be blessed," even if these men had been not impious slanderers of their brethren but true examiners of crimes.

For that which some of them, when overcome by the truth, have begun to say—namely, that one who departs from the Church does not lose baptism, but does lose the right to administer it—is shown in many ways to be said groundlessly and vainly. First, because no reason is shown why he who cannot lose baptism itself can lose the right to administer it. For each is a sacrament and is given to a man by a kind of consecration: the one when he is baptized, the other when he is ordained; and therefore in the Catholic Church neither is permitted to be repeated. For if, when those coming from that same faction, even prelates, have been received in the peace of unity after the error of schism has been corrected, and it has seemed necessary that they should hold the same offices which they held, they are not ordained again; but just as baptism in them, so ordination remained intact, because the defect had been in the severance, which the peace of unity corrected, not in the sacraments, which are the same wherever they are. And when it is judged expedient for the Church that their prelates coming into Catholic fellowship should not administer their offices there, nevertheless the sacraments of ordination themselves are not taken away from them, but remain upon them. And therefore hands are not laid on them before the people, lest injury be done not to the man but to the sacrament itself. And if this is done in ignorance and the deed is not defended obstinately, but is piously corrected when known, pardon is easily obtained.

For our God is not a God of discord, but of peace, and the sacraments of the Church are not in those who have withdrawn from the Church, but those who have withdrawn are themselves enemies. Just as they have in baptism that which can be given through them, so in ordination they have the right of giving; both indeed to their own ruin, as long as they do not have the charity of unity. But yet it is one thing not to have, another to have perniciously, another to have salubriously. What is not had must be given when there is need to give; what is perniciously had, after the perniciousness has been removed by correction, must be dealt with so that it may be had salubriously. Moreover, even if a layman, compelled by some necessity of a dying person, gives what he himself learned how it should be given when he received it, I do not know whether anyone would piously say that it should be repeated. For if it is done without any compelling necessity, it is a usurpation of another's office; but if necessity presses, it is either no sin or a venial one. But even if it is usurped without any necessity and given by anyone to anyone, what has been given cannot be said not to have been given, although it can rightly be said to have been given illicitly. Therefore, an illicit usurpation is corrected by the disposition of one who recollects and repents. But if it is not corrected, what has been given will remain for the punishment of the usurper, either of the one who gave illicitly or of the one who received illicitly, yet it will not be considered as not given. And in no way will the royal insignia, usurped by private individuals, be violated by a devoted soldier.

If, however, some persons secretly and irregularly, not in the public mints, were to stamp gold or silver or bronze, when they are caught, would not the recognized royal mark, after they have been punished or set free by indulgence, be gathered into the royal treasuries? Or if someone, whether a deserter or one who has never served at all, were to mark a private individual with a military mark, would not that marked person, when caught, be punished as a deserter, and all the more severely if he can prove that he never served at all, while the most audacious marker, if he betrays him, is punished along with him? But if perhaps that non-soldier, trembling at the military brand on his body, were to flee to the emperor's clemency and, having poured forth a prayer and obtained pardon, were to begin to serve, would that brand be sought again from the man now freed and corrected, and would it not rather be recognized and approved? Or are Christian sacraments less permanent than these bodily marks, when we see that even apostates do not lack baptism, which, when they return through penance, is not restored to them, and therefore is judged to have been incapable of being lost? Or was the military analogy not to be drawn, when the Apostle draws from the contests of the arena and openly declares: "No one serving God entangles himself in secular affairs, so as to please the one to whom he has proved himself"?

