Contra Epistulam Parmeniani

Let us meanwhile consider whether it may not be for a reason that the apostle did not say: “Remove the wicked from your congregation,” but: “Remove evil from yourselves,” because, even when someone is prevented from separating wicked men from the church’s congregation, if he removes evil from himself, he is not mingled with them in heart, and thus spiritually he is not only joined to the good, but also separated from the wicked. For just as in that passage to Timothy, when he had said: “And you shall not share in the sins of others,” as though that man were saying that it could happen that he could not separate some wicked men from the church’s congregation and therefore would be compelled to tolerate them, giving counsel, as it were, as to how he would not share in their sins, he says: “Keep yourself chaste”—for a wicked man can be mingled only with a wicked man, but a good man in no way, even though he moves in the same congregation with them—so also here to the Corinthians, when he had said: “For what have I to do with judging those who are outside?

Do you not judge those who are within? Lest they be disturbed by some multitude of evils so mixed with the grains that they could not be gathered and separated without disturbing them, he says: "Remove evil from yourselves," so that, if perhaps they could not remove the wicked from their congregation, by removing evil from themselves—that is, by not sinning with them nor consenting to or favoring their sinning—they might dwell among them most blamelessly and incorruptibly, because each person consents to evils through his own evil; but if he removes evil from himself, there is no ground on which he can consent to another's evil. Therefore, whoever also despises the discipline of the Church, so that he ceases to warn, rebuke, and reprove the wicked with whom he does not sin and whom he does not favor—even if he holds such a position and the peace of the Church permits separating them even from participation in the sacraments—does not sin by another's evil but by his own. For negligence itself in so great a matter is a grave evil. And so, as the apostle advises, if he removes evil from himself, he will not only remove the audacity of committing or the pestilence of consenting, but also the laziness of correcting and the negligence of punishing, by employing prudence and obedience in what the Lord commanded, lest the grains be harmed. For with that intention, whoever tolerates tares among the wheat, by removing evil from himself, neither communicates with them nor distinguishes and judges them in the meantime until the day. For he does not know what tomorrow will bring.

And therefore, with love preserved, whatever even necessary severity compels to be avenged must be avenged, not without hope of correction. So that this may appear clearly enough, let us examine the entire passage of the apostolic epistle more carefully. "What do you want?" he says. "Shall I come to you with a rod, or in the love of a spirit of gentleness?" Here it already appears that he is speaking about punishment, for which he named the rod. Yet is the rod without love, because he connected it thus: "Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love?" But what follows, "spirit of gentleness," reminds us to understand that even the rod has love. But the love of severity is one thing, the love of gentleness another. Love is indeed one, but it works differently in different things. "Altogether," he says, "fornication is heard of among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, so that someone has his own father's wife." Let us see how he commands them to rage against such a monstrous deed. "And you," he says, "are puffed up, and have you not rather had grief, so that he who did this deed might be removed from your midst?" Why "grief" rather than "anger," unless because if one member suffers, all the members suffer together? And not "grief because he was being removed," but "grief," he says, "so that he might be removed," that is, so that the sorrow of those grieving might ascend to God, and He Himself might remove from their midst the one who did this deed, as He Himself knew how, lest perhaps they, through human inexperience, should uproot the wheat together with it.

When, therefore, necessity compels such vengeance, the humility of those who mourn ought to obtain mercy, which the pride of the raging repels. Nor should the salvation of that very one who is removed from among the brothers be neglected, but it should be done so that such vengeance is useful to him, and it should be done with prayer and entreaty, if he cannot be corrected by rebukes. Therefore, he continues and says: "I, indeed, as one absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as if present, him who has acted thus, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, with you assembled and with my spirit, to hand over such a one, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of our Lord Jesus." What, then, was the apostle doing, except providing for spiritual salvation through the destruction of the flesh, so that either by some punishment or even bodily death, as Ananias and his wife fell before the feet of the apostle Peter, or through penance, since he had been handed over to Satan, he would destroy in himself the wicked concupiscence of the flesh, because he himself also says: "Mortify the members which are upon the earth," among which he also mentions fornication, and again: "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if you mortify the works of the flesh according to the spirit, you will live"? Yet he does not separate fraternal charity from him whom he commands to be separated from the fraternal congregation.

For he says more clearly to the Thessalonians: "But if anyone does not obey our word through the letter, mark him, so that you do not associate with him, that he may be ashamed. And do not regard him as an enemy, but correct him as a brother." Let them at last hear and understand how apostolic love strives, so that by bearing with one another we may study to preserve the unity of spirit in the bond of peace. For here too, after saying: "And do not regard him as an enemy, but correct him as a brother," as if showing why he said this, he immediately added: "But may the God of peace himself give you peace always in every way." Thus also concerning that man who had his father's wife, he rather prescribes mourning and everywhere commends peaceful charity, just as he says of himself: "Lest when I come again, God humble me before you and I mourn for many of those who have sinned before and have not done penance for the impurity and luxury and fornication they have committed." And a little later he says: "I have said before and I say now, as one present a second time and now absent, to those who have sinned before and to all others, that if I come again I will not spare." Therefore he judged by mourning, so that the mercy of God, without corruption of the bond of peace in which the whole of salvation consists, might crush sinners and correct them, just as he is understood to have done concerning that very man who had fornicated with his father's wife.

For it is not found about whom else he means in the second epistle to the same Corinthians, when he says: "For I wrote to you from much tribulation and anguish of heart, through many tears, not that you might be saddened, but that you might know the love which I have more abundantly for you. But if anyone has saddened, he has not saddened me, but in part, so that I may not burden you all. Sufficient for him is this rebuke which comes from many, so that on the contrary you may rather give and console, lest in any way he who is such be swallowed up by greater sadness. For this reason I beseech you, that you confirm your charity toward him. For I wrote also for this, that I might know your obedience, if you are obedient in all things. But if you have granted anything to anyone, I also grant it. For I also, if I have granted anything to anyone, have done so for your sake in the person of Christ, that we may not be possessed by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his designs." What more moderate, what more careful, what more full of pious concern and paternal and maternal charity could be done or said? Just as he applies correction to the one sinning, so to the one corrected and crushed and humbling his heart in penance he wishes to restore consolation, lest, he says, he be swallowed up by greater sadness. But what of that with which he concluded this sentence? "That we may not be possessed," he says, "by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his designs.

He it is who, through the semblance of a kind of just severity, persuades to cruel savagery, seeking nothing else by his most venomous cunning but to corrupt and break the bond of peace and charity, which, if preserved among Christians, renders all his powers ineffective for harm, shatters the snares of his plots, and causes his plans for overthrow to vanish. But even if the apostle spoke about someone else in the second epistle to the Corinthians, yet there too he indicated with how great charity ecclesiastical punishment ought to proceed against anyone. This is that saying which these men, in their misunderstanding, commonly hold as chief among their calumnies: "The just man will correct me in mercy and will reprove me; but the oil of the sinner will not anoint my head." But because these men do not know how to correct in mercy, they have both persecuted the innocence of Caecilianus with savage suspicions and anointed the power of Optatus Gildonianus with the oil of deceitful flattery. For if, for the sake of the bond of peace, they were tolerating the iniquity of Optatus with groans and lamentations, they would certainly not break the true and catholic peace in the holy unity of the whole world, or at least, if that peace had been broken by the nefarious blindness of their predecessors, they would so grieve over it that, having learned from their own experience how many evil men they are compelled to bear for the sake of the Donatist peace, they would extinguish the unappeased calumnies of those men by the peace of their own correction.

