1. 1. Indeed I have elsewhere, with the strength the Lord supplies, discussed much against the Donatists, partly in writing and partly also in oral discourse. But now, since there has come into our hands a certain letter of Parmenian, once their bishop, which he writes to Tyconius—a man endowed with keen intelligence and rich eloquence, yet a Donatist—since Parmenian thought him to be in error on the very point that Tyconius was compelled to confess as true, I have decided, at the request, or rather at the command, of the brothers, to reply here to this letter of Parmenian, especially because of certain testimonies from the Scriptures that he takes in a way other than they ought to be taken.

For Tyconius, beaten on all sides by the voices of the sacred pages, awoke and saw the Church of God spread throughout the whole world, just as so long beforehand it was foreseen and foretold concerning her through the hearts and mouths of the saints. Having perceived this, he undertook to demonstrate and maintain, against his own people, that no man's sin, however criminal and monstrous, sets a limit to the promises of God, and that the deeds of any persons whatever established within the Church, and any impiety, do not so act that the faith of God concerning the Church—that she would in the future be spread to the ends of the earth, a faith held in the promises to the fathers and now made manifest—should be made void.

Although Tyconius discussed this vigorously and copiously, and stopped the mouths of those who contradicted him with many great and clear testimonies of the holy Scriptures, he did not see what he should consequently have seen: namely, that those Christians in Africa belong to the Church spread throughout the whole world who are joined by communion not to those who are cut off from the communion and unity of that same world, but to the very world itself. Parmenian, however, and the rest of the Donatists saw that this followed, and they chose to take up a most obstinate spirit against the most evident truth that Tyconius was maintaining, rather than, by granting it, to be overcome by the African Churches that rejoiced in the communion of that unity which Tyconius maintained—the unity from which these men had separated themselves. And Parmenian indeed at first thought he should be corrected by a letter; but afterward they report that he was even condemned by their council. And so we have determined in this work to reply to the letter of Parmenian which he wrote to Tyconius, reproving him because he proclaimed the Church spread throughout the whole world, and warning him not to dare to do so.

2. 2. And so let us first see what sort of thing this is, that he says the Gauls and Spaniards and Italians and their associates—by whom he certainly wishes the whole world to be understood—are like the African traitors by commerce in crimes and fellowship in offenses. For to a man who brings forward from the holy Scriptures so many and so weighty proofs, he himself speaks without proofs and wishes to be believed though he proves nothing, inviting Tyconius, of course, to imitate himself—because he too believed certain of his fellow bishops, who merely talked, against so many Churches established throughout so vast an expanse of all lands. What more reckless thing could be found than such credulity? For he says that certain men, as he asserts, most faithful witnesses, having performed an embassy, came to these provinces; then that, by a twofold visitation of the Lord's most holy priests, as he himself says, the things they allege were published more clearly, more fully, and more truly.

O the man, who thinks that he ought to be believed more than God! Tyconius brings forth the thunders of the divine testament, which was made in the promise to Abraham and the promise to Isaac and the promise to Jacob, whose God he testifies himself to be, saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; this is my name forever (Exod 3:6, 15), and this man sets against it the narratives of his fellow priests. What was said to Abraham? In your seed all the nations shall be blessed (Gen 22:18). What was said to Isaac? And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham your father obeyed my voice (Gen 26:4-5).

What was said to Jacob? I am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; fear not. For the land on which you sleep I will give to you and to your seed. And your seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and it shall spread abroad to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east. And in you shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed, and in your seed (Gen 28:13-14).

But lest they think this was said of the Jews, let the Apostle explain what is the seed of Abraham in which all the nations were said to be blessed: The promises, he says, were made to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say, 'And to seeds,' as of many, but as of one, 'And to your seed,' which is Christ (Gal 3:16). It was therefore promised on such great authority, and fulfilled with such great truth, that all the nations would have a blessing in Christ—and those who wish to be called Christians contradict it!

And what do they set against these things? Certain most faithful witnesses, he says, having performed an embassy, came to these provinces; then, by a twofold visitation of the Lord's most holy priests, it was published more clearly, more fully, and more truly.

What, I ask you, what was published through these faithful witnesses, whom you wish to be more faithful than God? Was it that through the African traitors the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, was not permitted to reach all the nations, and dried up there where it had arrived? Say now that your colleagues are to be believed more than the testament of God, and while you say these things, boast that you preserved that very testament from the flames—the testament you are trying to blot out with your tongue.

2. 3. But let each one choose what he pleases, and if against the lightning bolts of heaven the smoke of an earthly lie has any power, let it vanish into the winds, leaving heaven behind. For if Parmenian were not currying favor with his own chair, he would rather choose to believe the Scripture of God than his colleagues. For God says to Jacob, I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you (Gen 28:15).

But it is surely far more credible about these men—since they had already been disapproved by a just judgment—that they were not admitted to share communion in those regions where God was already fulfilling what he had promised to our fathers, and that for this reason they spread such tales about the holy priests of God, by whom they had not deserved to be received, in order to stir up the weak spirits of the peoples they had deceived with false rumors, and to tear away from the peace of the whole world the rashly credulous minds ensnared by the pride of their name. What more insane thing is found than this folly, or rather this madness?

Among so many nations of the whole world God has in great part fulfilled, and still fulfills—until it comes to absolutely all—what he promised, he who said, I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you; and yet these men already believe those who announce that what God promised is not being fulfilled, and that therefore from the regions of the earth in which it had already been fulfilled the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, has perished, and the promises of God have been made void, because they themselves were not admitted to the communion of those among whom the world already held this fulfilled. And it is not said to them: God alone is true, but every man a liar (Rom 3:4).

You say these things out of your own resources, because whoever speaks a lie speaks from his own (John 8:44). You therefore lie like men, because like men you grow angry. This is not said to them; instead, they are even believed when they say that throughout the world, which Christ had already begun to possess, Christ has perished. And those who believe these things, while shamelessly saying, We are Christians, dare to say, We alone are.

3. 4. Parmenian also says that it is proved from this that the whole world was made criminal by the offenses of handing over the Scriptures and of other acts of sacrilege, because, although many such things were committed in the time of persecution, no subsequent separation of peoples occurred in those provinces. As if it could not have happened that some of the wicked lay hidden and were not accused, so that they could be condemned without any rashness; while others were also exposed and condemned, and, because they were convicted by manifest facts, ceased from disturbing and dividing the Churches;

and so it came about that, since some were not accused, and certain uncertain crimes were left to God for the sake of a sure peace, while others were so made manifest and convicted that no condemned man could deceive the peoples with a feigned innocence, the bond of unity was in no way broken.

For not even in Africa would this monstrous evil of cutting off have happened, had not a faction inventing falsehoods prevailed more than reason truly convicting.

3. 5. Let those who wish read what Optatus, bishop of Milevis of venerable memory, of the catholic communion, relates and by what documents he establishes so many things—whether concerning Lucilla, then a most wealthy and most factious woman, whom Saint Caecilian, while still a deacon, had offended for the sake of the Church's discipline,

or concerning the other associates of her faction—whether the thieves of the Church's silver, or those grieving that they had not attained the episcopate and harassing with whatever intrigues they could Caecilian, who had been preferred to them—or concerning the Numidian bishops, whom this faction had convened for the ruin of Caecilian, so that, with him deposed, another might be ordained for them.

These men, coming with their primate at that time, Secundus of Tigisis, and others, to whom Secundus himself had pardoned the confessed crimes of handing over the Scriptures, as if consulting for peace—as the ecclesiastical records testify—judged Caecilian, who was absent, to be a traitor, without any delay for a more careful inquiry,

with no opportunity for a reply preserved—so that, namely, crimes of handing over the Scriptures merely alleged should weigh against him in his absence, while to themselves, present, they pardoned crimes that had been confessed.

Thus against the man seated in the chair, with whom the whole Christian world in lands across the sea and far removed, and among the Africans themselves the more weighty Churches and those stronger against deceptions of this kind, held communion, they ordained another bishop, so that they might be able by their own deed to contradict the promises of God—that all the nations should not be blessed in the seed of Abraham—and might call even those parts of the world defiled by the African traitors which had neither heard the name of Caecilian, or at any rate had heard, as of an innocent man, how his life stood, the life of one whom even these men convicted of no crime.

Moreover, against the whole world saying, What you charge against your fellow citizens I could neither know nor ought I to have condemned what was unknown, they bring forward the testimony of the Apostle saying, Not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to those who do them (Rom 1:32). For it was too little for them to condemn so many and so great Christian peoples unheard, unless they also dared to bring out, against the Apostle himself, his very words, but not his meaning.

For if this is to consent to evildoers—to be with them in the Church—then the Apostle himself also consented to false brothers (See 2 Cor 11:26), among whom he testified that he was in danger, and whom, preaching the Gospel not chastely but through envy and without love, he nevertheless permits to preach (See Phil 1:15-18).

But if to consent to evildoers is nothing other than to approve and praise their evil deeds, then by the Apostle's example the whole world would not consent to the crimes of the Africans, even if it tolerated them, once known, for the sake of the Church's peace; and yet these men do not prove that the world knew of them, even if they had been able to prove that they were true.

4. 6. In vain, therefore, does Parmenian say that the traitors condemned in Africa were received into fellowship of holiness by the provinces across the sea. For this is what we ought not to believe, lest by a sacrilegious rashness we condemn the whole world, founded in the unity of Christ, on the basis of their false accusation, rather than love it on the basis of the true promise of God. For which is more to be believed: what God said, In your seed all the nations shall be blessed (Gen 22:18), or what these men say, 'In the seed of the African traitors all the nations are cursed'—so that what iniquity committed should prevail more than what truth promised?

Why, then, do we not rather believe that those who were received into communion by the provinces across the sea were innocent and could not be overborne by slanderers—which can be more probably established by many documents—or at any rate that, since they could not be convicted, even if they were wicked, they were believed innocent and were received without any contamination of those who received them?

And what of this: that even if, through wicked brothers—such as the Apostle tolerated in the unity of the Church, such as the martyr Cyprian laments in his letter On the Lapsed (Cyprian, De lapsis 6)—if, then, through such brothers, set even among the number of the judges, something had been done with some wickedness, so that the traitors could not be excluded and convicted, and the Christian world were deceived by their feigned innocence, the world would in no way have lost its own innocence?

4. 7. As for what he said about Hosius, once a catholic bishop of Cordova, they must be required to prove not only that he was such as they say, but that his being such was manifest to those with whom they assert he held communion. For unless they prove this, they say in vain that they knew what sort of man he was, because he could not harm those who did not know it—those innocent ones from whom these men, by separating themselves, cannot, on account of the sacrilegious iniquity of the separation itself, be innocent.

For this is more credible—if indeed Hosius, condemned by the Spaniards, was absolved by the Gauls—that it could have happened that the Spaniards, surrounded by false accusations and deceived by the cunning fraud of intrigues, passed sentence against an innocent man, and afterward peacefully, in Christian humility, yielded to the sentence of their colleagues, by whom his innocence had been proved,

lest by an obstinate and headstrong perversity, in defending their earlier sentences, they should rush, in the blindness of impiety, into the sacrilege of schism, which surpasses all crimes—as these wretched men did, who, so many times divided and cut apart, do not even belatedly perceive what they have done.

4. 8. And so they sufficiently declare how they became incurable: namely, lest they should be compelled to condemn their earlier sentences, which they rashly passed against the absent Caecilian, if in the trial across the sea—where they were overcome by Caecilian present—they had acquiesced through consideration of truth and peace; whereas they would have carried off a greater victory had they overcome human contentiousness at least after the trial than if they had overcome the man in the trial itself. For that victory is more exalted and fuller in a loftier triumph than if it were won not over a single conquered man but over an entire subjugated city, as Scripture says, Better is he who conquers anger than he who takes a city (Prov 16:32).

Those men, then, desired to conquer a man, while anger was conquering them; and because they could not conquer the man, they were overcome both by the man and by anger—by the man, because they were defeated in the trial; by anger, because not even when defeated did they rest, hearing or reading with a most depraved heart the saying of the Apostle, For if I build again these same things that I destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor (Gal 2:18). If indeed the Apostle himself had understood these words with so warped a mind, he would have become neither a Christian nor an apostle, nor would he as a preacher have built up the Churches that as a persecutor he had earlier been destroying.

Nowhere, then, did these men so openly reveal why even when overcome they refused to be corrected, as when they detest the Spaniards because, after their own sentences had been pronounced otherwise, they yielded to the later examination and judgment of their colleagues. For just as this was done out of Christian gentleness, so that was done out of diabolical contentiousness; and therefore it is no wonder that by this humility peace was preserved, by that haughtiness it was torn apart.

Accordingly, what they did is rightly repaid to them; for they taught such things to their descendants. For the Maximianists too, for no other reason, refused to yield to the council of their three hundred and ten colleagues, by whom Primian—whom they themselves had first condemned—was judged innocent, except by setting, with abandoned obstinacy, the apostolic sentence against the ignorant and saying, For if I build again these same things that I destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor. For a hundred colleagues had destroyed Primian, and for that reason they refused, together with the three hundred, to build him up again. Thus, while they pretend to take care not to build up a man whom they had destroyed, they destroyed themselves in another schism by a greater sacrilege.

4. 9. But still, if Parmenian were living, he would no longer dare to reproach the Spaniards and call them transgressors because they bent their own sentence to the sentence of their colleagues, lest he himself offend his own colleagues, many of whom, after Primian was condemned by him, changed for the better and crossed over to the council of the three hundred, choosing rather to go against their own overhasty sentences than against the peace of unity, even within the party of Donatus. And Parmenian would above all spare Praetextatus of Assuras and Felician of Musti, who, even when condemned by their three hundred and ten fellow bishops, returned, out of zeal for concord, to those very men by whom they had been condemned, and by their own condemners, with the same zeal, were received for the sake of peace without any loss of their rank; nor did anyone think that those who had been baptized by them outside, in schism, should be rebaptized.

Or perhaps, because those who correct their own sentences greatly displease Parmenian, and, not understanding the Apostle, he calls them transgressors,

he would detest these men because they chose to return inside rather than remain outside, and, with some like-minded associates joined to him, he would even create Parmenianists, just as many fragments have already been made throughout all Africa from that great fragment?

So, so it must needs be: cut and chopped bit by bit, they perish utterly, who preferred the swelling of their own contentiousness to the most holy bond of catholic peace. For the things Parmenian charges are not so much to be feared as the things he confesses are to be observed.

5. 10. For when he said that through Hosius the Spaniard help was furnished to Caecilian, so that the company of the holy and undefiled was forced into communion with them, and that the unimpaired faith of the servants of God resisted this impiety, he confessed of his own accord that his own people had also approached Constantine, and that by Constantine's decision the case was examined by bishops as judges, over whom Miltiades, bishop of the city of Rome, presided. In this trial, since these men were defeated and Caecilian was found innocent—as the ecclesiastical records testify—they accuse this same Miltiades of the crime of handing over the Scriptures.

And I ask when they learned of this. For if before the trial, they ought not to have prejudged their own case by beginning to plead it before such a judge and, by the command of the emperor whom they themselves had approached, to undergo such a trial. But if they claim that they learned he was a traitor after the case was argued and the sentence pronounced, then men are mad to such a degree that, against the judges before whom they were defeated, they believe defeated litigants?

And yet in all these matters, though with great rashness they accuse the Italians and Gauls and Spaniards, they leave aside so many other provinces and nations from which by an unspeakable sacrilege they are separated—nations whom the crimes of the Italians, Spaniards, and Gauls could surely not harm, even if they were truly told. For they now arraign the other lands with blind custom, or rather frenzy, and are angry at them because, since there were two parties in Africa—one, they say, of traitors and the other of innocent men—they chose to join to themselves the traitors rather than the innocent.

This empty accusation is refuted most briefly and most truly thus: that when they had heard there were two parties in Africa, one of traitors, the other of innocent men, they believed that one to be innocent which had won its case before its neighboring ecclesiastical judges. Wherefore those always remained innocent who, not knowing how these things had been done in Africa, nevertheless believed what they ought peacefully and reverently to have believed—and from those innocent men separation could in no way be innocent.

6. 11. Parmenian also admits that at the town of Arles both bishops as judges and the parties from Africa met—namely, Caecilian and the Donatists. There he entrusted everything to his own people, who, being defeated, could do nothing but complain about the judges; nor does he deny, again, that they came to Constantine and, because there too they were overcome in a final judgment, he charges that Constantine himself was corrupted by a bribe.

When all these things are considered, let one who judges without partisan zeal choose whom to believe—whether the judges pronouncing their sentences or the litigants against whom the sentences were pronounced, who refused to end the suit. And the whole world certainly believed the judges. But those who agree with the Donatists and defend them confess that they believe men who, whatever their case may have been, nevertheless could not win it in so many disputes across the sea, and they take up with credulous emptiness their murmurs and charges against the judges.

In this matter, if they call themselves innocent and are unwilling rashly to believe that those whom they see defeated were defeated by the truth, how much more innocent are those who are unwilling rashly to believe anything evil about the judges themselves—about whom those who are defeated must of necessity complain! For not only does one who has lost a good case complain of an unjust or slow or negligent judge, but even one who has been most justly defeated murmurs against the innocent judge with the same blindness with which he was litigating against an innocent adversary.

Wherefore these men are criminal, not because they are unwilling rashly to believe anything about defeated men, but because by the frenzy of schism they have cut themselves off from those innocent men who, far more reasonably, are unwilling to believe any such thing about the judges themselves.

7. 12. For let there come forward, in the name of Christ, some most noble Church of those parts, from among the seven, and, if it please, especially Philadelphia (See Rev 1:11), which by its mystical name in the Greek tongue signifies brotherly love. Let us therefore hear her voice—and let not her chaff speak, but her wheat.

If, then, she should say to these men: 'Why do you arraign me, brothers, why do you accuse me? At what distance, in respect of earthly place, I am removed from Africa, you have been able partly to know, partly to hear. What the traitors there did then, or the accusers or condemners of the traitors, or the slanderers or oppressors of the innocent, I am wholly ignorant.

But that Lord of ours, who bought the whole world at the price of his blood, whose holy purchase the prophet sang so long beforehand, saying, They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones. But they themselves have considered and gazed upon me; they divided my garments among them, and over my garment they cast lots (Ps 22:16-18 (21:17-19)), did not set between you and us spaces empty and bare of Christians; he filled all these with the sanctification of his name. For in that very Psalm of the Passion it was declared not only how many he bought, but also how much he bought. For there it is said a little later, All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight, for the kingdom is his, and he shall rule over the nations (Ps 22:27-28 (21:28-29)). About your case, then, I might perhaps be compelled to judge if I were either near, or so remote that between us and you no other Christians dwelt, sealed with the same name, made peaceful in the same unity.

Many families of the nations lie between, bought together with me by his blood, who in his sight worship together with me. Through them the report about you reached me; they, from their nearness, were able to examine your case. But if this was not done, you neglected it; for had you not been neglected by the rest, you would not have come even all the way to us. But if anything was judged, grant pardon: I do not dare rashly to believe you who were defeated, and to condemn your judges with the same rashness. There is added another thing that moves me greatly.

For if you, being innocent, had been oppressed, you would at least love us as brothers who did you no harm; but when you nevertheless try to tear us apart with curses and to pursue us with bitter hatreds—us who are well aware that your case was committed to your neighbors by the right order of the Church, and who know before God how they judged—and even try to rebaptize us, as though for your sake Christ had lost his inheritance among us, what good can we be able to think of that case of yours?

