Contra Gaudentium Donatistarum Episcopum

BOOK ONE. Gaudentius, the Donatist bishop of Tamugadi, was threatening to burn himself alive in the church along with some desperate men he had gathered around him, when Dulcitius, a man of tribunician rank and a notary, to whom the most pious emperor had entrusted the execution of his laws for the completion of unity, was acting, as was fitting, gently with the madmen and had first sent peaceful letters to the same Gaudentius. Gaudentius wrote back two letters: one shorter, hurried, as he indicates, by the bearers being in a hurry; the other longer, in which he thinks he has responded more carefully according to the Scriptures. Therefore, with the Lord’s help, I have undertaken to refute what he wrote, so that even those who are slower of understanding may not doubt that I have responded to everything. For I will first set down his words, then add my own, not in the way I did when I replied to the letters of Petilianus. There, in each place, when his own words were inserted, it was written “Petilianus said,” and when my words were given, “Augustinus replied.” From this he slandered me, as if I had lied, saying that he had never debated with me face to face; as if he had not said what he wrote because I did not hear it in his words but read it in his letters, or as if I had not replied because I did not speak in his presence, but responded in writing to his writings. What are we to do with men who have such a heart, or who think that those to whom they wish their writings to be known have such a heart?

but let us also satisfy such matters here, and when we set down Gaudentius’ words, let us not say “Gaudentius said, but the words of the letter,” and when we respond, let us not say “Augustine responded,” but “this response.” Thus let us begin to refute Gaudentius’ first and shorter letter. Words of the letter: “To the honorable and, if you so wish, greatly desired Dulcitius, tribune and notary, from Bishop Gaudentius.” To this response: We ought not to discuss even these matters, lest we linger almost excessively over superfluities, when there are necessary passages that compel us to speak at somewhat greater length. Words of the letter: “I have received your religious letter through those who, by their character and their way of life, are manifestly dear to all.” To this response: Let us not discuss even this, how you said “your religious” to a man whom you rather consider irreligious. For you rendered honorific courtesy, as you judged it should be rendered, because he treated you more honorifically in the letter he sent to you than a Catholic ought to treat a heretic, thinking that your mind could be healed by such discourse.

The words of the letter: "In which," he says, "so many things have been said by your Dignation that I now for the time being pass over in silence. But since the sharpness of your intellect fails to notice, you could not in that same writing assert us to be either innocent or guilty." To this the response: How did he not assert them guilty, whom he said were wickedly assembled? How did he not assert him guilty, when he said that through your leadership the souls of the wretched were about to perish by a nefarious death, adding that you ought to understand what envy in this world and what punishment in that final, desperate judgment could await you? How did he not assert him guilty, whom he exhorted as he was able, that following the example of others to be imitated, you should, having abandoned the error of your former heresy, betake yourself to the one and true faith of God? Nevertheless, we have undertaken not to defend the words of a tribune, but to refute a heretic. Therefore, if this man of ours, speaking as a layman in military service, said something too incautiously, who would not forgive him? Who would contend that prejudice should be created for the Catholic Church from his words? Consider more carefully what you say, you whom the party of Donatus, in our conference which was held at Carthage, put forward, joined by six others, even as the defender of its own division.

The words of the letter: "But if," he says, "you consider them criminal, the fellowship of the damned must be shunned by you." Response to this: Clearly the fellowship of criminals is to be shunned, but that of the corrected is not to be rejected. Therefore we salubriously avoid the former, so that we may mercifully will, desire, and insist upon the latter. The words of the letter: "But if you think them innocent," he says, "which you yourself have also said, we rejoice to endure persecutors while established in the faith of Christ." Response to this: I have considered the letter of the tribune given to you, and nowhere in it have I read that he called you innocent, but that he had heard or learned from others that you are prudent. However, in the holy scriptures not only the good but also the evil are accustomed to be called by that name. For there that name was also given to the serpent, the deceiver of man. For what some have translated as 'most wise of all beasts', the Greek codices rather have 'most prudent', from which that scripture was translated into the Latin language. But if the tribune is thought to have called those innocent whom he said you were holding against their will for destruction, what wonder is it if he believed that what he knew had happened in other places was also happening there? Therefore you have no reason to rejoice that you suffer persecution, since you cannot find how you may assert yourself innocent. Far be it, however, that this should be called persecution by men, when it is rather a persecution of vices for the sake of liberating men, such as the diligence of physicians also makes for the sick.

Even if you were innocent, you would become guilty by this, because you desire to kill the innocent. For those who try to assert that they are innocent and yet are unwilling to spare their own lives, what else are they convicted of but killing the innocent? The words of the letter: "But in this church," he says, "in which the name of God and of Christ, His Son, as you yourself have also said, has always been invoked in truth, we either remain alive, as long as it pleases God, or, as is worthy of the household of God, we end our life's journey within the Lord's camp, under that condition, of course, that if force is applied, then that could happen. For no one is so insane as to hasten to death with no one impelling him." Response to this: Neither is it read in the tribune's letter that the name of God was invoked by you in truth, although he said it was invoked. And even if he had said it, this could be understood not to your glory, but to your punishment. For the apostle also said of the impious Gentiles: "who hold the truth in iniquity," as you also do, who hold the truth of divine baptism in the iniquity of human error. Hence, when we correct your iniquity, we certainly ought not to rescind the truth of that sacrament. You profess, innocent man, albeit in other words, that the church will perish along with you and yours. For when you say "in the church," what else do you want to be understood but "with the church," since you are preparing to accomplish this by fire?

This is the innocence of the Donatist party, that you do this with your own deaths added, which you are also alleged to have done at Carthage to bring odium upon us from the basilicas that were yours, as you were able and with whom you were able, without your own deaths. For who would not believe that you did out of zeal what you are prepared to do even by dying? But if you did not do that, then certainly this is more insane, that you are preparing to do it. But you said: if force was at work, and you added: for no one is so mad as to hasten to death with no one driving him: how much more mad, then, is he who, when he is being driven towards life, hastens to death! Words of the letter: "But as for those who are with us," he says, "I make God and all his sacraments my witness, that I have exhorted and most earnestly urged that whoever had the will to leave should safely declare it publicly. For we cannot keep unwilling men, we who have learned that no one is to be compelled to the faith of God." To this, the response: Why, then, do you not most openly profess yourself, if not a keeper of the unwilling, yet an exhorter to a good work, if what you are about to do is good? Or is it that you yourself understand how evil it is, and that you threaten to do it more to terrify than to fulfill, being either unfaithful by lying or cruel by telling the truth?

Words of the letter: (and in another hand:) I wish you well, flourishing in the affairs of the state, and desisting from troubling Christians. Response to this: We too can wish him well and flourishing in the affairs of the state, but not desisting from correcting heretics. Words of the later letter: To the honorable Dulcitius, desired with all affection, Gaudentius, bishop. Response to this: If you desire the man with all affection, why do you reject holding unity with him in Christ? Or, as if repaying evil for evil, do you desire to rebaptize him, whom you consider your persecutor? Words of the letter: "People known to each other only by reputation," he says, "usually either desire to exchange words in mutual sight, or at least do not shrink from the presence of one unknown. But your judgment, that you rejoiced to find me absent, and that you were saddened that I had returned, you have indicated in your letter." Response to this: Not all who are known to each other only by reputation wish to see one another, but only those whom that reputation itself commends well. It is indeed strange what has happened to you, that you call him desirable from whom you complain of suffering persecution, while he, who persecutes you, prefers you absent and does not wish to find the one he persecutes. But whence this, except that he wished you to be understood rather as a persecutor of those whose salvation in Christ he believed your presence to hinder?

Words of the letter: "But since on the past day," he says, "lest I should have been silent in a letter-response, because of the delay of the bearers, I have noted certain things briefly and summarily; now I must respond to the writings of your dignity with the words of the sacred and divine law. The Lord says: 'You shall not kill an innocent and just man, and you shall not purge a guilty man by purification.' Therefore it is certain that in the judgment of God, those who have absolved a guilty man and those who have killed an innocent man are bound by equal crime and equal guilt. If before communion the men named by you—Gabinius or the other faith-breakers in that evil fall—were guilty, according to the words of God they ought not to have been absolved. But if they were received as innocent or holy, why do you kill innocents who remain in that faith from which you receive them as holy?" Response to this: You speak enviously and falsely. For the man to whom you speak has not received such a command that you should be killed, but that you should be corrected; and if you are unwilling, so that you do not hinder the correction of others, you will be sent into exile. But if this ought not to be done by the just to the unjust, why did you also falsely boast in our conference about the exile of Caecilianus, to which you said he was sent by the Emperor Constantine at the insistence of your predecessors? But this tribune to whom you write, to whom the care of the laws enacted for unity has been entrusted, wishes so much that you live that he fears lest you kill yourself. Behold, set before your eyes him and yourself!

he himself wishes you to live in the peace of Christ, while you seek to kill yourself in the party of Donatus: recognize which of you is your persecutor. Moreover, Gabinius, now one of ours, who was once one of yours, and very many others who have passed over from you to us after considering the truth of the Catholic faith, should not seem to you to have been unpurified from your contagion because they were not rebaptized by us. For those who have not yet been baptized are washed from all sins in the Catholic Church by the laver of regeneration; but in those who receive this sacrament outside, not as an aid but as a judgment, because we do not violate the royal character even in a deserter, it happens as it is written: charity covers a multitude of sins. Behold how those who ought not to be baptized can be cleansed by the very charity of Catholic unity, so that what was harmful to them outside begins to benefit them inside, not that it begins to be present within them as it was outside. Therefore, we do not receive you as saints—for by passing over to us they are sanctified, who by remaining with you cannot be saints at all—nor do we kill innocent people, since we wish even the guilty to live.

But you, who recall the testimony of the divine voice well and throw it in our faces that God said, "You shall not kill the innocent and the just," if you are innocent and just, why do you kill yourself? We do not call you innocent and just, and yet we do not want you to be killed: you consider yourself innocent and just, and you do not spare the innocent and just. Certainly you yourself said: in the judgment of God, those who acquit a guilty man and those who kill an innocent man are bound by the same crime and the same guilt. Why, then, did you acquit Felicianus, the Maximianist, a guilty man? Why do you kill an innocent man, and yourself as well? We, however, neither acquit a guilty man—but we desire him to be corrected first so that he may deserve acquittal—nor do we judge you, whether you spare yourself or kill yourself, if you remain in the party of Donatus, to be innocent. For no matter how much innocence you boast of, you cannot be innocent by killing yourself, an innocent, unless perhaps you answer me and say: "When I kill myself, I certainly do not kill an innocent, because by the very will with which I resolve to kill myself, I become guilty in mind before I kill the body." If you say this, you speak the truth, and you accuse yourself in a remarkable way while defending yourself. For when you show that by killing yourself you first become guilty through your own intention, then undoubtedly, once the deed is committed, no one will convict you of having killed an innocent. By this reasoning, therefore, it is concluded that, although many innocent people are killed by others, no innocent person kills himself.

For by that very intention with which he prepares to kill himself, he is first stripped of innocence, so that when he kills himself, he does not die innocent. This would happen to you if, before you prepared to kill yourself, you were innocent. But now, since even before you were already not innocent as a heretic, if you kill yourself, it will not be the beginning of your iniquity, but its increase. Words of the letter: For concerning the blessed Emeritus of Caesarea, he says, a false report came to us, as if deservedly. But if this were so, hear the apostle saying: If some of them have fallen from the faith, does their faithlessness nullify the faith of God? Far from it. To this the response: It must be said concerning Emeritus of Caesarea what you were afraid to say. A false rumor was indeed spread about him, that he had become a Catholic, but just as you heard this, so you could have known the whole of what happened. Why then did you wish to remain silent about the praises of your fellow bishop, whose name was held up to you as an example? Certainly, if he did something worthy of praise in such a critical moment, it was surely not for you to remain silent. But because you do not wish us to believe that you could have envied his praises, why then did you remain silent, unless because you were afraid to blush on his account? Therefore, Emeritus came to Caesarea while we were stationed and present there. He came, however, not seized by anyone's cleverness, not brought by another's authority, but roused by his own will, he wished to see us.

We saw him, we came together to the Catholic Church, a very great multitude was present: he could say nothing in his own or your defense, he refused to communicate, he persisted in delay, he was convicted and fell silent, he departed unharmed. What could have been done more gently for our mildness, what more invincibly for the truth of the Catholic faith, what more salutarily for your correction, if you were wise? For since he had not come to us of his own accord except to say something against us on your behalf, he would certainly have spoken, if he had found anything to say. For whatever he had prepared to say as to why he came, by the assisting mercy of the Lord it was refuted by our prior prevention before it could be brought forth by his circumvention. And certainly if you think he could have replied but was unwilling, read what was done with him and let him himself reply. If Emeritus had crossed over to the Catholic peace, you would say that he had not consented to the light of truth by divine mercy, but had yielded to the weight of persecution by human weakness. If finally he were captured and brought unwillingly, you would boast according to your own judgment that he had kept silent not from lack of a reply, but from a plan to escape. But now, since he came of his own accord, certainly what failed him was not his tongue but his cause; but that he was unwilling to cross over into Catholic unity made a most stubborn confusion of a proud soul. But this, as much as it contributed to his own ruin and punishment, so much did it profit for the confirmation and salvation of others.