But let us return to the continuation of that first epistle to the Corinthians. When the apostle had said: "deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus," repeatedly commending that this ought to be done with the humility of those who mourn, not with the pride of those who rage, he immediately adds: "not your good boasting, or by way of reproach in pronunciation: your good boasting." For so some manuscripts, and especially Latin ones, have it, although the same meaning is maintained in both. For there is no fear that anyone might understand that he said, praising them: "your good boasting," when he had said above: "you are puffed up and have not rather had mourning," and here he immediately adds: "do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?" which can more fittingly be referred to that corruption of empty boasting. For pride, as if from the oldness of the first man, who fell through pride, makes those who are puffed up, with a mind leavened and corrupted, into one lump, who agree among themselves in a similar vanity of boastfulness. And to boast indeed not of one's own sins, but over the sins of another, as if from comparison of one's own innocence, seems a little leaven, because even to boast of one's own iniquities is much leaven; but even that little corrupts the whole lump. For the proud man falls by the merit of pride and begins to wish to boast even by defending his own sins.

Foreseeing this, the same apostle says: "Therefore, let him who thinks he stands beware lest he fall," and again: "If a man has been overtaken in some offense, you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, examining yourself, lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and thus you will fulfill the law of Christ." What is the law of Christ if not: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another"? What is the law of Christ if not: "I give you my peace, I leave you my peace"? Therefore, what he said here: "Bear one another's burdens, and thus you will fulfill the law of Christ," he says elsewhere: "Bearing with one another in love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." For even in that Pharisee there seemed to be a little leaven, because he not only did not grieve for the sinner, but boasted of his own merits over the sinner's sins. But that one came down confessing his sins, justified more than that Pharisee boasting of his merits, because he who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Therefore the apostle continues and says: "Purge out the old leaven, so that you may be a new dough, as you are unleavened." What is "so that you may be" and what is "as you are," if not because there were such ones there, and there were not such ones there, whom he was admonishing by the example of such ones to become such?

Yet he warns all as if they were the same, lest those who were already such despair of those who were not yet such and consider them not belonging to the structure of their body; for he warns them as if they were the same when he says: "that you may be as you are." For those who were already such knew, and through the apostle's admonition they ought to know more and more, that they should tolerate those who were not yet such, so that by tolerating one another in love they might preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace and, bearing one another's burdens, they would certainly fulfill the law of Christ. And because our Lord Jesus Christ, to teach the way of humility, deigned to be humbled even to death on the cross, and like a physician for the sick, he lovingly endured those who sinned, of whom he had said: "There is no need of a physician for the healthy, but for the sick," he immediately set forth the principal example, saying: "For our Passover, Christ, was sacrificed," so that by the example of such great humility they might learn to purge the old leaven, that is, whatever pride from the old man remained in them. "Therefore," he says, "let us celebrate the feast day," not indeed one day but the whole of life, not in old leaven nor in the leaven of malice and malignity, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. For malice and malignity is, as it were, to glory in another's sin, as if one ought to rejoice in his own justice only when he sees that another is not just.

Sincerity, however, is truth, even if someone progresses, to remember what he was and to have much more compassion for the fallen, since he himself was raised from his fall by the mercy of Christ, who humbled himself for sinners without any sin of his own. But lest the sins of others be perniciously abandoned and, as it were, dissemblingly neglected—which is no less a cruelty than that of pride—he continues and says: I wrote to you in my letter not to mix with fornicators, not, of course, with the fornicators of this world or with the avaricious or the plunderers or those serving idols. Otherwise you ought to have left this world; that is, if you separate yourselves from the sinners of this world who are outside the church, you ought to have left this world. For your work in this world is that, to win sinners for Christ for their salvation; which cannot happen if you flee their conversations and companionship. But now, he says, I wrote to you not to mix. If a brother is called a fornicator or a server of idols or avaricious or a slanderer or a drunkard or a plunderer, do not even take food together with such a one. For why should I judge those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But concerning those who are outside, God will judge. Remove evil from yourselves.

See how the apostle came to this statement, the last part of which Parmenian believed was written and quoted: "Remove evil from yourselves." "For," he says, "if it did not harm good and upright men, it would not be ordered to be removed." But he omitted what was said above, from which this conclusion was reached, by which he could have been helped in what he wanted to persuade—that separation from evil men should be made physically—when the apostle says: "Do not even take food together with such men." Why, then, did he not mention what seemed most able to support his intention? For when he strongly insists that physical separation from evil-living men should be made, why does he not use the apostle's testimony saying: "If a brother is called a fornicator or a servant of idols or a covetous man or a slanderer or a drunkard or a robber, do not even take food together with such men," unless because he saw that if he said this, he could be answered: "Do you, then, even if you have no fornicators or servants of idols, or you are ignorant of them, do you see and know no covetous man or slanderer or drunkard or robber among you? Why, then, do you, contrary to the apostle's precept, not only take the food of your table with such men, but also share the feast of the Lord's table?" This, therefore, Parmenian, as I think, tried to avoid, lest he be answered, and so he did not set down what seemed to sound most strongly for his cause.

For if this passage of the apostolic letter had escaped him and had not come to his attention, he would not place from its last part: "Remove evil from yourselves." But now, because we have said this, perhaps these men will dare to deny that they have among themselves the avaricious, or the slanderous, or the drunken, or the rapacious, and they will perhaps attempt to defend Optatus himself, who was most notorious throughout all Africa, whom they endured for so long. Let them say, then, if they can, that they now have a better and more purified church than was the unity itself in the time of the most blessed Cyprian, who, though he was separated from his colleagues by no bodily division, naming none of them individually, but prudently and soberly applying the medicine of a most salutary sharpness, gravely rebuked them in these words, because, while brothers were hungry in the church, they wished to have silver in abundance, seized estates by deceitful frauds, and increased their usury by multiplying interest. And to show most clearly that he was speaking about those with whom he lived in the communion of one church, he consequently added: "What would we not suffer for sins of this kind?" For he did not say "they would suffer" but "we would suffer," which he would by no means have said, since he himself was certainly not such, unless he wished to make it known that he grieved over the deeds of those who were joined to him not only by the unity of the church but also by the fellowship of the college, although he differed from them in life, morals, heart, and intention.

Let them say, then, that their church is now better and that they do not have such colleagues as Cyprianus had within that same unity. Let those who wish believe them and close their eyes to those evils which strike the face of those who dissemble, from their own conduct; I will recall them to those same earlier times of unity and ask them whether, when that great man, the bishop of the Carthaginian church Cyprianus, groaned with the testimony of a free voice about such a bad college, even to the point of those writings which would be handed down to posterity, the church of Christ existed or did not exist. If it existed, I ask how Cyprianus and others like him fulfilled what the apostle commands: if a brother is called a fornicator or a servant of idols or a covetous man or a slanderer or a drunkard or a plunderer, not even to take food together with such a one, when they were eating the Lord’s bread and drinking the Lord’s cup together with those covetous and rapacious men who, while brothers in the church were hungry, would rather have money in abundance, seized estates by deceitful frauds, and increased usury by multiplying interest.