For you who do not in the least hesitate to condemn by rash suspicions brothers most far removed, show how justly you were condemned by your neighbors. For why should I not believe that one could rightly be condemned by a neighboring judge after a hearing, who does not hesitate to condemn me, a brother so far absent and unheard, charging against me this greatest crime—that I, who could not be present, believed the judges to whom the case was brought rather than the defeated litigants? And if I had not rather believed those judges, then even if those who were defeated were innocent, I myself could not be innocent.

For we should be entangled in a great offense if, since we could not discern human hearts, nor held to ecclesiastical discipline, we were unwilling to believe those judging—beyond whom the case could not pass, and through whom the report could run all the way to us. Tearing yourself away from these innocent men by an impious rending, do you call yourself innocent? Yet surely, if you were, when you saw in the holy Scriptures that the harvest of your Lord cannot, before the final separation and winnowing, be separated from the weeds and the chaff, you would choose rather to be strong in enduring the wicked than impious in deserting the good.'

For how many of the Churches far removed throughout the world do we think these are, and how most just are the words that I have represented in Philadelphia!

8. 13. Indeed Parmenian even dares to complain that Constantine ordered those men to be led to the field, that is, to execution, who, defeated before ecclesiastical judges, could not even before him prove what they were saying, and were still being carried by a sacrilegious frenzy into rendings of the holy Church; and he charges that Constantine ordered this monstrously, at the suggestion of Hosius the Spaniard—condemning the unheard, as always, by his own suspicions.

As though, more humanely and more probably, another might believe that it was rather done at the suggestion of Hosius, as a bishop, that the emperor should bend his sentence toward a milder coercion of so monstrous a crime—that is, of sacrilegious schism. For what do these men not justly suffer, when they suffer by the most exalted judgment of God, who presides and admonishes by such scourges to beware the eternal fire, suffering both by the merit of their crimes and by the due order of the powers?

For let them first prove that they are not heretics or schismatics; only then let them raise a free voice about their unworthy punishments; only then, when they suffer something of the kind, let them dare to call themselves martyrs of the truth.

Otherwise, if whoever pays a penalty at the hands of the emperor or of the judges sent by him is at once a martyr, then all the prisons are full of martyrs, all the judicial chains drag martyrs, in all the mines there are toiling martyrs, to all the islands martyrs are deported, in all the places of punishment martyrs are struck by the magistrate's sword, all martyrs are exposed to the beasts, or by the orders of judges are burned alive in the flames. But it is rather as the Apostle says: There is no power except from God, and the minister of God is an avenger in wrath against him who does evil; he does not bear the sword without cause. Do you wish not to fear the power? Do good, and you will have praise from it (Rom 13:1, 3-4).

For if any good man suffers, praise comes to him from the power that acts; but let the wicked man not impute to the cruelty of the power what he deservedly suffers for his iniquity.

8. 14. And yet what do these men suffer like what they do, except that the multitude of men keeps its heart not in the heart but in the eyes? For if blood flows from mortal flesh, whoever beholds it shudders; but if souls cut off and separated from the peace of Christ die in the sacrilege of heresy or schism, then, because it is not seen, it is not lamented—nay rather, a death fouler and more grievous and, to speak plainly, truer is, by the right of custom, even laughed at, while the authors of such great deaths publicly insult us and do not even deign, for the sake of making the truth manifest, to hold a conversation with us.

And if they suffer any temporal hardship through the most sure and most upright order of the powers—while they themselves, by the private bands of their madmen, everywhere and daily commit far graver things by no royal, no ecclesiastical law—they call us persecutors of bodies, and do not call themselves slayers of souls, although by their private license they do not spare even bodies. But because, through Christian gentleness, an eye torn out in a brawl is avenged far more severely than a soul blinded in schism, they speak out, and speak against us, and do not speak with us; and when truth compels them to fall silent, iniquity does not permit them to be silent.

9. 15. Or is it perhaps not lawful concerning religion that the emperor, or those whom the emperor has sent, should judge? Why then did your envoys come to the emperor? Why did they make him judge of their case, if they were not going to follow what he judged? But to what end are these things said? Even granting that they make good their claim that it does not pertain to the emperor to decree anything against those who follow what is depraved in religion, will they on that account, if he does so and punishes them, be martyrs?

For in this way this plea will lie open to all heretics, against whom, by the hidden command of God through the manifest command of men, many measures have been most severely established by which they might be coerced—and not only to heretics whitewashed in any way at least with the Christian name, but even to the pagans themselves.

For surely the pagans too are impious in a false religion, whose images recent laws have ordered to be overturned and shattered, and whose sacrifices are forbidden under pain of death. If, then, any of them has been condemned in such a crime, is he to be held a martyr because he pays the penalty under the laws for a superstition that he thought a pious religion? Surely no Christian in any way dares to say this.

Not everyone, then, who has been punished by the emperor in some question of religion is made a martyr. For those who think such things do not see that they advance to the point where they would have to maintain that even the demons themselves could claim for themselves the glory of martyrs, because they suffer this persecution through Christian emperors—so that throughout almost the whole world their temples are overturned, their idols broken in pieces, their sacrifices withdrawn, and those who honor them, if they are caught, punished.

But if it is utterly mad to say this, then it is not from the suffering that the justice is certain, but from the justice that the suffering is glorious. And therefore the Lord, lest anyone in this matter should spread mists before the ignorant and, in the condemnation of his own deserts, seek the praise of martyrs, did not say generally, 'Blessed are those who suffer persecution,' but added a great distinction by which piety is truly set apart from sacrilege. For he said, Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice (Matt 5:10).

But in no way do they suffer for the sake of justice who have divided the Church of Christ and who, while with a feigned justice they as it were attempt to separate her before the time from the chaff, and pursue her wheat with false accusations, have themselves rather been separated from her, like the very lightest chaff, by the various gusts of rumors. 'But,' they say, 'we did not do this.' Let them see, then, that they must first free themselves from this question, and only then dare, if they suffer any hardships or punishments at the hands of Christian emperors, either to lay them down in complaint or to take them up for glory. On this matter, that is, the question of the schism itself, if I said nothing else, what has been said above would suffice.

10. 16. Or will they perhaps say that, even if they are convicted in a sacrilegious dissension, so that for that madness they are no martyrs if they suffer anything, nevertheless the coercing or punishing of these things ought not to belong to the power of emperors? On this matter I ask what they say: is it that powers of this kind ought to take no care about a vicious or false religion? But we have already said much also about the pagans, and about the demons themselves, that they suffer persecutions from the emperors. Or does this too displease them? Why then do they themselves overturn temples where they can, and not cease, through the frenzies of the Circumcellions, to do or to avenge such things? Is private violence more just than royal diligence? But I pass these things over.

This I ask: since the Apostle enumerates the manifest works of the flesh—which are, he says, fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strifes, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and the like (Gal 5:19-21)—what do these men think? Do they hold that the crime of idolatry is justly avenged by emperors? Or, if they will not have even this, why do they admit that the rigor of the laws is justly exerted against sorcerers, but are unwilling to admit it against heretics and impious dissensions, when these are reckoned by apostolic authority among the same fruits of iniquity? Or do they perhaps not permit these powers of human institution to take care even of such things?

For what purpose, then, does he bear the sword, who was called the minister of God, an avenger in wrath against those who do evil (See Rom 13:4)? Unless perhaps, as some of them—truly most ignorant—are accustomed to understand this, it was said of ecclesiastical honors, so that the sword is understood as the spiritual punishment that works excommunication; though the most provident Apostle, by the connection of the passage that follows, sufficiently makes clear what he is speaking of. For there he added, For on account of this you also pay tribute, and then went on, Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, honor to whom honor, fear to whom fear (Rom 13:6-7).

It remains, then, that by these disputations of theirs they should forbid Christians to pay tribute—when even the Lord, to the Pharisees who thought such things (whom these men imitate), having looked at the coin, replied, Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's (Matt 22:21).

But these men, disobedient and impious in both, render neither Christian love to God nor human fear to kings—so blind and insane that, although they themselves, through powers sent by the catholic emperors, shut their own schismatics the Maximianists out of the basilicas and, by the great force of orders and reinforcements, compelled them to yield, yet they arraign the catholic Church if for her sake catholic princes have commanded any such thing to be done. But let the Maximianists themselves, before they were Maximianists—that is, while they were still held together in one common body of the Donatists—recall what cruel and bitter things that Rogatus the Moor suffered at their hands through the barbarian king Firmus, and let them be silent and not dare to complain if they suffer anything of the kind, whether from the Primianists on account of their own schism, or together with the Primianists on account of the schism of the Donatists—not for a holy religion, but for a sacrilegious contentiousness.

11. 17. For perhaps they say that they have suffered graver things from the catholic emperors than they themselves did to the Rogatists through the kings of the barbarians, or to the Maximianists through the judges of the catholic emperors, or even now do, through the frenzy of the Circumcellions, to whomever they can.

As though the question were whether they suffer graver things than they do—which I would by no means concede. For many of their most savage and most bitter deeds are recounted, or rather cannot be recounted; and if these were fewer, or afflicted those against whom they are committed less, they would for that very reason certainly be graver, because they are not commanded by ordained powers but committed in lawless frenzies.

For the things they did against the Maximianists through judges of human institution are not so many. Into that class of actions let them put, if they will, what was also done by them, in persecuting Rogatus the Moor, through the barbarian Firmus, and let them reckon that man—though a most monstrous enemy of the Romans—among the lawful powers.

But these things are not so many as the many things they daily commit, through the raging bands of drunken young men over whom they set leaders—men who at first armed themselves only with clubs, but now have begun to arm themselves even with iron, who wander and rage throughout all Africa under the notorious name of Circumcellions, and act against all order of laws and powers.

When the crimes of these men are reported to them, they pretend to be ignorant of such a kind of men, or with a most shameless mouth they affirm that such men have nothing whatever to do with them—contrary to what all men know. Nor do they accept even this voice of the whole world, which says, far more probably and truly, that it does not know what was done in Africa, whether by the party of Donatus or against the party of Donatus, if in Africa itself it is permitted to the Donatist bishops either to be ignorant of the deeds of the Donatist Circumcellions or to say that they have nothing to do with them.

11. 18. But, as I had begun to say, the question is not in this way—whether they suffer graver things than they do—but whether it is lawful that any such thing be done against heretics and schismatics. For if they say it is not lawful, why do they themselves do it? But if they admit it is lawful, then even if they should show—what they can in no way do—that they suffer graver things from the catholic emperors than they themselves did to their own schismatics through those emperors' judges or through the kings of the barbarians, or than they do to every kind of men through the madness of the Circumcellions, neither is this to be wondered at, if princes can do more than the judges sent by princes, if Roman emperors can do more than barbarian kings, and if a robber deservedly suffers graver things by the laws than he himself commits against the laws. Hence the henchmen of the Circumcellions deservedly suffer, by just decrees, graver things than the Circumcellions do. And yet so great is Christian gentleness that their crimes incomparably surpass their punishments.

But behold, three hundred and ten Donatist bishops condemned the Maximianists in their council, while those men, by the obstinacy of their perversity, refused to yield the basilicas. The judges were approached; their council was entered into the proconsular records. Then it was ordered that those who had been condemned by so great a number of bishops should yield up the places. Those who yielded easily did not suffer much; but as for those who attempted to resist, who does not know how they were afflicted?

But still, if the monstrousness of those resisting had been so great that it reached the point of injuries to the judges, would they not have suffered far more bitter things by the Roman laws? So too at that time, when, after the conclusion of the case in which these men cut themselves off from the catholic Church, it consequently began to be pressed that they should not hold the basilicas, and they did hold them by resisting the imperial orders—and resisting in such a way that the notorious force of the Circumcellions prevailed, adding besides that they harassed with most turbulent and most savage seditions those whom the emperor had sent with gifts of the Church as they went through Africa—such laws were issued against them that they were not even allowed to retain those basilicas which did not belong to the unity but had been built by men separated and already established in their schism.

In this matter the royal power has now avenged its own injuries. For what avails it that the enemies of justice should justly possess anything?

12. 19. Nor is anyone found to have promulgated anything on their behalf except the apostate Julian, to whom Christian peace and unity were exceedingly displeasing, since the very religion from which he had impiously fallen displeased him. And these Donatists, as the records of the judges testify—to which they appealed for what they had obtained—supplicated him in such words that perhaps some who consented to the worship of idols out of fear were gentler toward it than these men were in praising him out of frenzy. For they said that with him justice alone had a place.

What else, then, are they found to have said but either that Christian holiness is not justice—which had no place with him—or that the honoring of demons is justice, which had first place with him? But as for how vehement the laws of other emperors that were enacted against them, who does not know? Among them, one general law against all who wish to be called Christians and do not commune with the catholic Church, but gather in their own separated conventicles, contains this: that either the one who ordains a cleric or the one ordained should be fined ten pounds of gold, and the very place where the impious separation gathers should be confiscated to the treasury.

There are also other general decrees by which the faculty of making wills, or of conferring anything by donations, or of receiving anything from donations or wills, is taken away from them.

For in a certain case, when a man of nobility had supplicated the emperors—because his sister, who had belonged to the party of Donatus, had at her death conferred a great deal upon certain persons of their communion, and especially upon a certain Augustine, a bishop of theirs—it was commanded, on the basis of that general law, that everything be restored to the brother; and there too mention was made of the Circumcellions, in case they should, in their usual manner, violently oppose, by what kind of reinforcements and supports they were to be repelled.

For so well known are they, so proven in many battles, that about them neither the emperor's suppliant nor the emperor himself could keep silent.

13. 20. Since these things are so—since they are condemned by both divine and human laws—nevertheless so great is Christian gentleness that not only do they hold the basilicas that they built once they were already cut off, but the unity has not even taken back all those that it held from the beginning. And although they themselves urgently shut the Maximianists out of the basilicas belonging to the party of Donatus, through judges sent by the catholic emperors, yet from many places that the catholic unity formerly held they are not shut out even by the laws of those same catholic emperors.

Finally, if anything has perhaps at some time been done against them too immoderately, so as to exceed Christian leniency, it displeases all the wheat of the Lord's harvest—that is, the Christians praiseworthy in Christ—who, whether with hundredfold or sixtyfold or thirtyfold fruit (See Matt 13:23), grow up in the catholic Church throughout the whole world.

14. 21. Wherefore let them most copiously accuse, along with us, the weeds or chaff of the catholic crop, but let them not refuse most patiently to bear them along with us. For he who was unwilling to root out the weeds before the time and to separate them from the mingling with the wheat said, Let both grow until the harvest (Matt 13:30). And when he explained the wrapping of that same parable to the disciples who asked, he did not say, 'The field is Africa,' but he said, The field is this world (Matt 13:38). Throughout the whole world, then, this crop was sown; throughout the whole, weeds were sown over it; throughout the whole, both grow until the harvest.

Was Donatus the chief of the reapers, or had the time of harvest come at the time when these men separated themselves from the world, when the Lord himself, lest anyone be permitted to interpret as he wished, said most plainly, The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels (Matt 13:39)? For such reapers cannot err, so as either to gather the wheat for weeds or to consign the weeds for wheat.

But these men, while they flee as it were the weeds, have shown that they themselves are the weeds, preaching in a most manifest sacrilege against the sentence of the Lord; so that, when he says, Let both grow until the harvest, they maintain that throughout so great a field, that is, the whole world, only weeds grow, but that the wheat has been diminished and remained in Africa alone, doing a sacrilegious injury to Christ our king and prince. For it is written, In a numerous people is the glory of a king, but in the diminution of the people is the ruin of the prince (Prov 14:28).

But now it is time, as I judge, to attend diligently to the very testimonies of the Scriptures which, by misinterpreting them, they use to deceive the ignorant, and—as far as the Lord grants—to open them up according to the understanding of catholic truth.

1. 1. What force, at last, but the blindness and emptiness of mind, compels men—as it were with eyes closed, as the saying goes—to throw against another what immediately returns upon the one who threw it and strikes him with a recoiling blow, leaving untouched the one he wished to wound? So these Donatists do with almost all the testimonies of the Scriptures, which, when they suppose they are bringing them forward against us, seem rather to warn us what sort of men the very Scripture convicts them to be. For what else does what Parmenian thinks to be for himself or against us accomplish, namely what is written, Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put what is bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (Isa 5:20)? O most foolish blindness! For what is so good and so pleasant as brothers dwelling together in unity (See Ps 133:1 (132:1))?

This those men call evil and put for bitter, who have separated themselves from all their brothers, while they were unwilling either not to stir up their empty suspicions—not to say their factious slanders—or, once stirred up, to tolerate them. For if they hated the true chaff and were not themselves chaff, they would not, on its account, sunder themselves from the Lord's wheat, sown and growing throughout the whole field, that is, this world.

1. 2. Let them therefore cry out as much as they can, Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil (Isa 5:20). We reply, 'This is true,' and we add another: Woe to those who have lost endurance (Sir 2:16), while they put light for darkness and darkness for light (See Isa 5:20). For what is more luminous than the promises of God, who has in our times exhibited what he foretold thousands of years before—that in the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, all the nations would have a blessing (See Gen 22:18)—and what is more darksome than the presumptions of men, who, on account of the rashly alleged and never proved crimes of traitors (which, even if they were true, would never prejudice God so that he should not fulfill what he promised), say that the Christian name has perished from so many nations in the world and remained in Africa alone? And this presumption of theirs they call light, while they strive to cover with the darkness of their lies the promises of God, now illumined by the very effect of events; and besides they cry out their own deeds against us, saying, Woe to those who put light for darkness and darkness for light.

Was Optatus, then, light, and did all Africa call him darkness? Or did all Africa rather perceive that he was darkness, while these men called him light—they who do not put light for darkness and darkness for light? 'But Optatus,' they say, 'displeased all the good in our communion.' You did not, then, call him light, and yet you communed with him.

Choose, therefore, what you will: either that darkness does not harm light in one communion, but it suffices for the light to disapprove the darkness and, for the sake of unity, to tolerate it if it cannot expel it—and so that there was no cause why you should be sundered from innocent brothers, to whom you certainly could not show the wicked, even if you say they were known to you, by the darksome sacrilege of schism;

or, if it does not suffice for the light to disapprove the darkness it cannot expel—that is, if it does not suffice for the good to disapprove the wicked whom they cannot exclude or amend—then one Optatus, most notorious and most evident in the one province of Africa, more easily stained the party of Donatus than any African traitor stained so many nations throughout the world—a traitor not, let me say, accused of false crimes, but, what is most shamelessly denied, unknown to them.

1. 3. Receiving the Scriptures, therefore, with a perverse heart, they make them harm not us but themselves, when they think it was written for this purpose, Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil (Isa 5:20)—namely, that the wheat should not tolerate the chaff among them until the time of winnowing; so that, while they ill understand Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil, there is fulfilled in them, Woe to those who have lost endurance (Sir 2:16).

But if they understand that this was said against those who, supposing what is evil to be good, commit evils, or against those who consent to such men by praising and approving them—two kinds that Scripture mentions in one place, saying, For the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does iniquity is blessed (Ps 10:3 (9:24))—

they will understand rightly and will not be troubled, since the wicked are found even among themselves—except that for the party of Donatus they tolerate those whom they ought to have tolerated for the unity of Christ; and through this obstinacy of their contentiousness the wretched men are forced, in their schism, to bear those whom they know, and in the world to accuse those whom they do not know.

Whoever, then, either corrects by reproof what he can, or excludes—with the bond of peace preserved—what he cannot correct, or, with the bond of peace preserved, disapproves in fairness what he cannot exclude, and bears it in firmness—this man is a peacemaker, and is altogether free, wholly secure, and entirely a stranger from that curse by which Scripture says, Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put what is bitter for sweet and what is sweet for bitter (Isa 5:20).