If indeed they saw Emeritus communicating with us, they would suspect the man was afraid; but when they saw him both remaining in the Donatist party and yet silent against the Catholic faith, it appeared to them all the more that by being silent he was crying out against his own people for our side. Or truly, when he stood with a sound and free voice and mouth, was not that Emeritus—that Emeritus, I say, both enemy and mute—a suitable witness for our cause against you? But you seemed to yourself to be consoled by apostolic authority, of course. Not on account of Emeritus, who could do no more for you than that, finding nothing to say for you, he nevertheless did not depart from you; but on account of others who, abandoning your error, are gathered into the Catholic communion changed for the better, you recalled that the apostle said: "If some of them have fallen away from the faith, has their faithlessness nullified the faith of God? Far from it." Truly, it remains that those who believed in God are said to have fallen away from the faith, while those who believe in men are said to hold the faith. "In your seed all nations will be blessed," the Lord said: behold in whom those believe who cross over from you to us. Men said that the transmarine peoples perished because of Caecilian's sin: behold in whom those who persist in your communion believe. And you say that those who followed the faith of God have fallen away from the faith, and that those who have remained in the words of men possess the faith of God.

Where then is what the apostle immediately subjoined to this sentence you recalled: "But God is truthful, but every human being is a liar"? If those who believe what the truthful Lord God said have fallen away from the faith, and those who believe what a lying human said persist in the faith? The words of the letter: "You urge flight upon me," he says, "as if from the law, but only the doer of the law ought to be heard, because the apostle Paul says: 'Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.' For hear also the Lord saying that the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, but the hireling, and one whose sheep are not his own, sees the wolf coming and flees, and the wolf seizes them and scatters them." To this the response: Behold how the party of Donatus understands the Gospel! Was the apostle not a shepherd but a "hireling" when he was let down in a basket through the wall and fled the hands of the one who wished to seize him, and are you a shepherd, who, for the sheep you call the Lord's, so that they perish in mind through error and destroy their bodies through madness, you wish to destroy even with yourself, you seek to kill with yourself, and you do not hear the shepherd and prince of shepherds saying: "The thief comes only to kill and destroy"? Did you come to this, you who had withdrawn? Did you return to this, you who had fled? This is the work of a thief and a robber, not of a shepherd and a guardian. Nevertheless, even without our compelling you, see that you did not wish all your colleagues who fled to be understood as shepherds, but as hirelings.

But if the Lord's sheep were with you, they would either come with you, so that they could have you as a corrected shepherd, or they would flee from you, leaving you behind, to the shepherd. The hireling, however, whom the Lord signifies, flees when he sees a wolf not with his body but with his soul, when he abandons justice out of fear, just as your Secundus of Tigisis fled, when he feared Purpurius of Limata, who had confessed to murder and was all the more terrifying, lest he lose his primacy or episcopate. Even those good shepherds, the apostles, fled in persecution with their bodies, but they did not, for that reason, abandon Christ's sheep in their care and concern. Therefore, if you were a shepherd, you would not first be on the side of the wolf; then, you would obediently hear the command of your Lord, who ordered his servants to flee in persecutions, through the mouth of any sinner whatsoever, and you would not argue against your Lord and say: "Only the doer of the law ought to be heard, because the apostle Paul says: 'Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.'

Why do you twist clear words into a different meaning? You deny that hearers of the law who are not doers are just before God; but He did not forbid them from being heard by men, when they speak the truth, lest, like you, someone should speak against his Lord, who says about some: "Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they speak and do not do." You see how Christ, even through men who are hearers and preachers of the law but not doers, nevertheless commanded others to hear it and to be doers of it; and you say: "Only the doer of the law ought to be heard," and, wishing to refute your supposed persecutor, you speak against your Creator. Indeed, the Lord says to a sinner: "Why do you recount my ordinances and take up my testament through your mouth?" But that is because it does him no good, who speaks and does not do what he speaks; yet it does good to him who, even through a bad man, hears good and does what he hears. The praise is not, indeed, seemly in the mouth of a sinner, but it is seemly in the life and conduct of the doer, even if he has heard it from the mouth of a sinner. Therefore, however much you consider the tribune to be a sinner and not a doer of the law, nevertheless obediently hear not him, but Him, even through him, who says: "If you are persecuted in one city, flee to another." Why do you hesitate? Hear and flee; Christ commands this, not the tribune.

Unless perhaps you answer and say: "Christ indeed said: 'If they persecute you in this city, flee to another'; but why should I leave this city, when neither is this man my persecutor nor am I a hearer of Christ?" And by this, if you stay, you are a ravening wolf, and if you flee, you are a fearful wolf. And since the Bridegroom says: "Unless you know yourself, O fair one among women, go out in the tracks of the flocks and feed your goats in the shepherds' tents," even if you boast that you are a shepherd, yet because you have gone out of the Lord's fold, you feed your goats, not Christ's sheep. The words of the letter: "Then," he says, "what places will there be, which in this storm of persecution, when all are disturbed, will receive priests to be kept in tranquility as if into a harbor, when the Lord said: 'When they begin to persecute you in this city, flee to another [city].' The apostles then fled safely, because the emperor had ordered no one to be proscribed on their account. But now, the receivers of Christians, terrified by proscriptions and fearing dangers, not only do not receive them, but even fear to see those whom they silently venerate." To this the response: I clearly praise that you recognize yourselves, but I grieve that you do not correct yourselves. For what is more evident than this profession of yours, by which you sufficiently declare that you do not belong to the company of those to whom the Lord said: "If you are persecuted in one city, flee to another"?

This is precisely what I said a little earlier you could most truthfully answer me, if you were to say: "Neither is this man my persecutor, nor am I a hearer of Christ." Behold, you say this most openly. For how are you a hearer of Christ, when he promises his hearers, that is, his followers, that until the end of the world, whenever they suffer persecution, there will not be lacking cities to which they may flee, saying: "But when they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For I say to you, amen, you will not exhaust the cities of Israel until the son of man comes"? But you, in this persecution which you complain of suffering, say that places are already lacking to you, to which you may flee and where, as in a harbor, you may rest from this storm, speaking against the promise of Christ, who says that cities will not be lacking to which his own who suffer persecution may flee, until he comes, that is, until the consummation of the world. Therefore, because he promised this to his own, which you do not find, he certainly lies if you are his; but because he himself does not lie, you are not his. And through this, neither is the tribune to whom you write your persecutor, but he is the persecutor of your persecutor, that is, of your error, by which you are compelled to do such things that you are of the kind of whom it is written, that they suffered persecution from their own deeds.

Therefore, if you understood what it is in you that those who love you persecute, you would without doubt flee from the evil deeds of yours by which you suffer persecution, and you would join yourselves to those who, in order to free you, persecute your persecutors; for they persecute nothing but your errors. The words of the letter: "Through the maker," he says, "of all things, the Lord Christ, Almighty God fashioned man in His own image and sent him forth with free will. For it is written: 'God made man and left him in the hand of his own will.' Why now is it snatched from me by human authority, what God has bestowed? Take note, most eminent sir, how great are the sacrileges committed against God, so that what He granted, human presumption takes away and vainly boasts of doing so in God's stead. It is a great injury to God, if He is defended by men. What does he think of God who wishes to defend Him by violence, except that He is unable to avenge His own injuries?" To this the response: According to these most false and most vain reasonings of yours, with the reins loosened and let go, all sins of human license are left unpunished, with no barriers of laws opposed, the audacity to harm and the lust for wantonness would run riot; no king would restrain his kingdom, no commander his soldier, no judge his provincial, no master his slave, no husband his wife, no father his son from the freedom and sweetness of sinning by any threats or penalties.

Take away what sound doctrine wisely says through the Apostle for the health of the whole world, and, to confirm the children of perdition in a will so much worse as it is freer, delete what the vessel of election says: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers. For there is no power except from God, and those that exist are ordained by God. Therefore, whoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God; and those who resist bring judgment upon themselves. For princes are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you wish not to fear power? Do good, and you will have praise from it; for it is the minister of God, an avenger in wrath against him who does evil." Delete these things, if you can, or, as you do, if you cannot delete them, despise them. Have the worst will concerning all these things, lest you lose free will; or certainly, because you blush as men before men, cry out, if you dare: "Let homicides be punished, let adulteries be punished, let all other crimes and vices of whatever magnitude, whether of wickedness or lust, be punished; only we wish sacrileges to be unpunished by the laws of rulers." Or do you say something else, when you say: "It is a great injury to God, if He is defended by men." What does one think about God who wishes to defend Him with violence, except that He is not able to avenge His own injuries Himself? In saying these things, what else do you say but: "Let no human power contradict and obstruct our free will, when we do injury to God"? O grief!

The ancient times were defrauded of such teaching, since you had not yet been born when holy Moses bore his own injuries most gently, but avenged God’s injuries most severely. But now, more learned by heretical presumption, you cry out most invidiously: “God made man and left him in the hand of his own free will. Why is what God has granted now snatched away by human authority?”—demanding this, namely, that for the purpose of doing injuries to God, who made man with free will, free will be left to you by man. But even those who, by the decree of King Nebuchadnezzar, with the penalty of their death and the dispersion of their houses set before them, were terribly forbidden to blaspheme God—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—and would be sharply punished if they despised it, could have said what you yourself said: “It is a great injury to God if He is defended by men. What does one think of God who wishes to defend Him by violence, except that He is not able to avenge His own injuries?” These words of yours could have been said by them as well, and perhaps were said, if not with the same freedom, then with not dissimilar vanity.

Therefore, when man was created, free will was given to him, but so that if he did evil, he would become a sufferer. Indeed, those first men, when they had sinned, were condemned to death, and before death, the final penalty even of the body, was inflicted upon them, they were sent into exile from paradise. The emperor imposed milder penalties on you because of Christian gentleness: he wished to impose exile on you, not death. But you, learned men, considering what is deserved and what is less in the punishment, add death not from his judgment but from your own. Do not perish eternally, while you wish to have free will granted to you by men in this time to offend God. Listen to the apostle, and you will have a great shortcut by which royal power cannot harm you: do good, and you will have praise from it. From it, even before us, the just had praise, not only those who faithfully obeyed religious kings, but also those who endured impious kings as adversaries for the truth of God: those had praise for obedience, these had praise for suffering, yet both from it, but by doing good, not by resisting powers.

But what you do is not only not good, but a great evil: to tear apart the peace and unity of Christ, to rebel against the promises of the Gospel, and to bear Christian standards as if in a civil war against him of whom it is said: "He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth," that is, against the true and supreme king of Christians. Therefore, let it suffice for you as an occasion for correction that for such great evils of yours you receive far milder and lesser penalties, if you do not voluntarily impose upon yourselves what the emperor has not decreed; and do not wish to have free will granted to you by men for licentious impunity, lest you fall more wretchedly into the hands of God himself. For even your forebears judged that in injuries of this kind against God, the free will of man should not be left unpunished by emperors, because, although they had a bad cause, they nevertheless pursued the bishop Caecilian all the way to the judgment of the Emperor Constantine.

Words of the letter: "Our faith, indeed," he says, "which the Lord Christ left to the apostles, these persecutions alone render most pleasing to us. Blessed you will be, when men have persecuted you and cursed you and spoken every evil against you for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven; for thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you, their fathers. If it was said only to the apostles, faith had rewards only up to them, and what would it profit those who were to believe afterwards? Hence it is clear that it was said to all. Then the apostle Paul says: 'Those who wish to live holily in Christ must necessarily suffer persecution.' Moreover, in the Gospel the Lord said: 'The hour will come when everyone who kills you will think he is offering a sacrifice to God.' But they will do this because they have not known the Father nor me." Response to these things: You would rightly say these things, seeking the glory of martyrs, if you had the cause of martyrs. For the Lord does not say that those who suffer these evils are blessed, but those who suffer for the sake of the Son of Man, who is Christ Jesus. You, however, do not suffer for him, but against him; you suffer, indeed, because you do not believe in him, and you endure so that you may not believe. How, then, do you boast that you hold that faith which the Lord Christ left to the apostles?

Do you wish men to be so blind and deaf that they do not read, do not hear the Gospel, where they might learn what faith the Lord Christ left to the apostles concerning his Church? From which, divided and separated, you do nothing else than rebel against the words of the head and the body, and yet you boast that you endure persecution for the sake of the Son of Man and the faith which he left to the apostles. Let us set aside other matters and hear his last words on earth, where we may see what faith concerning the Church he left to the apostles, what kind of testament, as it were, he made—not about to end his life, but about to live without end, not about to be placed in a tomb, but about to ascend into heaven. For after rising from the dead, when he had appeared to his disciples to be seen with eyes and touched with hands, he said: "It was necessary that what is written about me in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms be fulfilled." Then he opened their understanding so that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them: "Because it is written thus, and thus it was necessary that Christ suffer and rise on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." Likewise on the Mount of Olives, after he had said nothing further while placed on earth, he commended this as the last thing, which had been most necessary.