And this indeed is another question, whether baptism can be given by those who have never been Christians, and nothing is to be rashly affirmed on this without the authority of a council as great as such a matter requires. But concerning those who have been separated from the unity of the Catholic Church, there is no longer any question: that they both have and can give baptism, and that they have it perniciously and give it perniciously outside the bond of peace. For this has already been discussed, considered, examined, and established in the unity of the whole world. But if we are acting wrongly, let them themselves explain how the sacrament of baptism cannot be lost and the sacrament of ordination can be lost, since they say: a person departing from the Church does not lose baptism, but does lose the right to give it. For if both are sacraments, which no one doubts, why is that one not lost and that one lost? No injury should be done to either sacrament. If holy things flee from the wicked, let both flee; if holy things remain inviolably in the wicked, let both remain. If they say: 'baptism is rightly given only in the true Church,' the answer is given to them: 'baptism is rightly held only in the true Church.' Why can it not be given where it is not rightly given, when it can be held where it is not rightly held? Or is it because not having is one thing, and not having rightly is another? So too, not giving is one thing, and not giving rightly is another.

Just as one who departs from unity does not rightly possess, but nevertheless does possess, and therefore it is not given back to him when he returns, so also one who departs from unity does not rightly give, but nevertheless does give, and therefore what he has received from him is not repeated for one coming to unity. But they contend that what is not rightly given is not given at all. What if another should contend that what is not rightly possessed cannot be possessed at all? Do we not cry out against both, and say that he who has departed from unity does indeed possess, but does not rightly possess? Therefore, if they wish that he should hear what we cry out in like manner, let them themselves hear us crying out that he who departs from unity does indeed give, but does not rightly give. For this reason, just as what he had outside is not given back to the one returning, so what he had received outside is not to be repeated for the one coming. Hence it is consequently understood that the perversity of men is to be corrected, but the sanctity of the sacraments is in no perverse person to be violated; for it is established that it remains undefiled and inviolable in perverse and wicked men, whether in those who are inside or in those who are outside. And when they are said to pollute them, it is said as far as it lies in them, while they themselves remain undefiled. But in the good they remain for reward, in the evil they remain for judgment.

For even concerning the Spirit, which can in no way be extinguished, it was nevertheless said: "Do not extinguish the Spirit," that is, "As far as it lies in you, do not act as though you were attempting to extinguish the Spirit, or as though you considered the Spirit extinguished." And the name of God can in no way be polluted, and yet it was said: "The son and the father were entering to one girl, in order to pollute the name of their Lord God." And in no way can these men extricate themselves, when it is put to them why the sanctity of the sacrament can be both held and given by one whom God has already inwardly condemned as a criminal, and yet begins to be unable to give it only when he has been condemned by men, although even then he cannot lose it. Finally, why did Felicianus, whom the three hundred and ten condemned with Maximianus and who was long outside in a sacrilegious schism, as they themselves declared in their own council, not only not lose baptism itself, but also not lose the right of giving it? For he was received back in his own honor, just as he had gone out, together with all those whom he had baptized while placed outside, none of them being rebaptized. For if they judged that any of those whom he had baptized while outside ought to be rebaptized, they would be judging that he had lost the right of giving while he was outside; and consequently it would follow that they would also ordain him again, if they rebaptized those. But when they are recalled to the peace of Christ, they are slanderers; when they consult the peace of Donatus, they are dissemblers. What else is this than what their own Tyconius says about them: "What we want is holy"?

Why then does Parmenianus exult with empty boasting and say: the censure of divine law will never permit that a dead man can give life, a wounded man heal, a blind man illuminate, a naked man clothe, a polluted man cleanse? For the Lord raises the dead, the Lord heals the wounded, the Lord illuminates the blind, the Lord clothes the naked, the Lord cleanses the polluted. What does he arrogate to himself that is not of man? Are those who do not sin so alive among them that they are even said to be able to give life, when they cannot give growth? I, he says, planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase. Neither the one who plants is anything, nor the one who waters, but the one who gives the increase is God. How does one who cannot give growth to the living give life to the dead? For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills. Are they so healthy among them that they can even heal the unhealthy? What else do these men do but set themselves up to be blessed in place of the Lord? But those who hope not in man but in God are in no way deceived by them, and sing: bless, my soul, the Lord, and do not forget all his rewards, who becomes propitious for all your iniquities, who heals all your infirmities. If he himself heals all infirmities, he leaves none for Parmenianus to claim he heals. Are there so many lights among them that they can even illuminate?

