1. 1. 1. Gaudentius, the Donatist bishop of Thamugadi, threatened to burn himself, together with certain abandoned men whom he had gathered to himself, in the church. To the distinguished tribune and notary Dulcitius, on whom the most devout emperor had laid the duty of carrying out his laws with a view to completing the unity, and who was dealing—as he ought—gently with men in a frenzy, and who had first sent peaceable letters to this same Gaudentius, Gaudentius wrote back two letters: one shorter, and (as he indicates) hurried because the bearers were in a hurry; the other indeed more lengthy, in which he thinks he has answered more carefully according to the Scriptures. And so, with the Lord's help, I have undertaken to refute what he wrote in such a way that even those who are slower of wit may not doubt that I have answered everything. For I will first set down his words, then add my own—not in the way I did when I answered the letters of Petilian. There, in each separate place, when his words are inserted, I put "Petilian said"; and when my own words are given back, "Augustine answered." For this he slandered me, as though I had lied, saying that he never disputed with me face to face: as if for that reason he had not said what he wrote, because I did not hear this in his spoken words but read it in his letters; or as if I had therefore not answered, because I did not speak in his presence but answered his writings by writing in turn. What are we to do with men who have such a heart, or who suppose that those to whom they wish their writings to become known have such a heart? But let us satisfy even such people here: and when we set down the words of Gaudentius, let us not say "Gaudentius said" but "The words of the letter"; and when we answer, let us not say "Augustine answered" but "Answer to this." Let us, then, begin in this way to refute the earlier and shorter letter of Gaudentius.

1. 1. 2. The words of the letter: "To the honorable Dulcitius, tribune and notary, longed for by us exceedingly, if you would have it so: Bishop Gaudentius."
Answer to this: We need not discuss even these things, lest we dwell almost too long on superfluous matters, when there are necessary points that compel us to speak at somewhat greater length.

1. 2. 3. The words of the letter: "I have received the writings of your religion through men who, by their character and by their own conduct, are clearly dear to all."
Answer to this: Neither will I discuss how you said "of your religion" to a man whom you rather think to be irreligious. You have, of course, returned the courtesy as you judged it should be returned; for he treated you more courteously in the letters he sent you than a Catholic should treat a heretic, thinking that your mind could be healed by such a manner of address.

1. 3. 4. The words of the letter: "In them," he says, "so many things were said by your Excellency, which for now I pass over in silence; but since the keenness of your wit was less aware of it, you could not in that same writing assert us to be either wholly innocent or guilty."
Answer to this: How did he not assert them guilty whom he said were ill assembled? How did he not assert him guilty when he said that under your leadership the souls of wretched people will perish by an unspeakable end, adding that you ought to understand what envy can await you in this world, and what punishment in that last judgment to be dreaded? How did he not assert him guilty whom, as best he could, he exhorted to follow the example to be imitated of others, to lay aside the error of his former heresy, and to bring himself over to the one and true faith of God? But we have undertaken not to defend the tribune's words but to refute the heretic's. If, then, this man of ours, like a layman in military service, has said anything rather incautiously, who would not excuse him? Who would contend that the Catholic Church should be prejudged by his words? Consider you more carefully what you say, you whom the party of Donatus, in our Conference held at Carthage, put forward, joined with six others, even as a defender of their division.

1. 4. 5. The words of the letter: "But if," he says, "you think them criminals, you must shun their damnable fellowship."
Answer to this: Plainly the fellowship of criminals is to be shunned, but the fellowship of the corrected is not to be spurned. The one, therefore, we wholesomely avoid in such a way that we mercifully will, desire, and press for the other.

1. 5. 6. The words of the letter: "But if you think us innocent," he says, "which you yourself also said, then, established in the faith of Christ, we rejoice to endure persecutors."
Answer to this: I have considered the tribune's letter sent to you, and nowhere in it did I read that he called you innocent; rather, that he had heard from others, or had learned, that you were prudent. And in the holy Scriptures this name is wont to be applied not only to the good but also to the wicked. For there even the serpent who deceived man received this name. For what some have translated as "the wisest of all the beasts," the Greek manuscripts rather have as "the most prudent," from which that Scripture was translated into the Latin tongue (See Gen 3:1). But if those are to be thought called innocent by the tribune whom he said you hold unwilling unto destruction, what wonder is it if he believed to be happening there what he had learned was done in other places? There is, then, no reason for you to rejoice that you suffer persecution, since you cannot find how to assert yourself innocent. But far be it that this should be called a persecution of men, since it is rather, for men's liberation, a persecution of vices—the kind that even the diligence of physicians works upon the sick. Yet even if you were innocent, you would by this be made guilty, because you long to kill the innocent. For those who try to assert themselves innocent and yet are unwilling to spare their own lives, what else are they convicted of but killing the innocent?

1. 6. 7. The words of the letter: "But in this church," he says, "in which the name of God and of his Christ, as you yourself also said, has always been frequented in truth, we either remain alive as long as it pleases God, or, as befits the household of God, we bring the end of life to its close within the camp of the Lord: on this condition, namely, that if force has been brought to bear, then it can come about. For no one is so out of his mind as to hasten to death with no one driving him."
Answer 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 yet even if he had said so, this could be understood not for your glory but for your punishment. For the Apostle said even of the impious gentiles, who hold the truth in iniquity (Rom 1:18); as you also do, who hold the truth of the divine baptism in the iniquity of human error. Hence, when we correct your iniquity, we ought by no means to undo the truth of that sacrament. You indeed profess, innocent man, though in other words, that you and yours are to perish together with the church. For when you say "in the church," what else do you wish to be understood but "with the church," since you are preparing to do this very thing with fire? This is the innocence of the party of Donatus: that you do, with your own deaths added, what at Carthage too, to bring us into hatred, you are alleged to have done to the basilicas that had been yours—as best you could and with whom you could—without your own deaths. For who would not believe that you did out of zeal what you are even prepared to do by dying? But if you did not do that, surely this is more frenzied still, which you are preparing to do. But you said, "if force has been brought to bear," and added, "for no one is so out of his mind as to hasten to death with no one driving him." How much more out of his mind, then, is he who, when he is driven to life, hastens to death?

1. 7. 8. The words of the letter: "But those who are with us," he says, "I call God to witness, and all his sacraments, that I have exhorted and most earnestly persuaded that whoever had the will to depart should openly and securely declare it; for neither can we hold back against their will those who, as we have learned, are not to be compelled to the faith of God."
Answer to this: But why do you not also most openly profess yourself, if not one who holds back the unwilling, yet one who exhorts them to a good work, if what you are going to do is good? Or do you perhaps yourself understand how evil it is, and threaten that you will do it rather to terrify than to carry it out—either faithless by lying, or cruel by speaking the truth?

1. 8. 9. The words of the letter: (And in another hand): "I wish you safe and flourishing in the affairs of the republic, and withdrawing from troubling Christians."
Answer to this: We too can wish him both safe and flourishing in the affairs of the republic, but not resting from the correction of heretics.

1. 9. 10. The words of the second letter: "To the honorable Dulcitius, longed for with all affection, Bishop Gaudentius."
Answer to this: If you long for the man with all affection, why do you refuse to hold the unity of Christ with him? Or, returning evil as though for evil to one whom you think your persecutor, do you long to rebaptize him?

1. 10. 11. The words of the letter: "It is usual," he says, "for people known to each other by reputation alone either to desire, or, having met face to face, to exchange words, or, if unacquainted, at least not to shrink from each other's presence. But your judgment, you have intimated in your letter, was glad to find me absent, and grieved that I had returned."
Answer to this: Not all who are known to each other by reputation alone wish to see each other, but only those whom reputation itself well commends. But it is indeed strange what has happened to you: that you call him one to be longed for, by whom you complain you are suffering persecution; while he who persecutes you would rather you were absent, and does not wish to find the one whom he persecutes. But why this, except that he wished rather to be understood as the persecutor of those whose salvation in Christ he believed to be hindered by your presence?

1. 11. 12. The words of the letter: "But since on a previous day," he says, "lest I should be silent in a reply by letter, because of the delay of the bearers, I intimated certain things curtly and briefly: now I must answer your Excellency's writings with the words of the most sacred divine law. The Lord says: You shall not slay the innocent and the just, and you shall not acquit the guilty by acquittal (Exod 23:7). It is certain, therefore, that in the judgment of God those are bound by equal crime and equal guilt who acquit the guilty and who slay the innocent. If they were guilty before communion—Gabinius, whom you named, or the other faith-breakers—then, as fellows with him in his evil lapse, they ought by no means to have been acquitted according to the words of God. But if they were received as innocent or holy, why, while they remain in that faith from which you receive them as holy, do you slay the innocent?"
Answer to this: You speak invidiously and mendaciously. For the man to whom you speak did not receive such a command that you should be killed, but that you should be corrected; and if you are unwilling, then, lest you 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 wish falsely to boast in our Conference about the exile of Caecilian, to which you said he was sent at the urging of your forebears by the emperor Constantine? But this tribune to whom you write, to whom the care of the laws passed for unity was entrusted, so wishes you to live that he fears lest you yourself kill yourself. See, set before your eyes the man himself, and yourself. He wishes you to live in the peace of Christ; you seek to kill yourself in the party of Donatus: recognize which of you is your persecutor.

1. 12. 13. But Gabinius, now ours, who was once yours, and very many others who have come over from you to us, having considered the Catholic truth, should not therefore seem to you not to have been cleansed from your contagion because they have not been rebaptized by us. For those who have not yet been baptized are washed from all sins in the Catholic Church by the bath of regeneration; but in those who receive this sacrament outside, not for help but for judgment, since we do not violate the royal mark even in a deserter, there comes to pass what is written: Love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet 4:8). See how those who ought not to be baptized can be cleansed by the very love of Catholic unity, so that what was in them outside does not begin to be in them inside, but what was a hindrance outside begins to profit them inside. We do not, therefore, receive them from you as holy; for by coming over to us they are sanctified, who by remaining among you could not be holy at all; nor do we slay you who are innocent, since we wish even the guilty among you to live.

1. 13. 14. But you, who recall well the testimony of the divine voice and cast in our teeth that God said, You shall not slay the innocent and the just (Exod 23:7)—if you are innocent and just, why do you kill yourself? We do not call you innocent and just, and yet we do not wish you to be killed; you think yourself innocent and just, and you do not spare the innocent and the just. Surely you yourself said that "in the judgment of God those are bound by equal crime and equal guilt who acquit the guilty and who slay the innocent." Why, then, have you acquitted the guilty Maximianist Felician? Why do you slay the innocent—and yourself? But we neither acquit the guilty, but, that he may deserve to be acquitted, we first desire him to be corrected; nor do we judge you innocent, whether you spare yourself or kill yourself, if you have remained in the party of Donatus. For however much you may boast of your innocence, by killing yourself, an innocent man, you cannot be innocent—unless perhaps you answer me and say: "When I kill myself, I do not kill an innocent man, since by the very will with which I resolve to kill myself I am made guilty in mind before I have killed the body." If you say this, you speak the truth, and in wondrous ways, by accusing yourself, you defend yourself. For when you show that, in killing yourself, you are first made guilty by your own purpose, then, once the deed is done, no one will convict you of having killed an innocent man. By this reasoning, then, it is gathered that, while many innocent people are killed by others, no innocent person is killed by himself. For by that very thought with which one contrives to kill oneself, one is first stripped of innocence, so that, when one kills oneself, one does not die innocent. This would befall you if, before you prepared to kill yourself, you were innocent; but now, since you were not even before this an innocent man but a heretic, if you kill yourself it will not be the beginning of your iniquity but its increase.

1. 14. 15. The words of the letter: "For concerning holy Emeritus of Caesarea," he says, "a report false to his merit has reached us. But if it were so, hear the Apostle saying: If some of them have fallen away from the faith, has their unbelief made the faith of God void? By no means (Rom 3:3-4)."
Answer to this: I must say about Emeritus of Caesarea what you were afraid to say. A false report was indeed spread about him, that he became a Catholic; but in the same way that you heard this, you could have known all that was done. Why, then, did you choose to be silent about the praises of your fellow bishop, whose name was cast at you as an example? Surely, if he did anything praiseworthy at so critical a moment, it ought certainly not to have been passed over by you in silence. But since you do not wish us to believe that you could envy his praises, why, then, were you silent, except that you feared to be ashamed of him? Emeritus, then, came to Caesarea, while we were placed there and present. But he came not seized by anyone's cunning, not brought by another's power, but, roused by his own will, he wished to see us. We saw him, [coming] to the church . . .