Or are those crimes trivial and to be considered trivial? For they are accustomed to say even this, weighing them not on the fair balance of the divine scriptures, but on the deceitful balance of their own customs. For whatever wickedness and iniquity intoxicates the multitude loses the truth of examination. But the oracles of the heavenly pages are set before men like a most pure mirror, so that there each one may see how great any sin is, which perhaps is great and is despised out of the blind habit of those who live wickedly. Could avarice be more severely accused by the divine utterances than to be shown equal to idolatry and to be called by its name, as the apostle says: "and avarice, which is the service of idols"? Could it be judged worthy of a greater punishment than to be placed among those crimes by which those who are possessed will not possess the kingdom of God? Let them open the eyes of the heart, lest the eyes of the body be open in vain, and let them read the free preacher of truth in that same first epistle to the Corinthians, writing: "Do not err. Neither fornicators, nor those serving idols, nor adulterers, nor effeminate men, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the avaricious, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor plunderers will possess the kingdom of God.

How then did Cyprian and other similar grains of the Lord, in that then-united church, eat the Lord’s bread and drink the Lord’s cup together with the avaricious and rapacious, with those who would not possess the kingdom of God—not laymen or any clerics, but bishops themselves—when the same apostle commands not to mingle with them and cries out not even to take food with such people? Or was it because they could not be physically separated from them, lest they uproot the wheat along with them, that it sufficed for them to be separated in heart from such persons, to be distinguished in life and morals, for the sake of preserving peace and unity, for the sake of the health of the weak and of the grains that were, as it were, still nursing, lest the members of the body of Christ be torn apart by sacrilegious schisms? But behold, I do not force anyone among them to understand it thus; let them themselves explain how that then-glorious church could have been without spot or wrinkle, where brothers in the church were hungry while some wanted to have silver in abundance, where they seized estates by deceitful frauds, where they increased usury by multiplying interest, where they were involved in so many iniquities that through them they would not possess the kingdom of God. But if the glorious church without spot or wrinkle was counted only in those who mourned and groaned over those iniquities which were committed in their midst, whence also, according to the prophecy of the holy Ezekiel, such persons are marked by their own sign.

They deserved to be marked, so that they might escape most safely from the devastation and destruction of the wicked, and they cease to slander the good, who do not work evil through morbid greed, but endure it for the sake of peaceful charity, to whom it is said: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. For this reason the Holy Spirit, through the aforementioned prophet Ezekiel, designated the wicked whom the good tolerate in unity with such a word, that he said they were placed in the midst of the good, because if he said the good were in the midst of the wicked, they would seem to be somehow external and outside. "They groan," he says, "and grieve over the iniquities of my people which are committed in their midst," so that we might think of those wicked not only as not excluded, but even as included. If indeed the church did not exist then, because Cyprian and whoever with him knew those greedy and rapacious men to be what they themselves were not, although they accused them with the heaviest groans and the most illustrious voices, yet they were made of equal lot through this kind of communion, since they did not obey the apostle commanding not even to take food together with such men, and: "Remove evil from yourselves; why do we still labor?" Why do they themselves boast that they have some church, if it had already ceased to exist in those times? Let them say from whom Maiorinus or Donatus was born, so that through them Parmenianus and Primianus might be born.

For what good does it do them that they falsely claim either not to have in their own congregation, or to be unknown to them, the greedy and rapacious with whom the apostle forbids taking food, when there were such men in that church of unity from which they boast of having sprung, in such a way that they try to persuade that it remained only in their own society, that is, in the communion of Donatus? For if they say that the church perishes through communion with such men, why do they not say that it already perished in the time of Cyprian? And thus, finding no origin from which they themselves arose, they would cease to say that the church remained with them, when they say that the whole church perished in earlier times. But if the church always remained, remains, and will remain in the good to whom such things are displeasing, let them at last learn not to understand the apostle’s saying, “Remove evil from yourselves,” in such a way that, by attempting to gather the tares through schisms, they uproot the wheat as well. All this we discuss so that those who read or hear these things may remember that they could never demonstrate, either in those times when events were most recent, or now when the whole world is connected in Christian peace in the Catholic Church with a much firmer consciousness of innocence, that Caecilian or others who adhered to him in concord were tares.

But so that each person may remain secure in the unity of the holy Church and not follow the deserters of that same unity, lest he perish with them, we say this: because, if those had been tares, they ought rather to have been tolerated until the harvest than that the wheat should have been uprooted and separated by the ruinous evil of schism. But someone will say: 'How then will we be able to obey the apostle who commands: "Do not even take food together with such men"? For if he were commanding that only a separation of heart be made from them, he would not say: "I wrote to you in my letter not to mix with fornicators"—not, of course, the fornicators of this world, that is, those who were not Christians, concerning whom he later says: "For why should I judge those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are within? But concerning those who are outside, God will judge." Therefore, since he commands a separation of this kind, which is not made from those evil men who are not Christians, but from those who are Christians—and a separation of heart is to be made from all evil men, and consequently we must also be separated in heart from those evil men who are not Christians—what remains, except that we understand that we are commanded by the apostle that we should not be mixed with certain evil Christians, of the kind he designates, even in that kind of association in which we are mixed with pagans in the very society of human life?

And so in another place: "If someone from among the infidels calls you and you wish to go, eat everything that is set before you, asking no questions; but here, with such as these," he says, "do not even take food together." He therefore permits taking food with infidels, that is, with those who have not yet believed in Christ, among whom he says one should eat what they set out, concerning whom, since they are outside, God will judge; but with those who are inside, that is, if a brother is called a fornicator or a servant of idols or a covetous man or a slanderer or a drunkard or a robber, he forbids even taking food. He therefore urges that the tares be separated from the wheat before the time of harvest. If we are unwilling to do this, since the Lord forbids it, we will tolerate them and persevere in separation of will and heart alone with them, and accordingly also take food with such persons, which the apostle forbids. In this apparent difficulty of the question, I will say nothing new or unusual, but what the soundness of the Church observes: that when any brother, that is, one of the Christians established within the society of the Church, is caught in some such sin as to be deemed worthy of anathema, let this be done where there is no danger of schism, and with that love concerning which he himself elsewhere gives instruction, saying: "Do not consider him an enemy, but correct him as a brother." For it is done not for eradication, but for correction.

But if he does not recognize himself and does not correct himself through penance, he himself will go out and be separated from the communion of the Church by his own will. For the Lord himself, when he said to servants who wanted to gather the tares, "Let both grow until the harvest," prefaced the reason by saying, "Lest, when you want to gather the tares, you uproot the wheat as well." Here he sufficiently shows that (this applies) when that fear is not present, but complete and certain security about the stability of the grain remains—that is, when someone's crime is so well known and appears so execrable to all that it has either no defenders at all, or none of such a kind as could cause a schism, then the severity of discipline should not sleep, a discipline in which the correction of depravity is as much more effective as the preservation of charity is more diligent. But this can be done without harm to peace and unity and without injury to the wheat when the multitude of the church congregation is alien to that crime which is anathematized. For then it aids the prelate who is rebuking rather than the criminal who is resisting; then it salubriously refrains from association with him, so that no one even takes food with him, not out of hostile rage but out of fraternal restraint; then also that man is both struck by fear and healed by shame, when, seeing himself anathematized by the whole Church, he cannot find a crowd of accomplices with whom to rejoice in his sin and insult the good.