that not even to him, than whom no greater man arose among those born of women, John the Baptist, does John the Evangelist grant, concerning whom he says: he was not the light, but was to bear witness to the light. The true light was that which illuminates every man coming into this world. If that light illuminates every man, it leaves none whom Parmenianus claims to illuminate, because, although holy men are in a certain sense called lights, yet illuminated lights are one thing, and the illuminating light is another, which alone is that of which the same John the Baptist says: we all have received from its fullness. But who clothes the naked except he who says: bring forth that first robe, and who will clothe this corruptible with incorruption and this mortal with immortality? And is any man said to clothe another with a divine garment, when it is a great thing if he himself deserves to be clothed? Moreover, let him dare to say that he cleanses the polluted, if he first dares to say that he himself is not polluted. For we are indeed cleansed through the grace of God. But not even then will we cleanse anyone, when our cleansing is perfect; how much less now, when the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul! For who will boast that he has a chaste heart, or who will boast that he is clean from sin? For to cleanse and to heal in spiritual matters are equivalent. For just as we are saved in hope, so we are cleansed in hope, in perfect health and in perfect cleanness.

How, then, can we now heal and cleanse, when we will not be able to do so even then, when we are in every way clean and safe? But God, he says, does these things through a man. He does indeed, but He also did them through Judas, whom He sent with the others to preach the gospel, and through the Pharisees, in those who themselves did the good things they heard through them, while they did not do what they said. Finally, why do the wicked and criminal among them, whether when they are hidden or when they are tolerated for the sake of Donatus’ party, give life, heal, enlighten, cleanse? Are they not themselves dead, wounded, blind, polluted? Or is it not the case that among them the blind leading the blind fall together into the pit, because they, by hearing and obeying, follow not them, but the God whom they preach? So it is. But then they preach God, if they gather with Christ; when, however, they scatter what they do not gather with Him, preaching Donatus, not God, the blind following the blind fall together into the pit. But we will treat the question of baptism more fully, with the Lord’s help, when we have responded to all the testimonies of the holy scriptures which Parmenianus believed should be brought against us, he who truly waters his neighbors with the overthrow of iniquity, who gave them such a bad error to drink, that not only does he himself speak not for peace, but for division and schism, but he also persuades the divine books to speak thus.

But among many things I marvel at the man, when he argued that baptism cannot be held unless received, nor can it be received without a giver, that he inserted a testimony from the Gospel: "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven." For someone ignorant of these words could, when this man began to say, "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven," before he said "from heaven," suppose that he was going to say "from Donatus" or "from Parmenianus" or "from someone of the Donatist party" or altogether "from the Donatist party itself." I recognize the Gospel and recall that it is written there: "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven." But is Donatus heaven? Is Parmenianus heaven? Is the Donatist party itself heaven? Indeed, it would not be heaven, even if it were in heaven. For he who says, "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven," would never say, "unless it has been given to him from the sun or from the moon or from the stars," which nevertheless are in heaven; how much less would he say, "unless it has been given to him from the Donatist party," which not only is not heaven nor in heaven, but does not even wish to be in the kingdom of the heavens! And without doubt he would not say that either: "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from the church"; for the church itself receives from heaven. But if he said, "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him by a man...

righteous," these shameless ones would indeed rush in and proclaim themselves righteous, so that anyone who wished to receive might receive from them, and we would not raise the question whether they were righteous or not, but we would easily show that there were even hidden unjust men among them, based on some who had been exposed and expelled, and yet they would not reject them nor say that what had been given and received by such men was not given or received. But even this would be falsely said, if it were said: "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him by a righteous man." For I ask from whom that righteous man himself, from whom another receives, received. If he too received from a righteous man, I inquire about him as well, until from the very head of the human order I come to someone who did not receive from a man, and thus I prove false the claim that a man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him by a man. But what do these ignorant men accomplish through the Gospel testimony, except to remind men that they should at last wake up and notice that truly it is not men who are to be regarded when a man desires to receive something holy, but only that one who gives it from heaven to man, because a man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven? And if they say: "He receives it indeed from heaven, not from a man, but yet through a man," I ask: through what kind of man? If only through a righteous man, then those who among them have received through the most wicked hidden men do not have it; if also through an unjust man, what reason, then, is there for them to rebaptize anyone?