2. 4. Again, with their usual blindness, they bring forward something similar. 'Of you,' they say, 'Scripture says, He who judges the just unjust, and the unjust just, is abominable before God (Prov 17:15).' Why does this abomination not rather fall upon those who dared to condemn the whole Christian world unheard, in which, among so vast a number of men, there were and are, without any doubt, men innocent of their crimes?

In this way, then, they judged what is just to be unjust, and what is unjust they judged just, when they held in communion, honoring him as a priest and a colleague, Optatus the Gildonian, for ten years the groan of all Africa.

Or if they disapproved him in their heart, but tolerated him for the sake of peace, let them learn that the patience of no peacemaker, not consenting to evil, can be stained by any evils; and so let them perceive in what perdition they lie who, on account of the crimes of the Africans—whether false or true, for that is not now the question—do not keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (See Eph 4:3) with the whole world.

And if they were to say, 'We do not know whether there are good Christians throughout so many nations of the lands across the sea,' they would speak most shamelessly. For God bears witness to his wheat, which, sowing it throughout the whole field, he foretold would grow until the harvest, although with weeds sown over it by the devil; whence, even if we know the men themselves less, we nevertheless know that they exist, because we hold by a most certain faith that God could not have lied.

When, therefore, with sacrilegious shamelessness they say, 'We do not know whether there are good Christians in the rest of the world,' let them see with what insanity they dare to say—for daily they do not hesitate to say—'We know that there are no Christians there.' It is one thing, surely, to say, 'We do not know whether there are,' and another to say, 'We know that there are not'—both are faithless and impious. But if he is to be detested who says, 'I do not know whether God spoke the truth,' what is he who says, 'I know that God did not speak the truth'?

2. 5. Certainly I think I ought to offend none of these men if I set God before Donatus. For however much they love Donatus, they fear God more; and finally, however much they themselves love Donatus, we know that God alone is true, but every man a liar (Rom 3:4). Christ, therefore, who is God over all, blessed forever (Rom 9:5), and who said most truly of himself, I am the truth (John 14:6), when his servants asked him whether he wished them to go and gather the weeds, said, Let both grow until the harvest (Matt 13:30); but Donatus says that the weeds indeed have grown, while the wheat has been diminished.

Let these men choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says, The field is this world (Matt 13:38); but Donatus says that the field of God has remained Africa alone. Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says, At the time of harvest I will say to the reapers: First gather the weeds (Matt 13:30); and he explains it, saying, The harvest is the end of the age (Matt 13:39); but Donatus says that by the cutting off of his party the weeds were separated from the wheat before the harvest.

Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says, The reapers are the angels (Matt 13:39); but Donatus says that he and his colleagues did, before the harvest, what the Lord said the angels would do at the harvest.

Let them choose whom to believe. They certainly call themselves Christians: we set before them Christ and Donatus. If they give words to Christ but their heart to Donatus, let them consider who they are. I spare them, I do not inveigh, I do not exaggerate; I press down my grief rather than bring it out.

But if they say they give their heart to Christ, then let them believe Christ when he says that throughout the whole world both the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the evil one grow (See Matt 13:38), not Donatus when he says that throughout the world only the sons of the evil one have grown, while the good sons have been diminished down to Africa alone. But if they believe Christ, let them now have peace—we do not say with the Churches of the world, but with the Gospel itself—which they falsely boast they preserved from the fire, since they do not prove it by their deeds.

3. 6. Now to what end is that which the same Parmenian thought should be objected to us from the prophet Isaiah: Is the hand of the Lord not strong enough to save, or has he made his ear heavy that he should not hear? But your offenses separate between you and God, and on account of your sins he has turned away his face from you that he should not have mercy. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with sins; but your lips have spoken iniquity, and your tongue meditates injustice.

No one speaks just things, nor is there true judgment. They trust in vain things and speak empty things, for they conceive pain and bring forth iniquity. They have hatched the eggs of asps and weave the spider's web; and he who was about to eat of those eggs, crushing one, found it rotten, and in it a basilisk. Their web, therefore, will not be for clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their works. For their works are works of iniquity, and their feet run swift to wickedness, swift to shed blood, and their thoughts are the thoughts of fools. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known (Isa 59:1-8).

Those whom Scripture describes in this passage, wherever they are—even among the good—do not harm the good, just as chaff does not harm the wheat, until the Lord of the threshing floor comes, bearing a winnowing fork in his hand, and cleanses his floor, and stores the wheat in the barn, but burns the chaff with unquenchable fire (See Matt 3:12); just as so great a multitude of criminals did not harm the good—which we learned through the prophet Ezekiel—namely those who groaned and grieved over the crimes of the people that were being committed in their midst (See Ezek 9:4). Hence, because they could not correct them, and ought in no way to separate themselves from the unity of the people of God, by the merit of their most innocent endurance they deserved to be marked and, in the devastation and destruction of those lost ones, to be delivered.

But why do these men, who object these things to the catholics, not look at themselves—whose hordes of raging bands, armed with iron and clubs, dart here and there, and are by no means sated, in such monstrousness, with the frequent slaughters they work wherever they can—where, amid the pyres of their corpses, with the women who, mingled with them everywhere against the order of things divine and human, roam day and night, such drunkenness rages that from it they conceive a daily madness not only of pursuing others but even of hurling themselves headlong? Do not their feet run to malice, and are they not swift to shed blood (See Isa 59:7)? Does judgment not depart from these men, who usurp for themselves even the most unjust licenses of a disordered power? Does not darkness come upon them, while they wait for light in a false martyrdom (See Isa 59:9)? Do they not walk in the midst of night even by day, since the Apostle says, Those who are drunk are drunk at night (1 Thess 5:7)? Do not these men fall at noon as if in the middle of the night (See Isa 59:10; Job 5:14)? This indeed belongs to all heretics, who cannot see a most manifest thing set in the light of all the nations—outside whose unity, whatever they do, however much it may seem to be done with great skill and diligence, profits them as little against the wrath of God as spiders' webs can shield from the cold.

3. 7. What, then, do they put forward from this prophetic chapter that cannot be turned back upon themselves—except perhaps about the eggs of asps, of which the framer of the sentence of the plenary council of three hundred and ten made much mention, when they came together from all the provinces of Africa? This, certainly, if Parmenian were living now, he would not say, nor would he put forward from the prophet Isaiah against us, They have hatched the eggs of asps (Isa 59:5).

For he would look at Felician of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, joined to his college, whom, from the number of the condemned, they received afresh as if whole, for the supposed good of peace—not of Christ, however, but of Donatus—men who both were the eggs of asps and had hatched. For so do the three hundred and ten describe them, 'by the truthful mouth of the plenary council,' as their records, appended even to the proconsular records, testify.

For these are certainly the words of their council: 'For although the channel of a venomous womb long hid the harmful offspring of viperous seed, and the moist curds of the conceived crime warmed themselves with slow heat into the limbs of asps, yet the conceived poison could not be concealed by a vanishing shade.

For although late, their vows pregnant with crimes brought forth a public outrage and their own parricide.' These eggs of asps had already hatched and, now horrible and foul-smelling, with their venomous offspring, had already been cast out of their communion; but inside there was Optatus the basilisk, who, by a certain royal nod—by which it is said to excel among serpents—might recall even the asps that had been cast out.

Or if these things do not harm them for the sake of peace, why do they object to the catholics things they could not prove, when they themselves have received men whom they condemned with their own mouth?

If these things do not harm the peace of Christ, yet they harm it for the sake of the peace of Donatus, to which much favor is shown to the injury of the peace of Christ; and for this sacrilege, whatever they suffer in bodily hardships is God's admonition to beware of eternal damnation. For they themselves truly shed blood, not only bodily through the frenzies of the Circumcellions, but also spiritually—they who try, if they could, to rebaptize the whole world.

Or if he alone sheds blood who either wounds mortal flesh or destroys it by a wound, but he does not shed it who destroys seduced souls by the sacrilege of schism, why did they say such things against their own schismatics the Maximianists, through the same sentence of their plenary council, Their feet are swift to shed blood (Isa 59:7), when it is established that no one was killed by them bodily, no one wounded, but that, moreover, those men suffered many things from these, when they were shut out of the basilicas through the judicial powers?

Such things they did, in many cases, before the separation of the Maximianists, when they were together in one body, to those who had made the earlier schisms from the party of Donatus. For what schismatic of their own did they ever spare—they who wish, most shamelessly, to be spared by the world, of which they themselves are schismatics—when schisms are most justly punished by that one true unity alone, if these things are to be punished in that way?

4. 8. And that which is written, As the prince of the people is, so also are his ministers; and as the ruler of the city is, such also are its inhabitants (Sir 10:2)—if they understood to what it refers, they would neither object it to us nor be proud with empty boasting.

For we, so that we may place men's hope—which is safe and rightly secure in God alone—not in men, since we remember that it is written, Cursed is he who puts his hope in man (Jer 17:5), do not understand in this passage the prince of the people and the ruler of the city to signify a bishop—not because we cannot behold innumerable holy bishops in the catholic Church, but lest, as I said, anyone's hope as a man be placed in a man, and lest, if it should perhaps befall him to live in a city where there is no good bishop, he should think he may become wicked with impunity, usurping for his defense this Scripture, as perversely understood as it is understood by these men, and saying that he therefore cannot be good, because as the prince of the people is, so also are his ministers, and as the ruler of the city is, such also are its inhabitants (Sir 10:2).

For this error is contradicted by the mouth of Truth, saying, Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do (Matt 23:3). And so, when peoples have such bishops, who say good things from the chair of Moses and do not do the things they say (See Matt 23:2) out of their own pestilence (See Ps 1:1)—if those peoples do the good things that the bishops say and do not do the evil things that the bishops do, as the Lord commanded, do they not sufficiently show that the prince of the people and the ruler of the city is not to be understood as these men understand it, since peoples can be good even where the bishops have been wicked, just as the people could be wicked where Moses was prince and a good ruler?

For erring in the words of the holy Scriptures and, as the Apostle says, understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions (1 Tim 1:7), they themselves rather, according to the perversity of their understanding, suffer great straits, when it is said to them: 'Then as Optatus was, so was also the people of Thamugadi; and if by the sharing of the sacraments, as you say, even those are contaminated who disapprove the evil deeds—even the deeds they tolerate for the peace of unity—then such are all of you too, who communed both with that colleague of yours and with that people, when all Africa with a manifest groan declared him a satellite of Gildo.' Him I often name for this reason, that he appeared so manifestly that, wherever he has been named, no one answers that he is ignorant of him.

4. 9. For let them look back and recall how many like themselves they have among them, whose malice is equal but whose notoriety is unequal, and let them at last come to the true meaning of these words and understand that the one prince of the people is our Lord Jesus Christ, whose ministers are good, and that he himself is the ruler of that city of Jerusalem, which is our eternal mother in heaven (Gal 4:26).

To the dignity of this ruler the inhabitants are conformed, not to an equality, but each according to his measure, because it was said to them, You shall be holy, for I also am holy (Lev 11:45), according, namely, to a certain likeness of the image into which we are transformed from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor 3:18), by the gift of him who makes us conformed to the image of his Son (See Rom 8:29). There is also another, wicked people, whose prince is the devil and the ruler of that city which is mystically called Babylon (See Rev 17:5), since the apostle Paul calls him and his angels the princes and rulers of this darkness (See Eph 6:12), that is, of sins; and his ministers are like him, because they transfigure themselves into ministers of justice, as he into an angel of light (See 2 Cor 11:14-15), and the inhabitants are conformed to that worst ruler in like deeds. But the separation of these peoples and cities will be open at the time when this harvest has been winnowed; and until that is done, the love of the wheat tolerates all things, lest, while the grains too hastily flee the chaff, they be impiously separated from their fellow grains.

5. 10. What weight, then, does it now have for the case, what these men object to us, that through Isaiah the Lord says of wicked sacrificers, The criminal who sacrifices to me a calf is as one who slays a dog, and he who offers fine flour is as one who offers swine's blood; and he who offers incense in memorial is as a blasphemer (Isa 66:3)? All these things are said far more fittingly of those who, against the Church of God spread—as it was promised—throughout the whole world, have erected the altar of their schism; which sacrilege wraps them all up, and whoever offers sacrifice anywhere with such a heart or such deeds as to deserve to hear these things brings ruin upon himself, not upon those good men who, according to the prophet Ezekiel, groan and grieve over the sins and iniquities committed in their midst (See Ezek 9:4), although they do not bodily separate themselves from them; for the Lord renders to each according to his heart (See Ps 20:4 (19:5)).

For if in earlier times wicked priests did not harm either their good colleagues, such as was Zechariah (See Luke 1:5), or the good people, such as was Nathanael, in whom there was no guile (See John 1:47), how much more does a wicked bishop, in Christian unity, in no way harm either good fellow bishops or good laypeople, since now that priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, our high priest seated at the right hand of the Father, intercedes for us (See Heb 6:20; 7:17, 25; Rom 8:34), who was handed over for our offenses and rose again for our justification (Rom 4:25). Therefore that too does not harm the good, but the wicked who offer, which was said most truly, The Most High does not approve the gifts of the wicked (Sir 34:23).

For he did not say, 'The Most High does not approve the gifts of those who tolerate the wicked for the sake of peace'—although these men could not even prove the things they objected at the time when they made the schism. Otherwise, with those men excluded, the inheritance of Christ, spread throughout the whole world, would hold these men in catholic communion.

6. 11. The sacrifices, he says, of the impious are an abomination to the Lord; for they offer them iniquitously (Prov 21:27). It has already been answered above that Christ is not iniquitous, who offered himself for us and is our mediator in heaven (See 1 Tim 2:5); and while he governs his Church, the wicked, who are either unknown or tolerated for the sake of peace, will not harm the good, until he himself comes and, having sent ahead the reapers, separates the weeds from the harvest and, with the winnowing fork, the chaff from the wheat (See Matt 3:12; 13:30)—

although these men, as must often be said, objected false crimes, which, even if they were true, would do no harm to the love of the good, which for the sake of unity tolerates all things in unity (See 1 Cor 13:7), if perhaps they could not, even when these were known, persuade the ecclesiastical judges of them. The sacrifices of the impious, therefore, will harm those very men who offer impiously.

For one and the same sacrifice, on account of the name of God, which is there invoked and is always holy, becomes for each such as the heart with which he approaches to receive it. For he who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself (1 Cor 11:29). He did not say 'to others,' but to himself. He, then, who eats and drinks worthily, eats and drinks grace to himself. Let those men, then, see whether they eat worthily, who, among so many parents and children, husbands and wives, among so many—what is most important—heirs of God and coheirs of Christ (See Rom 8:17) spread throughout the whole world, have divided by a wicked schism, when they could certainly, if they were good and truly arraigned the wicked, fruitfully tolerate for the peace of Christ what they ruinously tolerate for the party of Donatus.

7. 12. 'In Exodus,' he says, 'it is written, Let the priests who approach the Lord God be sanctified, lest perhaps the Lord forsake them (Exod 19:22); and again, And when the ministers approach the altar of the holy place, let them not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die (Exod 30:20-21); and that in Leviticus, A man who has a blemish and a defect, let him not approach to offer gifts to God (Lev 22:21).'

It is well that they bring forward these testimonies from the old books. Let them tell me, then, whom—established either among the priests or among the people—a wicked or blemished priest has ever harmed in respect of spiritual salvation. Where Moses and Aaron were, there were sacrilegious murmurers, whom God always threatened to destroy from before his face; where Caiaphas and others like him were, there was Zechariah, there Simeon and other good men; where Saul was, there was David; where Jeremiah, where Isaiah, where Daniel, where Ezekiel, there were wicked priests and wicked peoples; but each one bore his own burden.

7. 13. I forbear to say with what criminal pride it is said that there is no one among their colleagues, or that they themselves are not, with some blemish or defect—not of body, but, what is worse, of character. And when we begin to press this with them, they reply that it makes a difference what kind of blemish and what kind of defect it is, as though Scripture had made the distinction when it said, A man who has a blemish and a defect, let him not approach to offer gifts to God (Lev 22:21).

Had no blemish and defect—I do not say Optatus, but Parmenian himself or Donatus himself? But these men are so blinded by love of men, and with an unchaste heart do not hesitate to make the adulterers of their mind equal to the one lawful husband, that they maintain that what could be said of the Lord Jesus Christ alone was perfectly fulfilled even in Donatus. Who will give my eyes a fountain of tears? (Jer 9:1) What groan fit for this crime can be wrung from a stricken breast?

But meanwhile let them attend to whether at least Optatus had some blemish or some defect; they are not so blind as to answer that even his life was wholly unblemished and free of every defect. Why, then, did he approach to offer gifts to God, and from him did the rest, with joined hands, receive what one blemished and defective had offered? Let them attend, among their other men, to whether drunkenness is no blemish—but first let them read with what criminals the apostle Paul joined drunkards (See 1 Cor 5:11; 6:9-10)—whether avarice is no blemish, which the same Apostle so detests that he compares it to the servitude of idols (See Eph 5:5).

7. 14. But those who think most rightly understand that any man—although, in respect of the fellowship of human society, it can not absurdly be said that he lives most justly—cannot, however, be without some defect, so long as the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (Gal 5:17). And, He who is born of God does not sin (1 John 3:9); and, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).

For although, insofar as we are born of God, we do not sin, yet there is still in us also what we are from Adam, because death is not yet swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:54)—which is promised also in the resurrection of the bodies (See 1 Cor 15:52)—so that we who already, according to faith, are children of God, may in every way be blessed and unblemished and incorrupt; but according to sight it does not yet appear what we shall be (1 John 3:2).

For not yet in reality, but in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Rom 8:24-25). But so long as with patience we await the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23), let us not dare to say that we are free of every defect, lest that very pride be a most monstrous defect; and let us at some time awake and see that, in the priests of that time, when bodily defects were avoided, there was prefigured that one who, being God, became man for our sake, alone truly the unblemished lamb (1 Pet 1:19) and the priest without defect. And therefore then too the priest alone entered into the Holy of Holies (See Lev 16:2, 34; Heb 9:7), while the people stood outside, just as now that priest, after the resurrection, has entered into the secret places of the heavens, to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father, while the people whose priest he is still groan outside.

For with the bishop the people are within, and they pray with him and, as if subscribing to his words, answer, 'Amen.' To such a degree, then, when—because the souls could not be without any blemish and without any defect—the bodies of priests were required to be so (See 1 Macc 4:42), was that one alone prefigured, not these proud and impious men, who, while their soul plays the harlot, are not jealous for the bridegroom, but dare to display themselves to the people in place of the bridegroom.

8. 15. 'In the Gospel,' he says, 'it is written, God will not hear sinners; but if anyone worships the Lord and does his will, him he will hear (John 9:31).' And here too the answer is conclusive. For if two pray together, one a sinner and the other one who worships the Lord and does his will, surely he hears the one, he does not hear the other.

What, then, does this testimony mean, or how do they suppose it should be brought forward on their behalf, when by these very words the good become especially secure among the wicked, and no cause of bodily separation arises—so that by a wicked schism men should be separated even from the good through spiritual discord—since the wicked among the good can fail to be heard on account of their faithlessness, and the good among the wicked can be heard on account of their faith?

For God, who is the inspector of the heart (Prov 24:12), does not err, so as to hear or reject one for another. Or do they say these things so that it may be understood that a wicked bishop is not heard when he prays for the people? Even if this were so, yet the people, if they are good and faithful, ought not on that account to be anxious. For that Scripture makes them secure which says, Brothers, these things I write to you, that you may not sin; and if anyone has sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and he is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:1-2).