1. 15. 16. But you thought you had well consoled your people by apostolic authority, as it seemed—not on account of Emeritus, who could do no more for you than this, that, finding nothing to say for you, he nevertheless did not depart from you; but on account of others who, having abandoned your error and been changed into the Catholic society, are gathered for the better. For their sake you recalled that the Apostle had said: If some of them have fallen away from the faith, has their unbelief made the faith of God void? By no means (Rom 3:3-4). Truly, it remains that those are said to have fallen away from the faith who have believed God, and those to hold the faith who believe men. In your seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen 22:18), the Lord said. See in whom they believe who come over from you to us. That the overseas nations had perished through the sin of Caecilian—men said this. See whom they believe who persist in your society. And you say that those have fallen away from the faith who have followed the faith of God, and that those have the faith of God who have remained in the words of men. Where, then, is what the Apostle straightway added to this sentence which you recalled: But God is truthful, and every man a liar (Rom 3:4)—if those have fallen away from the faith who believe what God the truthful Lord said, and those persist in the faith who believe what a lying man said?

1. 16. 17. The words of the letter: "You urge flight upon me," he says, "as though 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 (Rom 2:13). For hear the Lord too saying: Because the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep; but the hireling, and he whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them (John 10:11-12)."
Answer to this: See how the party of Donatus understands the gospel. Was the Apostle, then, not a shepherd but a hireling when, let down through the wall in a basket, he fled the hands of the man who longed to seize him (See 2 Cor 11:33)? And are you a shepherd—you who wish to destroy with yourself, you who seek to kill with yourself, the very ones you call the Lord's sheep, so that they perish in mind by error and destroy their bodies in frenzy—and do not hear the shepherd and prince of shepherds saying, The thief does not come except to kill and to destroy (See John 10:10)? Is it for this you came, who had gone away? Is it for this you returned, who had fled? This is the work of a thief and a robber, not of a shepherd and a guardian. And yet, even without our compelling you, see that you have wished all your colleagues who fled to be understood not as shepherds but as hirelings. But if the Lord's sheep were with you, either they would come with you, so that, you being corrected, they might still have you as their shepherd, or, leaving you, they would flee to the shepherd. But the hireling whom the Lord signifies flees at the sight of the wolf, not in body but in mind, when out of fear he deserts justice. So fled your Secundus of Tigisi, when he feared Purpurius of Limata, who had confessed to homicide and was the more terrible, lest he lose his primacy or his episcopate. But in body even those good shepherds, the apostles, fled in persecution, and yet did not for that reason abandon the sheep of Christ in their care and mind. If, then, you too were a shepherd, you would first not be on the side of the wolf; and then you would obediently hear the command of your Lord, who bade his servants flee in persecutions, through the mouth of any man whatsoever, even a sinner, and 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 (Rom 2:13)."

1. 17. 18. Why do you twist plain words into another meaning? He denied that hearers of the law and not doers are just before God; he did not forbid them to be heard by men when they speak the truth—lest, like you, he should speak against his Lord, who says of certain people: What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say, and do not (See Matt 23:3). You see how Christ, even through men who are hearers and preachers of the law and not doers, nevertheless commanded others to hear it and to be its doers; and you say, "Only the doer of the law ought to be heard"; and, wishing to refute as it were your persecutor, you speak against your Creator. To the sinner indeed the Lord says: Why do you declare my justifications, and take my covenant in your mouth? (Ps 50:16 (49:16)) But this is so because it profits nothing to him who speaks and does not do what he says. Yet it profits him who hears the good even through an evil man, and does what he hears. Praise is not comely in the mouth of a sinner (Sir 15:9); but it is comely in the life and conduct of the doer, even if he has heard it from the mouth of a sinner. However much, then, you reckon the tribune to be a sinner and not a doer of the law, hear nevertheless obediently—not him, but, even through him, the one who says: If they persecute you in one city, flee to another (Matt 10:23). Why do you stand still? Hear and flee; Christ commands this, not the tribune. Unless perhaps you answer and say: "Christ indeed says: If they persecute you in this city, flee to another; but why should I depart from this city, when this man is not my persecutor, nor am I a hearer of Christ?" And by this, if you remain, you are a raging wolf; and if you flee, you are a fearing wolf. And since the bridegroom says, Unless you know yourself, O fair one among women, go forth in the footsteps of the flocks, and pasture your kids in the tents of the shepherds (Song 1:8); even if you boast that you are a shepherd, yet because you have gone out from the Lord's sheepfold, you pasture your kids, not the sheep of Christ.

1. 18. 19. The words of the letter: "Then," he says, "what places will there be that, in this storm of persecution, will receive into tranquillity, as into a harbor, the priests harried on every side and needing to be preserved, since the Lord has said: When they begin to persecute you in this city, flee to another? (Matt 10:23) Then indeed the apostles fled safely, because the emperor had not ordered anyone to be proscribed on their account. But now the harborers of Christians, terrified by proscriptions and dreading the dangers, not only do not receive them, but even fear to see those whom they secretly venerate."
Answer to this: This indeed I praise, that you acknowledge yourselves; but that you do not correct yourselves, I grieve. For what is plainer than this profession of yours, by which you declare clearly enough that you do not belong to the fellowship of those to whom the Lord says, If they persecute you in one city, flee to another (Matt 10:23)? This is exactly what I said a little before: that you could most truly answer me if you should say, "This man is not my persecutor, nor am I a hearer of Christ." See, you say this most openly. For how are you a hearer of Christ, since he promises his hearers, that is, his followers, that until the end of the age there will not be lacking cities to which they may flee whenever they suffer persecution, saying: When they persecute you in this city, flee to another; for amen I say to you, you will not finish the cities of Israel until the Son of man comes (Matt 10:23)? But you, in this persecution which you complain you are suffering, now say that there are lacking to you places to which to flee, and where, as in a harbor, you might rest from this tempest; speaking against the promise of Christ, who says that cities to which his own who suffer persecution may flee will not be lacking until he comes, that is, until the consummation of the age. Since, then, he promised his own this which you do not find, surely he lies if you are his; but since he himself does not lie, you are not his. And by this, neither is the tribune to whom you write your persecutor; rather, he is the persecutor of your persecutor, that is, of your error, by which, compelled, you do such things that you belong to the kind of people of whom it is written that they suffered persecution from their own deeds (See Ps 7:15-16). Accordingly, if you understand what those who love you persecute in you, then without doubt you will flee those very evil deeds of yours from which you suffer persecution, and you will be joined to those who, that they may free you, persecute your persecutors: for they persecute nothing but your errors.

1. 19. 20. The words of the letter: "Through the maker of all things, the Lord Christ," he says, "almighty God fashioned man like to God and left him to free choice. For it is written: God made man, and left him in the hand of his own choice (Sir 15:14). Why is there now snatched from me by human authority what God bestowed? Take heed, most excellent man, how great are the sacrileges perpetrated against God, that human presumption should take away what he granted, and vainly boast that it does this for God. Great is the 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?"
Answer to this: According to these most false and most empty arguments of yours, with the reins loosed and let go for human license, let all sins be left unpunished; let the audacity to harm and the lust to run riot rage with no bars of laws set against them; let no king restrain his realm, no general the soldier, no judge the provincial, no master the slave, no husband the wife, no father the son, from the freedom and sweetness of sinning by any threats or punishments. Take away what sound doctrine wisely says through the Apostle for the health of the whole world; and, that you may strengthen in choice the sons of perdition—a choice the worse, the freer—blot out what the Vessel of election says: Let every soul be subject to the higher powers; for there is no power except from God. And those that are, are ordained by God. Therefore he who resists the power resists the ordinance of God. And those who resist acquire judgment for themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good work, but to evil. Do you wish, then, not to fear the 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 (Rom 13:1-4). Blot these out, if you can; or, as you do, if you cannot blot them out, despise them. Have the worst possible choice concerning all these things, lest you lose free choice. Or else, since you blush before men as men, cry out, if you dare: "Let homicides be punished, let adulteries be punished, let the other crimes and outrages of however great wickedness or lust be punished; only sacrileges do we wish to be unpunished by the laws of those who reign." Or do you say anything else, when you say: "Great is the 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?" In saying these things, what else do you say but: "Let no human power contradict and clamor against our free choice, when we do injury to God"? O grief! The ancient times were cheated of such teaching, since you were not yet born when holy Moses bore his own injuries most gently, but avenged God's most severely. But now you, more learned by heretical presumption, cry out most invidiously: "God made man and left him in the hand of his own choice. Why is there now snatched from me by human authority what God bestowed?" Demanding this, namely, that, to do injuries to God who made man with free choice, free choice may be left to you by man. But even those who, by the decree of King Nebuchadnezzar, with the punishment of their destruction and the scattering of their houses set before them, were terribly forbidden to blaspheme God—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—and would have been sharply struck if they despised it, could have said what you yourself said: "Great is the 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?" These your words they too could utterly have said, and perhaps did say; and if not with the same liberty, yet with no unlike vanity (See Dan 3).

1. 19. 21. Free choice, then, was given to man when he was created; but in such a way that, if he were an evildoer, he should become one who suffers. In short, those first men, when they had sinned, were condemned to death; and before the last death even of the body was completed for them, they were sent into exile from paradise. Milder measures has the emperor decreed against you, on account of Christian gentleness: he wished to bring exile upon you, not death; but you learned men, considering what is owed to desert and what is the lesser in punishment, add death—not from his judgment, but from your own. Do not perish forever, while you wish free choice to offend God to be granted you at this time by men. Hear the Apostle, and you will have a great shortcut, by which the royal power cannot harm you: Do good, and you will have praise from it (Rom 13:3). From it the just before us too had praise—not only those who faithfully obeyed religious kings, but also those who, for the truth of God, endured impious kings as adversaries: the former [had] the praise of obedience, the latter the praise of suffering, yet both from it, but by doing good, not by resisting the powers. But what you do is not only not good but a great evil: to rend the unity and peace of Christ, to rebel against the gospel promises, and against him of whom it is said, He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth (Ps 72:8 (71:8))—that is, against the true and supreme King of Christians—to carry Christian standards as it were in a civil war. Let it suffice you, then, as an occasion for correction, that for such great evils of yours you receive far milder and lesser penalties—if only you do not heap upon yourselves of your own accord what the emperor did not decree; and do not wish free choice to be granted you by men for licentious impunity, lest you fall the more unhappily into the hands of God himself. For even your forebears judged that, in injuries of this kind against God, man's free choice should not be left unpunished by kings; for, although they had a bad cause, they nevertheless, in persecuting bishop Caecilian, carried it all the way to the judgment of the emperor Constantine.

1. 20. 22. The words of the letter: "But our faith," he says, "which the Lord Christ left to the apostles, these persecutions alone make most welcome to us. Happy, he says, will you be when men persecute you, and curse you, and say all evil against you for the sake of the Son of man: rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven. For so their fathers persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matt 5:11-12; Luke 6:22-23). If it was said to the apostles alone, then the faith had its rewards only as far as them; and what would it profit those who would believe afterward? Hence it is clear it was said to all. Then the apostle Paul says: Those who wish to live devoutly in Christ must necessarily suffer persecution (2 Tim 3:12). And this the Lord said in the Gospel: The hour will come when everyone who kills you will think he is offering a victim to God; but they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me (John 16:2-3)."
Answer to this: These things would be rightly said by you who seek the glory of martyrs, if you had the cause of martyrs. For the Lord does not say that those are happy who suffer these evils, but those who suffer for the sake of the Son of man, who is Christ Jesus. But you suffer not for his sake, but against him. For you suffer because you do not believe him; and you endure in order not to believe. How, then, do you boast that you hold that faith which the Lord Christ left to the apostles? Or do you wish men to be so blind and deaf that they do not read, do not hear the Gospel, where they may learn what faith concerning his Church the Lord Christ left to the apostles—the faith 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 of the faith he left to the apostles? Let us pass over other things and hear his last words on earth, where we may see what faith concerning the Church he left to the apostles—what testament, as it were, he made, not about to end his life but to live without end; not to be sent into the tomb, but to ascend into heaven. For, rising from the dead, after he had appeared to his disciples to be seen with the eyes and handled with the hands: It was necessary, he said, that the things written about me in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms be fulfilled. Then he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them: Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary that Christ should suffer and rise again the third day, and that penance and the remission of sins be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Luke 24:44-47). Likewise on the Mount of Olives, after he said nothing further while placed on earth, but what had been most necessary, he commended this as his last word. For many were to come throughout all parts of the earth, claiming for themselves the name of the Church, and barking, each from the corners of his own ruins, against the whole house which throughout the whole earth sings the new song, of which it is written: Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth (Ps 96:1 (95:1)). For the apostles desired to hear something else, and did not seek what had been most necessary for them. Tell us, they say, if at this time you will restore, and when, the kingdom of Israel? But he: It is not, he says, for you to know the times or moments which the Father has set in his own power; but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:6-8). When he had said this, a cloud took him up (Acts 1:9). Nothing further did he add to these words: this he fixed in the minds of his hearers the more tenaciously, the later it was. This bride the bridegroom, departing, commended to his friends. This faith, then, concerning the holy Church, he left to his disciples. This faith, Donatists, you resist; and for the faith which the Lord Christ left to the apostles, you contend that you bear persecution. This Son of man, who commended his Church with such great care—beginning from Jerusalem and bearing fruit and growing among all nations—you contradict with the wondrous impudence of your blindness, and cry out that you endure evils for the sake of the Son of man. Or do you perhaps say this because you have found yourselves another son of man, by whose name you may be called, of whose party you may be spoken of? You err; he is not the one: for when he said that to suffer persecution for the sake of the Son of man is happiness, that bridegroom was proclaiming himself, not an adulterer.