For this reason the apostle himself says: "if a brother is named." For in that he says "if anyone," he seems to have wished to signify nothing other than that one who sins among those unlike him—that is, among those whom the plague of similar sins does not corrupt—can be healthfully corrected in such a way. But in that he says "is named," he undoubtedly wished this to be understood: that it is not enough for someone to be such, unless he is also named, that is, becomes notorious, so that the sentence of anathema pronounced against him may seem most worthy to all. For in this way he is corrected with peace preserved, and he is not struck lethally but is burned medicinally. For this reason he also said of the one whom he had wished to be healed by such medicine: "this correction, which comes from many, is enough for him." For a correction by many cannot be healthful unless it is when the one corrected does not have a multitude of associates. But when the same disease has seized many, nothing else remains for the good than grief and groaning, so that through that sign which was revealed to the holy Ezekiel, they may deserve to escape unharmed from the devastation of those men—for they cry out to the one who cannot err: "Do not destroy my soul with the impious and my life with men of blood"—lest, when they wish to gather the tares, they uproot the wheat as well, and not cleanse the Lord's harvest through diligence, but rather themselves be counted among the refuse through temerity.

Therefore the same apostle, when he had already discovered many stained by unclean lust and fornications, writing to the same Corinthians in the second epistle, does not again command that they should not take food with such persons; for there were many, nor could it be said of them: 'if a brother is named a fornicator or a covetous man or something of that sort, do not even take food together with such a one,' but he says: lest when I come again, God humble me to you and I mourn many of those who have previously sinned and have not done penance for the uncleanliness and lust and fornication which they have committed. He threatens them rather by his own grief to be restrained by divine scourge than by that reproof that the rest should keep themselves from association with them. For he says consequently: behold, I am coming to you a third time. Every word will stand on the testimony of two or three witnesses. I have said and I say, as I was present the second time and now absent, to those who have previously sinned and to all others, that if I come again I will not spare, because you seek proof of Christ who speaks in me. What else did he say here: 'I will not spare' except what he said above: 'and I mourn,' so that his mourning might obtain a scourge from the Lord, by which those would be chastised who, on account of their multitude, could not be so reproved that the rest would keep themselves from association with them and make them blush, as ought to be done if a brother is named in some crime dissimilar to the rest?

And indeed, when the contagion of sin has invaded the multitude, the severe mercy of divine discipline is necessary. For counsels of separation are both empty and pernicious and sacrilegious, because they are done with impious pride and they disturb the weak good more than they correct the bold bad. Just as that most faithful witness of the avarice of his colleagues, when he attributed those evils of tribulations which the church was suffering at that time to divine censure and discipline, after recalling the worst morals of bishops he knew, who, while brothers were hungry, wanted to have silver abundantly, seized estates by deceitful frauds, and increased usury by multiplying interest, said: "What, indeed, would we not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind?" And then he adduces testimony from the Psalms, saying: "Since divine censure has already long since warned and said: 'If his sons abandon my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they profane my ordinances and do not observe my precepts, I will visit their crimes with a rod and their offenses with scourges. But I will not scatter my mercy from them.'

Therefore, let a man mercifully correct what he can, and what he cannot, let him bear patiently and groan or mourn with love, until either He above corrects and amends it, or defers the uprooting of the tares and the winnowing of the chaff until the harvest. Yet, so that Christians of good hope, secure in their own salvation, may move among the desperate whom they cannot correct, remaining in unity, let them remove evil from themselves—that is, let what displeases them in the morals of others not be found in themselves. For when the Apostle had said: "Why should I judge those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are within? But concerning those who are outside, God will judge," as if they were to respond: "What are we to do, when we are so oppressed by a multitude of the wicked that we cannot exercise our judgment in any form of coercion?"—"Remove evil from yourselves," he says, that is: "If you cannot remove the wicked from your midst, at least remove the evil itself from yourselves." But if anyone wishes to understand what was said—"Remove evil from yourselves"—in such a way that any wicked person is to be removed from the congregation of the brethren through correction by separation, no one will doubt that this is to be done with a zeal for healing, not with a hatred for destroying. And what manner is to be employed and what times are to be observed, so that the peace of the Church is not violated—in which the wheat must especially be spared, lest it be uprooted together with the tares—we have discussed as seemed necessary in the present context.

Those who consider this diligently and peacefully neither neglect the severity of discipline in preserving unity, nor break the bond of fellowship by the immoderation of coercion. For this very thing that the apostle says—not even to take food together with such persons—many good Christians do with those for whose care they are more intimately responsible, so that they do not hesitate to separate from their company those whom they perceive can be corrected by such reproof, or those whom they altogether despair of being able to correct, lest they corrupt others by the contagion of evil associations. But one does this well, that is, with humble charity and benign severity, who presides over his brothers in such a way that he remembers he is their servant, just as the Lord’s own precept and example require. For then it is done both without the pride of arrogance toward man and with the lament of prayer to God. But it is not as easy to remove someone from the rank of clergy by a bishop, or from the number of the poor whom the church feeds, or from the congregation of laity by a bishop or a cleric or any prelate who has the authority, so that food is not even taken with such persons by the rest to whom this can be commanded, as it is easy for a multitude of the evil in any order of the church to be separated and expelled from the mixture of the good.

For in their own homes, each of the good faithful so moderate and govern the discipline of their households that they also obey the apostle there, who commands not even to take food together with such persons, when they do this or order it done concerning their own children and household members, when they see them living in such a way that the love which is held for them suggests that this must be done. But a crowd of the wicked, when there is opportunity in the congregations to deliver a sermon, is to be struck with a general rebuke, and especially if some scourge from above from the Lord has offered occasion and opportunity, by which it appears that they are being beaten according to their merits. For then calamity renders the hearers’ ears humble to the corrective sermon, and more easily drives afflicted hearts into groans of confession than into murmurs of resistance, just as then the blessed Cyprian would perhaps not have said those things about his colleagues unless the divine severity from above were assisting him. For at that time he was saying those things in a time so troublesome, so calamitous and mournful, that they not only dared not be angry with him, but also felt that they could scarcely obtain pardon from those who were angry. Although, even if no calamity of tribulation presses, when opportunity is given, the multitude is usefully rebuked in the multitude; for just as they are accustomed to rage when separated, so in the congregation itself, when rebuked, they are accustomed to groan.

Therefore, that precept of the apostle is in no way to be neglected, when it can be done without danger of violating peace, because he himself did not wish it otherwise, that the evil one be separated from the congregation of the good; and that precept of his is especially to be held, that bearing with one another we strive to preserve the unity of spirit in the bond of peace. Likewise, we must obey the Lord in the Gospel where he says: "If he will not hear the church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican," and also where he forbade gathering the tares, lest the wheat be rooted up together with them. For both can be observed by those of whom it is said: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." But let us now look at the remaining testimonies which Parmenianus set forth. Among all the things by which their sacrilegious pride appears, it reveals itself in no place more openly than in that he dared even to set forth that passage from the prophet Jeremiah, whereby he might persuade blind men that the communion of the Donatists is not only the true church, but even such at this time as the holy church will be after the final winnowing. I know not what can be added to this sacrilegious presumption and unspeakable arrogance. And indeed in many places of their discourses they are understood to presume nothing else, but sometimes they are ashamed, when the truth begins to press them, when they are asked either whether they do not have, or whether they themselves are not, sinners.