With what truthful and pious humility this was said, let them hear, if they have ears to hear with. For John had said, These things I have written to you, that you may not sin. If it had then followed that he said, 'And if anyone has sinned, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and he is the propitiation for your sins,' he would have seemed to have set himself apart, as it were, from sinners, so that he no longer needed the propitiation that is made through the mediator seated at the right hand of the Father and interceding for us (See Rom 8:34). Which surely would have been said not only proudly but also falsely. But if he had even said this, 'These things I have written to you, that you may not sin; and if anyone has sinned, you have me as a mediator with the Father, I entreat for your sins'—as Parmenian in a certain place set the bishop as mediator between the people and God—who among good and faithful Christians would bear him, who would look upon him as an apostle of Christ and not as an antichrist? And yet these broken cisterns bear the smoking pride of these men, and cannot hold the Holy Spirit (See Jer 2:13), so as to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and to be secure, in all their prayers, about the one mediator (See 1 Tim 2:5).

8. 16. For all Christian men commend one another by their prayers. But he for whom no one intercedes, while he himself intercedes for all, this is the one and true mediator (See 1 Tim 2:5); and since his type was prefigured in the priest of the Old Testament, there too no one is found to have prayed for the priest.

But the apostle Paul—although under the head a chief member (See Eph 4:15; Rom 12:5), yet because he is a member of the body of Christ, and knew that the greatest and truest priest entered for us, not through a figure into the inner part of the veil to the Holy of Holies, but through the expressed and rendered truth into the inner part of heaven, to a holiness not imaginary but eternal (See Heb 6:19; 9:3, 12, 24)—commends even himself to the prayers of the Church and does not make himself a mediator between the people and God, so that all the members of the body of Christ may pray for one another, since the members are anxious for one another and, if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it (See 1 Cor 12:25-26), and, if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together; and thus the prayer of all the members for one another, still laboring on earth, will ascend to the head that has gone before into heaven, in which is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2).

For if Paul were a mediator, so surely would his fellow apostles be, and thus there would be many mediators, nor would the account hold for Paul himself by which he had said, For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). In him we too are one, if we keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (See Eph 4:3): let us not desert the good on account of the wicked, but for the sake of the good let us endure the wicked; lest, while we wish to defend what by rash presumption we abandon, men unknown to us, we be compelled by a greater crime to condemn the unheard.

8. 17. And what of this: that there is also found in the Scriptures the prophet Balaam, not of the people of Israel but a foreigner, hired by an enemy to curse the people of God, turned by the Lord to blessing—whose words, all of one praying well, we hear and read (See Num 24)—and, though he had something else in his wish, yet the words of one praying are both good and, on behalf of the people, are heard by the Lord.

Hence it is no wonder that good words which are said in prayers on behalf of the people, even if they are said by wicked bishops, are nevertheless heard—not on account of the perversity of the prelates, but on account of the devotion of the peoples. Yet what is written in the Gospel, God does not hear sinners; but if anyone worships the Lord and does his will, him he will hear (John 9:31), was not said by the Lord, but by that man who had indeed already had the eyes of his body restored, but to whom the eyes of his heart were not yet open—whence he still thought the Lord himself to be a prophet. For afterward, when he had recognized him, he adored the Son of God as a suppliant (See John 9:17). But the Lord himself, when a publican and a Pharisee prayed in one temple, says that the sinner confessing his sins was more justified than the Pharisee boasting of his merits (See Luke 18:10-14)—and these men are like that Pharisee. For although, once justified, he ceased to be a sinner, yet, in order to be justified, the sinner was praying and confessing his sins, and, being heard, he was justified, so that he ceased to be a sinner. He would not, then, have ceased to be a sinner, unless the sinner were first heard. Wherefore the truth is witness that not indeed every sinner is heard, but yet that not every sinner is unheard.

9. 18. They object also what is said in the Psalms: But to the sinner God says: Why do you expound my justifications and take up my testament through your mouth? But you hated discipline and cast my words behind you. If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you placed your portion. Sitting, you spoke against your brother and against the son of your mother you laid a stumbling block (Ps 50:16-18, 20 (49:16-18, 20)). But let them at last open the ears of their heart and cease to be understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions (1 Tim 1:7).

For they attend to what is said to the sinner, Why do you expound my justifications and take up my testament through your mouth? (Ps 50:16 (49:16)) And they do not understand that it was said for this purpose: that he should know that the words of God which he utters with his mouth profit him nothing, if he himself does not do what he says, but that they profit others who, even through the wicked, hear and do. What the Lord commands, the Lord himself teaches in the Gospel, saying of the Pharisees, They sit on the chair of Moses. Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do (Matt 23:2-3).

9. 19. And would that in these words, which they mentioned from the psalm, they were willing to behold themselves as in a mirror: how they cast the words of God behind them (See Ps 50:17 (49:17)) who announce peace to the peoples and do not love peace; how they hate discipline who dare to condemn the world unheard and who, because—deservedly, nay, with far less than they deserve for the audacity of so great a frenzy—they suffer temporal hardships according to the discipline of divine mercy, do not confess that their sins are being punished, but boast that their merits are being crowned.

I do not say that they ran with a thief (See Ps 50:18 (49:18)), because worse than a thief is a robber, which Optatus was proclaimed on every side to be. Or do they perhaps not place their portion with adulterers, who shamefully allow the drunken bands of their nuns to roam, mingled day and night with the drunken bands of the Circumcellions?

Or do they not, sitting, speak against their brothers, who, on account of certain men whom they could not convict, maintain that there are no Christians in the inheritance of Christ spread throughout the whole world, and thus against the son of their mother—that is, the one still a little child in the faith, to be nourished with the milk of the sacraments—lay a most ruinous stumbling block (See Ps 50:20 (49:20)), while the weak one, not yet knowing how to follow God the Father, follows a man and, enticed by a feigned and shadowy appearance of truth, is torn away by a cruel rending from the framework of unity?

But if to those who do not do evils in that party the evil deeds of the rest are displeasing, and they do not believe that the crimes of others harm them—crimes they groan and grieve to see done in their midst (See Ezek 9:4)—why do they ruinously tolerate, in the common sacrilege of schism, what they could fruitfully have tolerated in the integrity of unity? For they can say, if at last, taught by the very facts, they awake, they can say that the evils of individuals do not harm the rest who neither do nor approve such things; but that the sacrilege of schism is not the evil of individuals, but pertains to all those who do not commune with catholic unity, they can most easily be convicted, even if they most difficultly confess it.

For the very reason that, in their communion, the crimes of some do not pertain to others, by that very reason schism is the crime of all—because, when they now say that among their own people they cannot be stained by the crimes of others, they must at the same time confess that they had no cause to depart from unity, where the crimes of others could not stain them; and therefore by the most manifest crime of schism they are bound together alike, as by one deadly bond.

10. 20. 'But Jeremiah prophesied'—what did Jeremiah prophesy? 'That those who forsake God,' he says, 'do not have true baptism. For he says, The heaven was astonished at this and shuddered much more vehemently, says the Lord, for my people have done two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of life, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Jer 2:12-13); and again, It has become to me, he says, like deceitful water that has no faith (Jer 15:18); and that which is written, He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit? (Sir 34:30)

And that in the Psalms, Let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head; and again elsewhere, Dying flies destroy the sweetness of the oil (Ps 141:5 (140:5)); and elsewhere, For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful one and will withdraw itself from thoughts that are without understanding (Wis 1:5).'

If all these things are to be understood in the way they are understood by these men, the account of truth squares neither with us nor with them. But if I show that they are to be understood in another way, they alone are troubled by their own perversity; and, in order not to be troubled, they flee back to the catholic understanding—and from where they find a way out of the reply, from there they are entangled in the crime of schism.

For they too certainly have—I will not say, 'they are such,' but I will say this, which they either confess or most insanely deny—they too, then, have men forsaking God, who is the fountain of living water (See Jer 2:13), that is, men living iniquitously. For God is forsaken not by the feet but by the heart. They have also liars and men having no faith (See Jer 15:18), that is, men professing one thing and behaving otherwise. They certainly have dead men (See Sir 34:30).

For if the Apostle does not grant delights even to the more delicate and weaker sex, saying of the widow, But she who lives in delights is dead while living (1 Tim 5:6), let them seek whether no men among them—and, what is more, no prelates or ministers—live in delights, and so, if they dare, let them declare that they have no dead men and that they are better than that Church to whose angel, in the figure of prelates or souls, it is said that it does not live but is dead (See Rev 3:1-6), and which nevertheless is numbered among the seven Churches, and to which—not divided from the framework of the body of Christ, but persevering in unity—precepts of life are besides given.

I pass over what they said against the Maximianists in their council: 'Quite after the example of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the corpses of the perishing (See Exod 14:31).' Of which number of the dead Felician is now within, who, still dead, baptizes; or, if he has now come back to life, he has with him those whom, dead, he baptized in schism. They certainly have sinners (See Ps 141:5 (140:5)). For if any who seem great among them be questioned, they do not deny that even they themselves are sinners. For either they do not strike their breasts, or, when they do it, they do it feignedly—and if this is so, then certainly even then they unhappily sin, deceiving their peoples with a feigned humility—or else they do not say in the Lord's Prayer, Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12). Which surely is not said of those sins that were forgiven in the regeneration of baptism, but of those which the weakness of human life daily contracts from the most bitter waves of the world, for the curing of which the medicines of almsgiving, fasting, and prayers are furnished, so that in prayer is said what is done in almsgiving. For even to forgive the sin that another has committed against you, so that God may forgive you too, is a great work of mercy. But if they say this in prayer feignedly, not truthfully, thinking that they have nothing for God to forgive them, that very thing is an inexpiable sacrilege, that very thing is an impious and insane pride, which is certainly a monstrous sin.

For what shall I say of the dying flies (See Eccl 10:1), when we have shown that in them are found, in manifold ways—whether they confess it or are convicted of it—men not still about to die, but already dead?

But as for the deceitful, whom the holy Spirit of discipline flees, and who live in ruin without understanding (See Wis 1:5)—how many of them they have among themselves, let them consider according to what has been said above.

For all the wicked too who lie hidden there—which is certain even from this, that often, when betrayed and convicted, they are condemned, not only for recent deeds but also for an old habit of outrages, having been able by a most cunning pretense to be long concealed—these surely are the more deceitful, who deceive by feigning themselves good.

10. 21. If, then, these things are to be understood as these men understand them, how will the account be able to stand for them—why, among them, those who by living wickedly forsake God, whether they lie hidden or are known, do not become broken cisterns that cannot hold the waters (See Jer 2:13), if in this passage the sacrament of baptism is to be understood? And why are their liars and faithless men believed either to give or to have water that is not deceitful (See Jer 15:18) but truthful? Why, from those of their dead by whom men are baptized, does their washing profit anything (See Sir 34:30)? Why do their sinners fatten the heads of others with oil (See Ps 141:5 (140:5))? What have the dying or dead flies there (See Eccl 10:1) deserved, that they should not destroy the sweetness of the oil? By what privilege are all those fortified who are feigned there—that is, who cover the wolf with the skin of justice—so that the holy Spirit of discipline does not flee them (See Wis 1:5; Matt 7:15)? Or if the holy Spirit flees them, how is it given to those baptized through them?

For here cannot be said what they are accustomed most ineptly and most shamelessly to say: 'that someone can then be baptized by a wicked man, if the wickedness of the one baptizing lies hidden.' For he who is feigned is the more feigned the more he lies hidden. When, therefore, the Holy Spirit withdraws itself from this man, what hope will there be for the one baptized, if the merit of the man baptizing is to be considered in that grace of God? Here they simply do not find what to answer, because they deny that they have open wicked men. In which indeed they are most manifestly convicted.

But what is that to us? It is enough for us, for the necessary point of the case, that they cannot deny that they have feigned good men, that is, hidden wicked men, among themselves. For they are refuted by the many who, when they were living there with ruined and criminal habits and had long lain hidden by that very pretense, were at some time betrayed and expelled.

If, then, they are unwilling for us to believe that there are still some such men there, those certainly who were cast out, when they lay hidden there in the same pretense and the holy Spirit fled them, of whom it is written, For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful one (Wis 1:5)—how could they baptize?

Why are not at least those reviewed who are alive, so that they may receive baptism—which surely they could not receive from the feigned men whom the Holy Spirit was deserting?

But if they say, 'The Holy Spirit indeed was absent from those feigning men who were to give it for justifying,

but it was present to those believing men who were to receive it for cleansing, through the ineffable efficacy of its power—easily able to do both, to flee the one and to cherish the other, to find the one guilty and to cleanse the other'—let them see that the very question they resolve for themselves is at the same time resolved for us.

10. 22. But what is understood in this sentence of holy Scripture—which certainly they themselves, not understanding it and as it were putting it forward on behalf of their party, thrust upon us, to their own conviction—we admonish that this is to be understood in almost all such questions: namely, that all the sacraments, although they harm those who handle them unworthily, nevertheless profit through them those who receive them worthily, just as does the word of God, whence it was said, Do what they say, but do not do what they do (Matt 23:3).

For to dig broken cisterns that cannot hold the waters (See Jer 2:13)—what prevents me from understanding it thus: that this is to be turned toward earthly pleasure and to be unable to hold the Holy Spirit, who is signified by the name of water in the Gospel (See John 3:5), as what Christian in any way does not know? Likewise, deceitful water having no faith (See Jer 15:18) can be understood not as a false baptism, but as a people deceitful and faithless—not counting the truthful and faithful, but counting only those who are deceitful and faithless. For that peoples are sometimes signified by the term 'waters,' let them read the Apocalypse, and let them not slander themselves first and rather than us. For so it is said to John, The waters that you saw, over which that harlot sits, are peoples and crowds and nations and tongues (Rev 17:15). And what is written, He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him? (Sir 34:30)—to postpone for the moment a more careful inquiry into these words—I take most safely as denoting the baptisms of the pagans, because they worship men dead both to justice and to this life, in whose name they baptize.

For although the priests too are said to be dead through impiety, yet it is understood not on account of them, but on account of their dead gods, in whose contrast it is said, Our God is the living God (Jer 10:10). Wherefore, even if among the Christians there are some prelates or ministers dead through their iniquity and impiety, yet he lives of whom it was said in the Gospel, This is he who baptizes (John 1:33), because, as the Apostle says, Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more, and death shall have dominion over him no longer (Rom 6:9).

But as for the oil of the sinner, the Psalm itself most plainly indicates how it is to be understood. For it says, The just man shall correct me in mercy and shall reprove me; but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head (Ps 141:5 (140:5)). Hence it is manifest that by the oil of the sinner are signified the flatteries of a fawner, which, rejected and detested, he chooses rather to be corrected and reproved by the just—because the just man, doing this not with the deceitful gentleness of flattery but with the truthful harshness of rebuke, does it far more mercifully.

Hence too is that in the Apocalypse, Those whom I love I reprove and chastise (Rev 3:19), and that in Solomon, Better are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy (Prov 27:6), and many such things are found. But the sweetness of the oil—namely, the good odor through the good repute of Christians—those destroy (See Eccl 10:1) who, about to live wickedly and to return to the death of their iniquities, rush in in a great multitude, so that through baptism their sins may be forgiven them and they may turn back to them again.

For on account of their numerousness I judge that they are compared to flies. But for them they destroy the sweetness of the oil who look not at the very grace of God but at the morals of men; and since, just as grains are not seen amid the chaff, so those living piously do not easily appear amid the crowds of the iniquitous, they, carnally offended, are either delayed from receiving everlasting salvation or recoil from it altogether. But that there is a good odor in the good repute of rightly living Christians, the Apostle teaches, saying, We are the good odor of Christ in every place (2 Cor 2:14-15). On the contrary, those to whom it is said, For the name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of you (Rom 2:24), surely destroy the sweetness of the oil.

Thus, then, these passages have other, sincerer meanings, which, if these men too follow them, they are freed from the straits of those questions. But their understanding, if it is not confirmed by us, entangles themselves alone; but if it is confirmed by us, it entangles both of us.

...an angel, or the Holy Spirit through his hands.

11. 23. What need is there now to discuss more? Unless perhaps this will move someone: that when Parmenian wished to prove that carnal men cannot beget spiritual sons, he added a testimony from the Gospel, What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). As if we said that any man begets spiritual sons through himself and not through the Gospel, in whose preaching the Holy Spirit works to beget in baptism spiritual sons—even when it flees a feigned minister, as we learned above.

And therefore the Apostle, when he was speaking with such sons, if he had said, I have begotten you, and had not added, in Christ Jesus through the Gospel (1 Cor 4:15), in no way would any of the faithful religiously confess himself to be born of him. But the Gospel even the thief Judas preached without harm to believers; and they assert that their feigned men—that is, hidden wicked men, as they themselves also concede—though the Holy Spirit flees them, yet through their ministry spiritual sons are begotten.

For who could bear so great a madness that, when he perhaps calls a man begetting sons of his wife carnal, he should call an adulterer spiritual? 'God forbid,' he says, 'that I should hold this.' How, then, could a hidden adulterer, when he was a prelate among them, propagate spiritual sons, if carnal men cannot do this? Or did Christ perhaps then, or the Holy Spirit, or perhaps an angel, baptize through his hands?

If, then, a man baptizes when the baptizer is manifestly good, but, when the baptizer is a hidden wicked man, then God baptizes, or an angel, and each one is born spiritually such as was the one by whom he is baptized, let those who desire baptism wish that the men through whom they are baptized be not manifestly good but hidden wicked men, so that thus, with God or an angel baptizing, they may deserve to be reborn more holily. If they think to avoid this absurdity, let them confess that, through whatever man, when anyone is baptized with the baptism of Christ, Christ baptizes—he of whom alone it was said, This is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit (John 1:33).

11. 24. For that passage from the Gospel, As the Father has sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they will be forgiven, and if you retain anyone's, they will be retained (John 20:21-23), would be against us, so that we should be compelled to confess that this is done by men, not through men, if, after he said, I also send you, he had immediately subjoined, If you forgive anyone's sins, they will be forgiven, and if you retain anyone's, they will be retained.

But since there was interposed, When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit, and then it was added that through them the remission or retention of sins is done, it is sufficiently shown that they themselves do not do this, but surely the Holy Spirit does it through them, as in another place he says, For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit who is in you (Matt 10:20).

But the Holy Spirit is in a prelate or minister of the Church in such a way that, if he is not feigned, the Spirit works through him both his reward unto everlasting salvation and the regeneration or edification of those who through him are either consecrated or evangelized; but if he is feigned, since it is most truly written, For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful one (Wis 1:5), the Spirit is indeed absent from his salvation and withdraws itself from his thoughts that are without understanding, yet does not desert his ministry, by which it works through him the salvation of others.

On account of this the Apostle says, For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me (1 Cor 9:17)—that is, 'it profits those to whom I dispense this, not me who am feigned.'

For he who does it unwillingly, on account of carnal advantages and joys—which, if he could have otherwise, he would desert that office—he himself is surely feigned; and therefore he does not say, 'If I do it unwillingly, I profit nothing to those toward whom I do it,' but he only sets himself apart from the reward of salvation, not also those to whom even a wicked servant dispenses the Lord's provisions.

But because the Apostle was not such, but rather such that he did it willingly—that is, dispensed the free grace with the piety of a chaste heart—the Holy Spirit worked through him even his reward, which, as he himself says, the Lord, the just judge, will render to him on that day (2 Tim 4:8).

But those who announced the Gospel not chastely—who indeed announced nothing other than the truth, that is, Christ, yet announced it not with the truth of their heart but for the occasion of their own advantages—he allows them to announce, and he rejoices, not surely for them, but for those who through them were being saved, holding the precept of him who says, Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do (Matt 23:3). For thus the Apostle speaks to the Philippians: Some indeed, he says, preach Christ through envy and contention, but some also through good will: some out of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the Gospel; but some announce Christ through obstinacy, not chastely, thinking to stir up tribulation for my chains. What then? Provided that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is announced. And in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice (Phil 1:15-18).