1. 20. 23. We too confess, as you say, that it was not said to the apostles alone: Blessed will you be when men persecute you (Matt 5:11). For this pertains to all—not those who after them have suffered, or suffer, or will suffer any persecution whatsoever, but those who suffer for the sake of justice, as they too did. For he had said a little above: Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:10). Then he added these things which you wished to recall and to usurp for yourselves in vain. For in vain you think this beatitude pertains to you, when you do not show in yourselves the justice to which the reward is owed; nay rather, on the contrary, you even suffer for iniquity—less from others, more from yourselves—so that, before the judgment of God which is to come, you yourselves render to yourselves in part what you deserve. Hence, since you yourself said that this was said not to the apostles alone but to all, lest the faith should seem to have had its rewards only as far as them: just as this, then, was said not to the apostles alone but to all who, even after them, were to suffer any evils whatsoever for the sake of justice; so also that was said to all: If they persecute you in this city, flee to another (Matt 10:23). Why do you not do this, if you belong to the fellowship of those to whom these things were said? And even if you should do it, you will not therefore belong; for even robbers can do this, whom the public laws have ordered to be sought out. But since you do not wish to do this, by this shortcut you show that you do not belong to those to whom these things were said. And, that your very excuse may show you all the more plainly to be strangers to that number of true Christians, you now say that the places to which you may flee, which he promised would not be lacking until the end of the age, are already lacking to you; in no way convicting him of having promised falsely, 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 further shall we say to you, when your own tongue conquers you?

1. 21. 24. For that too which you added that the Apostle said—All who wish to live devoutly in Christ must necessarily suffer persecution (2 Tim 3:12)—he did not indeed say must necessarily; but: All, he says, who wish to live devoutly in Christ will suffer persecution. But who doubts that you do not belong to these? For if you too 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 as to flee the hands of the persecutors. The gates lie open, and you do not wish to go out. What persecution do you suffer, except from yourselves? Your persecutor loves you, and your frenzy persecutes you. He desires that you flee; it drives you to perish. But you understand what the Apostle says—All who wish to live devoutly in Christ will suffer persecution—in such a way that you must confess your forebears did not live devoutly under the apostate emperor Julian. For whoever was made a Donatist at that time, until, against your error, the devout care of Christian emperors should rise again, if he died before, did not live devoutly, because he did not suffer persecution. But if the Apostle said this because, as is written elsewhere, Man's life upon earth is a temptation (Job 7:1), and he does not cease to tempt the devout and true Christians not only by the assault of adversity but also by the seduction of prosperity, so that the human mind either succumbs to affliction or vanishes in elation: then surely, as long as one lives here, all who wish to live devoutly in Christ will suffer persecution, so that either, conquered, they are seized by the devil, or, proved, they conquer the devil; but those whom, seized and captive, he already possesses, he does not persecute in order to obtain them, but, since he obtains them, he uses them.

1. 21. 25. Further, if only that man is to be called a persecutor who torments with some pain, or wishes to hold someone in order to torment him, do not let the tormentor of the heart seem to you lighter than the tormentor of the body; and consider what manner of persecution he suffered who said in the Psalm: I saw the senseless, and I was wasting away (Ps 119:158 (118:158)). This persecution just Lot suffered in Sodom, even before, in his house, his guests the angels, when they were thought to be men, were sought by the Sodomites for outrage (See Gen 19). For the just man could not see them so publicly shameful, and before the outrage to his own house, without great torment of heart.

1. 22. 25. Hence the apostle Paul, among his persecutions, also recalls such things, saying: Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is made to stumble, and I do not burn? (2 Cor 11:29) Accordingly, the greater the love of Christ is in us, the greater the grief of mind with which we see you holding the sacraments of Christ, and 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:

1. 23. 26. Do not, then, be deceived because it was said to you: The hour will come when those who kill you will think they are doing a service to God (John 16:2); or, as you set down this testimony, think they are offering a victim to God. That this was not said of the persecutions which the gentiles made against the Church is plain. For the gentiles assigned to their many gods—who indeed do not exist—that they were doing a service, when they were doing this to the one [true] God. Hence this same thing which the Lord foretold to his own was fulfilled either through the Jews, who killed holy Stephen and many others, while they thought they were doing a service to God, since they seemed to worship the one true God; or it was even said to us, that is, to Catholics, concerning the 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 yourselves a singular name in Africa from such victims. For if it had been said to you, surely you yourselves would not kill yourselves, but would await rather to be killed by us, who, as you say, think that when we do this we are doing a service to God. But now, when you hasten to death lest you be held by our men, you fear to live, not to be killed; because you blush to be corrected, or to be convicted of your error. Or do you perhaps belong to those to whom both pertain, because, when you are killed both by yourselves and from yourselves, you think you are doing a service to God, and offering him these victims from yourselves? To you, then, belongs what follows, and was recalled by you. For the Lord straightway added and said: But they will do these things to you, because they have not known the Father nor me (John 16:3). When, therefore, you kill yourselves, thinking you are doing a service to God, you have not known the Father—whom you have not heard saying, You shall not kill (Exod 20:13)—nor have you known the Son, whom you have not heard saying, Flee (See Matt 10:23).

1. 24. 27. The words of the letter: "But," he says, "they boast themselves dwellers of a war-bearing peace and a bloody unity. Let them hear the Lord saying: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you; not as the world gives, do I give to you (John 14:27). For the peace of the world is sealed among the minds of nations at variance by arms and by the outcome of war; the peace of the Lord Christ, calm with wholesome gentleness, invites the willing, does not compel the unwilling."
Answer to this: You indeed wish to make a war-bearing peace and a bloody unity, either by our violent deaths or by your own voluntary deaths; not charging yourselves with what you do to us, and charging us with what you do to yourselves. But we are compelled both to endure what you do to us, and, as for what you do to yourselves, we can do nothing but grieve; provided only that there be made the peace and unity of Christ for the salvation of many, as it is made in very many, even if, on account of the frenzy of a few, it is not made in all. For if you were willing to attend not with an envious but with a faithful eye, you would see with what true peace and unity of Christ they rejoice who have come from you to us, the throngs of so many and so great peoples, among whom, even if there are still some troubled by the very newness, they too are little by little healed of this weakness. And if some feigned ones persevere, surely those whom we see to be truthful were not for their sake to be left ungathered—some of whom in your regions appeared greater even than certain of ours, when, that liberty of perdition being granted you, they were unwilling to return to you. We ought, then, lest we lose these, to gather even the feigned, since in the Gospel it is read that the servants gathered to the wedding of their lord guests both good and bad (See Matt 22:9-10): especially because the spirit of pride, like a wicked wind, shook you from the Lord's threshing floor before the time of winnowing, whence we strive to recall you to it, as far as we can with God's help. And you surely know how, by the brooms of diligence, the grain is dragged along together even with the dirt, when it is recalled to the threshing floor.

1. 25. 28. But as for what seems good to you, that the unwilling are not to be compelled to the truth, you err, knowing neither the Scriptures nor the power of God, who makes them willing while they are compelled unwilling. For did the Ninevites do penance unwillingly because they did it under the compulsion of their king? For the prophet, going through the city for three days, had foretold the wrath of God to that whole city (See Jonah 3). What need, then, was there of the king's command, that God—who does not look upon faces but upon hearts—should be humbly entreated, except that there were among them certain people who would neither care for nor believe the divine pronouncements, unless terrified by an earthly power? By that command, then, of royal power—against which your downfall becomes voluntary—the occasion of salvation, which is provided in Christ, comes to many; for even those who are violently brought to the supper of so great a father of the household, and are compelled to enter, nevertheless find within reason to rejoice that they have entered. For the Lord himself foretold that both would happen, and fulfilled both. For, certain people being rejected, who are surely understood as the Jews, since they had earlier been invited through the prophets and chose for the hour to make excuse, the lord said to his servant: Go out into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the weak, and the blind and the lame. And the servant said: Lord, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room. And the lord said to the servant: Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to enter, that my house may be filled (Luke 14:21-23). By the highways we understand heresies; by the hedges, schisms. For the highways in this place signify diverse opinions, the hedges perverse opinions. Why, then, do you wonder if he dies of hunger—not for bodily food, but for spiritual—whoever enters this supper neither gladly brought in nor violently driven?

1. 26. 29. The words of the letter: "By hatred," he says, "of the world we rejoice; in its pressures we do not succumb, but are glad. This world cannot love the servants of Christ, who is known not to have loved Christ, the Lord himself saying: If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you; if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you (John 15:18, 20)."
Answer to this: How do you, rejoicing by hatred of the world, not succumb to its pressures but are glad, when you wish to kill yourselves rather than suffer troubles of any kind; and you choose to die—not killed by others for the truth of Christ, but by your own selves for the party of Donatus? This is the madness of the Circumcellions, not the glory of martyrs. Since, then, your deeds are evident, why do you usurp for yourselves words that belong to others? "This world," he says, "cannot love the servants of Christ, who is known not to have loved Christ." We, then, do not belong to this world, because we love you. But you are not the servants of Christ, who, repaying evil for good, and turning your malice back upon yourselves when you cannot exercise it upon us, neither love us nor kill yourselves. But the Lord, when he said, If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you; if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you, said this not to you but to those to whom he commanded that, if they persecuted them in this city, they should flee to another—which you do not do. He said it to those for whom the cities to which they might flee would not be lacking until the end of the age—which you complain are now lacking to you, and you will not confess that you are not those to whom these things were said.

1. 27. 30. The words of the letter: "But even if persecution should grow quiet," he says, "whence is the number of martyrs filled up, John saying: I saw, he says, the souls of those slain beneath the altar of God, crying out and saying: How long, O Lord, do you not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth? And to each were given white robes, and it was said to them that they should rest yet a little while, until the number of their brothers should be filled up, who would begin to be slain, as they also were (Rev 6:9-11)?"
Answer to this: If you wished to be martyrs beneath the altar of Christ, you would not, by burning yourselves, be making a sacrifice to the devil. For who rejoices at this frenzy of yours, except the devil who inspires it in you, and those who are of his party? It is he who used to cast that boy of whom we read in the Gospel sometimes into the water, sometimes into the fire (See Mark 9:22); it is he who plunged that herd of swine, drowning them in the waves (See Matt 8:32). It is he who, that he might cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, suggested it even to the Lord himself by a most audacious temptation (See Matt 4:5-6). Without doubt you belong to the devil, since you employ in your deaths the three kinds of death—water, fire, the precipice. For if you did not lose your minds through madness, these very words which you set down from the holy book ought to recall you from this destruction which you bring upon yourselves. For what do the souls of the martyrs say beneath the altar of God? How long, O Lord, do you not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth? They demand that their blood be avenged—surely upon those by whom it was shed: or upon others? And by this, yours will be avenged upon you.

1. 27. 31. But what is more foolish than that you think this prophecy concerning the martyrs, who were foretold as to come, was fulfilled in none but the Donatists; as if, after blessed John wrote this, no martyrs were slain until the party of Donatus should arise—who, when they cannot kill others, kill themselves; who do the works of robbers and demons, and claim for themselves the glory of martyrs? But even if, over so great an interval of time, that is, from John down to these men, no true martyrs had been slain—so that, if nothing else, we might say they would be in the times of Antichrist, in which that number of martyrs would be filled up—still we would not believe that these men, guilty of either another's blood or their own, are added to the number of true martyrs, who were told to rest a little while, until the number of their brothers should be filled up, who would begin to be slain as they themselves were—surely by others, not by themselves as these men are, and therefore these men are not as they were. We can also most truly say that the Catholics whom these men kill, even in the Donatists' times, belong to the supplement of that number. But since, after the apostle John, who wrote those future things, so great a slaughter of martyrs was made everywhere among so many nations by impious slayers; what do these wringers of their own souls and torturers of others mean, that they boast what they read was foretold of the holy martyrs to have been fulfilled in themselves? Prepare yourselves rather, so that your blood may be avenged—not upon those who wish either to seize you or to make you flee that you may live, but rather upon yourselves. Or do you perhaps, lest this happen, for this reason not shed it, but either dash it out by a precipice, or choke it in the wave, or turn it into ashes? But you err; it will be avenged upon you, in whatever way it is destroyed by you. For it would be avenged upon you even 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 has condemned you? For how will it be avenged, unless he who dared to butcher it is condemned? In this voice, then, you are nothing but your own accusers, because you are the guilty ones of your own blood. And God will condemn none but you, when he avenges your blood—dashed out, or choked, or burned, or in whatever manner butchered, or, if you choose this, shed by you.