Nevertheless, in this prophetic testimony they have most openly revealed their impious vanity and excessive perversity. For when the holy Jeremiah wished to show that good and evil, even if for a time they share a single fellowship of congregation, yet the weight of their conduct and the end of their merits are far from equal, he said, "What have the chaff to do with the wheat?" But Parmenianus, wishing to refute Tychonius, who said that the wicked are to be tolerated by the good in unity for the sake of peace in the meantime and separated at the final divine judgment, set forth this testimony of Jeremiah, by which, perverse and erring, he inflames the perverse and erring to the most turbulent and criminal seditions, so that whoever, with the puffed-up mind of his own flesh, seems to himself to be something when he is nothing, thinking himself and his like to be the most purified grains, does not consider that he should approach the congregation of the Church, in which it is necessary that those who belong to eternal life tolerate those who belong to eternal fire up to a certain end, as the grains tolerate their chaff. No other blast from the threshing floor of Christ has shaken out the lightest chaff before the time of winnowing; no other sacrilegious presumption has made whatever schisms exist anywhere.

He says that the most holy Jeremiah warns and separates the unfruitful and barren throng of sinners from the honored grain of the just, saying: What have the chaff to do with the wheat? O trumpet of fury, O voice of accursed pestilence! Does the human race perhaps err so greatly that it does not recognize Parmenian as a winnower? Or does he himself give place to Donatus and boast that he has come to the mass purified by him? For that man before him, I know not whether he deigns to acknowledge Maiorinus. Or were these three, like three prongs of some winnowing fork in the hand of the Lord, by whom the harvest of the whole world was to be cleansed, and was Africa chosen where the purified mass would settle, while all the rest of the earth was to be clothed with the separated chaff? Whence, then, such great throngs of Circumcelliones? Whence such great crowds of drunken feasts and countless debaucheries of unmarried but not incorrupt women? Whence such a great crowd of rapacious, avaricious, usurious men? Whence so many, in their own regions most notorious, who wish to be but are not as powerful as Optatus? What is answered to these things? Are these not so? Or is this also wheat? Woe to the most shameless denial, if they say these things do not exist among them; woe to the most criminal perversity, if they answer that they are grains. Finally, why did Primian dare to winnow again the mass of purified wheat after the trident of such great authority, that is, Maiorinus, Donatus, Parmenian, so as to separate the Maximianists from his communion? Or did he perhaps cast out grains?

What then is he himself with his followers, who have cast out such things? Or have these grains been so purified that they do not recognize one another and try to winnow by condemning one another? Could chaff baptize grain? If it could, why then do they say: What have the chaff to do with the wheat? But if it could not, why did Felicianus, when he had flown outside among the chaff of the Maximianists, and all those he baptized, return again with him to that most purified mass, and now have them all inside, and not say to themselves: What have the chaff to do with the wheat? Let them therefore finally wake up and understand how the prophet spoke: What have the chaff to do with the wheat? For let them first consider where it is said, if any human sense at all remains in them. Can it be said in the field: What have the chaff to do with the wheat, when they are borne by the same root? Or on the threshing floor, where they are threshed together? But surely in the granary: What have the chaff to do with the wheat? For that father of the household will come, bearing his winnowing fan in his hand; he will clean his threshing floor, store the grain in the granary, and burn the chaff with inextinguishable fire. For by another similitude, all the grain is signified by the name of sheep, and all the chaff by the name of goats, which two kinds of flocks are fed together for a time under one shepherd. But the Son of Man will come, he says, with his angels, and all nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on the right, but the goats on the left.

and he will say to those who are on the right: come, blessed of my father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world. But to those who are on the left he will say: go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Then, therefore, the prophecy will be fulfilled: what have the chaff to do with the wheat, when goats and sheep will not be able to share a common pasture. If good fish can say to bad fish within that net which the Lord said is like the kingdom of heaven: 'withdraw from us or we from you, until all are brought to the shore and through the angels the good are sent into vessels, but the bad are cast away,' can it be fulfilled at this time that which is said: what have the chaff to do with the wheat? But those who think their congregation is already purified grain have flown away from the mixture of grain and chaff as if they were pure chaff, and those who feel they are not yet feeding with goats under one shepherd have been separated from the Lord's flock by the snares of wolves, and those who think they are not gathered together with bad fish are not only bad fish themselves, but have also broken the nets of unity. But if we understand at this time that what Jeremiah says is happening: what have the chaff to do with the wheat, we can rightly understand nothing else except that they are indeed in one congregation, until at the end of the winnowing they are also physically separated, but nevertheless the wheat has its heart upward, while the chaff is downward.

He is seeking his own chaff, not that of Jesus Christ; but he stores up the wheat as a treasure in heaven, and where his treasure is, there also is his heart. The words of the blessed Isaiah are also to be understood in this way, which that man, likewise not understanding, has tried to twist to the same opinion of his own error. For what does Isaiah say? "Depart, depart, go out from there and do not touch the unclean. Go out from its midst and separate yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord." Must the same things be repeated so often, how the separation of the heart from evils takes place? For he does not touch the unclean who consents to no sin. But he goes out from there, so that his case may be safe before God, if he also does not neglect the discipline of correcting and rebuking while preserving peace. For he who wishes to abandon manifestly evil men in a bodily manner, as it were, spiritually abandons hidden good men, whom he is forced to accuse, untried and unknown, while he tries to defend his own separation.

But let them answer: if Felicianus is pure, why did he leave their midst? If, however, he is impure, why do they now touch the impure? And if he was impure then when he was outside, those whom he baptized there are impure, because they touched the impure. Or were all of them purified by returning with him? Can they, then, purify those baptized outside, whom they did not baptize in their own communion? Why, then, do they rebaptize others? Or is condemnation by the three hundred ten assembled at Bagai perhaps some special honor, and therefore whoever from the whole world comes to them is rebaptized, because the whole world did not merit that special honor of being condemned by the Council of Bagai? What then? Are those baptized by Maximianus and his other associates who do not return to the communion of Primianus rebaptized when they come, or are they spared? If they are rebaptized, the honor of the Council of Bagai is violated—for in that council even their baptizers were condemned; if, however, they are spared, these men must be asked to assemble again at the town of Bagai, and, if that number of three hundred ten is now consecrated, let an equal number assemble and there pronounce sentence against the whole world, just as they pronounced it against the Maximianists, so that, when they wish to rebaptize someone coming from some part of the world, he may defend himself by the same privilege, asserting that he ought to be spared just as he is spared whom a Maximianist baptizes, because not only the Maximianists, but also the whole world, has merited condemnation by the Council of Bagai.

Then they will free themselves from such great odium, so that, when they have begun no longer to rebaptize those baptized in the church which is established throughout all lands, if someone raises the question why they no longer do what they formerly did, they may answer: 'When we were doing those things, we had not yet condemned the whole world by the Council of Bagai; but now, having been mercifully entreated, we have granted that we should condemn them by such a council as we condemned the Maximianists, whose baptism we do not repeat.' What then is so great, what so difficult, in granting to all nations such a condescension of condemnation? Or is it permissible to repeat the baptism of the whole world, but not permissible to repeat the condemnation of the whole world? Let them also be assured on this point: we do not find by what council they condemned so many nations and provinces. They condemned a few in Africa, by whom they were overcome by the judgment of the whole world, and they did not dare afterwards to condemn the judges before whom they were overcome. For what would be more shameless, what more insane? Much less could they condemn even those established in other parts of the world, who preferred to believe such ecclesiastical judges rather than the defeated litigants.