Would he permit them to preach Christ, although they preached the truth of the Gospel not in the truthful chastity of their heart—would he rejoice at the preaching of such men—unless he knew that it was indeed ruinous for them to announce a chaste thing unchastely, but salutary for those who, hearing good and true things through them, advanced toward salvation?

For where Christ, who is the truth (See John 14:6), is not preached, but falsehood and lie, he most plainly forbids it, saying to the Galatians, If anyone evangelizes to you beyond what you received, let him be anathema (Gal 1:9), and likewise to Timothy, As I asked you, he says, to remain at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, that you might charge certain men not to teach otherwise (1 Tim 1:3). But those envious, contentious, obstinate, unchaste men, seeking an occasion to satisfy their evil will—because the Holy Spirit so fled their pretense that it did not desert their ministry by which through them Christ was preached—he not only permits them to do it, but even rejoices that they do it.

11. 25. We bring forward these proofs from the holy Scriptures, so that it may appear that scarcely anything is graver than the sacrilege of schism, because there is no just necessity for cutting off unity, since the good tolerate the wicked—who will in no way harm them spiritually—for this reason, that they may not be spiritually sundered from the good, when the consideration of preserving peace reins in or defers the severity of discipline; which, however, security exercises when it appears that, without the wound of schism, something can be punished by ecclesiastical judgment unto salutary correction.

For we rather say: The name of the Lord belongs to those who fear him (See Ps 61:5 (60:6)), although they are mingled with the crowds of those who do not fear him; and that which the Apostle says, The Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who invokes the name of the Lord depart from injustice (2 Tim 2:19).

For if, for the good of peace—lest before the time, when the weeds are gathered, the wheat be rooted up together with them—anyone is compelled by necessity to be among the unjust, let him nevertheless depart from injustice, and securely he invokes the name of the Lord.

For at the same time he both departs from the unjust and goes out from them and is separated, for the time being, in heart, so that he may deserve to be separated from such men in body too at the end.

12. 26. And that which is written, Praise is not comely in the mouth of a sinner (Sir 15:9), is certainly comely in the mouth of the faithful. But each one has his own mouth, just as each one has his own burden, nor is anyone wounded by another's mouth without the consent of his own heart. But when the preaching of God proceeds from the mouth of a sinner, it must be asked what kind of sinner Scripture wished to signify in this passage.

For the publican too, who was justified more than that Pharisee (See Luke 18:14), was surely a sinner. For if his sins were not real, his confession of sins was false; but if that confession was true, on account of which he even deserved to be justified, then without doubt his sins were real. This I would say most truly also of the prayer of holy Daniel, who indeed says truthfully, While I was praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people (Dan 9:20). In whose mouth, then, is praise not comely, except especially the most lying and feigned man, whom the holy Spirit of discipline will flee (See Wis 1:5)? Yet when he speaks the truth, it is not comely in his mouth, because it is not attributed to him of which he is not a partaker—just as prophecy was not comely in the mouth of Caiaphas, the high priest of the priests, who did not know what he said, but, being high priest, prophesied (See John 11:51). But yet in itself the praise of God is comely in the ears of those who hear and the heart of those who believe (See Rom 10:10).

13. 27. Indeed, from a sentence of the Apostle, ill usurped, Parmenian even dares as it were to insult those whom he denies to have baptism and therefore says cannot give it. For what do you have, he says, that you did not receive? (1 Cor 4:7)

To pass over from where and why the Apostle says this—which is declared by the connection of his epistle—if he wishes this to be understood of baptism, and if he cannot give who does not have, and he does not have who did not receive, so that what is written, For what do you have that you did not receive?, may in some way support him, I ask whether he does not have who received it among them. If they say, 'He has it,' I ask whether he loses it if he departs from them. If they say, 'He loses it,' he must be baptized again if he returns, so that what he lost may be restored to him. But if this is not done, nor does anyone say it should be done, then he had not lost it. Moreover, if he received it and did not lack it, he surely has what he received, and therefore it cannot be said to him, according to these men's understanding, For what do you have that you did not receive?

Now turn your mind to the very origin of the schism. Whatever sort they think Caecilian to be—whom we believe innocent—without doubt he had been baptized in unity; for this division had not yet been made. Let us suppose, as they wish, that he himself departed from unity; he surely did not lose what he had received. For if he returned, he would not be baptized again, so as to recover what he had lost. Moreover, if he had not lacked what he had received, he surely had it. Nor, then, could it be said even to him, from these men's perverse understanding, For what do you have that you did not receive?

Much less can this be said to him who received from the Lord through Caecilian. For why could a man, who is not joined to you, not receive through him—who did not lose it when he departed from you—what he did not have? How much more shamelessly, then, is it said to the whole world, For what do you have that you did not receive?—the world from which the connection of the sacrament itself came into Africa, which through no crime of any traitor could lose the promise of God, who said to Abraham with a most plain pledge, In your seed all the nations shall be blessed (Gen 22:18)—even if these men had been not impious slanderers of the brothers, but true examiners of crimes.

...nor do they lose the right of giving.

13. 28. For that which some of them, convicted by the truth, have begun to say—'He who departs from the Church does not indeed lose baptism, but he nevertheless loses the right of giving it'—appears in many ways to be said vainly and emptily. First, because no cause is shown why he who cannot lose baptism itself can lose the right of giving it. For each is a sacrament, and each is given to a man by a certain consecration—the one when he is baptized, the other when he is ordained—and therefore in the catholic Church neither is permitted to be repeated.

For if at any time, coming from that party, even prelates have been received, for the good of peace, with the error of schism corrected, then, even if it seemed necessary that they should hold the same offices they held, they have not been ordained again, but, as baptism in them, so ordination remained whole, because the defect had been in the cutting off, which was corrected by the peace of unity, not in the sacraments, which, wherever they are, are themselves. And when it is judged expedient for the Church that their prelates, coming into catholic fellowship, should not there administer their honors, yet the very sacraments of ordination are not taken from them, but remain upon them.

And therefore the hand is not laid on them again among the people, lest injury be done not to the man but to the sacrament itself. And if at any time it is done in ignorance, and the deed is not headstrongly defended but, when recognized, is piously corrected, pardon is easily obtained. For our God is not the God of dissension, but of peace (1 Cor 14:33); nor are the sacraments of the Church his enemies in those who have departed from the Church, but those very men who have departed are enemies.

But just as they have in baptism that which can be given through them, so in ordination they have the right of giving; both, indeed, to their own ruin, so long as they do not have the love of unity. But yet it is one thing not to have, another to have ruinously, another to have salutarily. What is not had must be given when there is need to give it; but what is had ruinously, the ruin being driven off through correction, must be brought about that it be had salutarily.

13. 29. And yet, even if a layperson, compelled by some necessity of one perishing, has given what he learned, when he himself received it, how it was to be given, I do not know whether anyone would piously say it must be repeated. For if it is done with no necessity compelling, it is the usurpation of another's office; but if necessity presses, it is either no offense or a venial one.

But even if it is usurped under no necessity and given by anyone to anyone, what has been given cannot be said not to have been given, although it can rightly be said to have been given unlawfully. The unlawful usurpation, therefore, is corrected by the disposition of one remembering and repenting.

But if he does not correct it, what has been given will remain to the punishment of the usurper—either of him who gave it unlawfully or of him who received it unlawfully—yet it will not be held as not given.

Nor in any way will the royal mark be violated, through a devoted soldier, by what has been usurped by private persons. For if some men have furtively and irregularly stamped gold or silver or bronze by striking it, not in the public mints, when it has been detected, will not the recognized royal mark—those men being punished or freed by indulgence—be gathered into the royal treasuries?

Or if anyone—whether a deserter or one who never served at all—marks some private person with the military mark, when it has been detected, is not the one so marked punished as a deserter, and the more severely the more he could prove that he had never served at all, the most audacious marker being punished along with him, if he betrays him? But if perhaps, not serving, he in fear shuddered at that character of military service in his body and fled to the clemency of the emperor, and, having poured out his prayer and obtained pardon, has now begun to serve, is that character, the man being freed and corrected, repeated, or rather, being recognized, approved?

Or do the Christian sacraments perhaps adhere less than this bodily mark, when we see that not even apostates lack baptism—which surely is not restored to them when they return through penance, and therefore is judged to have been unable to be lost? Or was a comparison from military service not to be drawn, when the Apostle draws one even from the contests of the games (See 2 Tim 2:5) and openly cries out, No one serving God as a soldier entangles himself in worldly affairs, that he may please him to whom he has proved himself (2 Tim 2:4)?

13. 30. And this indeed is another question—whether baptism can be given also by those who were never Christians—nor is anything to be rashly affirmed here without the authority of a council as great as suffices for so great a matter.

But about those who are separated from the unity of the catholic Church, there is now no question that they both have it and can give it, and that they have it ruinously and hand it on ruinously outside the bond of peace. For this has now been discussed, considered, examined, and confirmed in the very unity of the whole world. But if we do wrong, let them explain how the sacrament of baptism cannot be lost and the sacrament of ordination can be lost, since they say, 'He who departs from the Church does not indeed lose baptism, yet he loses the right of giving it.'

For if each is a sacrament—which no one doubts—why is the one not lost and the other lost? Injury must be done to neither sacrament. If holy things flee the wicked, let both flee them; if holy things remain inviolably in the wicked, let both remain. If they say, 'Baptism is rightly given only in the true Church,' it is answered them, 'Baptism is rightly had only in the true Church.' Why can it not be given where it is not rightly given, when it can be had where it is not rightly had? Or is it because not to have is one thing, not to have rightly another?

So too not to give is one thing, not to give rightly another. Just as he who departs from unity does not rightly have it, yet has it, and therefore it is not given back to one returning, so too he who departs from unity does not rightly give it, yet gives it, and therefore what he received from him is not repeated for one coming to unity.

But they maintain that what is not rightly given has not been given. What if another maintained that what is not rightly had cannot be had—do we not protest against both and say that he who has departed from unity does indeed have it, but does not have it rightly?

If, then, they wish that the one should hear what we equally protest, let them themselves hear us protesting that he who departs from unity does indeed give it, but does not give it rightly. Wherefore, just as what he had even outside is not given back to one returning, so what he received even outside is not to be repeated for one coming. Whence it is consequently understood that the perversity of men must be corrected, but the holiness of the sacraments must be violated in no perverse man; for it is established that it remains unpolluted and inviolable in perverse and criminal men, whether in those who are within or in those who are outside.

And that the wicked are said to pollute them, they are said to do so as far as in them lies, while those things remain unpolluted. But in the good they remain unto reward, in the wicked they remain unto judgment. For of the Spirit too, which can in no way be quenched, it was nevertheless said, Do not quench the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19)—that is, 'As far as in you lies, do not act as if you were trying to quench the Spirit, or as if you reckoned the Spirit quenched.' And the name of God can in no way be polluted, and yet it was said, A son and a father went in to the same girl, that they might pollute the name of the Lord their God (Amos 2:7).

13. 31. Nor can these men in any way extricate themselves, when it is put to them why the holiness of the sacrament can be both had and given by one whom God has already condemned as a criminal within, and only then begins to be unable to be given by him when he has been condemned by men—although not even then can he lose it.

Finally, why did Felician—whom, with Maximian, the three hundred and ten condemned, and who was for a long time outside, in a sacrilegious schism, as they themselves pronounced in their council—not only not lose baptism itself, but also not lose the right of giving it?

For he was received in his honor, just as he had gone out, with all those whom, while outside, he baptized, not one of them being rebaptized; for if they judged that any of those whom he had baptized outside ought to be rebaptized, they would be judging that he had lost the right of giving while he was outside; and therefore it would follow that they should also ordain him again, if they baptized those men again.

But when they are called back to the peace of Christ they are slanderers; when they consult for the peace of Donatus they are dissemblers. What else is this than what their own Tyconius says of them: 'What we wish is holy'?

14. 32. Why, then, does Parmenian exult with empty boasting and say, 'Never will the censure of the divine law allow that a dead man should be able to give life to anyone, a wounded man to heal, a blind man to enlighten, a naked man to clothe, a polluted man to cleanse'? For the Lord raises the dead, the Lord heals the wounded, the Lord enlightens the blind, the Lord clothes the naked, the Lord cleanses the polluted.

Why does he arrogate to himself what does not belong to a man? Are those among them who do not sin so alive that they are even said to be able to give life, when they cannot give the increase? I, he says, planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. Neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase (1 Cor 3:6-7).

How does he give life to a dead man, who cannot give increase to a living one? For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will (John 5:21). Are they so healthy among them that they can even heal those who are not healthy? What else do these men do than set themselves up to be blessed in place of the Lord? But they are in no way seduced by them who, hoping not in man but in God, sing, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his recompenses; who is gracious to all your iniquities, who heals all your infirmities (Ps 103:2-3 (102:2-3)).

If he himself heals all infirmities, he leaves none which Parmenian may say he heals. Are there such great lights among them that they can even enlighten? Which not even John the Evangelist grants to that John the Baptist, than whom no one greater has arisen among those born of women (See Matt 11:11)—of whom he says, He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. The true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world, was (John 1:8-9). If that light enlightens every man, it leaves none whom Parmenian may say he enlightens; because, although holy men are in a certain manner called lights, yet enlightened lights are one thing, and the enlightening light another, which alone is that of which the same John the Baptist says, We have all received of his fullness (John 1:16). But who clothes the naked except him who says, Bring forth for him the first robe (Luke 15:22), and who will clothe this corruptible with incorruption and this mortal with immortality (See 1 Cor 15:53)? And is any man said to clothe anyone with the divine garment, for whom it is a great thing if he himself deserves to be clothed? Now further, let him dare to say that he cleanses the polluted, if he first dares to say that he is not polluted. For we have indeed been cleansed by the grace of God. But not even then shall we cleanse anyone, when our cleansing has been perfected; how much less now, when the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15)! For who shall boast that he has a chaste heart, or boast that he is clean from sin? (Prov 20:9)

For to cleanse and to heal, in spiritual matters, are of equal force. But just as we have been saved in hope (See Rom 8:24), so we have been cleansed in hope, in respect of perfect salvation and perfect cleanness. How, then, can we already heal and cleanse, who shall not be able to even then, when we shall in every way be clean and saved? 'But God,' he says, 'does these things through a man.' He does indeed, but he did them also through Judas, whom he sent with the rest to preach the Gospel (See Matt 10:1-8); he did them also through the Pharisees, in those who themselves did the good things they heard through them, while those men did not do the things they said (See Matt 23:3).

Finally, why do their iniquitous and criminal men, whether when they lie hidden or when they are tolerated for the party of Donatus, give life, heal, enlighten, cleanse? Are they themselves not dead, wounded, blind, polluted? Or do not blind men leading the blind fall together among them into the pit (See Matt 15:14) for this reason, that those who follow do so by hearing and obeying not them, but the God whom they preach? Just so, indeed. But they then preach God, if they gather with Christ; but when they scatter what they do not gather with him (See Matt 12:30), by preaching Donatus, not God, then, blind men following the blind, they fall together into the pit.

But about the question of baptism we will treat something more at length, with the Lord's help, when we have replied to Parmenian on all the testimonies of the holy Scriptures that he believed should be objected to us—he who truly gives his neighbors drink, to their overthrow, from the cup of iniquity, who has poured out for them so evil an error that, not for peace but for division and rending, not only does he himself speak, but he even persuades them that the divine books speak.

15. 33. But, among many things, I wonder that the man, when he was arguing that baptism cannot be had unless received, nor received without one giving, interposed a testimony from the Gospel: A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven (John 3:27). For someone ignorant of these words, when this man had begun to say, A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven, before he had said from heaven, might think that he was going to say, 'from Donatus,' or 'from Parmenian,' or 'from someone of the party of Donatus,' or altogether 'from the party of Donatus itself.' I acknowledge the Gospel and note that it is written there, A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven.

But is Donatus heaven? Is Parmenian heaven? Is the party of Donatus itself? It would not be heaven, not even if it were in heaven. For he who said, A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven, would never say, 'Unless it has been given him from the sun or from the moon or from the stars,' which are nevertheless in heaven; how much less would he say, 'Unless it has been given him from the party of Donatus,' which not only is not heaven nor in heaven, but does not even wish to be in the kingdom of heaven! Nor without doubt would he say, 'A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from the Church'; for the Church too receives from heaven.

But if he said, 'A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him by a just man,' these bold-faced men would indeed rush in and proclaim that they are just, so that whoever wished to receive might receive from them; nor would we raise the question whether they were just or not, but we would easily show, from certain men betrayed and expelled, that there are among them even hidden unjust men, and yet that they do not disapprove them nor say that what was given and received by such men was not given or not received.

But even this would be said falsely, if it were said, 'A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him by a just man.' For that just man himself, from whom another receives—I ask from whom he received. If he too from a just man, I ask the same about him, until from the very head of the human order I come to someone who did not receive from a man, and so I teach that it is false that a man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him by a man.

15. 34. But what do these men accomplish, unwittingly, through the evangelical testimony, except that men are admonished to awake at last and observe that truly men are not to be regarded when a man desires to receive something holy, but only him who gives this to a man from heaven, because a man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven (John 3:27)? But if they say, 'He receives from heaven indeed, not from the man, yet through the man,' I ask through what sort of man.

If only through a just man, then those do not have it who, among their very selves, received through hidden most iniquitous men; if also through an unjust man, what cause, then, is there that they should rebaptize anyone? If through an unjust man but only a hidden one, then they do not have it whom Optatus, the manifest satellite of Gildo, baptized;

if also through an unjust man even a manifest one, who nevertheless is not yet condemned and cast out from the communion of the Church, then those do not have it whom Felician of Musti, when he was outside their communion, baptized in the schism of Maximian—whom nevertheless now, returned with him, no one rebaptizes.

Finally, if a man, although from heaven, can nevertheless receive anything only through a man, I ask through what man John the Baptist himself, who said these things, had received what he surely had received from heaven—and none is found.

And so the evil cause is convicted by the testimonies brought forward by itself; because, even though the Son says that he has received from the Father and that the Holy Spirit receives of his own—not as it were by degrees, but as he himself explained, saying, Because all that the Father has is mine, therefore I said: He will receive of mine (John 16:15)—

yet that a man can receive something divinely with no man interposed, John himself testifies by his own example, and so many holy men before the Son of God became man,

and, after he rose again and ascended into heaven, the hundred and twenty men who were gathered together at once, whom the Holy Spirit, coming from heaven with no man on earth laying on a hand, filled; and, the order of the Church being now established, Peter himself wondered that Cornelius the centurion, before baptism itself, before the laying on of the hand, was filled with the same Holy Spirit together with those who were with him.

No one, then, receives without one giving; but as regards the holiness of baptism, God is present to give and a man to receive, whether through God himself giving, or through an angel, or through a holy man, or through an iniquitous man—as through so many, whether hidden or manifest, whom the servants of the head of the household are forbidden to gather from the harvest before the time, and whom the Lord's wheat, separated for the time being in heart, like chaff, until the time of winnowing, does not desert bodily by rashness, but bears spiritually by piety.

16. 35. 'He who has believed wrongly,' he says, 'cannot obtain the sacrament of baptism, because it is written, The perverse cannot be adorned (Eccl 1:15).' What? If, then, someone baptized among them, who, for example, had thought that Christ began to exist from the time when, according to the flesh, he was born of the Virgin Mary, afterward moved by the word of truth—when he had learned that he is the one of whom John says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, of whom he consequently says, The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14)—were to confess to them his former error and to indicate, in his anxiety, that he had been in it when he was baptized, would they order him to be baptized again?