If through an unjust man only a hidden one, then those whom the manifest satellite of Gildo, Optatus, baptized do not have it; if through an unjust man even a manifest one, who yet has not been condemned and cast out from the communion of the Church, then those whom Felicianus of Musti, when he was outside their communion, baptized in the schism of Maximianus do not have it—yet no one rebaptizes those who have now returned with him. Finally, if a man, though from heaven, can receive nothing except through a man, I ask: John the Baptist himself, who said these things, through what man had he received what he had certainly received from heaven? And none is found. And thus the bad cause is refuted by the testimonies he himself produced, because, even if he says that the Son received from the Father and that the Holy Spirit receives from his own, not as if by degrees, but as he himself explained, saying: “Because everything the Father has is mine, therefore I said: he will receive from mine,” yet that a man can receive something divinely without the interposition of a man is testified by John himself by his own example, and by so many saints, before the Son of God became man, and after he rose and ascended into heaven, the one hundred and twenty men who were gathered together, whom the Holy Spirit coming from heaven filled without any man on earth laying on hands; and, with the order of the Church already established, Cornelius the centurion, before his baptism, before the laying on of hands, was filled with the same Holy Spirit together with those who were with him, at which Peter himself marveled.

Therefore no one receives without a giver; but as pertains to the sanctity of baptism, God is present who gives and the man who receives, whether through God giving by himself or through an angel, or through a holy man [or through Peter] or through an unjust man, just as through so many either hidden or manifest ones, whom the servants of the householder are forbidden to gather from the harvest before the time, and whom, like chaff, the Lord's grains, with heart meanwhile separated, do not corporally abandon through temerity but spiritually bear through piety. He who believed wrongly, he says, cannot obtain the sacrament of baptism, because it is written: the perverse cannot be adorned. What then? If someone among them is baptized, who, for example, had thought that Christ began to exist from the time when he was born in the flesh from the virgin Mary, and later, moved by the discourse of truth, when he had discovered that he is the one of whom John says: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, of whom he consequently says: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and he confessed to them his former error and indicated that he was in that error when he was baptized, would they order him to be baptized again?

They would never do so, but would rejoice in the man's inexperienced simplicity, previously corrupted by a carnal opinion, later corrected by the reason of truth; or if such perversity seemed to him pertinaciously defended, and after long resistance he was not corrected but even expelled from the Church, and later, having come to know the truth, he returned, they would judge that he was to be cured by penance, not wounded by a repetition of baptism, even though he confessed that he had held this in his heart even at the time when he had been baptized among them. Therefore, a perverse person cannot be adorned, because the sacrament he had received would not avail him as an ornament if he persisted in perverse faith, but rather to his punishment; yet the sacrament itself, even in a perverse person whom it did not adorn but judged, would remain intact, and therefore the sanctity of that sacrament was in no way to be violated, even when the perversity of that man was to be corrected.

Parmenianus even dares to set before us divine examples, by which he thinks to show that a holy man must be sought, from whom the sacrament should be received. "He himself," he says, "the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, from whom the beginning of spiritual baptism arose, when he was to be baptized according to the will of his Father—is it shown that he came to the faithless and profane Pharisees, or to the most holy John?" But if by this example we are invited to receive baptism, we ought to seek out one inferior to ourselves from whom to be baptized, since the Lord was baptized by one who had foretold that he ought to be baptized by the Lord himself, and who testified that he was unworthy to untie the strap of his sandal. Nay rather—to set aside inquiring more diligently why our Savior himself wished to be baptized, since he wished it for some definite reason—perhaps for this reason, because although he could have immersed himself, he who could also baptize his own baptizer, the Lord wished to be baptized by a servant, and he through whom all things were made by one who was made among all things, in order both to teach humility and to show that it does not matter by whom one is baptized, provided that one is baptized with that baptism with which he ought to be baptized. Nor would he have disdained to be baptized by the Pharisees, if the Pharisees had possessed a baptism of this kind, with which he wished to be baptized for the sake of a certain sacrament.