For many indeed were to come throughout all parts of the earth who would claim for themselves the name of the Church and, against the universal house, which throughout the whole earth sings the new song, concerning which it is written: "Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth," would bark from the corners of their own ruins. For the apostles were desiring to hear something else, and they were not seeking what was most necessary for them: "Tell us," they say, "if in this time you will present [and when] the kingdom of Israel?" But he replied: "It is not for you to know the times [or moments] which the Father has placed in his own power, but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." Having said these things, a cloud took him up. He added nothing further to these words: he fixed this all the more tenaciously in the minds of his hearers the later it was heard. This bride the departing bridegroom commended to his friends. This faith, therefore, concerning the holy Church he left to the disciples. To this faith, Donatists, you resist, and you contend that you suffer persecution for the faith which the Lord Christ left to the apostles. To this Son of Man, who commended his Church, beginning from Jerusalem and bearing fruit and growing among all nations, with such great diligence, you contradict with a marvelous blindness of impudence, and you cry out that you endure evils for the sake of the Son of Man.

Or do you perhaps say this because you have found for yourselves another Son of Man, in whose name you are called, from whose part you are named? You are mistaken; he is not that one. When he said that it was a blessing to suffer persecution for the sake of the Son of Man, that Bridegroom was proclaiming himself, not an adulterer. And we confess, as you say, that it was not said to the apostles alone: "Blessed will you be, when men have persecuted you." For this pertains to all, not only to those who after them have suffered any persecution whatsoever, whether they are suffering or will suffer, but to those who suffer for the sake of righteousness, just as they did. For a little earlier he had said: "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven"; then he added those words which you wished to recall and vainly usurp for yourselves. For you vainly think that this blessedness pertains to you, when you do not demonstrate in yourselves the righteousness to which the reward is due. On the contrary, you even suffer for iniquity, less from others, more from yourselves, so that before the future judgment of God you yourselves also, in some part, render to yourselves what you deserve. Hence, since you yourself said that this was said not only to the apostles but to all, lest faith should seem to have had its rewards only up to their time: just as therefore this was said not only to the apostles but to all who after them were to suffer any evils for the sake of righteousness, so also that was said to all: "If they persecute you in this city, flee to another.

Why do you not do this, if you belong to the company of those to whom these words were spoken? Even if you did do it, you would not thereby belong, because even robbers can do this, whom the public laws have ordered to be sought out. But because you are unwilling to do this, you show by a short cut that you do not belong to those to whom these words were spoken. And to show you much more clearly as aliens from that number of true Christians by your very excuse, you already say that the places of refuge, which he promised would not be lacking until the end of the world, are lacking to you, in no way proving that he made a false promise, but showing that you do not belong to the fellowship of those to whom he promised this, and therefore that you are not truthful martyrs, but deceitful heretics. What more shall we say to you, when your own tongue defeats you? For also that which you added, that the apostle said: "All who wish to live piously in Christ must suffer persecution," he did not indeed say "must," but: "All," he says, "who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution." But who doubts that you do not belong to these? For if you also are those of whom the apostle said this, why do you not do what the apostle himself did? For if the gates were closed against you, you ought to have been let down through the wall, so that you might flee the hands of the persecutors. The gates are open and you are unwilling to go out. What persecution do you suffer except from yourselves?

Your persecutor loves you, and your fury persecutes you: he desires that you flee, it drives you to perish. Now, if you understand the Apostle’s saying—that all who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution—in such a way, then you must confess that your forebears did not live piously under the apostate emperor Julian. For anyone who became a Donatist at that time, if he died before the pious care of Christian emperors again rose up against your error, did not live piously, because he did not suffer persecution. But if the Apostle said this because, as it is written elsewhere, the life of man on earth is a temptation, and it ceases not to tempt pious and true Christians not only by the assault of adversity but also by the seduction of prosperity, so that the human spirit either succumbs to affliction or is dissipated by pride—then certainly, as long as this life is lived, all who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution, so that they are either conquered and caught by the devil, or, having been tested, they conquer the devil. But those whom he already possesses as captured and captive, he does not persecute in order to obtain them, but because he already holds them, he uses them.

Moreover, if only he who torments with some pain or who seizes in order to torment is to be called a persecutor, do not think that a tormentor of the heart is lighter than one of the body, and consider what kind of persecution was suffered by the one who said in the psalm: “I saw the senseless and I wasted away.” This persecution the just Lot suffered in Sodom even before the angels, his guests in his house, while they were thought to be men, were sought after by the Sodomites for defilement. For the just man could not see them, so publicly shameful even before the injury to his own house, without great torment of heart. Hence the apostle Paul also recalls such things among his own persecutions, saying: “Who is sick, and I am not sick? Who is scandalized, and I am not burned?” Therefore, the greater the love of Christ in us, the greater the pain of soul with which we see you holding the sacraments of Christ and being separated from the members of Christ and rebelling against the peace of Christ. But as long as you live in this body, some hope concerning you is given to us; when, however, you die in that dissension, we grieve for you much more bitterly. Moreover, when you kill yourselves, either by rushing upon foreign weapons or by your own precipices, drownings, and fires, it cannot be sufficiently expressed with what grief you torment us. For the impious Absalom afflicted the holy father David more when dead than when he was a rebel. For while alive, David desired to capture him, so that he who raged in malice might be healed by repentance.

Therefore, that son was a persecutor of his father not only by dividing the people of God, nor only by bearing arms and waging war against God’s law and against his father’s legitimate kingdom, but he persecuted his father’s heart far more grievously by dying in that impiety. Finally, that best of fathers did not weep for that worst of sons while he lived, whom he had not despaired of and had not ceased to lament, but when hope was ended, he wept for him when he was killed. Learn, therefore, what the Apostle means when he says: All who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution. If the Donatists had not plundered the homes of Catholics, if they had not set fire to Catholic churches, if they had not thrown the sacred books of Catholics into those fires, if they had not afflicted the bodies of Catholics with the most savage massacres, if they had not cut off the limbs of Catholics, if they had not gouged out their eyes, if, finally, they had not cruelly killed Catholics, we would most truly say that we suffer from you this one most grievous persecution, because we see you senseless and we waste away, because you are weakened and we are weakened, because you are scandalized and we burn, because you are lost and we mourn. These evils of yours, which send you into eternal destruction, persecute us more bitterly than those which are inflicted by you on our bodies, or our property, or our homes, or our basilicas. You persecute us less when you rage against us than when you perish. Finally, in that persecution in which you rage against us, we rejoice with praise; but in this one, in which you perish, if we were to rejoice, we would perish with you.

But as long as you live in this flesh, we cannot despair of you; but when you die in this impiety, especially when you kill yourselves with horrible blindness of fury, only that which consoled the holy David consoles our bitterest sorrow, namely, the people of God gathered in unity, who were divided by the tyranny of a wicked son. For it is far more tolerable that very few of your most obstinate ones perish by their own precipices, or drownings, or fires, than that countless peoples, whose salvation those men hinder, will burn with them in the eternal fire. Therefore, the Church of Christ has never lacked, nor will it lack, a means by which, according to the apostle, those who wish to live piously in Christ may either suffer persecution by enduring the malice of the impious while they live in harm, or grieve for them when they perish. Do not, therefore, be deceived because it was said to us: "The hour will come when those who kill you will think they are doing a service to God," or, as you placed this testimony, "think they are offering a victim to God." It is indeed clear that this was not said about the persecutions that the Gentiles inflicted on the Church. For the Gentiles thought they were doing a service to their many gods, who certainly do not exist, when they did this to the one God.

Hence this same thing, which the Lord foretold to his own, was fulfilled either by the Jews, who killed Saint Stephen and many others, thinking they were doing a service to God because they seemed to worship the one true God, or also to us, that is, to Catholics, it was said concerning various heretics raging everywhere, who, where they can and when they can and how they can, by killing Catholics think they are doing a service to God, and especially concerning you, who have made a special name for yourselves in Africa from such victims. For if it had been said to you, you would certainly not kill yourselves, but would rather expect to be killed by us, who think we are doing a service to God, as you say, when we do this. But now, since you hasten to death lest you be held by our people, you fear living, not being killed, because you blush to be corrected or to be convicted of your error. Or perhaps you are those to whom both pertain, because, when you are killed and you kill yourselves, you think you are doing a service to God and offering these victims to him from yourselves? Therefore it pertains to you, what follows and was recalled by you. For soon the Lord added and said: "But they will do this to you because they have not known the Father nor me." Since, therefore, you kill yourselves, thinking you are doing a service to God, you have not known the Father (whom you did not hear saying: 'You shall not kill'), nor have you known the Son (whom you did not hear saying: 'Flee').

Words of the letter: But they boast themselves inhabitants of a warlike peace and a bloody unity. Let them hear the Lord saying: I give you my peace, I leave you my peace; not as the world gives do I give to you. For the peace of the world is forged between dissenting minds of peoples by arms and the outcome of war; the peace of the Lord Christ, with healthful and gentle tranquility, invites the willing, does not compel the unwilling. Response to this: You indeed desire to make a warlike peace and a bloody unity, either by our violent deaths or by your voluntary deaths, not imputing to yourselves what you do to us and imputing to us what you do to yourselves. But we are compelled to endure what you do to us, and we can do nothing but grieve over what you do to yourselves, while yet the peace and unity of Christ is brought about for the salvation of many, as happens in the majority, even if, because of the madness of a few, it does not happen in all. For if you would look not with an envious but with a faithful eye, you would see with what true peace and unity of Christ those rejoice who have come to us from you, the multitudes of so many and such great peoples, among whom, even if there are still some disturbed by the novelty itself, they too are gradually healed from this infirmity. And if some feigned ones persist, certainly it is not on their account that those whom we see as truthful ought not to have been gathered, some of whom, in your regions, have even appeared greater than some of ours, when, with that freedom of perdition granted to you, they were unwilling to return to you.

We were therefore obliged, lest we lose these people, to gather even the feigned, because in the Gospel it is read that a servant gathered good and bad guests for his master's wedding feast, especially since you have been shaken out of the Lord's threshing-floor by the spirit of pride like a violent wind before the time of winnowing, whence we are trying to recall you to that floor, as far as we can with God's help. And you certainly know how, with the broom of diligence, grain is dragged along even with the earth when it is recalled to the threshing-floor. But as for what seems to you that the unwilling should not be compelled to the truth, you err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God, who makes them willing while they are compelled unwilling. For did not the Ninevites perform penance unwillingly, because they did so at the compulsion of their king? For the prophet had already announced the wrath of God to the whole city, walking through it for three days: what need was there, then, for the king's command, that they should humbly supplicate God, who does not look at faces but at hearts, unless it were that there were some among them who would neither care about nor believe the divine predictions unless terrified by earthly power? By that command of royal power, therefore, against which your fall is voluntary, an opportunity is given to many for salvation, which is in Christ, who, even if they are violently led to the feast of such a father of the family and compelled to enter, yet inside they find something to rejoice that they have entered. For the Lord himself both foretold and fulfilled each.

For when some were rejected—who are understood to be the Jews, because they had previously been invited through the prophets and at the hour chose to excuse themselves—the Lord says to his servant: "Go out into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in here the poor and the weak, the blind and the lame." And the servant says: "Lord, it has been done as you commanded, and there is still room." And the Lord says to the servant: "Go out into the roads and hedges, and compel them to enter, so that my house may be filled." We understand 'roads' to mean heresies, 'hedges' to mean schisms; for 'roads' in this passage signify diverse opinions, but 'hedges' signify perverse opinions. What, then, do you wonder, if whoever neither willingly brought in nor forcibly driven enters this feast dies of spiritual hunger, not of bodily food? Words of the letter: "We rejoice," it says, "in the hatred of the world. In its pressures we do not succumb, but we are glad. This world cannot love the servants of Christ, who is known not to have loved Christ, with the Lord himself saying: 'If the world hates you, know that it hated me first before you. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.'" To this the response: How do you, rejoicing in the hatred of the world, not succumb to its pressures but are glad, when you yourselves wish to kill yourselves, lest you suffer any kind of troubles, and you choose to die not killed by others for the truth of Christ, but by yourselves for the party of Donatus? That is the madness of the Circumcellions, not the glory of martyrs.

Therefore, since your deeds are evident, why do you usurp the words of others? "This world," he says, "cannot love the servants of Christ, who is known not to have loved Christ." So we do not belong to this world, because we love you; but you are not servants of Christ, who, repaying evil for good and turning your malice back upon yourselves when you cannot exercise it against us, neither love us nor kill yourselves. But when the Lord said: "If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you," he said this not to you, but to those to whom he commanded that, if they were persecuted in that city, they should flee to another—which you do not do. He said this to those to whom he indicated the cities to which they might flee, cities that would not be lacking until the end of the world, cities which you complain are already lacking to you, and you refuse to admit that those to whom these words were spoken are not you.