They would surely never do it, but they would rejoice over the man's unlearned simplicity—depraved before by a carnal opinion, afterward corrected by the reasoning of truth—

or if such a perversity seemed to him to be defended obstinately, and, having long resisted and not been corrected, he were even driven from the Church,

and afterward, the truth being known, were to return, they would surely judge that he must be cured by penance, not wounded by a repetition of baptism—although he confessed that he had had this in his heart even at that time when he had been baptized among them.

The perverse, then, cannot be adorned, because the sacrament he had received would avail him not for adornment, if he persisted in a perverse faith, but rather for punishment—although the sacrament itself, of itself, would remain whole even in the perverse man, whom it did not adorn but judged; and therefore in no way was the holiness of that sacrament to be violated, even when the perversity of that man was to be corrected.

17. 36. Parmenian even dares to set before us divine examples, by which he thinks to show that a holy man must be sought, from whom the sacrament ought to be received. 'The Son of God himself,' he says, 'the Lord Jesus Christ himself, from whom the beginning of spiritual baptism arose, when according to the will of the Father he was to be baptized, is he shown to have come to the perfidious and profane Pharisees, or to the most holy John?' But if by this example we are invited to receive baptism, we ought to seek out one inferior to us by whom we may be baptized, since the Lord was baptized by one who had foretold that he himself ought to be baptized by the Lord, and who testified that he was unworthy to loose the strap of his sandal (See Matt 3:11-14).

Nay rather, to leave off inquiring more carefully why our Savior himself wished to be baptized—since he willed it for some certain cause—perhaps for this reason: that, although he could baptize himself, he who could even baptize his own baptizer, the Lord willed to be baptized by a servant, and he through whom all things were made (See John 1:3) by one who was made among all things, both to teach humility and to show that it does not matter who is baptized by whom, provided that he be baptized with that baptism with which he is to be baptized. Nor would he disdain to be baptized by the Pharisees, if the Pharisees had a baptism of this kind, with which he, for the grace of a certain sacrament, willed to be baptized.

For when he was also to be circumcised, was John sought, since this was already accustomed to be done by the Jews? And when the legal sacrifice was to be offered for him, was that temple shunned which is called by him a den of robbers (See Matt 21:13)? Into which certainly both the good and the wicked entered, nor did the wicked harm the good; since the Lord, who says, Be holy, for I also am holy (Lev 11:45), so inviolably makes his holy ones dwell among the wicked, if they keep the holiness they receive, just as the Lord Jesus himself was polluted by no contagion of malignity in the nation of the Jews—neither when, according to the perfect way of humility, made under the law, he received those first sacraments, nor when afterward, the disciples being chosen, he lived with his own betrayer even to the final kiss.

For by his example—of one not only not doing evils, but also not consenting to any malice—the wheat is secure among the chaff, because it neither does such things nor consents to those who do, even if in the same crop until the harvest, in the same floor until the winnowing, within the same nets until the separation that will take place on the shore, the good tolerate the wicked (See Matt 3:12; 13:37-50). But these men are truly blind leaders of the blind (See Matt 15:14), who both see so many wicked men in the number of their own and do not see the way of peace (See Rom 3:17), and persuade men to follow them not for bearing with one another on account of the bond of unity (See Eph 4:2-3), but for dividing from one another on account of the sacrilege of schism.

18. 37. 'But it was said through the prophet to King Jehoshaphat: O King Jehoshaphat, do you help a sinner, or do you love one whom the Lord hates? On account of this the wrath of the Lord was upon you (2 Chr 19:2).' For which of us says that a sinner is to be helped in that, surely, in which he wishes to sin, as Ahab himself, whom Jehoshaphat helped by going with him into battle, when Ahab despised the truthful words of the prophet Micaiah?

And yet not even so did the most wicked desert of King Ahab harm the innocence of King Jehoshaphat, because the Lord delivered him, crying out to him from the danger of war, but permitted that sacrilegious despiser to come into the hands of the enemy (See 1 Kgs 22). And if Jehoshaphat experienced any danger—which the prophet indicates to him was from the wrath of the Lord—he had merited it not by another's sin but by his own, because, as was said to him, he was helping one who sinned.

But with God his other good deeds prevailed. For so it is said to him: Did you help that sinner, and are you a friend to those who hate the Lord? And in this there is wrath upon you from the face of the Lord. The good words of God are all with you, because you have taken away the groves from the land and have prepared your heart to seek God (2 Chr 19:2-3).

But he who dwells in the Church of God, where there are also those who seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ (Phil 2:21), who through envy and contention announce Christ not chastely (Phil 1:15, 17), and who says, Whether in pretense or in truth, let Christ be announced; and in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice (Phil 1:18),

remains unpolluted and whole among them, because he does not consent to them in seeking their own things, since he blames and arraigns this, nor does he help them to sin, but to this: that Christ may be more widely preached and, by those who hear and do, through those who do not do what they say, Christ may be believed, hoped in Christ, Christ loved.

For to such men the same Apostle gave a precept, saying, Do not be joined with unbelievers. For what partnership is there of justice with iniquity? What communion is there of light with darkness? And what agreement of Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what concord has the temple of God with idols? For you are temples of the living God. For he says: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore go out from their midst and be separated, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean. And I will receive you and will be to you a Father, and you shall be to me sons and daughters, says the Lord almighty (2 Cor 6:14-18).

Understanding these words carnally, these men, through so many divisions, have cut themselves into bits within the one province of Africa. For they do not understand that no one is joined with unbelievers except one who does the sins of the pagans or favors those who do such things, nor that anyone becomes a partner of iniquity except one who either does or approves iniquitous things. But who communes with darkness except through the darkness of his own consent, when, leaving Christ, he follows Belial?

Who places his part with unbelievers except one who becomes a partner of their unbelief? For so too he ceases to be the temple of God, nor does he otherwise join himself to idols.

But those who are temples of the living God and appear in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation like luminaries in the world, holding the word of life (See Phil 2:15-16), are infected by nothing that they tolerate for the sake of unity, nor are they straitened, because in them God dwells and walks, and they go out from the midst of the wicked and are separated, for the time being, in heart—lest perhaps, when they wish to do this through the sedition of schism, they be separated from the good spiritually before they are separated from the wicked bodily.

19. 38. What, then, is written that God said, Those who glorify me I will glorify, and he who despises me shall be despised (1 Sam 2:30), these men above all are unwilling to behold. For how do they glorify God, who say that his promises could not be fulfilled throughout the world—the promises he made to our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which, foretelling them so long beforehand through the Prophets, he exhibited through his only Son, who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh (See Rom 1:2-3), so that in him, that is, in the seed of Abraham, all the nations might be blessed; who say that the Son of God himself said in vain, Let both grow until the harvest (Matt 13:30), as though he were false or deceived himself, when only weeds have grown throughout the world, but the wheat, except for the party of Donatus, has failed in the whole world?

How do those who hold these things glorify the Lord, when it is written, In the breadth of a nation is the glory of a king, but in the diminution of the people is the ruin of the prince (Prov 14:28)? Or how do they not despise the Lord, who, with an incredible rashness of impiety, blow away his baptism in those whose case they have not heard and about whom they could in no way judge, and dare to arrogate to themselves what belongs to God,

who receive men condemned by themselves, in their honors whole, for the peace of Donatus, and detest men unheard by themselves, against the peace of the Lord; who maintain that baptism handed down by the Apostles has perished in those parts of the earth, and concede that baptism handed down by Felician among the Maximianists has not perished?

But now, how do the catholics not glorify the Lord, who are confident that his promises could be hindered by no crimes of men from being fulfilled, who follow up his sacraments with such due veneration that they show that these, even if handled by the unworthy, remain in their inviolate holiness, while those who handle them are condemned by their own perversity?

20. 39. 'Again,' they say, 'it is written, Do not commune with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them. For the things that are done by them in secret it is shameful even to speak of (Eph 5:11-12).' We have already said how these very words are to be understood: that not to commune is not to consent; which, for the discipline of the Church, is too little, unless they are also reproved, so that they may be corrected. But these things must be done with peace preserved, and as far as the duty of preserving unity admits, lest the wheat be rooted up together with them.

21. 40. 'Again, to Timothy the same Apostle says, Do not commune with the sins of others. Keep yourself chaste (1 Tim 5:22).' He taught by what follows how what he said before is to be understood. For he who keeps himself chaste does not commune with the sins of others. For if he communes, he consents; if he consents, he is corrupted; if he is corrupted, he does not keep himself chaste.

But at last, at length, Parmenian awoke and attended to what Tyconius said—yet in vain; for at once, out of love of his own opinion, he closed his eyes against the truth. For he says, 'Or do not, dearest brother, the sins of others pollute others? And this is not to commune with criminals: though you meet with them, not to do their deeds.'

And yet he did not say the whole. For it is too little not to do their deeds, unless they displease; too little that they displease, unless they be reproved. For it is one thing not to do, another not to commune—that is, to consent to those who do—another also to reprove. Why, then, where he had begun to see, did he at once turn himself away and refuse to come through to the end, and scarcely set down a third of the whole? Or did he think, as they did with the people, that the sentence of truth too must be cut short? We say that he who does not do evil, nor consents to one doing it, and reproves the one doing it, dwells firm and whole among the iniquitous, like wheat among the chaff; but he says only, 'Not to do their deeds.' And yet let us see how he refutes this third little particle of the whole sentence.

21. 41. 'That this is against the divine law,' he says, 'no one who venerates the law is ignorant.' Still these words can be said in common. For another too can say, 'That this is according to the divine law, no one who venerates the law is ignorant.' But one must prove, not assert. Let us attend, then, to how he proves it. 'For what does it profit,' he says, 'to have kept one's innocence, if you are mingled with the guilty and liable with them?' Indeed, if it is so, it is not that having kept one's innocence does not profit, but that innocence has not been kept.

For no one can rightly be said to be mingled with the guilty and liable except through the stained consent of conscience. But he who fulfills what is written, To the just man nothing iniquitous is pleasing (Prov 12:21), wherever any necessity compels him to dwell, cannot be mingled with iniquities. 'Or how,' he says, 'will you be able to remain uncorrupted, you who are associated with the corrupt?'

Just so, plainly, if he is associated—that is, if he commits something evil with them or favors those committing it; but if he does neither, he is in no way associated.

Moreover, if he adds the third thing—that he be not slothful in punishing, but the just man either correct in mercy and reprove (See Ps 141:5 (140:5)), or even, if he bears that office and the consideration of preserving peace admits it, reprove sinners before all, that the rest may fear, and even remove them either from some grade of honor or from the very communion of the sacraments, and do all these things with the love of one correcting, not with the hatred of one persecuting—he has fulfilled the fullest duty not only of the most chaste innocence, but also of the most diligent severity. But where the other things are hindered, those two, always retained, keep him uncorrupted and chaste: that he neither do evil nor approve the deed.

22. 42. But still let us see from where he teaches what he affirms. 'Since it is written,' he says, 'A little leaven corrupts the whole lump (1 Cor 5:6).' Parmenian said this and departed, nor can it now be shown to him that in the party of Donatus there is not only a little leaven, but much poison from those hatched eggs of asps (See Isa 59:5) and now full-grown serpents, condemned on behalf of Primian and again recalled to Primian. 'But they have been corrected,' he says.

Thanks be to God. If it is true, I do not begrudge it. And would that it were done perfectly. For if to return from the Maximianists to the party of Donatus is some grade of correction, how much truer and more perfect a correction is it to return from the party of Donatus itself to catholic unity!

And Tyconius indeed said many things, by which in those times—and, as he inwardly knew—they would be unwilling to confess that their whole lump was corrupted by their own leaven, not a little but much, who charged that the whole world had been leavened by the sins of the Africans. But I wonder at these men, if it still pleases them so to understand these apostolic words, and yet to wish so to defend Optatus the Gildonian that they do not even concede that he was a little leaven.

But if they concede even this, how great do they think their lump is, that it could not be wholly corrupted? Or if it was corrupted only in those whom Optatus pleased, let them, taught by experience, learn to understand what they read, because the whole lump is in those to whom pertains what is called the whole, whether good or evil (See 2 Cor 5:10). But it pertains to those who consent; to those who do not consent it does not pertain at all, and therefore it must be corrected by ecclesiastical discipline, lest by persuading it reach to many. And where the consideration of peace permits this to be done and it is not done, that very negligence draws guilt, and is in danger of consenting through the sloth of correcting.

23. 43. From which rule that too is to be understood which he consequently objects, saying that it is written, Let it be for you a perpetual statute throughout your generations to divide between the holy and the irreligious, and between the clean and the unclean (Lev 10:9-10). For each one does this the better, the more he advances in the Church. For when the herb had grown and made fruit, then the weeds appeared (Matt 13:26). And although the servants of the head of the household already divided and distinguished between the two by knowledge, yet they are commanded to let them grow, and this until the harvest (See Matt 13:30).

But these things thus far. For what remains must be considered and treated somewhat more carefully from a fresh beginning.

1. 1. Since every pious account and measure of ecclesiastical discipline ought above all to regard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (See Eph 4:2-3)—which the Apostle commanded to be preserved by bearing with one another, and which not being preserved, the medicine of punishment is convicted of being not only superfluous but even ruinous, and therefore no longer a medicine at all—those evil sons, who, not out of hatred of the iniquities of others, but out of zeal for their own contentions, seek either to draw away entirely or at least to divide the weak peoples ensnared by the boasting of their own name, swollen with pride, mad with stubbornness, treacherous with slanders, turbulent with seditions,

lest they be shown to lack the light of truth, hold out the shadow of a rigid severity; and the things that in the holy Scriptures were commanded to be done—with the sincerity of love preserved and the unity of peace kept—for correcting the faults of brothers by a more biting cure, they usurp for the sacrilege of schism and as an occasion of cutting off, saying, 'Behold, the Apostle says, Drive out the evil from among yourselves (1 Cor 5:13). Which evil, surely,' they say, 'if it did not harm the whole and uncorrupt, would not be commanded to be driven out.'

1. 2. For the moment let us see whether perhaps it was not without reason that the Apostle did not say, 'Drive out the wicked from your congregation,' but, Drive out the evil from among yourselves—because, even when anyone is hindered from separating wicked men from the congregation of the Church, if he drives out the evil from himself, he is not mingled with them in heart, and thus spiritually he is not only joined to the good but also separated from the wicked.

For just as in that passage to Timothy, when he had said, Do not commune with the sins of others (1 Tim 5:22)—as if Timothy were saying that it could happen that he could not separate some wicked men from the congregation of the Church and was therefore compelled to tolerate them—as if giving counsel how he should not commune with their sins, he said, Keep yourself chaste—for none can be mingled with the wicked except a wicked man, but a good man in no way, although he dwell in one congregation with them—

so too here, to the Corinthians, when he had said, For what business is it of mine to judge those who are outside? Is it not those who are within whom you judge? (1 Cor 5:12)—lest perhaps they be troubled by some great number of the wicked so mingled with the wheat that it could not be gathered and separated without harm to them—he said, Drive out the evil from among yourselves, so that, if perhaps they could not drive out the wicked from their congregation, by driving out the evil from themselves—that is, by not sinning with them, nor consenting to them in sinning, nor favoring them—they might dwell among them most whole and most uncorrupted; because through his own evil each one consents to the wicked, but if he drives out the evil from himself, there is nothing by which he might consent to another's evil.

Wherefore whoever even despises the discipline of the Church, so that he ceases to admonish, rebuke, and arraign the wicked with whom he does not sin and whom he does not favor—even, if he bears such an office and the peace of the Church permits it, to separate them from the participation of the sacraments—sins not by another's evil but by his own. For in so great a matter that very negligence is a grave evil.

And therefore, as the Apostle admonishes, if he drives out the evil from himself, he will drive out not only the boldness of committing or the pestilence of consenting, but also the sloth of correcting and the negligence of punishing—prudence and obedience being applied in that which the Lord commanded, lest the wheat be harmed (See Matt 13:29).

For with that intention whoever tolerates weeds among the wheat, by driving out the evil from himself, neither communes with them and distinguishes and judges them, for the time being, until the day (See Rom 14:5). For he does not know what will be tomorrow. And therefore, with love preserved, whatever necessary severity compels to be punished is to be punished not without hope of correction. And that this may sufficiently appear, let us retrace the whole passage of the apostolic epistle more carefully.

1. 3. What do you wish? he says. Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness? (1 Cor 4:21) Here already it appears that he speaks of punishment, to signify which he named the rod. Yet is even the rod without love, because he so connected it, Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love? But what follows, a spirit of gentleness, admonishes us to understand that the rod too has love. But the love of severity is one thing, the love of gentleness another. There is indeed one love, but it works diversely in diverse cases. It is altogether heard, he says, that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the gentiles, so that someone has his father's wife (1 Cor 5:1).

Let us see how, over so monstrous a deed, he commands them to be severe. And you, he says, are puffed up and have not rather mourned, that he who did this work might be taken from your midst (1 Cor 5:2). Why rather mourned and not been angry, except because if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it (1 Cor 12:26)? And not 'mourned because he was being taken away,' but mourned, he says, that he might be taken away—that is, that the grief of the mourners might ascend to God, and he himself might take him who did this work from their midst, as he himself should know how, lest perhaps they, through human ignorance, root up the wheat together with it.

When, then, necessity compels to such a punishment, the humility of the mourners ought to obtain the mercy that the pride of the raging repels. Nor should the salvation even of him who is taken from the midst of the brothers be neglected, but it must be done in such a way that such a punishment is useful to him, and it must be done with vow and prayers, if he cannot be corrected by rebukes.

And therefore he goes on and says, I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as if present, him who has so acted: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to hand over such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus (1 Cor 5:3-5).

What, then, was the Apostle doing, except providing, through the destruction of the flesh, for spiritual salvation—so that, whether by some punishment or even by bodily death (as Ananias and his wife fell before the feet of the apostle Peter (See Acts 5:5, 10)), or through penance, since he had been handed over to Satan, the man might destroy in himself the criminal concupiscence of the flesh—because the Apostle himself likewise says, Mortify your members that are upon the earth (Col 3:5), among which he mentions also fornication, and again, For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you will live (Rom 8:13)?

Yet he does not separate brotherly love from him whom he commanded to be separated from the brotherly congregation. For this he says more plainly to the Thessalonians: But if anyone does not obey our word through this epistle, mark that man, that you may not associate with him, so that he may be ashamed. And do not regard him as an enemy, but reprove him as a brother (2 Thess 3:14-15). Let these men at some time hear and understand how apostolic love takes pains that we, bearing with one another, may strive to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (See Eph 4:2-3).

For here too, when he had said, And do not regard him as an enemy, but reprove him as a brother, as if showing why he said this, he immediately subjoined, But may the God of peace himself give you peace always in every way (See 2 Thess 3:16). So too about that man who had his father's wife, he enjoins mourning rather, and everywhere commends peaceful love, as he says also of himself, Lest, when I come again, God humble me before you, and I mourn for many of those who sinned before and did not repent of the uncleanness and licentiousness and fornication that they committed (2 Cor 12:21). And a little later he says, I have foretold and I foretell, as when present the second time, and now absent, to those who sinned before and to all the rest, that if I come again I will not spare (2 Cor 13:2). Therefore by mourning he was judging, that the mercy of God, without the corruption of the bond of peace—in which all salvation consists—might crush and correct the sinners, as he is understood to have done concerning that very man who had fornicated with his father's wife.