1. 28. 32. The words of the letter: "Is this not," he says, "a persecution, which has driven so many thousands of innocent martyrs to death? For Christians, according to the Gospel willing in spirit but weak in flesh (See Matt 26:41), having found a shortcut, have snatched away their souls from the sacrilegious contamination of the furnaces, imitating the example of the elder Razias in the books of the Maccabees (See 2 Macc 14:37-46); and not without cause did they fear. For whoever fell into their hands did not escape. But let them do as much as they wish; what is certain is that they cannot be of God who act against God."
Answer to this: Most openly altogether, and most truly, you confess what persecution you suffer. For it is that of which I have already spoken, which in the holy Scriptures is expressed clearly enough concerning certain impious people, of whom it is said that they suffer persecution from their own deeds (See Ps 7:15-16)—which indeed can be said of you most fittingly, even if the hands of others should butcher 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 plainly, while Christian gentleness spares you, your madness so rages against you that, as you say, "having found the shortcut of the furnaces," you snatch away your souls; and that you altogether suffer persecution from your own selves is too great an impudence, if you deny it, when you accomplish both—both why you justly perish and that you perish. But you say there are so many thousands of men who do this, as if this too were no small reason why Africa should be freed from such teaching of yours. For it is a kind of men to whom you could persuade this evil, who used to do these things even before, especially when the license of idolatry was everywhere fervent, when these men used to rush upon the gatherings of pagans frequenting their feasts with arms. The young pagans used to vow to their idols which of them would kill the most; but these men, flocking together in droves hither and thither, as in an amphitheater, threw themselves like savage beasts upon the hunting spears set against them, died in a frenzy, were buried while rotting, and, deceiving, were venerated. Besides these there are the huge rocks and the horrid cliffs of the mountains, made famous by the most frequent deaths of your voluntary ones: by water and fire they did this more rarely; by precipices huge droves were consumed. I speak of things most well known to the men of our age. For who does not know this kind of men, restless in horrid crimes, idle in useful works, most cruel in others' deaths, most cheap in their own, especially terrorizing in the fields, free from the fields, and, for the sake of their food, going round the country cottages (whence they received the name of Circumcellions)—the reproach of African error, most notorious throughout almost the whole world?

1. 29. 33. Of this kind, then, who does not know how many before went and perished by various deaths, and how few now, in comparison with them, burn in their own fires? But if you think we ought to be moved because in this way so many thousands die, how much consolation do you reckon we have, that from so great a madness of the party of Donatus—where not only the error of nefarious division but also this very frenzy has been made a law—far and incomparably more thousands are freed? For those who perish are not even equal in number to those who, of that same kind, are now already held by the order of discipline, and, the work and name of Circumcellions lost, devote themselves to tilling the fields, keep chastity, hold unity. How much less are these lost ones equaled by the number of both sexes—not only of boys and girls, of youths and maidens, but also of the married and the old—of whom innumerable ones cross over from the nefarious dissension of the Donatists into the true and Catholic peace of Christ? For these who burn themselves are not even as many men as there are places full of peoples who are rescued from the deadly plague of that error and frenzy, through this insistence on completing unity. Is it then, I beseech you, a sound counsel of mercy, that all these together with those be kept for the eternal torments of hell, lest those—very few in comparison with these—be burned in the fires of their own furnaces? For that all may live with Christ, we must work with great efforts and prayers; but if, through the frenzy of certain people, this cannot be, we must labor at least that not all perish with the devil.

1. 30. 34. Indeed, searching most sagaciously in the holy Scriptures whether you could bring forward anything in support of this insane doctrine 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 (Matt 26:41)—as though for this reason each one ought to kill himself, because he is weak to endure sufferings amid the hands of persecutors. You could not more quickly say that your false martyrs are of the number of those of whom it is written, Woe to those who have lost endurance! (Sir 2:16), and that they do not at all belong to those to whom the Lord says, In your patience you will possess your souls (Luke 21:19). But those of whom it is read, The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, were oppressed by involuntary sleep, not slain by voluntary destruction. Read diligently, and attend to what you say. Where is what the Apostle says: God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will make with the temptation also a way out, that you may be able to endure (1 Cor 10:13)? Is this apostolic truth, then, not to be believed, and ought we to hold ourselves as enemies, because we cannot endure other enemies? Far be this from Christian hearts. Let Catholics believe—let Donatists not believe—the faithful Apostle, nay, the faithful God himself, who does not let his own be tempted beyond what they can bear, but makes with the temptation also a way out, that they may be able to endure; and lest they always disbelieve these things, let them not be Donatists. For when patience to be obtained from the Lord is despaired of in any sufferings, and therefore the shortcut of the furnaces is sought, where these men cast themselves—not, indeed, to wild beasts, as most blessed Cyprian says, but yet to the flames—whom no one has condemned: this is not counsel but frenzy, not wisdom but madness. Let those have their fires who do not say concerning the help of the Lord: For from him is my patience (Ps 62:5 (61:6)).

1. 30. 35. Surely holy Job, when he was rotting from head to foot with an intolerable wound and was tortured with monstrous pains, had this shortcut of yours ready to hand, by which to snatch himself from a life of this kind, full of horrible calamities, in which he without doubt remained—and yet he was unwilling. Power, surely, was at hand, but justice did not allow it. For according to this he says: And would that I were able to kill myself, or to ask another to do this for me! (See Job 6:8-9 (Vetus Latina)) The just man denied that he was able to do what could not be done justly. In the same manner of speaking the Apostle too says to the Galatians: I bear you witness that, if it could be done, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me (Gal 4:15). For why could this not be done, except that it could in no way be done justly? So too the Lord, when through his angels he urged the just Lot, going out of Sodom, to hasten to Zoar: For I cannot, he said, do anything until you enter there (Gen 19:22). He said he could not do what without doubt he could by power, but could not by justice. For most patient Job could—if nothing else—not take food or drink, and so consume that wretched and horrible life: but this he could not do justly, since it is lawful for no one 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 said so many things in his pains, could ask someone that this be done for him? For neither did a hand fail him, suffering and rotting, for the slaying, nor a tongue for the asking. Surely he could even ask his own wife this—who, however, neither herself suggested that it be done, who desired him to die through his blasphemy, with God angered; and therefore, saying something against God by nefarious counsel, yet did not dare to tell him to kill himself. The devil has more right over you, who so easily persuades you what he could not persuade the foolish woman, whom he reserved as a handmaid to deceive the man, after all else had been taken from him. That just man, then, said he could not ask anyone to kill him, thereby showing surely that this is not permitted. For what cannot be done justly, the just man cannot do; since, by deciding this, he first loses justice, so that what the just man cannot, the unjust man can. So, then, he said: And would that I were able to kill myself!—as though he said, "And would that it were just"; for then it could be done by a just man. For he would not wish injustice for himself, in order to be able to do what none but the unjust can. But if it could be done, he would wish this to be justice; and since it could not be done that this should be justice, the just man could not do what injustice alone would do. And by this it is not unjust for a just man to desire death, when life is most bitter; but if God does not give the desired death, it will not be just except to bear that most bitter life. So too it is not foreign to a just man to desire life, when bitter death threatens; but when he sees that he cannot obtain it, he says what the Lord, transfiguring us into himself, said: Yet not what I will, but what you will, Father (See Mark 14:36). But these things are to be said to those whom those who persecute them seek to drive to do evils, not to those whom those who love them seek to share in goods: to those, I say, these things are to be said who suffer persecution for the sake of justice, not who bring it upon themselves for the sake of injustice.

1. 31. 36. Accordingly, that elder Razias too, whom these men—bereft of examples for their crime—boast they have found in the books of the Maccabees as one to be imitated, ought to have done what in the same writings those seven brothers are read to have done, even with their mother exhorting them (See 2 Macc 7): that, when seized and not turned away from the law of his Lord, he should accept everything that was applied to him, and endure it in pain, and have patience in his humility. Therefore, not able to bear humility amid the hands of his enemies, he plainly gave an example not of wisdom but of folly, to be imitated not by the martyrs of Christ but by the Circumcellions of Donatus. And yet, if we consider more diligently, you appear estranged even from him. For he, when he was already being seized by his foes, did not have free flight; therefore he struck himself with the sword, and, when he could not slay himself, threw himself down from the wall. Then, when he could no longer live, yet still breathing and moving his body by force, he reached, though bloodless, a steep rock by running; where, drawing out his entrails with both hands, he tore them, scattered them, and fell—so surrounded by the crowd that he could not have escaped even if he could live. You, then, who neither hear the Lord saying, Flee (See Matt 10:23), nor imitate Razias, who wished but could not flee: surely you have neither him in precept nor this man in example. What of this—that this Razias, according to your own reasoning, is without doubt to be blamed? For you said, on account of the gospel sentence where the Lord says, The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matt 26:41), that you fled to the shortcut of the furnaces because, namely, you are weak to bear the hands of your enemies, if you are seized by them. Therefore, of him who gravely wounded himself with the sword, who, wounded, sought the wall, who threw himself headlong from there onto his neck, who afterward too was able to run to the rock, to stand on the rock, to draw out his entrails, to pluck them, to scatter them—can it be said that the spirit was willing but the flesh weak? whose not only spirit appeared so willing, but flesh so firm, that it is scarcely credible he was willing and able to do what he did. And so this man ought to displease you, who upsets the reasoning of your weakness by his firmness. Further, if, being able to flee and not willing, he had heaped wood in his house, and, when his enemies rushed in to seize him, had set fire beneath, and burned himself up together with his dwelling, he would indeed have furnished you an example, but would have acquired for himself a great torment. But now, since he was not able to flee, he is perhaps somewhat less guilty of his own blood, in that he brought death upon himself, which the enemy was already about to bring upon him when seized.

1. 31. 37. "But Razias was praised by the authority of the holy Scriptures." How praised? Because he was a lover of the city (See 2 Macc 14:37). This he could be even carnally—of that earthly Jerusalem, namely, which is in slavery with her children, and not of that which is above, our free mother (See Gal 4:25-26). He was praised because he kept continence in Judaism (See 2 Macc 14:38); but the Apostle says that these things were loss and dung to him in comparison with Christian justice (See Phil 3:7-8). He was praised because he was called the father of the Jews (See 2 Macc 14:37): this is rather the reason why even this man, as a man, was overtaken by the impatience of humility, so that he wished rather to die than to be subjected to his enemies. It is said that he chose to die nobly: he would do better to wish to die humbly, for so [he would die] profitably. But the history of the nations is wont to praise with those words brave men of this age, not the martyrs of Christ. It is said that he manfully threw himself down from the wall into the crowds: nor do we say that he did this in womanly fashion. Although you, who have profited much from this example, have taught even your women to do this; but we confess that even they do this not in womanly fashion but manfully—yet not wholesomely, because not faithfully. Finally, as for the fact that he is said to have called upon the ruler of life and spirit to give these to him again, that is, life and spirit (See 2 Macc 14:46)—neither then did he ask for anything by which the good are distinguished from the bad. For God will give these things even to those who have done evil, not in the resurrection of eternal life, but in the resurrection of eternal judgment. This Razias, then, was praised as a lover of the city, as one of very good repute, that is, of good fame, because he was called the father of the Jews, and because he kept continence in Judaism. But Scripture narrated that death of his, more wondrous than prudent, as it was done, not praising it as something to be done. But it is ours, as the Apostle admonishes, to prove all things, to hold what is good, to abstain from every evil appearance (See 1 Thess 5:21-22).

1. 31. 38. And this Scripture indeed which is called of the Maccabees, the Jews do not have as they have the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, to which the Lord bears testimony as to his own witnesses, saying: It was necessary that all things written about me in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms be fulfilled (Luke 24:44); but it has been received by the Church not unprofitably, if it is read or heard soberly, especially on account of those Maccabees who, for the law of God, as true martyrs, suffered from persecutors things so unworthy and horrible; so that even from this the Christian people might take note that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which will be revealed in us (Rom 8:18), for whom Christ suffered—if those men bore so much most patiently for the law which God gave through his servant to those men, for whom he had not yet handed over his Son. Although even this Razias has something that may profit readers, not only that the mind may be exercised in judging rightly what it reads, but also that the human mind—nay, the Christian mind—might take note how much is to be borne from enemies through the ardor of love, when this man, through fear of humiliation, bore so much from himself. But the ardor of love descends from the sublimity of divine grace, while the fear of humiliation arises from love of human praise: and therefore the one contends through patience, while this man sins through impatience. We ought not, then, by consenting, to approve whatever we read that men, even men praised by the testimony of God, did in the Scriptures, but, by considering, to discern—applying a judgment not, indeed, of our own authority, but of the divine and holy Scriptures: which do not permit us to imitate or praise all the deeds even of those men to whom good and excellent testimony is borne there, if some things were done by them not rightly, or do not befit this present time. But concerning the things that were then right and now are not, what need is there to discuss anything in this question, since the matter at issue—that one should bring death upon himself, especially one who is granted, or rather compelled, to live—is among those deeds which neither will ever be able to be right, nor could be, as we have already sufficiently shown?