The words of the epistle: "But even if persecution ceases," he says, "whence is the number of martyrs filled, John saying: I saw, he says, the souls of those slain under the altar of God crying out and saying: How long, Lord, do you not judge and avenge our blood upon those who dwell on the earth? And each received white robes, and it was said to them that they should rest yet a little while, until the number of their brothers who will begin to be slain as they themselves were is completed?" To this the response: If you wished to be martyrs under the altar of Christ, you would not, by burning yourselves, make a sacrifice to the devil. For who rejoices in this madness of yours except the devil, who inspires it in you, and those who are on his side? It is he who cast that boy, of whom we read in the Gospel, sometimes into water, sometimes into fire; it is he who plunged that herd of swine headlong into the waves; it is he who, to cast himself from the pinnacle of the temple, even suggested it to the Lord himself with the most audacious temptation. You undoubtedly belong to the devil, since you frequent three kinds of death—water, fire, and a precipice—in your deaths. For if madness did not destroy your minds, these very words which you have placed from the holy book ought to recall you from that destruction which you inflict upon yourselves. For what do the souls of the martyrs under the altar of God say? "How long, Lord, do you not judge and avenge our blood upon those who dwell on the earth?

They demand that their blood be avenged, certainly by those from whom it was shed: not by others, does it? And therefore your blood will be avenged in you. But what is more foolish than your belief that this prophecy about the martyrs, who were foretold as future, was fulfilled only in the Donatists, as if, after the blessed John wrote this, no martyrs were killed until the party of Donatus arose, who, if they cannot kill others, kill themselves, doing the works of robbers and demons and claiming the glory of martyrs for themselves? For if, over such a long interval of time, that is, from John up to these people, no true martyrs had been killed, we would say, if nothing else, that they would be future in the times of Antichrist, in whom that number of martyrs would be completed; yet we would not believe that these people, guilty of the blood of others or of their own, are added to the number of true martyrs, to whom it was said that they should rest for a short time until the number of their brothers, who began to be killed just as they were, was completed—by others, of course, not by themselves as these people do, and therefore these people are not like them. We can also say most truly that the Catholics whom the Donatists kill in their own times also belong to the supplement of that number.

But after the Apostle John, who wrote down those future events, such a great slaughter of martyrs was carried out everywhere among so many nations by the impious, what do these extortionists of their own souls and torturers of others mean by boasting that what is read as predicted about the holy martyrs has been fulfilled in themselves? Prepare yourselves rather, so that your blood may be avenged not in those who wish either to arrest you or to have you flee so that you may live, but in yourselves instead. Or perhaps, to prevent this from happening, you do not shed it, but either dash yourselves over a precipice, or drown yourselves by water, or turn yourselves into ashes? But you are mistaken. It will be avenged in you, by whatever means you destroy yourselves; for it would also be avenged in you if it were shed by others not in the Church of Christ, but in the party of Donatus. Will you then cry out to God to avenge your blood, and will He hear you unless He condemns you? For how is it to be avenged, unless the one who dared to slaughter it is condemned? In this cry, therefore, you are nothing but your own accusers, because you are guilty of your own blood, and God will condemn none but you when He avenges your blood, whether it be dashed, drowned, burned, or slaughtered in any way, or, if you choose this, shed.

Words of the letter: "Is not this," he says, "the persecution which has forced so many thousands of innocent martyrs to death? For Christians, according to the Gospel, prompt in spirit but weak in flesh, have snatched away their souls by the discovered shortcut of sacrilegious pyres, imitating the example of the presbyter Razias in the books of Maccabees, and not fearing in vain. For whoever has fallen into their hands has not escaped. But let them do as they wish: what is certain is that they cannot be of God. They are those who act against God." To this the response: You confess most openly and most truly what persecution you suffer; for it is the same of which I have already spoken, which is expressed quite clearly in the holy scriptures concerning certain impious men, of whom it is said that they suffer persecution from their own deeds. This indeed can be said most fittingly of you, even if the hands of others were to slaughter you on account of your sacrileges. For even robbers and any men guilty of capital crimes, when they are punished by just laws, are not to be said to suffer persecution except from their own deeds. But now, clearly, when with the Christian clemency that spares you, your own madness rages against you so that, as you say, you snatch away your souls by the discovered shortcut of pyres, it is excessive impudence if you deny that you suffer persecution from yourselves in every way, since you fulfill both conditions: both that on account of which you justly perish and that you do perish.

But you say that so many thousands of men do this, as if it were not also a considerable reason why Africa should be freed from your kind of teaching. For they are the kind of men to whom you were able to persuade this evil, who used to do these things even before, especially when the license of idolatry raged everywhere, when they would rush in upon the pagans celebrating their festivals with arms. Moreover, pagan youths would vow to their idols how many each would kill. And these men, flocking together from here and there, as if in an amphitheater, would thrust themselves against the spears of hunters like wild beasts, raging they died, rotting they were buried, deceiving they were venerated. Besides these, there are the immense rocks and the horrid precipices of mountains, made famous by the very frequent deaths of your volunteers. They did this more rarely by water and fire; huge crowds were consumed by precipices. I speak of things very well known to the men of our age. For who does not know that this kind of men is restless in dreadful crimes, idle from useful works, most cruel in the deaths of others, most worthless in their own, terrifying especially in the countryside, idle from the fields, and for the sake of their livelihood going around rustic cells, whence they received the name Circumcelliones? An almost world-famous disgrace of African error?

From this kind, therefore, who does not know how many formerly went and perished by various deaths, and how few now burn in their own fires in comparison with them? But if you think we ought to be moved because so many thousands die in this way, how much consolation do you suppose we have, in that from such great madness of the Donatist party, where not only the error of the nefarious division but also that fury has been made into law, far and incomparably more thousands are being freed? For those who perish are not even equal in number to those of that same kind who are now held in the order of discipline and, by cultivating the fields, having lost both the work and the name of circumcelliones, serve, preserve chastity, and maintain unity; how much less are these lost ones equal in number to those of both sexes, not only boys and girls, young men and virgins, but also married people and the elderly, countless numbers of whom are crossing over from the nefarious dissension of the Donatists into the true and Catholic peace of Christ! For those who burn themselves are not as many men as there are places full of people who are being rescued from the deadly plague of that error and fury through this effort of completing unity. Can it be, I ask, a sound counsel of mercy, that all these should be kept together with those for the eternal punishments of hell, lest those very few in comparison with these be burned by the fires of their own furnaces?

For indeed, it must be striven with great efforts and vows that all may live with Christ; but if this cannot be done because of the madness of some, at least it must be labored that not all perish with the devil. Certainly, inquiring most shrewdly from the holy scriptures, if you could bring forth anything for that insane opinion of voluntary death, you think you have found something because it is written in the Gospel: "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak," as if anyone ought to kill himself because he is weak for enduring sufferings at the hands of persecutors. You could have said more quickly that your false martyrs are from that number of whom it is written: "Woe to those who have lost endurance," and that they do not pertain at all to those to whom the Lord says: "In your patience you will possess your souls." But concerning those of whom it is read: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," they were oppressed by involuntary sleep, not killed by voluntary destruction. Read carefully and pay attention to what you are saying. Where is what the Apostle says: "God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but will make with the temptation also an outcome, so that you can endure"? Is this apostolic truth not to be believed, and must we have ourselves as enemies, because we cannot endure others as enemies? Far be this from Christian hearts.

Clearly, the faithful apostle—indeed, the faithful God Himself, who does not allow His own to be tempted beyond what they can bear, but provides with temptation also the outcome so that they can endure—let Catholics believe this, let Donatists not believe it, and that they may not always disbelieve it, let them not be Donatists. For when patience is despaired of in any passions to be obtained from the Lord, and therefore a shortcut of furnaces is sought, where these men cast themselves not indeed to beasts, as the most blessed Cyprian says, but nevertheless to flames, which no one has condemned, this is not counsel but madness, not wisdom but insanity. Let them have their own fires, who do not speak of the Lord’s help: because from Him comes my patience. Certainly, the holy Job, when he was rotting from head to foot with an unbearable wound and was tormented with monstrous pains, had this shortcut of yours at hand, by which he could have snatched himself from a life of this kind, full of horrible calamities, in which he undoubtedly remained, but he did not wish to be taken away. The power was certainly present, but justice did not permit it. For according to this, he says: “And would that I could kill myself, or ask another to do this for me.” The just man denied that he could do what could not be done justly. In that manner of speaking, the apostle also says to the Galatians: “I bear witness to you that, if it were possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.” For why could this not be done, unless because it could in no way be done justly?

Thus also the Lord, when through His angels He urged the just Lot, as he was departing from Sodom, to hasten to Segor: "For," He said, "I will not be able to do the deed until you enter there." He said He was not able to do what He undoubtedly could do by power, but which He could not do by justice. For the most patient Job could, if nothing else, have refrained from taking food or drink and thus have ended that wretched and horrible life; but he could not justly do this, since no one is permitted to kill himself, especially when, in order to be able to live, he is able to flee. Or would anyone doubt that that holy man, who spoke so much in his sufferings, could have asked someone to do this for him? For neither did his hand, in pain and festering, fail him for killing, nor did his tongue fail him for asking. Certainly he could have asked even his own wife. Yet she, who desired him to die through his blasphemy while God was angry, did not even suggest that this be done; and therefore, though she said something in a wicked counsel against God, she did not dare to tell him to kill himself. The devil has more power over you, who so easily persuades you of what he could not persuade a foolish woman, whom he had kept as his servant for deceiving her husband after taking everything from him. Thus that just man said that he could not ask anyone to kill him, thereby showing that it is certainly not permitted.

For what cannot be done justly, the just man cannot do, since in decreeing this he first loses justice, so that what the just man cannot do, the unjust man can. Thus he spoke: "And would that I could kill myself," as if he were saying, "And would that it were just"; for then it could be done by a just man. For he would not wish for injustice so that he could do what only the unjust man can do, but if it were possible, he would want this to be justice. Because it could not happen that this would be justice, the just man could not do what only injustice would accomplish. And through this it is not unjust for a just man to wish for death, when life is very bitter, but if God does not grant the wished-for death, it will not be just to endure anything other than that very bitter life. Just as it is not alien to a just man to wish for life, when bitter death threatens, but when he sees that he cannot obtain it, he says what the Lord, transfiguring us in Himself, says: "Truly not what I want, but what You want, Father." But these things are to be said to those whom the persecutors seek for the purpose of enduring evils, not to those whom those who love seek for the purpose of sharing goods; these things, I say, are to be said to those who suffer persecution on account of justice, not to those who inflict it on themselves on account of injustice.

Therefore, even that elder Razias, whom these men, bereft of examples for their crime, boast of having found in the books of the Maccabees as though to be imitated, ought to have done what those seven brothers are read to have done in the same writings, even with their mother exhorting them: that is, when captured and not turned away from the law of his Lord, he should have accepted everything that was applied to him, endured it in pain, and maintained patience in his humility. Consequently, unable to bear humility at the hands of his enemies, he gave an example not of wisdom, but of folly, to be imitated not by Christ's martyrs, but by Donatus's circumcellions. However, if we consider more carefully, you are shown to be alien even from him. For that man, when he was already being seized by his enemies, did not have free flight. Therefore, he struck himself with his sword, and when he could not kill himself, he threw himself from the wall, then from a jagged rock, while he could no longer live, yet still breathing and moving his body with a rush, running though bloodless he reached a place where, with both hands drawn forth, he tore apart and scattered his own entrails and fell, surrounded by a crowd so that he could not escape, even if he could live. You, therefore, who neither hear the Lord saying "flee" nor imitate Razias, who wished but could not flee, assuredly have neither him in precept nor him in example. What of the fact that this Razias, according to your reasoning, is without doubt to be blamed?

You said, on account of the evangelical saying where the Lord says, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak," that you have fled to the shortcut of the pyres, because evidently you are too weak to endure the hands of your enemies if you are caught by them. Therefore, of that man who severely wounded himself with a sword, who, wounded, sought the wall, who from there threw himself headlong, who even afterwards was able to run to a rock, stand on the rock, and draw out, seize, and scatter his own entrails—can it be said that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak? Not only did his spirit appear so willing, but even his flesh was so strong that it is scarcely credible that he was willing and able to do what he did. And so this man must displease you, because he disturbs the rationale of your weakness by his own strength. Moreover, if he, being able to flee but unwilling, had gathered wood in his own house and, when the enemies were rushing in to capture him, had set fire to it and burned himself along with his dwelling, he would indeed have provided an example for you, but he would have acquired great torment for himself. Now, however, because he was unable to flee, he is perhaps somewhat less guilty of his own blood, in that he inflicted death upon himself than the enemy would have inflicted upon him when captured.

Indeed, Razias is praised by the authority of the holy scriptures. How is he praised? Because he was a lover of the city: this could be understood even in a carnal sense, namely of that earthly Jerusalem which serves with her sons, not of that heavenly one, our free mother. He is praised because he preserved continence in Judaism: but the apostle says that these things, in comparison with Christian righteousness, are losses and dung. He is praised because he was called the father of the Jews: this is all the more reason why impatience with humility crept upon him as a man, so that he preferred to die before being subjected to enemies. It is said that he chose to die nobly: he would have done better to choose humbly, for thus it would have been useful. But with those words, the history of the Gentiles is accustomed to praise, but strong men of this world, not martyrs of Christ. It is said that he manfully threw himself from the wall into the crowds: nor do we say that he did this in a womanish manner. Although you, who have profited greatly from this example, have also taught your women to do this: but we admit that even they do this not in a womanish manner, but manfully, yet not healthfully, because not faithfully. Finally, that he is said to have invoked the ruler of life and spirit, that he might return these to him again, that is, life and spirit, and even then he did not ask for anything by which the good are distinguished from the evil. For God will return these even to those who have acted wickedly, not in the resurrection of eternal life, but in the resurrection of eternal judgment.