And yet the baptism of the Maximianists, whom three hundred and ten Donatists condemned at the Council of Bagai, is recognized, accepted, admitted; but the baptism of the whole world, through which the inheritance of Christ was exhibited as it was promised, in which they themselves were only a few years ago, which they could condemn by no right, which they have not condemned even by any perversity of a council, is disapproved, spat upon, repeated. O holy condemnation, which the Maximianists deserved, and the laborious innocence of the nations, which among them lost the Christian name for this reason, because it could not find such a place of condemnation! But if only those coming from the Maximianists are not rebaptized who return with their baptizers, as those who returned with Praetextatus and Felicianus, let them first see how they confirm the baptism of the same schism given equally outside their communion in some, and spit upon it in others, honor it in part and violate it in part. For thus where they violate, they become guilty; but where they confirm, they are found witnesses of their own guilt. For if they afterwards confirmed in such a way that they already ceased to violate, it would be called not discrepancy, but correction; but when they disapprove in some what they approve in others, in these they are accused, in those they give testimony against themselves. For I ask, why do you not baptize those whom Felicianus baptized in the schism of Maximianus: because they received the baptism of Christ, or because they received the baptism of Felicianus?

If it is because of Felicianus, that he was condemned among the Maximianists, that places him outside your communion; then that baptism is the same as that of Salvius of Membressa and others like him. But if it is because of Christ, then does Felicianus in Musti count more with you for the baptism of Christ than Christ himself in all lands? Does the one sitting at your side, whom you have condemned, count more with you for the baptism of Christ than the one sitting at the right hand of the Father, who was crucified for you? Mercy is shown to the baptism of Christ in a very few, lest Felicianus be offended, and no mercy is shown lest Christ himself be spat upon in so many thousands of nations. But the blindness of men is incredible, and I do not know at all how such great perversity could be believed to exist in men, were it not revealed by the evidence of their own words and deeds that they have the eyes of their heart so closed that, when they recall the testimonies of holy scripture, they do not observe in the deeds of the prophets how the words of the prophets are to be understood. Jeremiah said: "What is chaff to wheat?" Did he himself withdraw from the chaff of his own people, among whom he spoke such true things? Isaiah said: "Withdraw, withdraw, go out from there and do not touch the unclean." Why did he himself, in that people, touch the uncleanness which he severely denounced, in the same congregation with them? Let them read how much, and how vehemently and truthfully, he spoke against the wicked of his own people, from whom he nevertheless did not separate himself by any physical division.

David said: "I have not sat in a gathering of vanity, and I will not enter with criminals. I have held in hatred the council of the most wicked, and I will not sit with the impious." Let them read what sort of men he himself tolerated in his own times among that people, he who paid such honor to the mystical sacrament of anointing that he did not despise it even in the most criminal Saul, but rather venerated it so much that it could not possibly be more. Would they not, if we were to throw their own words back at them in light of their deeds, answer us: "We plainly had no fellowship in heart with such men, nor did we touch the unclean where contact can defile, that is, we withdrew and departed from them in consent and approval of conscience, because we not only did not do such things, but we were not silent toward those who did them"? But these seditious and mad men, who seek justifications for their own schisms from the oracles of the prophets, it remains for them, in their insane impiety, to accuse the morals of the prophets from the prophetic words. Or will they say this, that in those times it was not permitted for the righteous to withdraw from a wicked people, but in these times it is permitted? What could be more perverse than to say that in that time it was not fitting for the good to be physically separated from the evil, when many sacraments were commanded to be observed physically, but now physical separation is necessary, when those things are now observed spiritually?

Woe to the blind leading and the blind following! Do they not fear saying such things, lest perhaps across such a vast breadth of the whole world, through which the faith and name of Christ have been spread, before these people separated themselves, in some part of the world very far removed from the African regions, some righteous people had already done this, and these people were still living in the contagion of the impurity which those had fled? For who guarantees to them, who makes them secure, if a separation of this kind from the wicked is to be made, that before it was made by them, it had never been made so far away that the Africans were completely unaware of it, just as the Donatist party is utterly unknown in the most distant parts of those regions? Perhaps they say that what they were ignorant of could not harm them. So then, what was done in Africa cannot harm those other lands either, even if these people were telling the truth about what they falsely claim concerning the crimes of the Africans. But if they say that it could not have been hidden from them if it had happened, let them now tell how many schisms have occurred in all parts of the world. It is too much that I ask: let the Donatists of Carthage, or whoever is in the vicinity of Carthage, tell how many factions have been made throughout Numidia and Mauretania from the Donatist party itself.

all the causes of which they certainly ought to know, lest perhaps some just persons in their own regions avoided the society and congregation of the wicked and went out from there, lest they touch the unclean, lest they enter with criminals, lest perhaps these men, some years ago in some corner of Numidia or Mauretania, separating themselves from the grains, remained as chaff, and they do not know. But why are they secure, except that they hold it certain that those who separated themselves from the unity of the Donatist communion, which is spread throughout all Africa, could not have been good, because, if they were suffering some wicked men in their vicinity, whom they were unable to show to the rest, they ought rather to have tolerated them than to divide themselves from so many innocent persons, whom they could not persuade of others' sins, even if they themselves knew them perfectly? Why, then, is this innocence not attributed to the whole world in such a multitude and breadth of nations wherever Christ's inheritance extends, so that it may be certain and secure that those who call themselves good and separate themselves from the unity of the whole earth thereby demonstrate what they are? For they seem just to themselves and despise the rest, and therefore they do not sing the new song, because they are puffed up with the pride of the old man. For they separate themselves from that communion to which it was said: "Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth.

If they were truly just, they would also be humble; if, however, they were humble, even if they suffered truly evil men in the congregation of their own vicinity, whom they were unable to expel from the unity of Christ, they would choose to tolerate them out of Christ’s charity. But how can they have a just judgment concerning those very men whom they accuse of being evil in their own vicinity, when with reckless blindness they accuse utterly unknown persons so far removed from themselves? For whether they know that their own fellow citizens or neighbors whom they accuse are evil is uncertain to the whole world; but that they separate themselves with reckless blindness from those whose lives, being far removed, they cannot know is certain to the whole world, and that known evil men are tolerated with the praise of patience, lest unknown good men be condemned, is certain to the whole world. Therefore the whole world judges with assurance that those who separate themselves from the whole world in any part of the world are not good.

Finally, if the prophets warned their descendants to separate themselves physically from the chaff before the time of the final winnowing, and by such separation to avoid touching the unclean and not to enter with the criminal, why did the apostle Paul not do this? Or were those who proclaimed Christ not from truth but from envy not chaff? Or were those who did not preach the gospel chastely not unclean—those whom he testifies were in the church of that time, and whose most excellent charity, which endured all things, even later imitators followed? Or is avarice not uncleanness, which Cyprian did not touch in his heart, and yet he lived most peacefully among avaricious colleagues? Had he, you see, grown deaf to the words of the psalms, so that he sat in the meeting-place of vanity and entered with the criminal, did not hate the assembly of the wicked, and sat with the impious? Or was there not a meeting-place of vanity in those who, while brothers in the church were hungry, desired to shine with the most abundant silver? Or were they not criminal who seized estates by deceitful frauds? Or were they not the most wicked and impious who increased usury by multiplying interest? But he washed his hands with the innocent and surrounded the altar of the Lord. Indeed, he tolerated the guilty so as not to abandon the innocent with whom he washed his hands, because he loved the beauty of the house of the Lord, which beauty lay in the honorable vessels. In a great house, however, there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthenware ones.