1. 31. 39. Accordingly, however the praised life of this Razias is taken by you, his death does not have wisdom to praise it, because it does not have the patience worthy of God's servants; and rather to this man belongs that voice of Wisdom which is not of praise but of detestation: Woe to those who have lost endurance! (Sir 2:16) For if you believe that 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 for imitation his deed concerning the coveting of another's wife and the killing of her husband (See 2 Sam 11), but rather as something to be guarded against and shunned? Is Razias better than Solomon? Does it please you, then, that we set forth as an example to be imitated his wantonness toward the women by whose seductions he was led even to building temples for idols (See 1 Kgs 11:1-8)? Is Razias better than the apostle Peter, who, when he said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt 16:16), was called so blessed by the Lord that he deserved to receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven—and yet is not believed to be imitated in this, that soon, at that same moment, rebuked, he heard, Get behind me, Satan; for you do not savor the things of God, but those of men (Matt 16:23)? And, to pass over these things which the holy Scripture of the Church has blamed with most open voice, and to speak of those which are only there narrated and recorded, and concerning which no sentence of praise or reprehension is brought on either side, but which are left to us to judge: is Razias better than Noah? But who, sober, would praise that man because he lay drunk (See Gen 9:21)? Is Razias better than the patriarch Judah? Yet who would approve of him, who would be pleased with him, whom that fornication does not most rightly offend—since he went in, not indeed to his daughter-in-law, for this he did not know, but yet to her whom he thought a harlot (See Gen 38)? Is Razias better than Samson? Dare, then, to say, if you can, that the great and divine secret of strength which he had in his hair ought to have been betrayed to a flattering little woman. For that he killed himself together with his enemies, when he threw down the house upon himself and them, wishing to have the death which he was soon about to suffer from them in common with them, because he could not escape (See Judg 16)—this indeed he did not of his own accord, but it is to be attributed to the Spirit of God, who used him to do, when he was present to him, what he could not do when that same Spirit was absent. Just as Abraham's deed, when he wished to immolate his son, was obedience when God commanded (See Gen 22); what would it have been, had God not commanded, but madness?

1. 31. 40. Learned in these sacred writings, blessed Cyprian said in his treatise On the Lapsed: "Discipline forbids that anyone offer himself." See how great an evil you do when you wish to kill yourselves—you who would be undisciplined even if you wished to offer yourselves to others desiring to do this to you. He whom you call Savior commands flight; the persecutor permits flight: what, then, do you follow, that you perish in your own fires, except your own frenzy? 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, who divide Christ and kill yourselves. Show how you are driven to death, you to whom flight is both divinely commanded and humanly granted. Show how, by the shortcut of the furnaces, you snatch your souls from contamination, you whom you rather make most contaminated by the sacrilege of the furnaces, as by a diabolical sacrifice. Question Christ: he bids you flee; question the tribune: he permits you to flee. If you could question Razias himself, he would answer you: "I could not flee." You, then, have neither Christ as Savior, nor the tribune as persecutor, nor Razias as author.

1. 32. 41. But as for what you said—that your people did not fear in vain when they killed themselves, since whoever fell into our hands or those of our men did not escape—I ask, escape what? If death, why do you bring it upon yourselves with your own hands, if you fear it from ours? But it is plain that you do not speak of death. For how much we desire you to live, you yourselves also know; this is why you terrify us with your death. Accordingly, if you mean our communion, [saying] that no one of you who fell into our hands escaped, would that you spoke the truth! For very happily indeed they would not escape the communion which is offered by Catholics, so as to escape the damnation which is prepared for heretics. But that what you say is false, you could have considered even from your own Emeritus, who, when he had come to us, was more easily convicted by the truth than compelled to communicate. There are others too, lesser indeed in fame, but equal in folly. For whoever was of like vanity, so that, against the most manifest truth, by most perverse self-respect he became stubborn—blushing to be thought inconstant—departed from us without sharing in Catholic communion. But for this reason you said: "Whoever fell into their hands did not escape"; because you reckoned that the very few who persevered in resisting and departing from the most open truth lay hidden. But to Emeritus you did, according to your view, a most grave injury, who lost with you the praise of his hardness, as though he had wished in vain to be among the few not consenting to the truth, because he did not deserve to be reckoned among the hidden. Who of us would not believe that you envy your colleague? Or, if you do not envy him, imitate him. Come to us, you too, as he did; hear what we say, as he did; answer, if you can, what he could not. But if you are willing neither to answer nor to communicate, depart, as he did. See, he departed unharmed from our hands. Why do you say: "Whoever fell into their hands did not escape"? See, he did not believe that places to lie hidden would be lacking to him: why do you arrange to burn? Do you, then, not yet see that you are rather the ones who do not belong to God, and who act against God—not only by the common plague by which you resist the unity of Christ, but especially you, who hasten to add even deaths to this so great crime of yours?

1. 33. 42. The words of the letter: "But since," he says, "the office of an executioner did not befit your prudence, attend, I pray, to a few things. There is one thing, as I reckon, solid truth, and another the likeness of truth: since truth stands strengthened by its own force; an idol or image is what human presumption may make verisimilar to do injury: yet falsehood can never prejudge the truth. I mean the worshipers of images, who do not hold the truth: under another name I reckon him a gentile who makes for himself what he may worship. Hence it is public and open that, by threats or by terror and frequent persecutions, having taken away from the freedom of their nature Gabinius and the like, they are known to have fashioned for themselves faithless ones whom they might venerate, to whose worship they are compelled unwilling."
Answer to this: Still you add to your frenzy words of blasphemy, and you dare to say that the Catholic Church is a human figment—the Church to which God says: For I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name (See Isa 54:5 (Vetus Latina)). And, that we may know that this same Catholic Church is spread through the whole world, it follows and adds: And he who delivers you, he the God of Israel shall be called the God of all the earth (See Isa 54:5). This most evident work of God you call a human figment; nor do you take heed that you would in no way be separated from that Church which God promised himself would make to be in all the earth, unless you were following a man. We follow him who said to Abraham: In your seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen 22:18). We follow him who said to his own Church, which I have just recalled: I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name; and he who delivers you, he the God of Israel shall be called the God of all the earth. Therefore, holding the Church which is spread abroad and grows through all nations and through all the earth, we surely do not follow a human figment, but a divine promise and a divine deed. What do you follow, that, divided from the communion of this divine promise and divine work, you should wish to be of the party of Donatus? That by the sin of Caecilian the promises of God had perished from the world, and remained in the party of Donatus—did a man tell you this, or God? If God, read it to us from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the apostolic and gospel writings. Read, if you can, what in our Conference you were utterly unable to read. But if men said these things—men of whom it is said, They have strengthened for themselves a malignant word (Ps 64:5 (63:6))—behold the human figment, behold what you worship, behold him whom you serve, behold the one for whom you rebel, rage, burn.

1. 33. 43. But Gabinius and the rest, who came to know, chose, and held this Church—desiring to have with the faithful not a human figment but the divine promise foretold and fulfilled—were unwilling any longer to suffer for a human figment these very human troubles. For whoever, for the truth and unity of Christ, has lost—I do not say his goods, but even this his very life, those, at least, taking it away and killing him—truly has faith, truly has hope, truly has love, truly has God. But whoever, for the party of Donatus, has lost even the fringe of his garment, has no heart. What wonder, then, if wise men, when they saw set before them losses and exiles against the most stubborn oldness of a hardened custom, considered whether they ought to suffer these things for the party of Donatus against the Catholic Church—that is, for a human figment against a divine work—and surely saw that they ought not; and recognized that what you call persecution was for them the occasion of correction, and did what is written: Give the wise man an occasion, and he will be the wiser (See Prov 9:9)? You see, then, how vainly you said to the man who, by the command of his most devout emperor, seeks your correction, that the office of an executioner did not befit his prudence. For what more befits a religious man in military service than that, in the cause in which he weighs to whose deception you wish to belong, he himself should become the salvation of many to be corrected?

1. 34. 44. The words of the letter: "To teach the people of Israel," he says, "almighty God gave the office of herald to the prophets; he did not give command to kings. The Lord Christ, the Savior of souls, to instill the faith sent fishermen, not soldiers."
Answer to this: Hear, then, the holy prophets and the holy fishermen; and you will not suffer the most religious kings to be troublesome. For I have already shown above that it pertained to the care of the king that the Ninevites should appease God, whose wrath the prophet had announced. As long, then, as you do not hold the Church which the prophets foretold and the fishermen-apostles planted, so long the kings who hold it most rightly judge it to pertain to their care that you do not rebel against it with impunity. For God had kings too among the prophets: for holy David—which you cannot fail to know—was a king. Hear, then, the prophesying king, and you will dread no religious king when angered: hear, I say, the prophet king saying concerning Christ:

1. 35. 45. The words of the letter: "Never," he says, "did God look for the help of worldly soldiery, who alone is able to judge concerning the living and the dead."
Answer to this: God does not look for the help of worldly soldiery, when he rather bestows a benefit on kings, in whom he inspires that, in their realm, they take care that the command of their Lord be done. For those to whom it was said, And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth: serve the Lord in fear (Ps 2:10-11), perceive that their power ought so to serve the Lord that by that power those be struck who are unwilling to serve his will. But as for the odium you cast concerning the soldiers, if indeed this care, as we have already taught, is shown in the holy Scriptures to pertain to kings,

1. 36. 46. The words of the letter: "But this they do not know," he says, "the squatters upon others' property, who neither hear God saying, You shall not covet your neighbor's goods (See Exod 20:17); nor the Holy Spirit saying through Solomon: Then the just will stand in great constancy against those who afflicted them, and who took away their labors. Seeing this they will be troubled with horrible fear, and will marvel at the suddenness of the unhoped-for salvation; saying among themselves, repenting, and groaning through anguish of spirit: These are they whom once we held in derision, and as a likeness of reproach. We senseless ones reckoned their life madness, and their end without honor: how are they counted among the sons of God, and is their lot among the saints? Therefore we have erred from the way of truth; and the light of justice has not shone for us: we have wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and perdition, and have walked difficult solitudes; but the way of the Lord we have not known. What has pride profited us? or what has the boasting of riches conferred upon us? All things have passed away like a shadow (Wis 5:1-9). This faith, then, exhorts us to die willingly for God in this persecution."
Answer to this: Acknowledge your crime, and do not usurp for yourselves a name belonging to another. Scripture said: Then the just will stand in great constancy against those who afflicted them, and who took 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, had he not added, for the sake of justice (Matt 5:10), would have signified not only those who are crowned for their patience in the Lord, but also those who are punished by just laws. Wherefore, if you think that these words of the just which are written pertain to you, first show whether you are just. For you have great things which you may bandy about among your kinds of justice: the division of Christ, the rescinding of the sacraments of Christ, the desertion 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 the sake of which, namely, you will stand in great constancy against those who afflicted you and took away your labors. But now, when among your justices you have begun to boast that you slay yourselves, what just man will be equal to you? For then most of all will you appear to be ones to be avenged. But see by whom: surely by those who killed you. Therefore, that you may be avenged, you will be punished, and so will you stand against your own selves? Most of all will you stand, who, by the closed furnaces, confine yourselves in cruel straits, so that both he who wished to come to your aid cannot enter, and he who wished to escape cannot go out. Far be it, far be it that they stand with great constancy, who will stand with so evil a conscience. Unless perhaps you think that God can then spare you for your crimes, because you yourselves now do not spare yourselves. Whence even certain of your consecrated women, being pregnant, threw themselves over rocks, and, their wombs bursting apart, betrayed the crimes of fornication as well by the crime of homicide; thinking that, if they had thus avenged it on themselves, God would in no way avenge it: just as you too think that what could be committed by you as nefarious—by the sacrilege of schism and heresy, or by plundering, mutilating, blinding, killing, and finally even rebaptizing Catholics, and any other abominations—can be expiated in this way, by which you kill yourselves. But you err: Judas thought this too. Or do you wish to add this proof as well, by which we may know more certainly that your forebears were rather traitors, because you imitate the death of the traitor?

1. 37. 47. Therefore what in the Conference you wished contentiously to deny, even from this you confirm that the deeds are true. Among these confessed traitors, Secundus of Tigisi, who was then the bishop of the first see in Numidia, pardoned them; and those to whom, present at Cirta, he remitted the manifest and confessed crimes of betrayal, those same men, at Carthage, he punished as traitors—though absent and not convicted. From which crime even Secundus himself, when Purpurius of Limata objected it, could not clear himself, when this same Purpurius said to him: "What did you do, you who were seized by the curator and the council to hand over the Scriptures? How did you free yourself from them, except that you handed over, or ordered to be handed over, something or other? For they would not let you go just like that." But this Secundus confessed without ambiguity even in his letters sent to Mensurius, which you yourselves brought forward and read out—that he did not hand over [the Scriptures], but that there came to him persecutors sent by the curator and the council, whom Purpurius of Limata objected to him, that he might hand over the Scriptures: and that, when they sought them from him, he answered, "I am a Christian and a bishop, not a traitor," and was willing to hand over nothing at all to them. This you wish us to believe, though you yourselves see how incredible it is that, while that persecution was raging, a bishop seized or summoned to hand over the Lord's Scriptures was let go though he handed over nothing. For you contended that bishops could not assemble at the city of Cirta to ordain a bishop in the time of persecution. How, then, was that persecution raging, if a bishop could be held on account of handing over the Scriptures, and yet, handing over nothing, be let go with impunity? And yet you used to cry out, describing the savagery of the persecution of that time, that not even twelve bishops could be gathered into a council to ordain a bishop, who might draw up those records in which they mutually pardoned the crimes of betrayal, and left to the Lord, for the peace of the Church, the judgment to be made: while you, at this time, saying that you suffer such a persecution as never was—that is, that places are lacking to you to which to flee, and where you might lie hidden—nevertheless hold councils, ordain bishops, even in the place of those who perished in their own fires, again such men as are ready to perish in their own fires. And in the time of so great a persecution, as you think and boast, you were able to assemble even more than thirty, where Petilian too was present, who used to cry out that in the time of persecution not even twelve could assemble.