Therefore this Razias was praised as a lover of the city, so that he was very well spoken of, that is, of good repute, because he was called the father of the Jews and because he maintained continence in Judaism. But scripture narrated this death of his as more remarkable than prudent, in the manner in which it happened, not as if it were to be praised as something to be done. It is for us, however, as the apostle admonishes, to test all things, to hold fast to what is good, and to abstain from every appearance of evil.

And this scripture, which is called Maccabees, the Jews do not hold in the same way as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, to which the Lord bears witness as to his own witnesses, saying: it was necessary that all things written in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me be fulfilled. But it has been received by the Church not without benefit, if it is read or heard soberly, especially on account of those Maccabees, who, for the law of God, as true martyrs, suffered such unworthy and horrible things at the hands of persecutors, that even from this the Christian people might take note, since the sufferings of this time are not commensurate with the future glory that will be revealed in us, for which Christ suffered, if they so patiently endured such great things for the law which God gave through a servant to those men, for whom he had not yet given up his Son. Although this Razias also has something that may benefit readers, not only so that the mind may be exercised in judging rightly what it reads, but also so that the human spirit, indeed the Christian spirit, might take note of how much is to be borne from enemies by the ardor of charity, when this man, from fear of humility, endured such great things by himself. But the ardor of charity descends from the height of divine grace, whereas fear of humility arises from love of human praise; and therefore the former contends through patience, while the latter sins through impatience.

Therefore, we ought not to approve with consent whatever we read that men, even those praised by the testimony of God, have done in the Scriptures, but rather to discern by considering, applying the judgment not of our own authority, but of the divine and holy Scriptures, which does not permit us either to imitate or to praise all the deeds of those men to whom a good and illustrious testimony is given there, if any things were done by them not rightly or are not suitable to this present time. But concerning those things which were then right but are now not, what need is there to discuss anything in this question, when this matter at hand—that someone inflicts death upon himself, especially one who is permitted or rather compelled to live—is among those deeds which neither could ever be right nor could have been, as we have already sufficiently demonstrated? Accordingly, however you may interpret this praised life of Razias, his death does not have praiseworthy wisdom, because it does not have patience worthy of God's servants; rather, that voice of wisdom, which is not of praise but of detestation, applies to him: "Woe to those who have lost their endurance." For if you believe all the deeds of the praised are to be imitated, is this Razias better than David? Why then does no good man set before himself to imitate his deed of coveting another man's wife and killing her husband, but rather to beware of and avoid it? Is Razias better than Solomon?

Does it please you, then, that we should set up as an example to be imitated his licentiousness toward women, by whose seductions he was led even to building temples for idols? Is Razias better than the apostle Peter, who, when he said, "You are Christ, the son of the living God," was called blessed by the Lord, so that he merited to receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and yet is not believed to be imitable in that where, immediately in the same moment, he was rebuked and heard: "Get behind me, Satan; for you do not understand what pertains to God, but what pertains to men"? And to pass over these things, which the most clear voice of holy church Scripture has condemned, and to speak of those things which are only narrated and written there, and concerning which no sentence of praise or blame has been passed on either side, but which are left to us to judge, is Razias better than Noah? Yet who, being sober, would praise that man because he lay drunk? Is Razias better than the patriarch Judah? Yet who would approve him, who would be pleased by him, whom would he not most rightly offend in that fornication, since he entered, not to his daughter-in-law (for he was ignorant of this), but indeed to the woman he thought was a prostitute? Is Razias better than Samson? Dare to say, then, if you can, that the great and divine secret of strength which he had in his hair was to be revealed to a flattering little woman.

For that deed, when he killed himself along with his enemies, by collapsing the house upon himself and them, he intended to share with them the death he was about to suffer at their hands, since he could not escape. This, indeed, he did not do of his own accord, but it is to be attributed to the spirit of God, who made use of him so that he could do, when that spirit was present with him, what he could not do when the same spirit was absent. Just as in the case of Abraham, when he wished to sacrifice his son—which, when God commanded, was obedience; but if God had not commanded, what would it have been but madness? Instructed by these sacred Scriptures, the blessed Cyprian said in his confession that discipline forbids anyone to offer himself. See how great an evil you commit when you wish to kill yourselves, who would be undisciplined even if you wished to offer yourselves to others who desire to do this to you. The one you call Savior commands flight; the persecutor permits flight: what then do you follow, that you perish by your own fires, if not your own madness? And yet you say: Is this not a persecution, which has driven so many thousands of the innocent to death? Show how you are innocent, you who divide Christ and kill yourselves. Show how you are driven to death, you to whom flight is both commanded by the divine and permitted by the human. Show how, by the shortcut of the furnaces, you snatch your souls from contamination, which you rather make most contaminated by the sacrilege of the furnaces, as if by a diabolical sacrifice.

Ask Christ: he commands you to flee; ask the tribune: he permits you to flee; if you could also ask Razias himself, he would answer you: 'I could not flee.' You, therefore, have neither Christ the savior, nor the tribune the persecutor, nor Razias the author. As for what you said, that your people killed themselves not without reason fearing, because whoever falls into our hands or the hands of our people does not escape—I ask, what did he not escape? If death, why do you inflict it upon yourselves with your own hands, if you fear it from ours? But it is clear that you are not speaking of death. For how much we desire you to live, even you yourselves know; that is why you frighten us with your death. Therefore, if you say that none of your people who fall into our hands escape our communion—would that you spoke the truth! For they would indeed happily not escape the communion offered by Catholics, so that they might escape the damnation prepared for heretics. But what you say is false, as you could have considered even from your Emeritus, who, when he came to us, was more easily convinced by the truth than compelled to communicate. There are others, lesser in fame, it is true, but equal in folly. For whoever was of similar vanity, so that against the most manifest truth he became obstinate out of the most perverse shame, blushing to be thought inconstant, departed from us without Catholic communion.

But you said: "Whoever falls into their hands does not escape," because you thought that very few, who persistently resist the most obvious truth and depart, are hidden. But you have done Emeritus a very grave injury, according to your own standards, for he has lost in your eyes the praise of his own stubbornness—as if he wished in vain to be among the few who do not consent to the truth, because he did not deserve to be counted among the hidden. Who among us would not believe that you envy your colleague? Or if you do not envy him, imitate him. Come to us yourself, as he did; hear what we say, as he did; answer, if you can, what he could not; but if you are unwilling either to answer or to communicate, depart, as he did. Behold, he left our hands unharmed; why then do you say: "Whoever falls into their hands does not escape"? Behold, he did not trust that places would be lacking where he could hide; why then do you plan to burn? Do you not yet see that it is you who do not belong to God, and who act against God not only with the common plague by which you resist the unity of Christ, but also especially against us, who hasten to add even deaths to this great crime of yours?

Words of the letter: "But since your prudence, he says, was not suited to the office of executor, I ask you to attend briefly. There is, as I think, one solid truth, another image of truth. Since truth stands firm by its own strength, an idol or simulacrum is what human presumption has made similar to the true, to its injury; yet falsehood can never prejudice truth. I call worshipers of simulacra those who do not hold the truth; under a foreign name, I consider a pagan one who makes for himself what he worships. Hence it is public and open that by threats or terror and frequent persecutions, Gabinius and his like, removed from the freedom of nature, are known to have fabricated for themselves the faithless ones whom they venerate, to whose worship they are forced unwillingly." To this the response: You still add words of blasphemy to your madness and dare to say that the Catholic Church is a human fabrication, to which God says: "I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name." And, so that we may know that this same Catholic Church is spread throughout the whole world, it follows and adds: "And he who delivers you, the God of Israel himself, will be called God of the whole earth." This most evident work of God you call a human fabrication, and you do not look at yourselves, that you would in no way be separated from this Church, which God promised to make throughout the whole earth, unless you were following a man. We follow him who said to Abraham: "In your seed all nations will be blessed.

We follow Him who said to His own Church, as I have just recalled: "I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is His name, and He who delivered you shall be called the God of Israel of the whole earth." Therefore, holding to the Church, which is spread and grows through all nations and throughout the whole world, we certainly do not follow a human fabrication, but a divine promise and deed. What do you follow, that you, separated from the communion of this divine promise and divine work, wish to be of the party of Donatus? Did a man or God tell you that because of Caecilian's sin the promises of God perished from the whole world and remained only in the party of Donatus? If God, read this to us from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the apostolic and evangelical writings. Read it, if you can, which you were utterly unable to do in our conference. But if men said these things, of whom it is said: "They have established for themselves a wicked saying," behold the human fabrication, behold what you worship, behold whom you serve, behold on account of which you rebel, rage, and burn.

Gabinius indeed, and the others who recognized, chose, and held to this Church, not a human fabrication but a divine promise foretold and fulfilled, desiring to have it with the faithful, were unwilling to endure further those human troubles for the sake of a human fabrication. For whoever loses his property, or even his life, at the hands of others who take it away and kill him, for the truth and unity of Christ, truly has faith, truly has hope, truly has charity, truly has God; but whoever loses even a fringe of his garment for the sake of the Donatist party has no heart. What wonder, then, if wise men, when they saw that losses and exiles were set before them against the most stubborn antiquity of hardened custom, considered whether they ought to endure these things for the Donatist party against the Catholic Church, that is, for a human fabrication against a divine work, and saw that they certainly ought not, and recognized that this which you call persecution was for them an opportunity for correction, and did what is written: give a wise man an opportunity and he will be wiser. You see, therefore, how vainly you said to a man who, by the command of his most pious emperor, seeks your correction, that this prudence did not befit the office of the executor. For what is more fitting for a soldier on duty than that, in that cause in which he weighs by what deception you wish to be led, he himself should become a salvation for many who are to be corrected?

Words of the letter: "For teaching the people of Israel," he says, "almighty God gave proclamation to prophets, not command to kings. The Savior of souls, Lord Christ, sent fishermen, not soldiers, to instill the faith." To this the response: Hear then the holy prophets and the holy fishermen, and you will not find troublesome the most religious kings. For I have already shown above that it pertained to the king's care that the Ninevites appease God, whose wrath the prophet had announced. Therefore, as long as you do not hold the Church which the prophets foretold and the fishermen apostles planted, so long do the kings who hold it most rightly judge it to pertain to their care, that you may not rebel against it with impunity. For God also had kings among the prophets; David indeed was holy, which you cannot be ignorant of, and was a king. Hear then a king prophesying, and you will fear no religious king in anger. Hear, I say, the king-prophet saying of Christ: "He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth," and you will not fear a Christian king angered at you for blaspheming this Church, which, as prophesied by a king, is displayed to the ends of the earth. For even King Nebuchadnezzar, although he was not a prophet, nevertheless punished with religious severity those who blasphemed God, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Words of the letter: "Almighty God," he says, "never expected the help of worldly soldiery, who alone can judge the living and the dead." To this the response: God does not expect the help of worldly soldiery when he rather bestows a benefit upon kings, inspiring them to see to it that in their kingdom the precept of their Lord is carried out. For to whom is it said: "And now, O kings, understand, be instructed, you who judge the earth, serve the Lord in fear," they perceive that their power ought to serve the Lord in such a way that with that power they punish those who refuse to serve his will. And as for the odium you create concerning soldiers, if indeed this care, as we have already shown, is demonstrated in the holy scriptures to pertain to kings, through whom are those who will act against the rebellious Circumcellions and their insane associates or leaders to be set in motion, if not through their subject soldiers? Words of the letter: "But this they do not know," he says, "the incubators of others' property, who do not even hear God saying: 'Do not covet your neighbor's property,' nor through Solomon the Holy Spirit saying: 'Then the just will stand in great constancy against those who have distressed them and who have taken away the fruits of their labors. Seeing, they will be troubled with horrible fear and will marvel at the suddenness of unexpected salvation, saying among themselves, repenting and groaning in the anguish of their spirit: These are the ones we once held in derision and as a likeness of reproach.'

We considered them mad, but we were the senseless ones, judging their life to be insanity and their end without honor. How have they been counted among the sons of God, and how is their lot among the saints? Therefore we have strayed from the path of truth, and the light of justice has not shone upon us. We have grown weary on the road of iniquity and perdition, and we have walked through difficult wastelands, but we have been ignorant of the Lord's way. What has pride profited us, or what has the boasting of riches brought us? All things have passed away like a shadow. This faith, therefore, exhorts us to die willingly for God in this persecution. To this the response: Acknowledge your crime and do not usurp for yourselves a name that is not yours. Scripture said: "Then the just will stand in great constancy against those who have distressed them and who have taken away their labors." It did not say: "All who have suffered evils will stand," but: "The just will stand," just as the Lord, when he had said: "Blessed are those who suffer persecution," unless he had added "for the sake of justice," would not have signified only those who are crowned for their patience in the Lord, but also those who are punished by just laws. Therefore, if you think these words of the just, which are written, pertain to you, first show whether you are just. For you have great matters which you may bandy about as your justices: the division of Christ, the rending of the sacraments of Christ, the abandonment of the peace of Christ, war against the members of Christ, accusations against the spouse of Christ, the denial of the promises of Christ.