And those are indeed held in honor, while those are held in dishonor. And he cleansed himself from such things, so that he himself might also be a vessel sanctified in honor, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work, and he did not separate himself from the great house on account of the vessels that were in dishonor, but, while rebuking them, he tolerated those from whom he cleansed himself by not imitating them, within the unity of that house. But Parmenian knows how to set forth the words of the prophet who says: "I did not sit in the assembly of vanity, and I will not enter with the wicked. I have hated the court of the most nefarious. I will wash my hands with the innocent and I will surround the altar of the Lord, so that I may hear the voice of praise and recount all your wonders. Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the place of the tabernacle of your glory. Do not destroy my soul together with sinners, nor my life with men of blood, in whose hands are crimes, whose right hand is filled with bribes." Parmenian knows how to set these forth and does not take care to notice in what manner these words are served without any sacrilege of nefarious division. For the beauty of the house and the place of the tabernacle of the glory of God is, as I have said, not in all the vessels, which are nevertheless in one great house, but in those that are sanctified in honor, useful to the Lord, always prepared for every good work.

In this, whoever has loved the beauty of the house of God and the place of the tabernacle of his glory tolerates those things which are in dishonor, and does not on account of these abandon the house, lest he himself become not a vessel in dishonor, which is nevertheless tolerated in the house, but the filth which is cast out of the house; and on account of this same temporal congregation in one house with the wicked, he prays, saying: "Do not at the same time destroy my soul with sinners and my life with men of blood, in whose hands are crimes, whose right hand is filled with bribes." This he prays, of course, lest he perish together with those with whom charity commands him to live together, whose sacrifice he has set forth, saying: "Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the place of the tabernacle of your glory." For because I have loved the beauty of your house, and on account of that same love I tolerate the vessels which are in dishonor, because charity tolerates everything, do not at the same time destroy my soul with them. Does it not appear in these words the voice of those who, through Ezekiel, were prophesied to groan and grieve over the iniquities of the people which were taking place in their midst, and because they were vessels in honor, they merited to receive their own sign, so that, when all those began to be laid waste and destroyed, God would not destroy their souls with the sinners?

But these wretches, who presume that they have been cleansed like wheat from chaff from the congregation of all the wicked, have by this vanity prejudiced themselves, so that among the peoples over whom they preside they dare not rebuke the most unjust and shameful crowds in order to correct them, lest by this they be forced to confess that they are evil and it be said to them: 'Surely you speak as purified wheat: why do you admit through these words that so much chaff is mixed in with you?' And therefore, because they are not just, they do not correct and reprove in mercy, but with the oil of flattery they anoint the heads of those over whom they themselves wish to be heads, since they are unwilling to be under the one head which is in heaven in the unity of the body which is throughout the whole earth, so that it may rightly be said to their congregations: those who call you happy lead you into error and disturb the paths of your feet. Therefore, whoever does not wish to sit in the conventicle of vanity, let him not vanish in the pride of arrogance seeking conventicles of the just separated from the unity of the whole world, which cannot be found. For the just throughout the whole city which cannot be hidden, because it is built on a mountain—that mountain of Daniel I mean, on which that stone cut without hands grew and filled the whole earth—throughout this entire city, then, spread throughout the whole world, the just groan and grieve over the iniquities which are committed in their midst. Therefore, let him not seek separated just men, but rather groan in concord with them in the temporal mixture of the wicked.

For he will not sit in the conventicle of vanity, because he will sit where his conversation is; but he will hear the apostle saying: our conversation is in heaven. There he will not be with criminals, there he will not endure the court of the wicked, there he will not sit with the impious. Let him dwell in such hope, that he may one day merit to attain to the reality of which he now has hope. For we have not yet risen as Christ has, nor do we yet sit with him in the heavens, and yet because he has given us such hope, and through that hope we already in a certain sense dwell there, the apostle says: if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Savour the things that are above, not those upon the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. In that life of ours, which is hidden with Christ in God, we do not sit in the conventicle of vanity, because, as the same apostle says, he has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavens, but in hope, not yet in reality. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what does a man see, that he hopes for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with patience. This patience these wretches have lost, and by hastening to separate themselves from the chaff before the time, they have shown themselves to be the lightest chaff, carried away from the threshing-floor by the wind. Therefore let us hold what Wisdom says: but he who hears me will dwell in hope and will be silent without fear from all malice.

While we dwell in hope, therefore, thinking not of what we are but of what we shall be—for we are indeed sons of God, but what we shall be has not yet appeared, because when it appears we shall be like him, since we shall see him as he is—in such a dwelling of hope we suffer no evil men, no conventicles of vanity, no criminals, no iniquitous, no impious; and yet we suffer them not in hope, but in the reality which is seen, in the catholic congregation spread throughout the whole world, until iniquity passes away, until at harvest time the tares are gathered, until at the final winnowing the chaff is separated from the grain, until the good fish are selected from the bad fish with which they were gathered within the same nets on the shore, until the goats are separated from the sheep with which they have so long grazed under one shepherd in the same pastures, to be set apart on the left at the last. There is therefore no security of unity except from the promises of God, the church declared, which, as has been said, established on the mountain cannot be hidden, and therefore must be known in all parts of the earth.

We hold firmly and unshaken that no good persons can be separated from her, that is, no good persons, even if they endure evil persons known to them, wherever they may be, can on account of them separate themselves by the reckless sacrilege of schism from good persons unknown to them and placed far away, so that, in whatever part of the world these things have been done or are being done or will be done, for the other parts of the world placed far away and ignorant whether they have been done or why they have been done, and yet remaining with the whole world in the bond of unity, this very thing is a firm security: that this could not have been done except by those who are either mad with the swelling of pride, or insane with the venom of envy, or corrupted by worldly advantage, or perverted by carnal fear. By all these causes it is brought about that either good persons are defamed by false accusations, or false things are rashly believed about good persons, or even evil persons, who, tolerated for the sake of the bond of unity, do no harm to the good, are most perversely shunned when the peace of the good is broken, while the vexation of the wheat is not spared, as men usurp for themselves before the harvest what the angels will do at the harvest.

Since these things are so, they even dare to count the sacrilegious schisms or impious heresies, if they are admonished by some scourge to correct themselves, among the martyrdoms as penalties for their own madness. Parmenianus also, thinking this, at the end of his letter exhorts Tychonius to remain in the party of Donatus and endure persecutions, saying that he ought not to join willingly with those to whom he was not joined under compulsion of persecution, also adducing the testimony of Scripture saying: "Woe to those who have lost endurance and have turned aside into crooked paths! And what will they do when the Lord begins to inspect?" In his usual manner, he sets forth everything from the divine books against themselves. For who have lost endurance, if not those who, unable to convict those whom they accused of crimes, refused to tolerate them for the sake of Christ's peace, so that later, after thinking, they themselves divided their own party not into many small factions, and even tolerated the most manifest sacrilegious persons whom they themselves had condemned, received back again for the false peace of Donatus? And now at last let them finally recognize and correct what they have impiously done, at least from what they have learned from what they suffered from Maximianus. But of course they blush to be corrected by the most manifest reasons, because they resisted the commands of the emperors, lest they seem to have lost what they complain they suffered, corrected. As if it is not better that they lose those things than that they perish.