1. 37. 48. Further, in that same council you decreed that "those who communicated with us unwillingly, whether of the bishops or of the presbyters, provided only that they did not offer sacrifice, or preach to the people, should be admitted to pardon, and received in their honors": and so you yourselves, by this very decree of yours, utterly cut off all the force of your slanders. For where is what, by your empty talk, you say—that even those who were not [there] are made traitors through our communion, because, namely, as you slander, they defiled us who, when the impious powers were then pressing, handed over the ecclesiastical books? Why, then, do you now absolve from the crime those whom you have learned communicated with us unwillingly, if they did not offer sacrifice, nor make an address to the people; as if those first traitors, under the terror and dread of monstrous punishments, such as no one has at all brought upon you now, handed over the sacred books unwillingly, or there offered sacrifice, or made an address to the people? You see, then, that, just as you were able to pardon these men—whom you most emptily accuse of being made traitors through our communion—if they did anything unwillingly; so also your forebears, under a much tighter necessity, when true traitors handed [the books] over, could by the same rule have pardoned. But, in order to condemn others absent and unheard, they were compelled by the faction of Caecilian's enemies, doing what the Apostle says concerning such people: For in that you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge do the same things (Rom 2:1).

1. 37. 49. Wherefore, since the Donatists have always loved to kill themselves, and were themselves traitors from the beginning, what wonder is it if they have taught even their descendants to love the death of the traitor? But, in order to avoid this likeness, they have either never, or most rarely, killed themselves with the noose. Wholly in vain; for that one compelled Judas the traitor to do this—he who also often cast into water and fire that boy whom the Lord healed (See Mark 9:22), and threw the herd of swine headlong into the sea (See Matt 8:32), and suggested to the Lord himself, by audacious presumption, a precipice from the pinnacle of the temple (See Matt 4:5-6). Although, then, in various ways you cast yourselves headlong into voluntary death, yet by the instinct of the same devil, in killing yourselves, you imitate the traitor. And even if you are not [those traitors] yourselves, you have nevertheless, by nefarious teaching, learned to do in yourselves what the traitor did in himself—[learned it] from those who were [traitors] and made the schism in which you gladly remain. See now by what justice you will stand against those who afflicted you: that, if your deaths are avenged, they may be avenged most justly on none but yourselves.

1. 37. 50. But what are your labors, which you boast are taken away from you? Is it unjust that the churches which were yours, when they cross over into the Catholic peace, cross over with their possessions? For if, when they cross over to us, you wish to keep their possessions, then without doubt you wish to take away possessions belonging to others. But Mother Catholic says to you what the blessed Apostle said to certain people: For I do not seek what is yours, but you (2 Cor 12:14). And yet how are you not contrary to yourselves, when you object both things to us—both that we long to possess your goods, and that we violently compel you to be with us? You do not see how contrary these two are to each other. For if we seek and hold you unwilling for our communion, how do we desire your goods, which, while you communicate with us, we surely cannot have? But if we long to obtain them, how do we seek you, only to lose them while you communicate with us? But we confess to you: our cupidity is called love. This seeks you in us; this desires to find you, to correct you, and to associate you in the unity of Christ; so that, fearing lest you burn in your own furnaces, we glow with its fire; this kindles us, so that not only do we not covet your goods, but we wish that you should possess even ours together with us. Acknowledge, and come, and do not wish to perish; or, if you blush to come of your own accord, we serve your weakness, lest anything be lost to love. See, we wish to hold you; why do you hasten to burn? We hold you unto life, we hold you unto salvation, we hold you unto the unity, the truth, the sweetness of Christ: and to the supper of so great a father of the household, if you are not willing of your own accord, we compel you to enter.

1. 38. 51. The contest is about justice, not about money. Beware, then, lest perhaps, while you think that what is written pertains to you—Then the just will stand in great constancy against those who afflicted them, and took away their labors (Wis 5:1)—this should not befall you concerning your labors, but rather what is written in another place: The just will eat the labors of the impious (See Prov 13:22). 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, where you could, you surely overthrew, and whose basilicas you destroyed—which we too have done; nor will the musicians of the demons stand against you, whose pipes and stools you broke—which we too have done. So neither will you stand against us. For in all such deeds it is not plunder that is coveted, but error that is overthrown. Just as, then, the Canaanites will not stand against the Israelites, although the Israelites took away their labors; but Naboth will stand against Ahab, because it was a transgression, not a command, that the unjust should take away the labors of the just (See 1 Kgs 21): so heretics will not stand against Catholics, when in the affairs of heretics the commands of the Christian empire are carried out; nor are their goods taken away by Catholics, but rather sought out, and, when many of them are corrected as far as can be, [their goods] are kept to be restored to them: but Catholics will stand—not only against the gentiles, by whom the true martyrs were despoiled, but also against the Circumcellions of the Donatists, because they too took away their labors. But concerning these monetary labors the case is easier, since even those whose they were cross over to the Catholic peace. See, every day, if anyone makes the crossing to us, we restore the money, clothing, produce, vessels, lands, dwellings of your people: how are you going to restore to us the limbs of ours?

1. 38. 52. Surely sometime you awake, and perceive both that you are not those of whom it is said, nor we those by whom it is said: These are they whom once we held in derision (Wis 5:3); since we rather hold you for weeping. Nor will you be counted among the sons of God, unless, withdrawing from the party of Donatus, you hold this Church which the Son of God, as he foretold, displays. Nor is your lot among the saints, but among the heretics. For as to what you think others will say about you—We senseless ones reckoned their life madness (Wis 5:4)—I wonder that you are so senseless that you do not now say such things to yourselves. The unclean and the unbelieving will indeed then say these things to the true and faithful saints—surely to those whom they now reckon to be mad, because they are unwilling to enjoy the luxuries they see, while they believe what they do not see. But you, if not concerning your life, surely concerning this death which you wish to make for yourselves—if you do not reckon it madness, you are the more hopelessly mad. But those words, Therefore we have erred from the way of truth (Wis 5:6), and so on, will indeed be not only yours, but most of all yours. For you err, which is plain, from the way of truth, and the light of justice does not shine for you, you weary yourselves in the way of iniquity and perdition, and you walk difficult solitudes; but the way of the Lord you do not know. But the things that follow—What has pride profited us? or what has the boasting of riches conferred upon us? All those things have passed away like a shadow (Wis 5:8-9)—I do not know whether anyone among the rest could say them more aptly and fittingly than your predecessor Optatus. Do not, then, think yourselves to be what you are not, and perish being what you are: since it is not this faith, but your evil error, that exhorts you not to die willingly for God, as you say, in this persecution, but to suffer persecution wickedly for deeds done on behalf of Donatus.

1. 39. 53. The words of the letter: (And in another hand): "I wish you," he says, "safe, and, the truth being perceived, to soften your mind, and to refrain from the deaths of the innocent."
Answer to this: Do you rather, the truth being perceived, soften your own mind, lest it so rage that it does not even spare you. For what gentler than this man, to whom you wrote these things, can easily be found—who both invited you to life, and, if you were unwilling to spend it with us, relaxed [his constraint] for your flight? You are harsh against yourselves, you unmerciful, you cruel without any consideration of humanity, you who do in yourselves what the lovers of errors and persecutors of men were wont to do against their own enemies—so that there is something for the persecutors of errors and lovers of men to grieve over most bitterly. But why do you wish him to refrain from the deaths of the innocent? You indeed are not innocent: yet he gave you a way out (exitus), but you yourselves wish to give yourselves destruction (exitium). For I think that ignorance of the word deceived you, so that, wishing "destructions" (exitia) to be understood, you said "departures" (exitus). When, therefore, you exhort by your wish that the executor of the imperial laws should refrain from the destructions of the innocent, you are working that he should spare the deceivers, and permit the innocent to be deceived with impunity. What else, then, but that this man, for whom you reckon you wish well, should keep faith neither with God nor with his emperor—because, namely, by a justice not true but yours, cases of this kind ought not to pertain to the care of emperors so as to heal a slanderous division, but ought to, so that, once it is made, it may be confirmed? If this doctrine, which you have learned not from the holy Scriptures but from I know not where, seems just to you—that these things do not pertain to the imperial power—then it would have come into the mind of your forebears, when, by accusing, they sent the case of Caecilian to the judgment of the emperor Constantine. But now, because the lions did not harm Daniel on account of his innocence (See Dan 6), do you wish that they spare those who, by slandering, cast him to the lions? But God does not judge as man does, in whose hand is the heart of the king, and he inclines it where he will (See Prov 21:1). But when the heart of the king is unbelieving, the good are either exercised or proved; while when it is believing, the bad are either corrected or struck. Which of these two it is in your case, we have already said enough, and have answered your letters with the omission of no point: which we trust, by the Lord's mercy, will profit—if not you, yet some of you.

1. 39. 54. But if you prepare to answer anything to these things, read also the things that were done with Emeritus, to which he himself could not answer, lest perhaps you can—as I already admonished above that you should try. We also dealt with him concerning the case of the Maximianists, to which, so often objected to you by us in the Conference, you answered nothing, since concerning a most manifest and most recent matter you could find nothing to answer: how Maximianus, whom you struck with a far heavier sentence than Caecilian, so that you called him a minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, whom for the crime of schism the earth swallowed alive (See Num 16), did not pollute the fellows of his schism, to whom you gave a delay that they might return to your communion—an African did not pollute Africans, a living man living men, a known man known men, a partaker his associates; and Caecilian polluted men overseas, polluted men far off, polluted unknown men, polluted men not yet born. Find, if you can, what to say: how you received the honor of Felician of Mustis and Praetextatus of Assuras, whom, with Maximianus and ten others, you condemned without any delay; against whom, that you might drive them from the basilicas, you litigated before two—or, unless I am mistaken, before three—proconsuls; and when you had already ordained another in the place of Praetextatus, after so long a time you received them in their honors. By what justice, by what reason, by what effrontery is a condemned Maximianist received in his honor, and the Catholic world condemned unheard? By what justice, by what reason, by what effrontery do you say that it must be guarded against, lest Caecilian, long since dead and utterly unknown to you, once condemned with your forebears judging, thrice acquitted with your forebears accusing, should defile you; and you did not think it must be guarded against, lest Felician should defile you—condemned by the mouth of your universal council, and received by you all, especially by the favor of your predecessor? By what justice, by what reason, by what effrontery do you rescind the baptism which the Churches give, which the apostles planted by their labors, when you received the baptism which Felician and Praetextatus, over so long a time, while you litigated against them as condemned, conferred outside your Church? For if, as you are wont to misunderstand and object to us, this is to be understood as it is written, What does he profit in his washing who is baptized by a dead man? (Sir 34:25 (34:30))—those men lay among the dead when they baptized, those of whom your Bagai sentence sounded with so great an uproar: "Quite after the example of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the bodies of the perishing: for whom in death itself the punishment is the greater, that, after their soul has been wrung out by the avenging waters, they do not find even burial itself." What will you say to this? See, dead men baptize those whom you receive, and you do not die; and you slander us as dead, that, unwilling to communicate with the Catholic unity, you may truly die in your own fires. Answer these things: you have leisure to think what to say. At least let us confer this much benefit upon you, that, while you think what to answer, you may think less how to burn. But we do not wish that, from poverty of answering, you should reckon you must still say that weary and battered thing you have been wont to say: "If we are such, why do you seek us?" For we answer: the Catholic Church ought all the more to seek you, because you, lost, sought out the lost Maximianists. For from your own heart you say to us: "Why do you seek the guilty of so many and so great crimes?" But from the book of God we answer you, that love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet 4:8).

2. 1. 1. I have received your reply, Gaudentius—if indeed that is to be called a reply which you wished to send me back for this reason, lest, had you been silent, we should say you were convicted. But to reply is not the same as not to be silent. For if it were, you have plainly replied; but [you have done so] in such a way that even those who could hope something of you may know that you found nothing you ought to reply, and yet replied so as not to be silent. And so, while you took care not to be called conquered, you brought it about that you were shown to be so. To show this, your very writings suffice, if they are read by intelligent people and compared by diligent examination with mine. But to teach this by other writings, by which satisfaction may be given even to slower wits, a somewhat more lengthy disputation is necessary: which indeed I will undertake, if there is need and the Lord wills.