For when he also had to be circumcised, was John sought out, because this was already customarily done by the Jews? And when the legal sacrifice was to be offered for him, was that temple avoided which he calls a den of thieves? Into that temple certainly both good and evil entered, and the evil did not harm the good, because the Lord, who says, "Be holy, for I also am holy," makes his saints dwell inviolably among the evil, if they guard the sanctity they receive, just as the Lord Jesus himself was polluted by no contagion of malignity among the Jewish people, neither when, following the path of perfect humility, he received those first sacraments under the law, nor when afterwards he lived among the chosen disciples with his betrayer up to the final kiss. For by his example—not only of doing no evil, but also of consenting to no malice—the grains of wheat are safe among the chaff, because they neither do such things nor consent to those who do them, even if in the same field until the harvest, on the same threshing floor until the winnowing, within the same nets until the separation that will take place on the shore, the good tolerate the evil. But these are truly blind leaders of the blind, who see so many evil men among their own number and do not see the way of peace, and persuade men to follow them not in bearing with one another for the sake of the bond of unity, but in dividing from one another for the sacrilege of schism.

For it was said through the prophet to King Jehoshaphat: "O King Jehoshaphat, if you help a sinner or love one whom the Lord hates, therefore the wrath of the Lord was upon you." For who among us says that a sinner is to be helped in that very thing in which he wishes to sin, as Ahab himself, whom Jehoshaphat helped by going with him into battle, when that king scorned the truthful words of the prophet Micaiah? And yet not even thus did the very evil merit of King Ahab harm the innocence of King Jehoshaphat, because the Lord freed him, crying out to Him from the danger of war, but allowed that sacrilegious despiser to fall into the hands of his enemies. And if Jehoshaphat experienced any danger, which the prophet indicates to him came from the Lord's wrath, he had not deserved it by another's sin but by his own, because, as was said to him, he was helping a sinner. But before God his other good deeds prevailed. For thus it is said to him: "If you helped that sinner and are a friend to those who hate the Lord? And in this the wrath from the face of the Lord is upon you. The good words of God are with you in all things, because you removed the groves from the land and prepared your heart to seek God.

But whoever is engaged in the Church of God, where there are also those who seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ, who through envy and contention announce Christ not chastely, and says: "Whether by chance or by truth Christ is announced; and in this I rejoice, and I will rejoice," remains unpolluted and whole among them, because he does not consent to their seeking their own interests, since he blames and rebukes this, nor does he help them to sin, but helps them to that end whereby Christ is more widely proclaimed, and by those who hear and do, through those who say but do not do, Christ is believed in, hoped in, and loved. For the same apostle commands such people, saying: "Do not join with the unfaithful. For what participation has justice with iniquity? What communication has light with darkness? Or what agreement has Christ with Beliar? Or what part has the faithful with the unfaithful? Or what fellowship has the temple of God with idols? For you are temples of the living God." For he says: "Because I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they will be my people. For this reason, depart from among them and separate yourselves, says the Lord, and do not touch the unclean. And I will receive you and I will be a father to you and you will be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." These words, understood carnally by these people, have cut themselves into minute pieces throughout that same Africa.

For they do not understand that no one is joined to the unbelievers except one who either commits the sins of the pagans or favors those who do such things, nor does anyone become a participant in iniquity except one who either does or approves of unjust deeds. But who communicates with darkness except through the darkness of his own consent, when, having abandoned Christ, he follows Beliar? Who places his lot with the unbelievers except one who becomes a partaker of that unbelief? For thus he also ceases to be a temple of God and does not otherwise join himself to idols. But those who are temples of the living God and appear in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation like lamps in the world, possessing the word of life—nothing that they endure for the sake of unity defiles them, nor are they distressed, because God dwells and walks about in them, and they depart from the midst of the wicked and are separated in heart in the meantime, lest, when they wish to do this through the sedition of schism, they be separated from the good spiritually before they are separated from the wicked corporally.