For if it has some shadow, and although false and deceptive, yet some image of fortitude in not yielding to an emperor who commands, what enticement of even human praise is there in openly contradicting the truth? Why do they bring forward so many testimonies from the scriptures with closed eyes, which, when understood and brought against themselves, they reject, and which, if accepted according to their understanding, nonetheless convict them of their own perversity? Is it not written: "Do not contradict the truth in any way"? But to whom is contradiction made, if not to the truth, when even a king who commands something in accordance with the truth is resisted? But the human king, what he threatens or what he avenges is troublesome for a time; not so that King who is also called Truth, who even now cries out to them through the prophet: "I have struck your sons in vain; they have not received discipline," who now mercifully warns through human powers, lest in the end he avenge in such a way that the proud cannot boast of their own condemnation. For under the vengeance of kings, human obstinacy can wish to be praised under the false name of virtue; but to be burned in eternal fires will neither be nor be called fortitude. For there will not be on that day those who anoint the head with the oil of flattery or, deceived by vain falsehood, dream of crowns of the damned, saying "Bravo, bravo" and swearing by the gray hair of those who did not have a sound head, and by the sandals of those who did not know the way of peace.

What crowds do these men, turning them away from the unity of Christ and desiring to convert them to their own name, in the meantime dare to compare the temporal punishments of their schism to the passions of the martyrs, so that the anniversaries of their own penalties are celebrated with a great gathering of madmen, among whose number are those who, even with no one persecuting them, of their own accord hurl themselves over mountain precipices, in order to end a bad life with a worse death. On that day there will be no foolish crowds to whom it is said: “We are the just who suffer persecution,” and to whom a reprobate stone is sold for a precious gem, that is, carnal hardness for spiritual patience. There will be none who recite the names of the leaders of their madness at the altars, either those which they have separated from the unity of Christ or those which they have erected under the name of Christ against the Church of Christ. For these are the prices which, in order that they may receive them, while they wish to have something to sell, they provoke the severity of the authorities against themselves through their headstrong perversity; nor do those who are seduced by them and who therefore consider them just, because they pay the penalties of iniquity, return to their hearts and consider why they suffer what they boast of suffering.

For how little would it have been, if they had only paid a little attention, that Parmenian says such things to Tychonius about enduring persecutions and the glory of tolerance, as all heretics say, concerning whose restraint or punishment similar royal edicts are issued; such things as certainly Salvius now says to his own Membressitans, to whom the Abitinians inflicted so many blows and insults, through whom these men had deserved to be driven from the church, to have the carcasses of dead dogs tied around his neck, and finally to dance with him to shameful songs and chants. What speech do we think he had with his own, whom he miserably deceived, after he had suffered so much, so that they built another basilica for themselves? How much did he say about his own justice, for which he deserved to suffer such things, thereby persuading them that he was holy because he had suffered, and that those others were most unjust because they had done it? The ancient cruelty of the Etruscan tyrants is recalled, that they joined dead bodies to living, but human to human; but canine to human, and this to episcopal limbs, I do not know whether anyone can recall ever having heard or read of it. It is well known that frivolous and shameful dances are usually restrained by bishops; who ever remembers that men, whom bishops sought as auxiliaries, danced with bishops? Or was Salvius not then a bishop, because his condemnation is recited in the sentence of the Council of Bagai? What then?

If he himself were later reconciled to Primianus, just as Felicianus was reconciled to him, though condemned by the truthful mouth of that same plenary council, as their words are recited there, would he then be a bishop, or would he perhaps not be admitted, because the sacrilege of schism, which has polluted someone, can be cleansed, as Felicianus could be, but one whom dead dogs hung around the neck have made unclean cannot be purified? I would like to know what they say to these things, so manifest, so public, so recent, who cast their ancient calumnies at us as if they were our crimes. If any of them thinks I am making false boasts, what is so great, what is so difficult, that, caring for his own soul, he should go to Membressa, inquire whether these things were done, and defend them if he can? For if he says that these things are rightly done to schismatics whom three hundred and ten Donatist bishops condemned, let them not murmur when they suffer something, although they have never suffered such things, whom we convict of having made a schism from the unity of Christ by the authority not of three hundred and ten, but of the whole world. But if he says that what Salvius suffered is trivial, I ask whether, if the emperor were to force some Donatist bishop to dance and threaten him with beasts and fires if he refused, he would not prefer to suffer those things rather than to submit to that, and when he had suffered, would not these people recite him among the holy martyrs? Therefore, Salvius suffered worse things, with whom dancing was done, than if he had been burned alive.

if either of these two options were put to any of them—whether they would prefer not to dance themselves but to be danced with, rather than be burned alive—there is no doubt what they would answer they would choose. But if he says that the Primianists obtained nothing from the proconsul except that Salvius be driven from the basilica by the Abitinians, and that they themselves did of their own accord whatever they afterward did to him cruelly and shamefully, why does he not say to himself that Catholics too can ask nothing else from the emperors except that these men be excluded from the basilicas which they hold with sacrilegious name, and that they themselves, of their own accord, preserving royal power and honor, take vengeance on the sacrilegious much more mildly than the Abitinians, with no imperial law, no judicial order, took vengeance on Membressitanus Salvius? Let them consider these matters, first what they do and afterward what they suffer, lest, while they close their eyes to their own deeds and open their eyes to their own sufferings, they suffer temporal things here in vain and in the final judgment of God be punished with eternal punishment even for this very thing, that He warned them to correct themselves through such troubles in vain. I do not rehearse old matters, where they deceive whom they can; I speak briefly, I thrust present matters forward, I point with my finger: the condemned Maximianists are received, unknown peoples are accused; the baptism of the Maximianists is accepted, the baptism of the whole world is spat upon.

Behold the Assuritani, behold the Mustitani, behold the recently deceased Praetextatus, behold Felicianus still alive, behold their names among the condemned listed in the proconsular acts of the Council of Bagai; such recent and present deeds sufficiently indicate what they were like from the beginning. If they suffer anything on account of such perversities and iniquities, if they are unwilling to be corrected, at least let them not dare to boast. AUGUSTINE, RETRACTATIONS, BOOK II, CHAPTER 43 (17) (PAGE 151, KNOELL EDITION). THREE BOOKS AGAINST THE Letter of Parmenian. In certain books against the Letter of Parmenian, the Donatist bishop of Carthage and successor of Donatus, a new question is discussed and resolved: whether in the unity of the same communion of sacraments the wicked contaminate the good, and how they do not contaminate, is argued on behalf of the church spread throughout the whole world, against which they made a schism by slandering. In the third book of these, when it was being discussed how the Apostle’s saying is to be understood: “Remove evil from yourselves,” that which I said: that each person removes evil from himself, is not to be understood in that way, but rather in this way: that a bad man is removed from good men, which is done through ecclesiastical discipline, as the Greek language indicates, where it is written without ambiguity so that it is understood as “a bad man,” not “this evil,” although I also responded to Parmenian according to that interpretation.

This work begins thus: Many things indeed elsewhere against the Donatists.