2. 2. 2. For now, in the meantime, since you tried to affirm by the testimony of blessed Cyprian that you are rather the Catholics: attend a little to what Church he called Catholic, when he was defending its unity. "The Church," he says, "flooded with the light of the Lord, stretches out its rays through the whole world: yet there is one light that is diffused everywhere, and the unity of the body is not separated. With abundance of fruitfulness it extends its branches over all the earth, it spreads more widely its streams flowing copiously: yet there is one head, and one origin, and one mother, abounding in the successions of fruitfulness." Why, then, do you both deceive yourselves, and wish to deceive others by shameless lies? If, by the testimony of this martyr, your Church is Catholic, show that it stretches out its rays through the whole world; show that it extends its branches with abundance of fruitfulness over all the earth. For from this it is also named by the Greek word "Catholic." For what in Greek is called holon, in Latin is rendered "whole" or "universal." Through the whole, then, or according to the whole, is kath'holon, whence it is called "Catholic." If you know this, why do you pretend not to know it? But if you do not know it, why, before you speak what you do not know, do you not question those who do know? But if this displeases you, find some language—not Greek—in which you may teach that kath'holon does not signify "through the whole," or "according to the whole," or "according to the universal": and withdraw from the testimony of Cyprian. For he speaks against you, you who see what he says. He says that the Catholic [Church] is stretched out and extended through the whole world and over all the earth, agreeing with its Greek name and definition. You are found to hold, think, and say something else; and while you lean on Cyprian as witness, by Cyprian as witness you lie.

2. 3. 3. From this true and genuine Catholic [Church], then, which, flooded with the light of the Lord, stretches out its rays through the whole world, extends its branches with abundance of fruitfulness over all the earth, what cause you had for going out, when you are questioned, you find nothing just: utterly, by no cleansing of a plausible excuse do you wash away your departure from this Church. For what do you say, except: "Necessity compelled us, that we, the just, should leave the unjust"? The divine Scripture answers you: The evil son calls himself just; but he does not wash away his departure (See Prov 30:12 (Vetus Latina)). His departure, it says—surely that of which the apostle John speaks: They went out from us (1 John 2:19)—he utterly does not wash away, does not defend, does not excuse, does not cleanse. For it does not pertain to the just in the Catholic Church to do anything but most patiently tolerate the bad whom they cannot correct or condemn; and not, on account of the weeds, to go out from the Lord's field (See Matt 13), nor, on account of the chaff, from the Lord's threshing floor (See Matt 3:12), nor, on account of the dishonored vessels, from the Lord's house (See 2 Tim 2:20), nor, on account of the bad fish, from the Lord's nets (See Matt 13:47-48), before the time; lest in vain they try to wash away their departure. If you wish, by any argument whatsoever, to twist these gospel sentences into another meaning, you contradict that same blessed Cyprian, whose testimonies you employ: as you did in our Conference. For these are the words of the aforesaid martyr on this question, in the letter which he wrote to Maximus and the companions of his confession: "Although," he says, "weeds seem to be in the Church, yet neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that, because we perceive weeds to be in the Church, we should ourselves withdraw from the Church. We must only labor that we may be able to be wheat: so that, when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's barns, we may receive fruit for our work and labor. The Apostle says in his letter: But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware; and some indeed honored, some dishonored (2 Tim 2:20). Let us give our effort, and labor as much as we can, that we may be a vessel of gold or silver. But to break the earthenware vessels is granted to the Lord alone, to whom also the rod of iron is given (See Ps 2:9). The servant cannot be greater than his lord (See John 13:16): nor let anyone claim for himself what the Father granted to the Son alone—so as to think he can already bear the shovel or the winnowing fan to winnow and cleanse the threshing floor, or by human judgment separate all the weeds from the wheat. Proud is that obstinacy and sacrilegious that presumption which a depraved frenzy takes upon itself: and while certain people always claim for themselves more 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."

2. 4. 4. Surely now at least you see that against holy Cyprian you cried out in our Conference, and resisted him with contentions, by which you asserted that the field of Christ, of which he says, The field is the world (Matt 13:38), is not the Church, but the world apart from the Church, so that the things which were perceived might have weeds? For you said that in the Church manifest weeds could not be. How often did we set down this testimony of Cyprian, and you neither dared openly to resist him, nor yet were willing to consent? Surely now at least you awake, you hear, you take note, "that although weeds seem to be in the Church, yet neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that, because we perceive weeds to be in the Church, we should ourselves withdraw from the Church." Why, then, do you depart from the unity of this Church by a nefarious schism, and persist by heretical presumption in this same rending? See, you have Cyprian: consent to him, or answer him. Do you see how, by these words, in which he says that weeds are and are perceived in the Church, and yet that it ought not therefore to be departed from, he blots out all the slanders of your writings? By which you also advanced into so great precipices, and, after your manner, cast yourself headlong, so as to say that even those who did not know who had sinned, throughout the whole world, could perish through others' sins—Christians, namely, because it is read in the holy Scriptures that one stole from the anathema, and for this sin another people who did not know it was punished (See Josh 7): not knowing that those punishments of mortal bodies, that is, the deaths of men who would die, availed for the useful terror of the people; but yet that others' sins, especially those they did not know, were no detriment to the future life of those same dead. Would you, then, say this; would you dare to believe and say that anyone perishes unto God through others' sins, even unknown ones; nor did you fear even your own colleagues, who, while you were silent in our Conference—and perhaps, when you already thought this, not daring to say it—fought through such great bouts of disputation that the bad fish in the Lord's nets are not known by the fishermen, lest, namely, they perish by their contagion, if they knew them? Did it not come into your mind, when we disputed about the chaff of the Lord's threshing floor—that is, the Church—to be tolerated in one mixture until the time of winnowing, that, when Emeritus was pressed, he denied and said: "You do not read 'threshing floor'"? And when he was both more privately admonished by his own people, and more openly by us recalling from the Gospel that the Lord would come bearing the winnowing fan in his hand, who would cleanse his threshing floor and store the wheat in the barn, but burn the chaff with unquenchable fire (See Matt 3:12), he straightway corrected the error of forgetfulness by which he had denied it was written; nor yet did he turn back from his heretical or schismatic perversity, by which he denied that the bad ought to be borne by the good for the unity of the Church: and straightway he said that by the name of chaff the hidden bad are signified, so that you might keep this with special diligence for your cause—that unknown bad people could defile no one of the good. See, the excellent patron of your party lost his labors, with you opposing. For he, in order to safeguard the salvation of the good, asserts that the bad remaining in the Church are utterly unknown, lest they destroy them if they were known and tolerated: but you said that the good perish even by the contagion of unknown bad people. Nor did you fear so many of your own, hidden from the beginning—wicked, criminal, and impious—who surely, according to your sentence, destroyed you and all yours, without your knowing it. But now too you trembled with no dread, lest perhaps some one of you should sin without your knowing it, and destroy you while you say these things. Or do you perhaps, since you understand that you have perished by your known deeds, for this reason not fear to perish by others' unknown ones?

2. 5. 5. What should I wish for you, except that it be granted 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 holy Cyprian, that even known bad people, if we can neither correct nor punish them, must be borne for the bond of unity, but also for you, to whom, before the time of harvest, of winnowing, and of the shore, a bodily separation from the bad is pleasing—if your opinion is true, by which you think that "each one perishes both by his own sins, the one who commits them, and by others', the one who does not know whether they were committed"? For if this is so, surely even your forebears, who separated themselves, as you think, from known bad people, perished by unknown ones. But not only to you—who, when you say that a man perishes by others' crimes, whether he knows them or does not know them, without doubt allow no one to remain innocent—but also to Emeritus himself, who, holding a far more tolerable view, in the communion of the sacraments binds men only by known sins, and looses them from unknown ones, the venerable Cyprian answers with a far truer voice, that the wheat growing together does not perish, since the weeds are established not outside the Church but in the Church, and are not hidden and unknown, but plainly known and conspicuous. For I think that he is blinded not in the flesh but in the very mind, who contends that what is perceived lies hidden. But when that most blessed man admonishes that the Church not be departed from on account of the weeds in it, he does not admonish on account of those which are hidden, but rather on account of those which are perceived. For these are the ones that can disturb those who perceive them, unless wisdom makes them patient. For how should we learn that we ought not to depart on account of hidden things, which we do not know to exist at all? "Although," he says, "weeds seem to be in the Church." "They seem," he says—they are not believed by suspicion. And lest anyone think it was said "seem to be" as though they were not, but only seemed to be, he opens up by the following words what he said: "Yet neither our faith," he says, "nor our love ought to be hindered, so that, because we perceive weeds to be in the Church, we should ourselves withdraw from the Church." He does not say, "We suspect, we think, we believe, we suppose"; but "we perceive." For those too believed these things to be not covered but open, who said to the father of the household, Do you wish us to go and gather them?—concerning which it had been said, When the blade had grown, and had borne fruit, then appeared the weeds (Matt 13:26-28). To whom he answered: No; lest perhaps, while you wish to gather the weeds, you root up the wheat as well; and: Let both grow until the harvest (Matt 13:29-30). And yet you say (wherein you do nothing but contradict the Lord) that "weeds alone have grown throughout the world, and that throughout almost the whole world the wheat has been diminished and has perished": when to some nations the Church has not yet, by growing, arrived. But it is necessary that it arrive, and that the Gospel be preached in the whole world, and then the end come (See Matt 24:14). That this will be, the Lord foretold without any ambiguity.

2. 6. 6. You see that the Church, by the testimony of Cyprian, is both called Catholic from the whole, and is not without manifest bad people, on account of whom, nevertheless, he admonishes that it not be abandoned. In it are the good, in themselves many: but in comparison with the weeds or the chaff, surely few. For it is not apart from it, but in it, that what the Lord himself says comes to pass: Because iniquity has abounded, the love of many will grow cold (Matt 24:12). But there too is the people diffused everywhere, to whom it is said: He who perseveres to the end, he will be saved (Matt 24:13). But those who have faith as a grain of mustard seed, by which even mountains may be moved (See Matt 17:20), are altogether very rare. For concerning such faith the Lord said: Do you think the Son of man will come, and find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)—not concerning the apostasy of the whole world, as you most perversely understand it.

2. 7. 7. Further, concerning baptism, which you think exists only in the Church, and on this account reprove us because we judge that those coming from heresies, if they are already baptized, are not to be baptized again: it suffices that you could by no means answer how the condemned Felician was able to baptize, established outside your Church—whom you wished in vain to place among those to whom you gave a delay. Read the Bagai sentence of your council, in which, namely, after the many most bitter things that were said against them, and far heavier than against Caecilian when your forebears condemned him absent and innocent, their manifest and undoubted condemnation is thus appended: "Therefore know that, by the will of the presiding God, by the truthful mouth of the universal council, the men guilty of an infamous crime have been condemned—Victorianus of Carcabia, Martianus of Sullectum, Beianus of Baiae, Salvius of Ausafa, Theodorus of Usula, Donatus of Sabrata, Miggin of Elephantaria, Praetextatus of Assuras, Salvius of Membressa, Valerius of Melzi, Felician of Mustis, and Martialis of Pertusa, who by the deadly work of perdition cemented the filthy vessel with the dregs they had collected; and also the clerics, once of the Church of Carthage, who, while they took part in the crime, lent their pandering to the unlawful incest." And then a delay begins to be extended to the rest in these words: "But those whom the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute as plantings—that is, those who withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus by a modest shame of faith—we have permitted to return to Mother Church." Now concerning these, what had to be said has been said sufficiently in the earlier letters of mine sent to you. That you could utterly not answer this point, whoever reads and takes note a little will not be able to doubt.

2. 8. 8. In vain, then, does it seem to you that the councils of Agrippinus and Cyprian are to be followed on this question; since you yourselves neglected them, when, without any repetition of baptism, you received those baptized outside your communion by condemned men, against whom you were litigating to have them excluded from the basilicas. But concerning the opinion of Cyprian, or of his colleagues, to whom it then seemed good that those coming from heretics ought to be baptized, it would take long for me to dispute as it deserves. But solve me this brief question, if you can. When Cyprian, bishop of the Church of Carthage, rebaptized those coming from heretics, at that time Stephen, bishop of the Church of Rome, received 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, through Stephen and his innumerable colleagues throughout the world, who shared in the same opinion, it received men guilty of all crimes without baptism—had perished by the contagion of the bad, or had not perished? For you cannot say that these bad people were hidden: although you assert that even hidden ones harm and put to death. Whoever, then—a homicide, or even a parricide, an adulterer, an incestuous man, an idolater, finally a fearless traitor of the sacred books, or a cruel torturer that they might be handed over, and a violent extorter, and at the last, by command or by his own hand, a burner—being baptized among heretics, came to Stephen and his associates, was, according to you, received without baptism. You see, then, that all the crimes of men, if what you think about baptism is true, were 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 will think. If it had already then perished, what gave birth to Donatus?