Therefore, they especially refuse to consider what was written, that God said: "Those who glorify me, I will glorify; and whoever scorns me will be scorned." For how do they glorify God, who say that his promises, which he made to our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, could not be fulfilled throughout the whole world—promises which he announced so long beforehand through the prophets and fulfilled through his only Son, who was born to him from the seed of David according to the flesh, so that in him, that is, in the seed of Abraham, all nations would be blessed? How do they glorify God, who say that the Son of God himself spoke in vain when he said: "Let both grow together until the harvest," as if he were false or had deceived, when only the tares have grown throughout the world, while the wheat, apart from the party of Donatus, has failed in the whole world? How do those who think this glorify the Lord, when it is written: "In the breadth of the people is the glory of the king, but in the diminution of the people is the contrition of the prince"? Or how do they not scorn the Lord, who, with incredible rashness of impiety, blow upon his baptism in those whose case they have not heard and about whom they could in no way judge, and dare to arrogate to themselves what belongs to God, receiving back into their own communion, for the sake of Donatus's peace, those whom they have condemned while their honors remain intact, and yet detest, against the peace of the Lord, those whom they have not heard, claiming that baptism, handed down by the apostles in those parts of the world, has perished, while conceding that baptism handed down by Felicianus among the Maximianists has not perished?

Now, how do Catholics not glorify the Lord, who trust that his promises could not be prevented from being fulfilled by any crimes of men, who pursue his sacraments with such due veneration that they demonstrate that even if these have been handled by the unworthy, those sacraments remain in inviolate sanctity, while the unworthy are condemned by their own perversity? Again, they say, it is written: "Do not communicate with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather also rebuke them. For what is done by them in secret is shameful even to speak of." We have already said how these very words are to be understood: that not to communicate is not to consent; which, for the sake of church discipline, is not enough unless they are also rebuked, so that they can be corrected. But these things are to be done while preserving peace and as far as the duty of maintaining unity allows, lest the wheat be uprooted along with the tares. Again, to Timothy, the same apostle says: "Do not," he says, "communicate with the sins of others. Keep yourself chaste." He taught, as a consequence, how what he said earlier is to be understood. For he who keeps himself chaste does not communicate with the sins of others. For if he communicates, he consents; if he consents, he is corrupted; if he is corrupted, he does not keep himself chaste. But at last Parmenianus finally woke up and paid attention to what Tychonius was saying, but in vain; for immediately, out of love for his own opinion, he closed his eyes to the truth. For he says: "But surely, dearest brother, do not the sins of others pollute others?

and this is not to commune with criminals, even if you associate with them, by not doing their deeds. Yet he did not say everything. For it is not enough not to do their deeds, unless they displease you; it is not enough that they displease you, unless you rebuke them. For it is one thing not to do, another not to commune—that is, to consent to those who do—and another also to rebuke. Why, then, when he had begun to see, did he immediately turn away and refuse to go all the way to the end, and set down barely a third of the whole? Or did he think, as they did with the people, that the sentence of truth should also be cut short? We say that whoever does not do evil, nor consents to the one doing it, and rebukes the doer, dwells firm and whole among the wicked like grain among chaff; but he only says, “not to do their deeds.” And yet let us see how he refutes this third part of the whole sentence. “That this is against divine law,” he says, “no one who reveres the law is ignorant.” So far these words can be spoken commonly. For another could also say, “That this is according to divine law, no one who reveres the law is ignorant.” But it is necessary to prove, not to speak. Let us therefore attend to how he proves. “For what good is it,” he says, “to have kept innocence, if you are mixed with the guilty and liable?” Certainly, if it is so, it is not that keeping innocence does no good, but that innocence has not been kept. For no one can rightly be called mixed with the guilty and liable except through the stained consent of conscience.