These are your justices, for which, evidently, you will stand with great constancy against those who have distressed you and taken away your labors. But now, when you begin to boast among your justices that you kill yourselves, who will be deemed equal to you in justice? For then you will appear most clearly as avengers, but see against whom: against those, of course, who killed you. Therefore, to be avenged, you will be punished, and thus you will stand against yourselves. You stand most firmly, who, shut up in furnaces, compress yourselves into cruel straits, so that neither can anyone who wishes to help enter, nor can anyone who wishes to escape exit. Far be it, far be it that they stand with great constancy, when they will stand with such a bad conscience. Unless perhaps you think that God can then spare us on account of your crimes, because you yourselves do not spare yourselves now. Whence also some of your nuns, pregnant, threw themselves over rocks, and with their wombs bursting, they revealed the crimes of fornications along with the crime of homicide, thinking that if they had avenged themselves in this way, God would in no way avenge. Just as you think, who, by the sacrilege of schism and heresy, whether by plundering, mutilating, blinding, killing, finally also by rebaptizing Catholics, and whatever other nefarious deeds could be committed by you, can be expiated in this way by which you kill yourselves. But you are mistaken; Judas also thought this.

Do you also wish to add this as evidence, by which we may know more certainly that your predecessors were rather the traitors, because you imitate the death of a traitor? Therefore, what in the conference you obstinately refused to admit, you now confirm from this very fact that the official records are true, in which, when confessed traitors were pardoned by Secundus of Tigisis, who was then the primate of Numidia, and he absolved those whose crimes of betrayal were manifest and confessed in their presence at Cirta, he punished them at Carthage as if they were traitors not convicted and absent. From which crime Secundus himself, when accused by Purpurius of Limata, could not clear himself, when the same Purpurius said to him: "What did you do, you who were detained by the curator and the town council so that you would hand over the scriptures? How did you free yourself from them, except that you gave or ordered to be given whatever it was? For they did not let you go casually." Moreover, Secundus, even in his letter to Mensurius, which you yourselves produced and read, confessed without ambiguity that he did not hand over the scriptures, but that persecutors sent by the curator and the town council came to him, whom Purpurius of Limata accused him of, so that he would hand over the scriptures. And when they asked him for them, he replied: "I am a Christian and a bishop, not a traitor," and he wished to hand over nothing at all to them.

Do you wish us to believe this, when even you yourselves see how incredible it is that, during that fierce persecution, a bishop was seized or convened to hand over the dominical scriptures, and was released without having handed over any? Surely you argued that bishops could not assemble in the city of Cirta during the time of persecution to ordain a bishop. How then did that persecution rage, if a bishop could be detained for the purpose of handing over the scriptures and be let off unpunished without handing over any? And yet you cried out, describing the savagery of that persecution, that not even twelve bishops could gather in a council to ordain a bishop and produce those records, where they mutually forgave each other’s crimes of traditio and left judgment to the Lord for the sake of the peace of the Church, while you at this time, claiming to suffer a persecution such as never was—that is, that you lack places to flee to and hide in—nevertheless hold councils, ordain bishops, and even in the place of those who perished by their own fires, you ordain again such men as are prepared to perish by their own fires. Yet in a council, during a time of such persecution as you think and boast of, you were able to assemble more than thirty, including Petilianus, who cried out that not even twelve could assemble during a time of persecution.

Furthermore, in that same council you decreed that those among either the bishops or the presbyters who communicated with us unwillingly, provided they did not offer the sacrifice or preach to the people, should be granted pardon and be received back into their ranks, and thus you yourselves have completely cut away all the force of your calumnies by this very decree of yours. For where is that claim of yours, in your empty talk, that even those who were not traditors become traditors through communion with us, because, as you slanderously assert, those who, under the pressure of the impious authorities at that time, handed over the ecclesiastical books have polluted us? Why then do you now absolve from the crime those whom you have learned communicated with us unwillingly, if they did not offer the sacrifice nor preach to the people? As if those first traditors at that time, under the terror and dread of monstrous tortures—such as none at all have inflicted upon you now—did not hand over the sacred books unwillingly, or did offer sacrifice there, or did preach to the people. You see, therefore, that just as you have been able to pardon those whom you most vainly accuse of becoming traditors through our communion, if they did anything unwillingly, so also your predecessors, in a far more pressing necessity, could have pardoned the true traditors who handed over the books by the same rule.

but to condemn others who were absent and unheard, they were compelled by the faction of Caecilian’s enemies, doing what the apostle says about such things: for in judging another, you condemn yourself; for you do the same things that you judge. Therefore, since the Donatists have always loved to kill themselves and were themselves traitors from the beginning, what wonder is it if they taught their own descendants to love the death of a traitor? But for the sake of avoiding this resemblance, they have either never or very rarely killed themselves by the noose—entirely in vain. For that same one who compelled the traitor Judas to do it also often cast that boy, whom the Lord healed, into water and fire, and drove a herd of swine into the sea, and suggested to the Lord himself a leap from the pinnacle of the temple by audacious presumption. Therefore, although you hurl yourselves into voluntary death in various ways, yet by the instigation of the same devil you imitate the traitor in killing yourselves. And even if you are not those men, yet of those who were and made the schism, in which you willingly abide, you have learned from a nefarious teaching to do even this in yourselves, which the traitor did in himself. Behold now, with what justice do you stand against those who have distressed you, so that if your deaths are avenged, they are avenged most justly only in yourselves.

What then are these labors of yours, which you boast are taken from you? Is it unjust that the churches which were yours, when they pass over into Catholic peace, pass over with their possessions? For if, when they pass over to us, you wish to keep their possessions, you undoubtedly wish to take away the possessions of others. But the Catholic mother says to you what the blessed apostle said to some: I do not seek what is yours, but you. Yet how are you not contrary to yourselves, when you cast both charges at us—that we desire to possess your possessions and that we violently force you to be with us? Do you not see how contrary these two things are to each other? For if we seek and hold you, invited, to our communion, how can we desire your possessions, which we certainly cannot have while you are in communion with us? But if we desire to obtain them, how do we seek you, so that we might lose them while you are in communion with us? But we confess to you: our cupidity is called charity. This seeks you in us, this desires to find you, to correct you, and to unite you in the unity of Christ; so that we fear you burning in your own fires, and we burn with this fire; this inflames us, so that not only do we not covet your possessions, but we desire that you possess ours as well. Acknowledge this and come, and do not perish. Or if you blush to come willingly, we serve weakness, lest anything perish to charity. Behold, we wish to hold you: why do you hasten to burn?

We hold to life, we hold to salvation, we hold to the unity, truth, and sweetness of Christ, and to the banquet of so great a father of the household, and if you are unwilling to enter of your own accord, we compel you. The contest is about justice, not about money. Beware, therefore, lest, while you think that what is written pertains to you: "Then the just will stand in great constancy against those who have distressed them and taken away their labors," this should not happen to you concerning your labors, but rather what is written in another place: "The just will eat the labors of the impious." For the Maximianists will not stand against you, whose basilicas you took away when you could; nor will the pagans stand against you, whose temples you certainly overturned and whose basilicas you destroyed where you could, which we also did; nor will the musicians of the demons stand against you, whose flutes and castanets you broke, which we also did. Thus neither will you stand against us. For in all such deeds, it is not plunder that is desired, but error that is overthrown.

Just as the Canaanites will not stand against the Israelites, even though the Israelites took away their labors, but Naboth will stand against Ahab, because a crime was committed, not a command, so that an unjust man might take away the labors of a just man, so heretics will not stand against Catholics, when the commands of the Christian empire are fulfilled in the property of heretics, and their property is not taken away by Catholics, but rather is sought out and kept to be returned to them, corrected as much as possible, but Catholics will stand not only against pagans, from whom true martyrs were despoiled, but also against the Circumcellions of the Donatists, because they too took away their labors. But concerning these pecuniary labors, the case is easier, since even those to whom they belonged pass over to the Catholic peace. Behold, daily, if someone has made the transition to us, we return money, clothing, produce, vessels, fields, roofs of yours: how are you to return to us the members of our people?

Surely you will at last wake up and see that you are not those of whom it is said, nor we those by whom it is said: "These are the ones we once laughed at, while we rather weep for you." Nor will you be counted among the children of God unless, withdrawing from the Donatist party, you hold to this Church, which, as foretold, the Son of God displays. Nor is your lot among the saints, but among heretics. For as for what you think others will say about you: "We, the senseless, considered their life madness," I am amazed that you are so senseless that you do not now say such things to yourselves. Indeed, true and faithful saints will say such things to the impure and unfaithful then—to those, namely, whom they now consider to be mad because they refuse to enjoy the luxuries they see, while believing in what they do not see. But you, if you do not consider your life—or certainly this death you are making for yourselves—madness, you are more hopelessly mad. Those words, however: "Therefore we have strayed from the path of truth," and so on, will not be yours alone, but especially yours. For you are straying, which is evident, from the path of truth, and the light of justice does not shine for you; you are wearied by the path of iniquity and perdition, and you walk through difficult wastelands, but you are ignorant of the Lord's way. And what follows: "What did pride profit us, or what did the boasting of riches bring us?

All those things have passed away like a shadow, and I do not know whether anyone among the rest could say this more aptly and fittingly than your predecessor Optatus. Therefore, do not think yourselves to be what you are not, and do not perish as what you are, since it is not this faith, but your evil error that urges you, not to die willingly for God, as you say, in this persecution, but to suffer persecution wickedly for the sake of Donatus. The words of the letter: (and in another hand:) "I wish," he says, "that you, with the truth perceived, would calm your mind and refrain from the deaths of the innocent." To this, the response: Rather, with the truth perceived, calm your own mind, lest it rage so fiercely that it does not even spare you. For what can be found more gently than this, to whom you wrote these things, who both invited you to life and, if you were unwilling to live it with us, released you to flight? You are harsh toward yourselves, you are ungentle, you are cruel without any consideration of humanity, doing to yourselves what lovers of error and persecutors of men are accustomed to do to their enemies, so that there is something for the persecutors of error and the lovers of men to lament most bitterly. But what do you wish, that he refrain from the deaths of the innocent? You are certainly not innocent; nevertheless, he gave you a way out, but you yourselves wish to give yourselves destruction. For I think that ignorance of the word deceived you, so that, intending to mean "destructions," you said "deaths.

Since you urge, by your wishing, that the executor of the imperial laws should refrain from the destruction of the innocent, you are acting so that he spares deceivers and permits the innocent to be deceived with impunity. What else, therefore, are you doing, except that the one to whom you think you are wishing well should keep faith neither with God nor with his own emperor, because, according to your false justice rather than the true one, such cases ought not to pertain to the care of the emperors, so that a fraudulent division might be healed, but ought to pertain, so that, when it was made, it might be confirmed? If this teaching, which you have learned not from the holy Scriptures but from somewhere else, seems just to you—that these matters do not belong to imperial authority—then it would have occurred to your predecessors when they sent the case of Caecilian to the judgment of the emperor Constantine by accusing him. But now, because the lions did not harm Daniel on account of his innocence, you want them to spare those who cast him to the lions by their false accusations. But God does not judge as a man does; in His hand is the heart of the king, and He inclines it wherever He wills. Now, when the heart of the king is unfaithful, the good are either exercised or tested; when it is faithful, the wicked are either corrected or punished. Which of these two applies to your case we have already said enough, and we have responded sufficiently to your letter, omitting no point—which, although I wish it were also for you, yet I trust, with the Lord’s mercy, will be of benefit to some among you.

If you are preparing to answer something to these points, read also those proceedings which were held with Emeritus, to which he himself could not reply, lest perhaps you might be able to, as I have already advised you above to try. We also dealt with him concerning the case of the Maximianists, about which in the conference you were so often charged by us and answered nothing, because on a matter so manifest and so recent you could find nothing to reply: how Maximianus, whom you struck with a far heavier sentence than Caecilianus, so that you called him a minister of Dathan, Abiram, and Korah, whom the earth swallowed alive for the crime of schism, did not pollute the partners of his schism, to whom you gave a delay to return to your communion, did not pollute an African from Africans, living from living, known from known, a participant from associates, and Caecilianus polluted those across the sea, polluted those far away, polluted the unknown, polluted those not yet born. Find, if you can, what you may say: how you received back the honor of Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assura, whom you condemned with Maximianus and ten others without any delay, against whom you litigated before two or, unless I am mistaken, three proconsuls to drive them from the basilicas, and, when you had already ordained another in the place of Praetextatus, after so long a time you received them back in their honors. By what justice, by what reason, by what face is a condemned Maximianist received in his honor, and the catholic world condemned unheard?

By what justice, by what reason, by what face do you say that one must beware lest Caecilianus, long dead and utterly unknown to you, once condemned by your ancestors judging, three times acquitted by your ancestors accusing, should defile you, and yet you did not think it necessary to beware lest Felicianus, condemned by the mouth of your universal council and received by the favor especially of your predecessor from all of you, should defile you? By what justice, by what reason, by what face do you rescind the baptism which the churches planted by the labors of the apostles give, when you have accepted the baptism which Felicianus and Praetextatus, for so long a time, when you were litigating against them as condemned men, administered outside your church? For if, as you are accustomed to misunderstand and to object to us, what is written is to be understood thus: "He who is baptized by a dead man, what does he profit from his washing?"—among those men, those men lay dead when they were baptizing, concerning whom your Bagaitan sentence resounded with such a clamor: "Like the example of the Egyptians perishing, the shores are full of corpses, for whom in death itself there is a greater punishment, because after the avenging waters have wrung out their soul, they do not even find burial." What will you say to these things? Behold, dead men baptize those whom you receive, and you do not die, and you slander us as if we were dead, so that you truly die by your own fires, unwilling to communicate with the Catholic unity. Answer these things; you have leisure to think of what to say.