2. 8. 9. But far be it that, because most blessed Cyprian thought otherwise about baptism than the truth, both formerly by custom and afterward by reason more diligently perceived, has shown, anyone of us therefore, who in this matter do not have his view, should dare to set himself before him. For his many other and great merits, and his mind most full of singular love, by which he remained most peaceable with colleagues thinking differently, and his glorious passion in the unity of the Church, have sufficiently shown that he was a fruitful branch in the root of Christ, which the Father would cleanse even of this reproof, that it might bear greater fruit. For thus says Jesus himself: The branch that bears fruit in me, my Father cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit (John 15:2)—showing that even in the fruitful, the husbandman who is in heaven finds something to cleanse. For which of us can be compared to the apostle Peter—although we have never compelled the gentiles to Judaize, which he was doing when he was not walking rightly toward the truth of the Gospel? Whence, corrected by a wholesome admonition by Paul, his later fellow apostle (See Gal 2:11-14), he furnished posterity a more useful example of humility than if there had been nothing in him to be corrected.

2. 9. 10. Established, then, in this Church, which neither could nor will be able to perish by the contagion of the bad—whether hidden or even manifest—we dread no slanders concerning any men whatsoever. For if they are bad, without doubt either the good do not know them, or, when they are made manifest by their own evidence, they condemn them by ecclesiastical laws; or even if they know them, and cannot condemn them when not accused before them nor convicted, they tolerate them for the peace of the Church not only blamelessly but even laudably; nor do they damnably separate themselves, on account of the bad fish, by breaking the Lord's nets before the time of the shore. For if they should wish to do this, apart from the innumerable testimonies of the divine Scriptures, by which they are forbidden to do so, surely most blessed Cyprian, whom you have brought forward as witness, restrains them, crying out and attesting: "That although weeds seem to be in the Church, yet neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that, because we perceive weeds to be in the Church, we should ourselves withdraw from the Church." Admonishing us not only by his word but also by his own example—he who bore for the bond of unity colleagues such as these, seizing estates by treacherous frauds, increasing their gain by multiplying usury, whose avarice he understood, according to the Apostle, to be not some light vice, but idolatry (See Eph 5:5; Col 3:5)—and was not by their contagion made such himself: he departed from them by unlikeness of conduct, not by division of sacraments; and did not touch the unclean, but by abhorring their deeds, not by gathering peoples apart. But you, while you understand carnally what was said through the prophet Isaiah—Depart, and go out from the midst of them, and be separated, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean (Isa 52:11)—and other things that are similarly said in the Scriptures: while, I say, you understand these things not spiritually but carnally, you appear altogether such as those who, the same Prophet foretelling, are condemned saying: Touch me not, for I am clean (Isa 65:5). Finally, when you judged that others' sins were perversely to be avoided, you made others your own: dividing peoples by a sacrilegious schism, and, by a nefarious spirit, holding a sacrilegious heresy against the manifest and fulfilled promises of God concerning the Church spread throughout the whole world. For if, as you think and reprove us in word, one and the same society of the lost were not at once both schism and heresy, blessed Cyprian would not have said, in this very letter from which I set down this testimony about the weeds established in the Church, to those confessors whom he congratulated on 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 a schismatic and heretical error had received you as you came forth from prison." Do not, then, against the most open truth, either deceitfully evade both, or choose one of these—whichever seems milder to you: since you are both a schismatic by sacrilegious departure, and a heretic by sacrilegious dogma.

2. 10. 11. Nor let you flatter yourselves that we do not rescind your baptism. It is not yours, but the Catholic Church's, which we hold, whence you took it with you when you departed—not, indeed, to your salvation, but to your ruin. For the Lord's vessels remained holy even among foreigners. Whence the king who dared to use them contemptuously was punished, with God angered (See Dan 5). And the ark of the covenant, captured by enemies, by no means lost the power of its sanctification (See 1 Sam 5). If, then, those holy things, which then were among strangers in such a way that they ceased to be among their own, could nevertheless in no way lose the force of their holiness; how much more do the Christian sacraments not lose it, when they cross over to heretics in such a way that they also remain with us? This is what I said in writing to you, what we also said to you in the Conference, and what you thought rather should be evaded, because you could not dissolve it: that, as the Apostle says of certain people, They hold the truth in iniquity (Rom 1:18); so you too hold the truth of the divine baptism in the iniquity of human error. Which truth, not yours, we surely ought not to rescind on account of your iniquity. And because the same Apostle is understood to have said this of the idolatrous gentiles—who hold the truth in iniquity—you, as though answering me, demanded that I prove what the Apostle does not rescind of the gentiles' sacrilege, what of their profane rite he does not condemn. As though he could fail to rescind and condemn what is sacrilegious and profane, as we [fail to rescind] your schism and your heresy. Yet certain sentences of truth, which certain of the gentile philosophers hold concerning the unknown God, the Apostle not only did not destroy, but even from there, when there was need, employed a testimony. For, speaking to the Athenians, he says of God: For in him we live, and move, and are, as also certain of your own have said (Acts 17:28). This truth of wisdom, which most blessed Paul not only did not destroy, but even employed for instructing them, they held in the iniquity of their idolatry, which the apostolic teaching overthrew by apostolic devices. So we too do not rescind, but acknowledge, the true things which your forebears received in the Catholic Church and handed on to you; but your sacrilege we either rescind in your conversion, or detest in your obstinacy.

2. 11. 12. And yet you have altogether solved the whole question, and the whole matter at issue between us, by one word of the tribune, expounded carefully enough. For when I had said, "Neither is it 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—you answered: "You are deceived, or rather you deceive. For these are the words of the tribune: 'Nor let so great a work of the house of the Lord, where the name of God and of his Christ has been more frequently invoked by you, be said to have been burned up through your religion established there.' Understand that in truth it is called 'religion,' in falsehood it is named 'superstition.'" When would I have noticed that? when would I have reasoned so? when would I have so proved one thing from another? I confess, this escaped the edge of my poor wit, such as it is: and therefore believe me that I could there be deceived, not, as you said, that I wished to deceive in a word. And so the tribune, as a military man, erred, in that to one whom he knows or believes to be a heretic he said, "through your religion"; whereas heresy is not religion but superstition; but religion, by its proper expression, is said to be not in falsity but in truth. Accordingly, by this exposition of yours, the true worship of God is called "religion," but the false "superstition." Hear, then, your own self, obey your own self: and you will by no means refuse to follow us. For, writing to this same tribune, you set down in the very opening of your first letter, and said: "To the honorable Dulcitius, tribune and notary, longed for by us exceedingly, if you would have it so, Bishop Gaudentius"; and straightway you added: "I have received the writings of your religion." Why, then, do you still hesitate to come to us? See, the tribune Dulcitius, although he is a man of our communion, is nevertheless, according to your testimony, not superstitious but religious: and by this, according to your exposition, he holds not the false but the true worship of God. He, then, is in the Catholic [Church] rather than you: since you so far did not err in this word, that you even expounded that religion differs from superstition as much as truth differs from falsehood. But that man, as I have already said, being a military man and less learned in these proprieties of words, did not know what religion was. For far be it that I should say: He was deceiving you by flattery. But you, who reprove from the prophet those against whom you dispute, and cry out, "Woe to those who call bitter sweet, and sweet bitter; who call light darkness, and darkness light!" (Isa 5:20)—if it is superstition which Dulcitius holds with us, why did you call it religion? But if you spoke the truth, why, holding heretical superstition, do you spurn the Catholic religion? Follow, then, your own testimony: especially because even your own people, when they learn of it, will perhaps not communicate with you; since by this word you communicated with the tribune Dulcitius. Come, brother Gaudentius, do not lose the occasion which the Lord has given you even through your own tongue. Or are you perhaps angry at this, that I call you brother? For this name you spurned from us even in our Conference: where you showed that we are those whom the Lord commanded through the prophet: Say: You are our brothers, to those who hate you and detest you (See Isa 66:5); but that you are of the number of those who hate and detest these to whom the Lord says this. You surely cannot deny that you called it "religion," in which the tribune Dulcitius is. For this reason he sent you that letter, namely, that you should not kill yourself, and should communicate with that Church in which he himself is. If, then, his is religion, yours is superstition. For although both of you said this to each other in turn, you nevertheless choose that he rather than you spoke falsely.

2. 12. 13. Wherefore, according to this most true testimony of yours, and your most true exposition—since it is religion which the tribune Dulcitius holds—surely it is religion by which the emperor's command impels you to our communion. Whence it follows that it is also religion by which the Christian emperor judges it to pertain to his care that there be no sinning with impunity against divine matters: by which you do not wish to be cared for, except [in] those things which are contained in the earthly republic. Whence also you said, forgetting what you have read, that the king of the Ninevites did not command the people to do penance. For these are your words to me: "Why," you say, "do you deceive the wretched? God commanded Jonah, the Lord sent the prophet to the people; he commanded the king nothing of the kind." Take note, then, of what is written, and be angry with none but yourself, who either do not recall the divine writings, or rather you yourself deceive the wretched. Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, as the Lord had spoken. Now Nineveh was a great city, of about three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter the city, about one day's journey, and he preached and said: Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. And when the word had come to the king of the city of Nineveh, he arose from his seat, and took off his garments, and clothed himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And it was proclaimed by the king and by the powerful, saying: Let men and beasts, sheep and oxen, taste nothing, nor feed, and drink no water. And men were clothed with sackcloth, and the beasts cried out to the Lord earnestly: and each one turned away from his way of wickedness and from the iniquity that was in his hands (Jonah 3:3-8). Do you hear at last that the king took care of what you are displeased should pertain to the care of kings? Surely [he commanded] that what was being done less than it ought to be should be done earnestly. Therefore the Ninevites were not, by the king's command, constrained to penance by despoilings and proscriptions or by the terror of soldiers, because they did the commands obediently. So we do not show that the people suffered these things, since neither do you show that the king was despised. Accordingly, when anyone obeys kings commanding, with religious fear, the things that are according to God, beginning from fear and advancing to love, he receives peace from the Lord—not as the world gives peace (See John 14:27); since the world gives peace for temporal advantage, but the Lord for eternal salvation. Therefore, since this is religion, in which the tribune Dulcitius is (for you will not deny your own words): the party of Donatus is superstition, from which the religion of this man wishes you to be rescued; it is superstition that you seek to kill yourself, which the religion of this man strongly forbids; it is superstition that you reprove the emperor's care concerning these things, which the religion of this man undertook to carry out.

2. 13. 14. And so, since by your own word the case is finished, I beseech you, through the God of religion, the God of truth, that your error too may at some time be finished. This very thing, brother, is the Church of Christ, which at this time, by growing, is spread abroad through the whole world, containing both the bad and the good, to be separated at the final winnowing. And, that I may address you at the last rather with the words of him whom you wished to bring forward as a witness of the Catholic name: "It is the very one which, flooded with the light of the Lord, stretches out its rays through the whole world: it is the very one which extends its branches, with abundance of fruitfulness, over all the earth." Accordingly, "although weeds seem to be in it, yet neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that, because we perceive weeds to be in the Church, we should ourselves withdraw from the Church. We must only labor that we may be able to be wheat, so that, when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's barns, we may receive fruit for our work and labor. The Apostle says in his letter: But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware; and some indeed honored, some dishonored (2 Tim 2:20). Let us give our effort, and labor as much as we can, that we may be a vessel of gold or silver. But to break the earthenware vessels is granted to the Lord alone, to whom also the rod of iron is given (See Ps 2:9). The servant cannot be greater than his lord (See John 13:16): nor let anyone claim for himself what the Father granted to the Son alone, so as to think that he can already bear the shovel or the winnowing fan to winnow and cleanse the threshing floor, or by human judgment separate all the weeds from the wheat. Proud is that obstinacy and sacrilegious that presumption which a depraved frenzy takes upon itself. And while certain people always claim for themselves more 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 most blessed Cyprian, not mine: the words, namely, of him whom you set down for us, in the opening of your writings, as a most choice witness of the Catholic name, and commended through many things most copiously; nay, through him (since the words are true and divine) they are God's. See what you should hear, see what you should beware, so that, with the mercy of the Savior helping, we may together hold Catholic love, together love the Catholic peace, together grow everywhere with his wheat, together tolerate the weeds until the end, together live in the barn without end. You see, surely, that without any defense of Caecilian, or of any men whatsoever whom you think must be accused, the Catholic [Church] stands by its own strength and firmness. Although our Conference cleared even the case of Caecilian: and concerning the others of whom you slander, either the accusation is doubtful, or the condemnation unjust. But it is very foolish that we should place the cause of the Church, supported and fortified by divine testimonies, upon the cases of men, with reason wandering off course: since, even if we saw those bad people most manifestly, and could no longer separate them from the sacraments of the Church, our faith or our love nevertheless ought not to be hindered, so that, because we perceived these too to be among the weeds in the Church, we should ourselves have to withdraw from the Church. If you think to answer, do not abandon the cause, and wander off into superfluous things. Look at the things that have been said: answer the things that have been said, not by deceitfully evading, but by reasonably disputing. For what you accomplished by that lengthy reply of yours—or rather, how nothing you accomplished—I will, if it seems necessary and the Lord grants it, show more diligently in another work.