Whoever fulfills what is written: "to the just man nothing unjust is pleasing," wherever he may be placed, whatever necessity compels him, he cannot be mixed up in iniquities. "But how," he says, "will you be able to remain uncorrupted if you associate with the corrupt?" Quite so, if he associates, that is, if he commits something evil with them or favors those who commit it; but if he does neither, he in no way associates. Moreover, if he adds a third thing, so that he is not sluggish in correcting, but either the just man rebukes in mercy and reproves, or even, if he holds that office and the reason of preserving peace allows it, he also publicly reproves the sinners so that others may fear, and removes them either from some degree of honor or from the communion of the sacraments themselves, and does all this with a love of correcting, not with a hatred of persecuting, he fulfills the fullest duty not only of the most chaste innocence, but also of the most diligent severity. But where other things are hindered, those two, always retained, keep one uncorrupted and chaste, so that he neither does evil nor approves of the deed.

But let us see from where this man derives what he asserts. "For it is written," he says, "a little leaven corrupts the whole lump." Parmenianus said this and went away, and it cannot now be shown to him that in the Donatist party there is not only a little leaven, but much poison from those broken eggs of asps and the already very strong serpents condemned under Primianus and recalled again to Primianus. "But they were corrected," he says. Thanks be to God. If it is true, I do not begrudge it. And would that it were perfectly accomplished. For if returning from the Maximianists to the Donatist party is some degree of correction, how much truer and more perfect a correction is it to return from the Donatist party itself to Catholic unity! And Tyconius indeed said many things by which, in those times and as he knew inwardly, they would not admit that their whole lump was corrupted by their own not small but great leaven—those who accused the whole world of being leavened by the sins of the Africans. But I wonder at these men, if they still like to understand these apostolic words in such a way that they wish to defend Optatus Gildonianus so as not even to concede that he was a little leaven. But if they concede even this, how great do they think their lump is, that it could not be wholly corrupted? Or if it is corrupted only in those to whom Optatus was pleasing, let them learn by experience to understand what they read, because the whole lump is in those to whom what is said pertains entirely, whether good or evil.

But it pertains to those who consent; to those who do not consent, it does not pertain at all, and therefore ecclesiastical discipline must correct it, lest it reach many by persuasion. Where the reason of peace permits this to be done and it is not done, that very negligence incurs guilt and is in danger of consenting through the laziness of correcting. From this rule, that too is to be understood which he subsequently objects, saying it is written: "Let there be for you a legitimate eternal division among your generations between the holy and the irreligious, and between the clean and the unclean." For the better one does this, the more he advances in the Church. For when the herb had grown and borne fruit, then the tares appeared. And although the servants of the householder already divided and distinguished between the two by their knowledge, they are nevertheless ordered to let them grow, and this until the harvest. But enough of this. For what remains is to be considered and treated somewhat more diligently from another beginning.

BOOK THREE. Since every pious rationale and method of ecclesiastical discipline ought especially to regard the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace—which the apostle commanded to be preserved by mutual forbearance, and without which the medicine of punishment is shown to be not only superfluous but also harmful, and therefore no longer even a medicine—those evil children who, not from hatred of others’ wrongs but from zeal for their own contentions, seek either to drag away entire weak congregations entangled by the boastfulness of their own name, or at least to divide them—puffed up with pride, raving with obstinacy, treacherous with slanders, turbulent with seditions—in order not to be shown to lack the light of truth, they put forward the shadow of harsh severity. And they usurp for the sacrilege of schism and for the occasion of excision those things which were commanded in the holy scriptures to be done with a more caustic remedy for correcting fraternal faults, while preserving the sincerity of love and the unity of peace, saying: “Behold, the apostle says: ‘Remove evil from yourselves.’” And they add: “If that evil, certainly, did not harm the whole, it would not be ordered to be removed.