At least in this matter we confer some benefit upon you, so that while you think about what to answer, you think less about how you burn. But we do not want you, weary and shaken by lack of an answer, to think that you must still say what you are accustomed to say: "If we are such, why do you seek us?" For we answer: the Catholic Church ought to seek you all the more, because you have perished, if you, lost, sought out the lost Maximianists. For from your heart you say to us: "Why do you seek so many and such great criminals?" But from the book of God we answer you: because charity covers a multitude of sins. BOOK TWO. I have received, Gaudentius, your response, if indeed that is to be called a response, which you wished to send back to me lest, if you had kept silent, we would say you were convicted. But this is not to respond, that is, not to be silent. For if it were, you have responded plainly, but in such a way that even those who could hope something from you might know that you have not found what you ought to answer, and yet have answered, lest you be silent. Thus, while you took care not to be called defeated, you made yourself shown to be so. To demonstrate this, your own writings suffice, if read by those who understand and compared with mine by diligent examination. But to teach this by other writings, so that even slower minds may be satisfied, a somewhat longer disputation is necessary, which indeed I will undertake, if it is needed and the Lord wills.

Now for the moment, since you have tried to affirm that you yourselves are rather the Catholics by the testimony of the blessed Cyprian, attend a little to what Church he called Catholic when he defended her unity. "The Church," he says, "bathed in the light of the Lord, extends her rays throughout the whole world; yet it is one light which is diffused everywhere, and the unity of the body is not separated. She extends her branches over the whole earth with an abundance of fertility, and spreads her flowing streams more widely; yet there is one head and one origin and one mother, prolific with the successes of her fecundity." Why, therefore, do you both deceive yourselves and wish to deceive others with shameless lies? If by the testimony of this martyr your Church is the Catholic Church, show her extending her rays throughout the whole world, show her extending her branches over the whole earth with an abundance of fertility. For it is from this that she is called Catholic by the Greek word; for what is said in Greek is interpreted in Latin as "whole" or "universal." It is therefore "throughout the whole" or "according to the whole," whence she is named Catholic. If you know this, why do you pretend not to know it? But if you are ignorant, why do you not, before you speak, ask those who know what you do not know? But if this displeases you, find some language, not Greek, by which you can teach that καθ' ὅλον does not mean "throughout the whole" or "according to the whole" or "according to the universal," and withdraw from the testimony of Cyprian. For he speaks against you, who see what he says.

He says that the Catholic Church is spread and extended throughout the whole world and over the entire earth, agreeing with its Greek name and definition. You are found to hold, think, say, and maintain something else, and, although you lean on Cyprian as a witness, you lie with Cyprian as a witness. Therefore, from this true and genuine Catholic Church, which, bathed in the Lord’s light, extends its rays throughout the whole world and spreads its branches over the entire earth with an abundance of fertility, when you are asked what cause you had for leaving, you find nothing just; you utterly fail to wash away your departure from this Church with any purging of a probable excuse. For what do you say but: ‘Necessity compelled us, the just, to leave the unjust’? Divine Scripture answers you: a bad son calls himself just, but does not wash away his departure. ‘Departure,’ he says, ‘I have’—that departure, of which the apostle John speaks: ‘They went out from us’—he does not at all wash it away, defend it, excuse it, or purge it. For it does not pertain to the just in the Catholic Church, except to tolerate most patiently the evil whom they cannot correct or condemn, and not to go out from the Lord’s field because of the tares, nor from the Lord’s threshing-floor because of the chaff, nor from the Lord’s house because of dishonored vessels, nor from the Lord’s nets because of bad fish, before the time, lest they vainly attempt to wash away their departure.

You are trying to turn the evangelical sentences into another sense by any argument you wish, you contradict the same blessed Cyprian, whose testimonies you adduce, just as you did in our conference. For these are the words of the aforementioned martyr on this question in the letter he wrote to Maximus and his fellow confessors: "Even if," he says, "there appear to be tares in the Church, yet our faith or our love ought not to be hindered, so that because we see tares in the Church we ourselves should withdraw from the Church. We must only labor that we may be wheat, so that when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's granaries, we may reap the fruit of our work and labor. The apostle says in his letter: 'In a large house, there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthenware ones. And some are indeed honored, some dishonored.' Let us give our effort and labor as much as we can, that we may be a gold or silver vessel. For the rest, it is granted to the Lord alone to break the earthenware vessels, to whom the iron rod is given. A servant cannot be greater than his master, nor can anyone claim for himself what the Father has granted only to the Son, so as to think that he can either carry the winnowing-fan or the winnowing-fork to the threshing-floor for winnowing and purging, or separate all the tares from the wheat by human judgment. That is a proud obstinacy and a sacrilegious presumption which a perverse madness assumes for itself.

And while some people always assume more than gentle justice demands, they perish from the Church, and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their own pride, they lose the light of truth. Surely now at least you see that in our conference you cried out against the blessed Cyprian and opposed him with contentions by which you asserted that the field of Christ, of which he says, "The field is the world," is not the Church, but the world apart from the Church, so that it could contain the tares that are visible. For you used to say that manifest tares cannot be in the Church, whenever we adduced this testimony of Cyprian, and you neither dared to resist him openly nor yet wished to agree. Surely now at least you wake up, you hear, you take notice, because, even if tares appear to be in the Church, neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that because we see tares in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church. Why, therefore, do you separate from the unity of this Church by a nefarious schism and persist in the same division with heretical presumption? Behold, here is Cyprian for you: either agree with him or answer him.

You see how, with these words by which he says that tares exist and are seen in the Church yet that one ought not therefore depart from her, he erases all the calumnies of your writers, by which you have even advanced into such precipices and, in your usual manner, have hurled yourself headlong, so as to say that even Christians who were ignorant and had sinned could have perished throughout the whole world because of the sins of others, since indeed it is read in the holy scriptures that one thing was stolen from the anathema and for that sin an unknowing foreign people was punished—ignorant that those punishments of mortal bodies, that is, the deaths of those about to die, served for a useful terror to the people, yet that those same dead suffered no detriment to their future life from the sins of others, especially those they did not know. Would you say this? Would you dare to believe and say that anyone perishes before God because of the sins of others, even unknown sins? Did you not at least fear your own colleagues, who in our conference, while you were silent and perhaps, though you already felt this, did not dare to say it, fought with so many flanks of disputations that bad fish in the Lord’s nets are unknown to the fishermen, lest evidently they perish by their contagion if they knew them? Did it not occur to you, when we were disputing about the chaff of the Lord’s threshing-floor, that is, the Church, to be tolerated in one mixture until the time of winnowing, when Emeritus was pressed, that he denied it and said: “Do you not read ‘threshing-floor’?

He who, when he was being warned both more privately by his own people and more openly by us, as we recalled from the Gospel that the Lord would come bearing a winnowing fan in his hand, who would cleanse his threshing floor and store the grain in the granary, but would burn the chaff with an inextinguishable fire, immediately corrected the error of forgetfulness by which he had denied that it was written, yet did not convert the schismatic or heretical perversity by which he denied that the wicked ought to be tolerated by the good for the sake of the unity of the Church, and immediately said that by the term "chaff" the hidden wicked were signified, so that you might preserve for your cause with special diligence the point that unknown wicked men could not stain any of the good. Behold, the distinguished patron of your party has lost his labors, with you opposing. For he, in order to safeguard the salvation of the good, asserts that the wicked who remain in the Church are entirely unknown to the good, lest the good be ruined if they are known and tolerated; but you said that even the contagion of unknown wicked men destroys the good, and you were not afraid that so many of your own from the beginning—hidden, wicked, criminal, and impious men—who, according to your opinion, certainly destroyed you and all your people without your knowing it. But even now you have trembled with no fear, lest perhaps one of your people should sin without your knowledge and destroy you while you are speaking these things. Or perhaps, because you understand that you have perished through your own known deeds, you do not fear perishing through the unknown deeds of others?

What should I wish for you, except that it be permitted for us to find you, lest it please you to perish? For what hope will remain not only for us, who agree with the Lord Christ, the prophets, the apostles, and the blessed Cyprian that even known evil men, if we can neither correct nor punish them, are to be endured for the sake of the bond of unity, but also for you, to whom a bodily separation from the wicked before the time of harvest, winnowing, and the seashore is pleasing, if your opinion is true, by which you think that each person perishes both by his own sins and by those of others, whether he knows they have been committed or not? For if this is so, then assuredly your predecessors also, who separated themselves, as you think, from known evil men, perished because of the unknown. And not only do you, who, when you say that a man perishes by the crimes of others whether he knows them or is ignorant of them, undoubtedly allow no one to remain innocent, but even Emeritus himself, who, thinking far more tolerably, binds men by the sins of others only when known, and releases them from unknown ones, is answered by the much truer voice of the venerable Cyprian, who said that the growing grains do not perish because of the tares, not placed outside the Church, but within it, and not because of hidden and unknown ones, but because of those plainly known and evident. For I think that he is blinded not in the flesh, but in the mind itself, who contends that what is seen lies hidden.

But when that most blessed man warns us not to withdraw from the Church because of the tares that are in it, he warns not on account of those that are hidden, but rather on account of those that are seen. For it is these that can disturb those who see them, unless wisdom makes them patient. For how would we learn that we ought not to withdraw because of hidden tares, which we do not know exist at all? "Even if tares are seen," he says, "to be in the Church." He says "are seen," not "are believed by suspicion." And lest anyone think that "are seen to be" was said as if they were not, but seemed to be, he reveals what he meant by the following words: "Nevertheless," he says, "neither faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that because we see that there are tares in the Church, we ourselves withdraw from the Church." He does not say "we suspect, we think, we believe, we opine," but "we see." For indeed even those who said to the father of the household, "Shall we go and gather them?" concerning which it had been said, "When the herb had grown and borne fruit, then the tares appeared," also saw them openly, not believed them hidden. To them he replied: "No, lest perhaps, while you wish to gather the tares, you uproot the wheat at the same time," and "Let both grow together until the harvest." And yet you say—wherein what else do you do but contradict the Lord?—that tares alone have grown throughout the world and that wheat has perished, diminished almost throughout the whole world, when the Church, growing, has not yet reached some peoples.

It is necessary, however, that the Gospel be spread and preached throughout the whole world, and then the end come, which the Lord foretold would happen without any ambiguity. You see the Church, by the testimony of Cyprian, called catholic as a whole, and not being without manifest evils, on account of which, nevertheless, he warns that it is not to be abandoned. In it there are many good people in themselves, but in comparison with the tares or chaff, certainly few. For it is not outside it, but within it, that what the Lord himself says takes place: because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many will grow cold. But there is also the people spread everywhere to whom it is said: he who perseveres to the end, this one will be saved. But those who have faith like a mustard seed, by which even mountains are moved, are altogether very rare. For concerning such faith the Lord was speaking: do you think the Son of Man will come and find faith on earth?—not concerning the apostasy of the whole world, as you most perversely understand.

Furthermore, regarding baptism, which you think exists only in the Church and for that reason you accuse us, because we judge that those coming from heresies, if they have already been baptized, should not be baptized again, it suffices that you were least able to answer how Felicianus, placed outside your Church, could baptize when condemned, whom you vainly wished to place among those to whom you granted a delay. Read the Bagaitana sentence of your council, in which, after many very harsh things said against them and far more serious than those against Caecilianus, when your elders condemned him absent and innocent, their manifest and undoubted condemnation is thus subjoined: "Therefore, know that Victorianus of Carcabiana, Marcianus of Sullectum, Beianus of Beiana, Salvius of Ausafa, Theodorus of Usula, Donatus of Sabrata, Miggo of Elephantaria, Praetextatus of Assurum, Salvius of Membresita, Valerius of Melzita, Felicianus of Musti, and Martialis of Pertusa, guilty of a notorious crime, who with a deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel with collected dregs, and also the clerics once of the Church of Carthage, who, while they took part in the crime, provided pimping for an illicit incest, have been condemned by the presiding judgment of God, by the truthful mouth of the universal council.

And then he begins to grant a delay to the others with these words: "But those whom the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute the plantings—that is, those who, with a modest fidelity of shame, withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus—we have permitted to return to mother Church." Concerning these, what needed to be said has already been sufficiently stated in my earlier letter to you. Anyone who reads this and pays even brief attention will not be able to doubt that you were utterly unable to respond to that passage. Therefore, you are mistaken in thinking that the councils of Agrippinus and Cyprian are to be followed in this question, since you yourselves disregarded them when you received, without any repetition of baptism, those baptized outside your communion by condemned men, against whom you were litigating to have them excluded from the basilicas. As for the opinion of Cyprian or his colleagues, who at that time thought that those coming from heretics ought to be baptized, it would be a long task to discuss it as it deserves. But you, if you can, solve this brief question for me.