For it is not found of what other man he means in the second Epistle to the same Corinthians, when he says, For out of much tribulation and anguish of heart I wrote to you through many tears, not that you should be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love that I have more abundantly toward you. But if anyone has caused sorrow, he has not grieved me, but in part, that I may not burden all of you.

This reproof, which is made by many, suffices for him, so that, on the contrary, you should rather forgive and console him, lest somehow he who is such be swallowed up by greater sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you to confirm your love toward him. For to this end also I wrote, that I might know your proof, whether you are obedient in all things. But if you forgive anything to anyone, I also; for I too, if I have forgiven anything to anyone, have done it for your sake in the person of Christ, that we may not be taken advantage of by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his designs (2 Cor 2:4-11).

What more moderate, what more diligent, what fuller of pious solicitude and of paternal and maternal love can be done or said? Just as he applies amendment to the one sinning, so to the one corrected and crushing and humbling his heart in penance he wishes consolation to be rendered, lest, he says, he be swallowed up by greater sorrow. But what of that with which he concluded this sentence? That we may not be taken advantage of, he says, by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his designs (2 Cor 2:11). For it is he who, through the image of as it were a just severity, persuades to a cruel savagery, seeking by his most venomous craft nothing else than to corrupt and break the bond of peace and love—which being preserved among Christians, all his powers become weak to harm, and the snares of his ambushes are crushed, and his counsels of overthrow vanish.

2. 4. But even if the Apostle spoke of some other man in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, there too he signified with how great love ecclesiastical punishment ought to proceed against anyone. This is that which these men, not understanding it, are accustomed to hold as chief among their slanders: The just man shall amend me in mercy and reprove me; but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head (Ps 141:5 (140:5)).

But because these men have not known how to amend in mercy, they have both pursued the innocence of Caecilian with savage suspicions and anointed the power of Optatus the Gildonian with the oil of deceitful flattery.

For if, on account of the bond of peace, they tolerated the iniquity of Optatus, groaning and mourning, they would surely not break the true and catholic peace in the holy unity of the world,

or at any rate they would so grieve that it had been broken by their elders in a wicked blindness that, taught at least by experience among themselves how many wicked men they are compelled to bear for the peace of Donatus,

they would extinguish those men's unpeaceful slanders by the peace of their own correction.

2. 5. But let us return to what follows in that First Epistle to the Corinthians. When the Apostle had said, To hand over such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus (1 Cor 5:5), again and again commending that this ought to be done with the humility of the mourning, not the pride of the raging, he immediately subjoins, Your boasting is not good (1 Cor 5:6)—or, by way of reproachful pronouncement, Your boasting is good.

For so some, and especially the Latin manuscripts, have it, though the same meaning is held in both. For there is no fear that anyone should understand him to have said in praise, Your boasting is good, since above he said, You are puffed up and have not rather mourned, and here he immediately subjoins, Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump? (1 Cor 5:2, 6)—which can more fittingly be referred to the very corruption of empty boasting. For pride, as if from the oldness of the first man, who fell by pride, with a mind as it were leavened and corrupted, makes those puffed up into one lump who consent to it among themselves with a like vanity of boasting.

And to boast indeed not of one's own sins, but over another's sins, as it were by comparison with one's own innocence, seems a little leaven, because to boast even of one's own iniquities is much leaven; but even that little corrupts the whole lump. For the proud man falls by the desert of his pride and begins, by defending his sins, even to wish to boast of them. Foreseeing which, the same Apostle says, Wherefore let him who thinks he stands beware lest he fall (1 Cor 10:12), and again, If a man be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, attending to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:1-2).

What is the law of Christ but, A new commandment I give you, that you love one another (John 13:34)? What is the law of Christ but, My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you (John 14:27)? What, then, he said here, Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ, this he says in another place, Bearing with one another in love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:2-3). For in that Pharisee too there seemed to be a little leaven, because he not only did not grieve over the sinner, but over his sins extolled himself for his own merits. But the one confessing his sins went down justified more than that Pharisee boasting of his merits, for he who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 18:14).

The Apostle therefore goes on and says, Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened (1 Cor 5:7). What is that you may be and what is as you are, except that there were there men of one sort, and there were there men not of that sort, whom, that they might be of that sort, he was admonishing by the example of those who were?

Yet he admonishes all in one, as it were the same men, lest those who were of that sort despair of those who were not yet of that sort and think that they did not pertain to the framework of his body; for he admonishes them as if the same, when he says, That you may be, as you are.

For those too who already were such knew, and, the Apostle admonishing, ought more and more to know, that they should bear with those who were not yet such, so that, bearing with one another in love, they might preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (See Eph 4:2-3) and, bearing one another's burdens, might surely fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). And since our Lord Jesus Christ, to teach the way of humility, deigned to be humbled even to the death of the cross, and, like a physician, so bore with love the sick who sinned—of whom he had said, The healthy have no need of a physician, but the sick (Matt 9:12)—he at once set forth the chief example, saying, For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7), that by the example of so great a humility they might learn to purge out the old leaven, that is, whatever of pride had remained in them from the old man. Therefore, he says, let us celebrate the feast—not indeed one day, but the whole life—not in the old leaven, nor in the leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor 5:8).

For it is malice and wickedness, as it were, to boast of another's sin, as though each ought then to rejoice in his own justice when he has seen that another is not just. But it is sincerity and truth, even if anyone makes progress, to remember what he was, and much more to have mercy on the fallen, since he himself was raised from his own fall through the mercy of Christ, who without any sin of his own humbled himself for sinners.

2. 6. But lest the sins of others be ruinously left and as it were dissemblingly neglected—which is of no less cruelty than that of pride—he goes on and says, I wrote to you in an epistle not to associate with fornicators—not at all with the fornicators of this world, or the avaricious, or robbers, or those who serve idols. Otherwise you would have had to go out of this world (1 Cor 5:9-10)—that is, if you keep yourselves from the sinners of this world who are outside the Church, you would have had to go out of this world. For your work in this world is to win sinners to Christ unto salvation; which cannot be done if you flee their conversation and company. But now, he says, I have written to you not to associate, if anyone called a brother is either a fornicator, or serving idols, or avaricious, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or rapacious—with such a one not even to take food together. For what business is it of mine to judge those who are outside? Is it not those who are within whom you judge? But those who are outside God will judge. Drive out the evil from among yourselves (1 Cor 5:11-13).

2. 7. Behold how the Apostle comes to this sentence, the last particle of which Parmenian believed should be set down, saying that it is written, 'Drive out the evil from among yourselves (1 Cor 5:13). Which surely,' he says, 'if it did not harm the good and the whole, would not be commanded to be driven out.' But the things said above, from which it came to this, he passed over—by which surely he could be helped toward what he desired to persuade, that separation from the wicked ought to be made bodily, since the Apostle says, With such a one not even to take food together (1 Cor 5:11). Why, then, did he not mention what seemed able most of all to help his intention?

For when he vehemently insists in persuading that a bodily separation must be made from those who live wickedly, why does he not adduce the testimony of the Apostle saying, If anyone called a brother is either a fornicator, or serving idols, or avaricious, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or rapacious—with such a one not even to take food together, except because he saw that, if he said this, it could be answered him: 'So, then, even if you either do not have fornicators and idol-servers or are ignorant of them, do you see and know no avaricious man, or reviler, or drunkard, or rapacious man among you? Why, then, with such men, against the precept of the Apostle, do you not only take the food of your table, but even commune in the supper of the Lord's table?' This, then, Parmenian, as I judge, tried to avoid, lest it be answered him, so that he should not set down what would seem to sound most strongly for his cause. For if this chapter of the apostolic epistle had escaped him and not occurred to him, he would not set down from its last part, Drive out the evil from among yourselves (1 Cor 5:13).

2. 8. But now, because we have said this, perhaps these men will dare to deny that they have among themselves avaricious, or reviling, or drunken, or rapacious men, and perhaps will try to defend Optatus himself, who was most notorious to all Africa, whom they so long bore with. Let them say, then, if they can, that they now have a Church better and more purged than the very unity was in the times of the most blessed Cyprian, who—calling none of them by name, but prudently and soberly applying the medicine of a most salutary biting—gravely arraigned his colleagues, from whom nevertheless he was separated by no bodily disjunction, with these words: that, while their brothers in the Church went hungry, they wished to have silver in abundance, seized estates by treacherous frauds, and increased their gain by multiplying usuries.

And to show most plainly that he was speaking of those with whom he lived in the communion of one Church, he consequently added, 'What should we not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind?' For he did not say, 'should they deserve,' but, 'should we deserve'—which he would in no way have said, since he himself was surely not such, unless he wished to make manifest that he groaned over the deeds of those who were joined to him not only in the unity of the Church but also in the fellowship of the college, although he differed from them in life, morals, heart, and purpose.

Let these men say, then, that their church is now better and that they do not have such colleagues as Cyprian had in the very unity. Let those believe them who will, and close their eyes against those evils which, from the morals of those who disguise their face, strike it; I will call them back to those very earlier times of unity and ask them whether, when that so great man Cyprian, bishop of the Church of Carthage, groaned over so wicked a college by the testimony of a free voice, even in those writings that would profit posterity too, the Church of Christ existed or did not exist.

If it existed, I ask how Cyprian and the rest like him fulfilled what the Apostle commanded, If anyone called a brother is either a fornicator, or serving idols, or avaricious, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or rapacious—with such a one not even to take food together (1 Cor 5:11), when, together with these avaricious and rapacious men—who, while their brothers in the Church went hungry, wished to have silver in abundance, seized estates by treacherous frauds, and increased their gain by multiplying usuries—they ate the bread of the Lord and drank the cup of the Lord.

2. 9. Or are these crimes perhaps small and to be reckoned small? For these men are accustomed to say even this, weighing them not in the just balance of the divine Scriptures, but in the deceitful balance of their own customs. For whatever crime and iniquity intoxicates the multitude loses the truth of examination. But for this reason the oracles of the heavenly pages are set before men like a most sincere mirror, that there each may see how great any sin is which is perhaps great and is despised through the blind custom of those who live wickedly.

Could avarice be more gravely accused by the divine eloquence than that it should be shown equal to idolatry and called by its name, the Apostle saying, And avarice, which is the service of idols (Col 3:5)? Could it be judged worthy of a greater penalty than that it should be placed among those crimes by which the ones beset will not possess the kingdom of God? Let them open the eyes of their heart, lest the eyes of their body be open in vain, and let them read the free preacher of truth writing in that same First Epistle to the Corinthians: Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor those who lie with men, nor thieves, nor the avaricious, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor the rapacious will possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10).

How, then, did Cyprian and the other wheat of the Lord, in that Church of unity at that time, eat the bread of the Lord and drink the cup of the Lord together with the avaricious and rapacious, with those who will not possess the kingdom of God—not laypeople or any clerics, but bishops themselves—when the same Apostle commands not to associate with them and cries out, with such a one not even to take food (1 Cor 5:11)? Was it because they could not be separated from them bodily, lest the wheat be rooted up together, and it sufficed for them to be sundered from such men in heart, distinguished from them in life and morals, for the sake of the compensating consideration of preserving peace and unity, for the sake of the salvation of the weak and as it were suckling wheat, lest they tear the members of the body of Christ by sacrilegious schisms?

2. 10. But behold, I do not press any of them to understand it thus; let them themselves explain how that Church could then be glorious, without spot or wrinkle (See Eph 5:27), where, while their brothers in the Church went hungry, they wished to have silver in abundance, where they seized estates by treacherous frauds, where they increased their gain by multiplying usuries, where they were involved in such great iniquities that through them they would not possess the kingdom of God.

But if the glorious Church without spot or wrinkle was reckoned only in those who grieved and groaned over those iniquities which were committed in their midst—whence too, according to the prophecy of holy Ezekiel, such men deserved to be marked with a special sign, so that they might escape most safely from the devastation and destruction of the iniquitous (See Ezek 9:4)—let them cease to slander the good who do not do evils through a diseased cupidity, but tolerate them through peaceful love, to whom it was said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God (Matt 5:9).

For this reason the Holy Spirit, through the aforementioned prophet Ezekiel, designated by such a word the wicked whom the good tolerate in unity, so as to say that they were set in the midst of the good; because, if it said that the good were in the midst of the wicked, the good would seem to be as it were outside and external. They groan, he says, and grieve over the iniquities of my people that are committed in their midst (Ezek 9:4), so that we should think those iniquitous men not only not excluded, but even enclosed.

2. 11. But if even then there was no Church, because Cyprian and all who with him knew those avaricious and rapacious men—such as they themselves were not—although they accused them with the gravest groans and the most illustrious words, yet, entering one Church with them and handling equal sacraments in one congregation, were by this kind of communion made of equal lot, because they did not obey the Apostle commanding with such a one not even to take food together and, Drive out the evil from among yourselves (1 Cor 5:11, 13)—why do we still labor?

Why do they themselves boast that they have any Church, if it already ceased to exist in those times? Let them say from where Majorinus or Donatus was born, that through them Parmenian and Primian might be born.

For what does it profit them that they now lie that they either do not have avaricious and rapacious men—with whom the Apostle forbids food to be taken—in their congregation, or that they are unknown to them, since there were such men in that Church of unity, from which these men so boast that they sprang that they try to persuade us that it has remained in their fellowship alone, that is, in the communion of Donatus? For if they say that through the communion of such men the Church perishes, why do they not say that it already perished in the times of Cyprian? And so, not finding even from where they themselves arose, let them cease to say that the Church has remained among them—the Church which they say wholly perished in earlier times.

But if the Church has always remained, and remains, and will remain in the good to whom such things are displeasing, let these men at some time learn not so to understand what the Apostle says, Drive out the evil from among yourselves, that, trying through schisms to gather the weeds, they root up the wheat together with them.

All these things we so argue that those who read or hear them may remember that they could never have shown—either in those times, when the events were most recent, or now, when, with a far firmer conscience of innocence, the whole world is bound together for itself in the catholic Church in Christian peace—that Caecilian or the others who concordantly adhered to him were weeds. But we say these things so that each one may remain secure in the unity of the holy Church, and may not follow the deserters of that same unity, lest he perish with them; because, if those men had been weeds, they ought rather to have been tolerated until the harvest than separated, the wheat being rooted up, by the ruin of schism.

2. 12. But someone will say: 'How, then, will we be able to obey the Apostle commanding, who says, With such a one not even to take food together (1 Cor 5:11)? For if he were commanding that only a separation of heart should be made from them, he would not say, I wrote to you in an epistle not to associate with fornicators—not at all with the fornicators of this world (1 Cor 5:9-10), that is, with those who are not Christians, of whom he afterward says, For what business is it of mine to judge those who are outside? Is it not those who are within whom you judge? But those who are outside God will judge (1 Cor 5:12-13).

Since, then, he commands such a separation, which is made not from those wicked who are not Christians, but from those who are Christians—but a separation of heart is to be made from all the wicked, and through this we ought to be separated in heart even from those wicked who are not Christians—what remains except that we understand that this is commanded us through the Apostle: that with certain wicked Christians, such as he designates, we should not be mingled by such a conjunction as that by which we are mingled with the pagans in the very fellowship of human life? And therefore in another place, If any of the unbelievers invites you and you wish to go, eat everything that is set before you, asking no questions (1 Cor 10:27); but here he says, With such a one not even to take food together (1 Cor 5:11). He permits, then, food to be taken with unbelievers, that is, with those who have not yet believed in Christ, among whom he says one must eat what they set before him, and about whom, since they are outside, God will judge (1 Cor 5:13); but with those who are within—that is, if anyone called a brother is either a fornicator, or serving idols, or avaricious, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or rapacious (1 Cor 5:11)—he forbids even food to be taken. He persuades, then, that the weeds be separated from the wheat before the time of harvest. But if we are unwilling to do this, since the Lord forbids it, we shall tolerate them and persevere in only a separation of will and heart from them, and through this shall even take food with such men, which the Apostle forbids.'

2. 13. In this, as it were, strait of the question, I will say nothing new or unusual, but what the health of the Church observes: that, when any of the brothers—that is, of the Christians established within in the fellowship of the Church—has been caught in some such sin that he is held worthy of anathema, this be done where there is no danger of schism, and with that love of which the Apostle himself elsewhere commands, saying, That you regard him not as an enemy, but reprove him as a brother (2 Thess 3:15). For it is not done to root out, but to correct.

But if he does not acknowledge himself and correct himself by repenting, he himself will go out and, by his own will, will be sundered from the communion of the Church. For the Lord himself too, when he said to the servants who wished to gather the weeds, Let both grow until the harvest, prefaced the cause, saying, Lest perhaps, when you wish to gather the weeds, you root up the wheat together with them (Matt 13:29-30).

Where he sufficiently shows that, when this fear is not present, but a wholly certain security about the stability of the wheat remains—that is, when anyone's crime is so known and appears so execrable to all that it has either no defenders at all or none such through whom a schism could come about—the severity of discipline should not sleep, in which the amendment of depravity is the more effective the more diligent is the preservation of love.

But this can then be done without the stain of peace and unity and without harm to the wheat, when the multitude of the Church's congregation is a stranger to that crime which is anathematized. For then it helps the prelate reproving rather than the criminal resisting; then it salutarily keeps itself from his company, so that no one even takes food with him—not with hostile rage, but with brotherly coercion; then too that man is both struck with fear and healed by shame, when, seeing himself anathematized by the whole Church, he cannot find a companion crowd with which to rejoice in his offense and insult the good.

2. 14. For to this end the Apostle himself says, If anyone called a brother (1 Cor 5:11). For in that he says, If anyone, he seems to have wished to signify nothing else than that one can be salutarily corrected in such a manner who sins among unlike men, that is, among those whom the pestilence of like sins does not corrupt. But in that he says, called, he doubtless wished this to be understood: that it is too little for anyone to be such, unless he is also so called—that is, appears notorious—so that the sentence of anathema pronounced against him may seem to all most worthy. For thus he is both corrected with peace preserved, and is struck not lethally but burned medicinally. Therefore he said also of that man whom he had wished to be healed by such a medicine, This reproof, which is made by many, suffices for him (2 Cor 2:6). For a reproof by many cannot be salutary except when he is reproved who does not have a companion multitude.

But when the same disease has seized very many, nothing else remains for the good but grief and groaning, that through that sign which is revealed to holy Ezekiel they may deserve to escape unharmed from the devastation of those men (See Ezek 9:4)—for they cry out to him who cannot err, Do not destroy my soul with the impious, and my life with men of blood (Ps 26:9 (25:9))—lest, when they wish to gather the weeds, they root up the wheat together, and, instead of purging the Lord's crop by diligence, they themselves rather be numbered among the refuse through rashness.

And therefore the same Apostle, when he had already learned that many were defiled with unclean licentiousness and fornications, writing to the same Corinthians in the Second Epistle, does not again command that they should not take food with such men—for they were many, nor could it be said of them, If anyone called a brother is a fornicator, or avaricious, or anything such, with such a one not even to take food together (See 1 Cor 5:11)—but he says, Lest, when I come again, God humble me before you, and I mourn for many of those who sinned before and did not repent of the uncleanness and licentiousness and fornication that they committed (2 Cor 12:21). By his own mourning he rather threatens that they are to be coerced by the divine scourge than by that reproof, that the rest should keep themselves from their company.

For he consequently says, Behold, this is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand. I have foretold and I foretell, as when present the second time and now absent, to those who sinned before and to all the rest, that if I come again I will not spare, since you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me (2 Cor 13:1-3).

What else did he say here, I will not spare, but what he said above, And I mourn—so that his mourning might obtain a scourge from the Lord by which those might be corrected who, now on account of their multitude, could not be corrected in such a way that the rest should keep themselves from their company and make them ashamed, as must be done if any brother is called by name in some crime unlike that of the rest?