When Cyprian, bishop of the church of Carthage, was rebaptizing those who came from the heretics, Stephen, bishop of the Roman church at that time, was receiving heretics in the same baptism which they had received outside, and both, doing these different things, remained in catholic unity: tell me whether at that time the church, when according to you it was receiving those guilty of every crime without baptism through Stephen and his countless colleagues throughout the world who shared the same opinion, had perished from the contagion of evil men or had not perished. For you will not be able to call these evil men hidden, although you assert that even hidden men harm and kill. Therefore, whoever—a murderer or even a parricide, an adulterer, an incestuous person, an idolater, finally a not timid traitor of the holy codices or a cruel torturer and violent extortioner that they be handed over, and an ultimate burner by order or by hand—baptized among heretics came to Stephen and his associates, according to you was received without baptism. You see, therefore, all the crimes of men, if what you think about baptism is true, then gathered in the church without baptism. Answer whether Cyprian was stained by these crimes in that same unity, answer whether the church perished or did not perish. Choose what you think. If it had already perished then, what did Donatus give birth to?

But if the whole Church could not perish even when so many were gathered into it without baptism, answer me, I ask: what madness persuaded the Donatist party to separate from it, as if avoiding communion with the wicked? Far be it, however, that because the most blessed Cyprian thought differently about baptism than the truth—which was shown first by custom and later, after more careful examination, by reason—any of us who do not think as he did should dare to set ourselves above him. For his many other great merits, his mind filled with exceptional charity, through which he remained most peaceful with colleagues who held different views, and his glorious passion in the unity of the Church, have sufficiently shown that he was a fruitful branch on Christ’s root, which the Father would also cleanse from this reproach so that it could bear greater fruit. For Jesus himself says: “The branch that bears fruit in me, my Father cleanses it so that it may bear greater fruit,” showing that even in fruitful branches the farmer, who is in heaven, finds something to cleanse. For who among us can be compared to the apostle Peter, even though we have never forced Gentiles to Judaize, as he did when he was not rightly proceeding toward the truth of the Gospel? Hence, corrected by his later fellow apostle Paul through a salutary admonition, he provided a more useful example of humility to posterity than if there had been nothing in him to correct.

Placed in this Church, which the contagion of the wicked—whether hidden or even manifest—could not and will not destroy, we fear no calumnies from any men whatsoever. For if they are evil, without doubt either the good are ignorant of them, or they condemn them by ecclesiastical laws when they are revealed by their own indications, or even, if they know them and cannot condemn them because they have not been accused and convicted before them, they tolerate them for the sake of the Church’s peace not only blamelessly but even laudably, and do not separate themselves damnably, like broken Lord’s nets before the time of the shore, because of bad fish. For if they wished to do this, apart from the countless testimonies of the divine Scriptures which forbid them to do so, certainly the most blessed Cyprian, whom you adduced as a witness, restrains them, crying out and testifying that, even if tares are seen to be in the Church, our faith or our charity ought not to be hindered, so that because we perceive tares in the Church we ourselves should withdraw from the Church; he warns us not only by word but also by his own example, who endured such colleagues—seizing estates by deceitful frauds, increasing usury by multiplying interest, whose avarice he understood, according to the Apostle, to be not some light vice but idolatry—for the bond of unity, and did not become such by their contagion.

They departed from them by a dissimilarity of morals, not by a division of sacraments, and did not touch the unclean, but by recoiling from their deeds, not by gathering a separate people. You, however, while understanding carnally what was said through the prophet Isaiah: "Depart and go out from their midst and separate yourselves," says the Lord, "and do not touch the unclean," and other things similarly said in the Scriptures—while you understand these things, I say, not spiritually but carnally—you appear to be exactly those who are condemned by that same prophet's proclamation, saying: "Do not touch me, for I am pure." Finally, when you judged that the sins of others were to be perversely avoided, you committed other sins of your own, dividing the people by a sacrilegious schism and conceiving a sacrilegious heresy with a wicked spirit against God's manifest promises, which have been fulfilled in the Church spread throughout the whole world. For if, as you think and as you reproach us in word, one and the same society of the lost were not both schism and heresy, the most blessed Cyprian would not have said in this very epistle from which I placed the testimony about the tares established in the Church, to those confessors whom he congratulated for having been freed from the division of the Novatians: "I grieved vehemently and was gravely distressed that I could not communicate with those whom I had once begun to love, after you, coming forth from prison, were received by schismatic (and heretical) error.

Do not, therefore, deceitfully evade the most manifest truth by taking refuge in both, or choose one of them for yourself because it seems milder to you, when you are both a schismatic by sacrilegious separation and a heretic by sacrilegious dogma. Nor should you flatter yourselves that we do not rescind your baptism. It is not yours, but that of the Catholic Church which we hold, whence when you departed you took it with you not indeed to your salvation, but to your perdition. For the Lord's vessels remained holy even among aliens, whence the king who dared to use them insultingly was punished by an angry God, and the ark of the covenant, when captured by enemies, by no means lost the power of its sanctification. If, therefore, those holy things, which were then among aliens in such a way that they ceased to be among their own, could in no way lose the force of their holiness, how much more do Christian sacraments not lose it when they pass to heretics in such a way that they also remain with us! This is what I said in writing to you, which we also said to you in the conference, and which you thought rather to evade because you were unable to refute it, since, as the apostle says of certain people: they hold the truth in iniquity, so you also hold the truth of divine baptism in the iniquity of human error; which truth, because it is not yours on account of your iniquity, we certainly ought not to rescind.

And because the apostle himself is understood to have said of idolatrous Gentiles, "who hold the truth in iniquity," you demanded of me, as if in reply, that I prove what the apostle does not rescind of the Gentiles' sacrilege, what he does not condemn of their profane rite, as if he could fail to rescind and condemn what is sacrilegious and profane, just as we do your schism and your heresy. Yet certain truths, which some Gentile philosophers hold concerning the unknown God, he not only did not destroy, but even used as testimony when needed. For speaking to the Athenians, he says of God: "In Him we live and move and have our being," just as some among you have said. This truth of wisdom, which the most blessed Paul not only did not destroy but even employed to instruct them, they held in the iniquity of their own idolatry, which apostolic teaching overturned by apostolic means. So too we do not rescind, but recognize, what your elders received from the Catholic Church and handed on to you; but we either rescind your sacrilege in your conversion or detest it in your obstinacy.

Although you have completely resolved the entire question and everything that is at issue between us with a single word of the tribune, set forth with sufficient care. For when I had said: "Nor is this read in the tribune's letter, that the name of God was invoked by you in truth, because I had not read that very word there at all," you replied: "You are mistaken, or rather you are deceiving, for the tribune's words are: 'Lest such a great work, the house of the Lord, where the name of God and of his Christ has been invoked by you more often, be said to have been burned down through your religion established there.' Understand, because religion is spoken of in truth, superstition is named in falsehood." When would I have noticed this, when would I have reasoned thus, when would I have proved one thing from another in this way? I confess, this escaped the keenness of whatever little intellect I have, and therefore believe me that I could have been mistaken there, not, as you said, that I wished to deceive in a word. And so the tribune, as a military man, erred, so that he said to one whom he knows or believes to be a heretic: "through your religion," since heresy is not religion but superstition, and religion is not spoken of in falsehood but in truth, in proper speech. Therefore, according to this exposition of yours, true worship of God is called religion, false worship, however, is called superstition. So listen to yourself, obey yourself, and you will by no means refuse to follow us.

For when writing to the same tribune, in the very beginning of your first letter you placed and said: "To the honorable and, if you will, most greatly desired by us, Dulcitius, tribune and notary, Gaudentius, bishop." And immediately you subjoined: "I have received the writings of your religion." Why, therefore, do you still hesitate to come to us? Behold, the tribune Dulcitius, although he is a man of our communion, nevertheless, according to your testimony, is not superstitious but religious, and by this, according to your exposition, he holds not a false but a true worship of God. He, therefore, is in the Catholic Church rather than you, since you in this word erred so little that you even explained that religion differs from superstition as much as truth differs from falsehood. But that man, as I have already said, a military man and less learned in these proprieties of words, did not know what religion was; far be it from me to say that he was deceiving you by flattery. But you, who reproach those against whom you dispute from the prophet and cry out: "Woe to those who call bitter sweet and sweet bitter, who call light darkness and darkness light," if the position which Dulcitius holds with us is superstition, why did you call it religion? But if you spoke truly, why do you, by holding a heretical superstition, reject the Catholic religion? Follow, therefore, your own testimony, especially since even your own people, when they learn of it, will perhaps not communicate with you, because you communicated with the tribune Dulcitius through this word.

Come now, brother Gaudentius, do not lose the opportunity which the Lord has given you even through your own tongue. Or are you angry because I call you brother? For you rejected this name from us even in our conference, where you showed that we are those to whom the Lord commanded through the prophet: "Say, 'You are our brothers'" to those who hate you and who detest you, while you are among those who hate and detest those to whom the Lord says this. Certainly you cannot deny that you said religion is that in which the tribune Dulcitius is. For that reason he sent that letter to you, namely so that you would not kill yourself and would communicate with that church in which he himself is. Therefore, if his is religion, yours is superstition. For although you have both said this to each other, you nevertheless choose him to have spoken falsely rather than yourself. Therefore, according to this your most true testimony and your most true exposition, since the religion which the tribune Dulcitius holds is religion, certainly the religion is that which impels you by the emperor's command to our communion. Whence it follows that religion is also that by which the Christian emperor judges it to pertain to his care that there be no impious offense against divine matters, from which you do not wish to be cured except in those things which are contained in the earthly commonwealth. Whence you also said, forgetting what you read to the people about performing penance, that the king of the Ninevites did not command it; for these are your words to me: "Why," you ask, "do you deceive the wretched?

God gave a command to Jonah; the Lord sent the prophet to the people; He gave no such command to the king. Notice, therefore, what is written, and be angry only with yourself, if you either do not recall the divine Scriptures or rather deceive the wretched: Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, as the Lord had spoken. Now Nineveh was a great city, about a three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter the city as if it were a one day's journey, and he preached and said: "Yet three days, and Nineveh will be overthrown." And the men of Nineveh believed the Lord and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. And when the word reached the king of the city of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, tore off his garments, wrapped himself in sackcloth, and sat down in ashes. And it is proclaimed by the king and the powerful, saying: "Let men and beasts and sheep and oxen taste nothing, nor be fed, and let them not drink water." And men and beasts were clad in sackcloth; they cried out earnestly to the Lord, and each one turned away from the path of his own wickedness and the iniquity which he had in hand. Do you finally hear that the king took care of what you disapprove of as belonging to the care of kings? Certainly, so that it might be done earnestly, what was being done less than was necessary. Therefore, the Ninevites were not constrained by the king's command to repentance through confiscations, proscriptions, or the terror of soldiers, because they obediently did what was ordered. Thus we do not show that the people suffered that, just as you do not show that the king was despised.

Therefore, when kings command those things which are according to God with religious fear, whoever obeys them, beginning from fear and progressing to love, receives peace from the Lord, not the peace that the world gives, because the world gives peace for temporal advantage, but the Lord gives it for eternal salvation. Therefore, because this is the religion in which the tribune Dulcitius stands—for you will not deny your own words—the superstition is the Donatist party, from which this religion wishes you to be rescued. It is superstition that you seek to kill yourself, which this religion strongly forbids; it is superstition that you find fault with the emperor's care in this matter, which this religion has undertaken to carry out. And so, because your own word has ended the case, I beseech you by the God of this religion, the God of truth, that your error may also finally be ended. This, brother, is the Church of Christ, which at this time is growing and spreading throughout the whole world, containing both the evil and the good, who are to be separated at the final winnowing. And, to address you finally with the words of that man whom you wished to call as a witness for the Catholic name, this is the Church which, bathed in the Lord's light, extends its rays throughout the whole world; this is the Church which spreads its branches over the entire earth with an abundance of fruitfulness. Therefore, even if tares are seen in it, neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that because we see tares in the Church, we ourselves do not withdraw from the Church.

We must only labor so that we may be grain, so that when the grain begins to be stored in the Lord's granaries, we may receive fruit for our work and labor. The apostle says in his epistle: 'But in a great house, there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthenware ones. And some are indeed honored, some dishonored.' Let us give effort and labor as much as we can, so that we may be a gold or silver vessel. For the rest, breaking earthenware vessels is granted to the Lord alone, to whom also the iron rod has been given. A servant cannot be greater than his master, nor can anyone claim for himself what the Father has granted to the Son alone, so as to think that he can either carry the winnowing fan (or winnowing fork) for threshing and cleansing the threshing floor, or separate all the tares from the grain by human judgment. That obstinacy is proud and that presumption is sacrilegious, which a perverse madness assumes for itself. And while some always assume more for themselves than gentle justice demands, they perish from the Church, and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their own swelling, they lose the light of truth. These are the words of the most blessed Cyprian, not mine; they are, namely, the words of him whom you placed as a most choice witness of the Catholic name at the beginning of your writings and commended most copiously through many things, or rather, since they are true and divine, they are the words of God.