And indeed, when the contagion of sinning has invaded the multitude, the severe mercy of divine discipline is necessary. For counsels of separation are both empty and ruinous and sacrilegious, because they are done with impious pride and disturb the weak good more than they correct the headstrong wicked. So that most faithful witness of the avarice of his colleagues, when he attributed to divine censure and discipline the evils of the tribulations that the Church suffered at that time, having mentioned the worst morals he knew of certain bishops—who, while their brothers went hungry, wished to have silver in abundance, seized estates by treacherous frauds, increased their gain by multiplying usuries—said, 'What should we not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind?' And then he adduces a testimony from the Psalms, saying, 'Since the divine censure has long since forewarned and said, If his sons forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they profane my justifications and do not observe my precepts, I will visit their crimes with the rod and their offenses with scourges. But my mercy I will not scatter from them (Ps 89:30-33 (88:31-34)).'

2. 15. Let a man, then, mercifully reprove what he can; but what he cannot, let him patiently bear and, with love, groan or mourn, until either God from above amends and corrects it, or until he defers, until the harvest, to root up the weeds and winnow the chaff. Yet, that Christians of good hope, secure about their own salvation, may dwell in unity among the desperate whom they cannot reprove, let them drive out the evil from themselves—that is, that there be not found in them what displeases them in the morals of others. For when the Apostle had said, For what business is it of mine to judge those who are outside? Is it not those who are within whom you judge? But those who are outside God will judge (1 Cor 5:12-13), as if they answered, 'What do we do, when we are so pressed by the multitude of the wicked that we cannot exert our judgment in any coercion?', he says, Drive out the evil from among yourselves—that is, 'If you cannot drive out the wicked from your midst, drive out the evil itself from yourselves.'

But if anyone wishes to understand what was said, Drive out the evil from among yourselves, in such a way that, through the reproof of separation, every wicked man is to be driven out from the congregation of the brothers, no one will doubt that it must be done with the zeal of healing, not with the hatred of destroying.

And what measure must be applied, and what times observed, lest the peace of the Church be violated—in which especially the wheat must be spared, lest it be rooted up together with the weeds—we have discussed, as far as seemed necessary at present. Whoever considers these things diligently and peacefully neither neglects the severity of discipline in the preservation of unity, nor breaks the bond of fellowship by the immoderation of coercion.

2. 16. For this very thing that the Apostle says, With such a one not even to take food together (1 Cor 5:11), how many good Christians do regarding those for whom they care more closely—so that, from the company of those whom they could separate, whom they perceive can be corrected by such a reproof, or whom they wholly despair of being able to correct, lest they corrupt others by the contagion of evil conversations (See 1 Cor 15:33), they do not hesitate to do it. But he does this well—that is, with humble love and kindly severity—who so presides over his brothers that he remembers he is their servant, as is both the precept and the example of the Lord himself (See Matt 20:26-28). For then it is done both without the swelling of pride against the man and with the mourning of supplication to God.

But the multitude of the wicked in any order of the Church cannot be shut off and expelled from the mingling with the good as easily as any one man is removed by a bishop from the grade of the clergy, or from the number of the poor whom the Church feeds, or from the very congregation of laypeople—whether by a bishop or a cleric or any prelate who has the power—so that with such a one no food is taken by the rest to whom this can be commanded.

For in their own houses too any good faithful so moderate and govern the discipline of their household that there too they obey the Apostle commanding, With such a one not even to take food together (1 Cor 5:11), when they do this, or order it to be done, regarding their sons and their domestics, when they see them living in such a way that the very love which is held toward them suggests that this must be done to them.

But the crowd of the iniquitous, when there is the opportunity of delivering a sermon among the peoples, must be struck by a general rebuke, and especially if some scourge of the Lord from above has furnished the occasion and opportunity, by which it appears that they are being beaten for their deserts. For then the calamity of the hearers offers humble ears to the amending sermon, and compels afflicted hearts more easily into the groan of confessing than into the murmurs of resisting—just as blessed Cyprian then perhaps would not have said those things about his colleagues, unless the divine severity from above had helped him.

For he said those things at a time so troublesome, so calamitous, and so mournful that they not only did not dare to be angry, but even perceived that they could scarcely obtain pardon from those who were angry. And yet, even if no calamity of tribulation presses, when the opportunity is given, a multitude is usefully reproved in the multitude; for just as, separated, it is accustomed to rage, so, rebuked within the very congregation, it is accustomed to groan.

Wherefore that precept of the Apostle too (See 1 Cor 5:11, 13) is in no way to be neglected, when it can be done without danger of violating peace—because he himself did not wish the wicked man to be separated from the congregation of the good in any other way—and that other precept of his is especially to be held: that, bearing with one another, we should strive to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (See Eph 4:2-3).

Likewise we ought to obey the Lord speaking in the Gospel, both in that where he says, If he will not hear even the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican (Matt 18:17), and in that where he forbade the weeds to be gathered, lest the wheat be rooted up together (See Matt 13:29). For both can be kept by those of whom it was said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God (Matt 5:9).

3. 17. But now let us see the other testimonies that Parmenian set forth. Among all the things in which their sacrilegious swelling appears, in no place did he reveal himself more than in this, that he dared to set down even that passage from the prophet Jeremiah, by which he would persuade blind men that the communion of the Donatists is not only the true Church, but even such already at this time as the holy Church will be after the final winnowing. To which sacrilegious presumption and unspeakable arrogance I do not know what could be added. And in many places of their discourses they are understood to presume nothing else; yet sometimes they are abashed, when the truth begins to press them, when they are asked whether they either do not have or are not themselves sinners. But in this prophetic testimony they have most plainly betrayed their impious vanity and excessive perversity.

For when holy Jeremiah wished to show to the good and the wicked that, even if for a time there is one fellowship of the congregation, yet the weights of their morals and the end of their deserts are far disparate, he said, What has the chaff to do with the wheat? (Jer 23:28)

But Parmenian, when he wished to refute Tyconius—who said that the wicked are for the time being to be tolerated by the good in unity for the sake of peace, and to be separated at the end of the last divine judgment—set down this testimony of Jeremiah, by which, perverse and erring, he might inflame the perverse and erring to most turbulent and most criminal seditions; so that whoever, puffed up in the mind of his own flesh, seems to himself to be something when he is nothing (See Gal 6:3), esteeming himself and those like him to be as it were the most purged grains, may think that he need no longer come to the congregation of the Church, in which it is necessary that those who pertain to eternal life should, until a certain end, tolerate, like the wheat its chaff, those who pertain to the eternal fire. No other blast shook the lightest chaff from the threshing floor of Christ before the time of winnowing; no other presumption made the sacrilegious schisms, whatever and wherever they are.

3. 18. 'The most holy Jeremiah,' he says, 'admonishes, and distinguishes the unfruitful and barren crowds of sinners from the honored fruit of the just, saying, What has the chaff to do with the wheat? (Jer 23:28)' O trumpet of frenzy, O voice of execrable pestilence! Does the human race perhaps so err that it does not recognize Parmenian the winnower? Or does he too give place to Donatus and boast that he has come to the lump purged through Donatus? For whether he deigns to recognize Majorinus before himself, I do not know. Or were these three, as it were the three horns of a certain winnowing fork in the hand of the Lord, through whom the harvest of the whole world was to be cleansed, and was Africa chosen, where the purged lump should stand, while the rest, the chaff, separated, should clothe all the earth?

Whence, then, so great bands of Circumcellions? Whence so great crowds of banquets, of drunkards, and the innumerable debaucheries of women unwed but not uncorrupt? Whence so great a crowd of robbers, of the avaricious, of usurers? Whence so many men, each most notorious throughout his own region, wishing as much but not having as much power as Optatus? What is answered to these things? Do these things not exist? Or is this too wheat? Woe to the most shameless denial, if they answer that these things do not exist among them; woe to the most criminal perversity, if they answer that they are wheat.

Finally, why did even Primian dare once again to winnow the heap of cleansed wheat after a trident of such great authority—that is, after Maiorinus, Donatus, and Parmenian—in order to separate the Maximianists from his own communion? Or did he perhaps throw out grain? What, then, is he himself, along with those of his party who threw out such grain?

Or has this grain been so cleansed that its members do not recognize one another and try to winnow one another by condemning one another? Could chaff baptize wheat? If it could, then why do they say, What has the chaff to do with the wheat? But if it could not, then why is it that, when Felician had flown out among the chaff of the Maximianists, all those whom he baptized while he was with them came back again to that most thoroughly cleansed heap, and they now have all of them within, and they do not say to themselves, What has the chaff to do with the wheat?

3. 19. Let them, then, at long last wake up and understand how the prophet meant the words, What has the chaff to do with the wheat? (Jer 23:28) For let them first consider where it is said, if any human sense at all is in them. Can it be said in the field, What has the chaff to do with the wheat, when they are borne by the same root?

Can it be said on the threshing floor, where they are threshed together? Surely it is said in the barn: What has the chaff to do with the wheat? For that householder will come bearing his winnowing fork in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire (Matt 3:12).

For by another comparison all the wheat is signified by the name of sheep and all the chaff by the name of goats, two kinds of animals that for the time being are pastured together, mixed under one shepherd. But the Son of man will come, he says, with his angels, and all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at his left. And he will say to those who are at his right hand: Come, blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. But to those who are at his left hand he will say: Go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:31-34). Then, therefore, the prophecy will be fulfilled, What has the chaff to do with the wheat, when the pasture cannot be shared by the goats and the sheep.

If the good fish can say to the bad fish, within that net to which the Lord said the kingdom of heaven is like (See Matt 13:47), "Depart from us, or let us depart from you, until all are brought to the shore and the good are placed by the angels into vessels, while the bad are thrown away," then what was said can be fulfilled at this present time: What has the chaff to do with the wheat? But those who already think their own congregation to be cleansed wheat have flown away from the mingling of wheat and chaff like pure chaff; and those who do not perceive that they are still being pastured under one shepherd along with the goats have been separated from the Lord's flock by the snares of wolves; and those who do not think they have been gathered together with the bad fish are not only bad fish but have also torn apart the nets of unity.

But if we are to understand that what Jeremiah says, What has the chaff to do with the wheat, takes place already at this present time, we can rightly understand it in no other way than this: that they are indeed in one congregation, until at the end of the winnowing they are separated even bodily, and yet the heart of the wheat is above, but that of the chaff is below. For the chaff seeks its own things, not the things of Jesus Christ (See Phil 2:21), while the wheat stores up treasure in heaven, and where its treasure is, there is its heart also (See Matt 6:20-21).

4. 20. So too the words of blessed Isaiah are to be understood, which he likewise, failing to understand them, tried to twist toward the same opinion of his error. For what does Isaiah say? Depart, depart, go out from there, and touch nothing unclean. Go out from her midst and be separated, you who bear the vessels of the Lord (Isa 52:11). Must the same things be repeated so often, telling how the separation of the heart from the wicked is to be made? For one who consents to no one for sin does not touch what is unclean.

And he goes out from there, so that his cause may be safe before God, if he also does not neglect the discipline of correcting and reproving while keeping the peace intact. For one who wishes to forsake bodily, as it were, those who are manifestly wicked, forsakes spiritually the hidden good, whom he is compelled to accuse though he has neither tested nor known them, while he tries to defend his own separation.

4. 21. But let these people answer: If Felician is clean, why did he go out from their midst? But if he is unclean, why do they now touch what is unclean? But if he was unclean then, when he was outside, those whom he baptized there are unclean, because they touched what was unclean. Or were they all cleansed by coming back with him? Can these people, then, cleanse those baptized outside, whom they have not baptized in their own communion? Why, then, do they rebaptize others? Or is some special dignity perhaps conferred by being condemned by the three hundred and ten who sat at Bagai, and is it therefore the case that whoever comes to them from the whole world is rebaptized, because the whole world did not deserve that dignity of being condemned by the Council of Bagai? What, then? When any baptized people come from Maximian and from the rest of his associates who have not returned to Primian's communion, are they rebaptized, or are they spared?

If they are rebaptized, the dignity of Bagai is violated—for in it the very ones who baptized these people were also condemned; but if they are spared, these people ought to be asked to assemble again at the town of Bagai and, if perhaps that number of three hundred and ten has already been consecrated, to assemble just as many and there pronounce a sentence against the whole world, just as they pronounced one against the Maximianists, so that, when they wish to rebaptize someone coming from some part of the world, he may defend himself by an equal privilege, asserting that he ought to be spared just as the one whom a Maximianist baptizes is spared, because by now it is not the Maximianists alone but the whole world that has deserved to be condemned by the Council of Bagai.

Next, they will free themselves from such great odium, so that, when they have begun no longer to rebaptize those baptized in the Church that is established throughout all lands, if anyone raises the question with them why they no longer do what they did before, they may answer: "When we did those things, we had not yet condemned the whole world by the Council of Bagai; but now, having been asked, we have mercifully granted that we would condemn them by such a council as we condemned the Maximianists by, whose baptism we do not repeat." What great or difficult thing is it, then, to grant to all the nations so great a dignity of condemnation? Or is it permitted to repeat the baptism of the whole world, and not permitted to repeat the condemnation of the whole world? On this score too let them be at ease; we do not find by what council they have condemned so many nations and provinces.

They condemned a few people in Africa, by whom they were overcome through the judgment of the whole world, nor did they afterward dare to condemn the judges before whom they were overcome. For what could be more shameless, what more insane? Far less were they able to condemn those established also in the other parts of the world, who chose to trust such ecclesiastical judges rather than defeated litigants. And yet the baptism of the Maximianists, whom three hundred and ten Donatists condemned at the Council of Bagai, is acknowledged, accepted, admitted; but the baptism of the whole world—through which the inheritance of Christ has been displayed just as it was promised, in which they themselves were a few years ago, which they could by no right condemn, which they have not condemned even by any perversity of a council—is rejected, blown away, repeated. O holy condemnation, which the Maximianists have deserved, and toilsome innocence of the nations, which has on this account lost the Christian name among them, because it could not find such a place of condemnation!

4. 22. But if those alone who come from the Maximianists are not rebaptized who return along with the ones who baptized them—as those did who returned with Praetextatus and Felician—let them first see how they confirm in some cases, and blow away in others, a baptism of the same schism conferred equally outside their communion: in part they honor it, in part they violate it. For where they violate it, they become guilty; but where they confirm it, they are found to be witnesses of their own guilt.

For if they confirmed it afterward in such a way that they now ceased to violate it, this would be called not inconsistency but correction; but when they reject in some cases what they approve in others, in the former they are accused, in the latter they speak testimony against themselves. For I ask: Why do you not baptize those whom Felician baptized in the schism of Maximian—because they received the baptism of Christ, or because they received the baptism of Felician?

If because of Felician's, he conferred it among the Maximianists as a condemned man, he conferred it outside, beyond your communion; this baptism is the same as that of Salvius of Membressa and of others like them. But if because of Christ's, then Felician among the people of Mustis counts for more with you, as a baptism of Christ, than Christ himself in all lands,

and there counts for more with you, as a baptism of Christ, one who sits at your side, having come from a man condemned by you, than the one who sits at the right hand of the Father, having come from the one crucified for you. In a very few cases the baptism of Christ is spared, lest Felician be offended, and it is not spared, with the result that Christ himself is blown away in so many thousands of the nations.

4. 23. But the blindness of these people is incredible, and I simply do not know how it could be believed that there is in human beings such great perversity, were it not laid bare by the evidence of their own words and deeds that the eyes of their heart are closed to such a degree that, when they call to mind the testimonies of holy Scripture, they do not observe in the deeds of the prophets how the words of the prophets are to be understood. Jeremiah said, What has the chaff to do with the wheat? (Jer 23:28) Did he withdraw from the chaff of his own people, against whom he said such true things? Isaiah said, Depart, depart, go out from there, and touch nothing unclean (Isa 52:11).

Why did he himself, in one congregation together with them, touch the uncleanness that he so gravely reproved among that people? Let them read how many and how vehement and true things he said against the wicked of his own people, from whom nevertheless he separated himself by no bodily division. David said, I have not sat in the council of vanity, and I will not go in with evildoers. I have hated the assembly of the wicked, and I will not sit with the impious (Ps 26:4-5 (25:4-5)).

Let them read what sort of people he himself tolerated among that people in his own times—he who paid such honor to the mystical sacrament of anointing that he did not despise it even in the utterly wicked Saul, but rather venerated it so highly that he could not possibly have done so any more.

If we set their words against their deeds, would they not answer us: "We plainly had no fellowship in our heart with such people, nor did we touch the unclean where contact can defile, that is, by consent and by the approval of conscience we withdrew and went out from them, because not only did we not do such things, but neither did we keep silent toward those who did them"?

But these seditious and insane people, who seek defenses for their breaking away from the oracles of the prophets, have only this left: to charge, in their raving impiety, the conduct of the prophets on the basis of the prophets' own words. Or are they going to say that in those times the just were not permitted to withdraw from a wicked people, but that in these times it is permitted? What could be said more perversely than that in that time the good ought not to have been separated bodily from the wicked, when many sacraments were commanded to be observed bodily, but that now bodily separation is necessary, when those things are now observed spiritually?

4. 24. Woe to the blind who lead and the blind who follow! Do they not, in saying such things, fear that perhaps, throughout the great breadth of the world over which the faith and name of Christ has been spread, in some region of the earth most remote from the African territories, certain just people had already done this very thing before these people separated themselves, while these people were still living in the contagion of the uncleanness that the others had fled? For who guarantees them, who makes them secure, that—if such a separation from the wicked must be made—it was never made before they made it, so far away that the Africans were wholly unaware of it, just as in the remotest of those lands the party of Donatus is utterly unknown?

Perhaps they say that what they did not know could not have harmed them. So, then, neither can what was done in Africa harm those lands that are unaware of it—even if these people were telling the truth in what they lie about the crimes of the Africans. But if they say that, had it happened, it could not have been hidden from them, then let them tell us how many schisms have been made through all the parts of the world. I am asking too much: in Africa itself let the Donatists of Carthage, or whoever are in the vicinity of Carthage, tell how many factions have arisen throughout Numidia and Mauretania out of the party of Donatus itself.

They ought, of course, to know the causes of all these, lest perhaps certain just people in their own regions avoided the society and congregation of the wicked and went out from there, so as not to touch what is unclean (See Isa 52:11), so as not to go in with evildoers (See Ps 26:4 (25:4)), lest perhaps already some years ago these people remained as chaff in some corner of Numidia or Mauretania when the wheat was separating itself, and they do not know it.

But on what ground are they secure, except that they hold it for certain that those could not have been good who separated themselves from the unity of the communion of Donatus, which is spread throughout all Africa—because, if they were enduring some wicked people in their own vicinity whom they could not point out to the rest, they ought rather to have tolerated them than to divide themselves from so many innocent people whom they could not persuade of the sins of others, even if they themselves knew those sins perfectly well?

Why, then, is this innocence not granted to the whole world, throughout so great a multitude and breadth of nations wherever the inheritance of Christ extends, so that it may be certain and secure that those who call themselves good and cut themselves off from the unity of all the earth thereby show what sort of people they are? For they seem just to themselves and despise the rest, and therefore they do not sing the new song, because they are puffed up by the pride of the old man. For they are separated from that communion to which it was said, Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth (Ps 96:1 (95:1)).

If they were truly just, they would also be humble; but if they were humble, then even if they were enduring truly wicked people in the congregation of their own vicinity whom they could not expel from the unity of Christ, they would love to tolerate them out of the love of Christ. But how can they have a just judgment about the very people whom they reprove as wicked in their own vicinity, when with reckless blindness they bring charges against utterly unknown people set so far from themselves?

For whether they have known that even their own fellow citizens or neighbors whom they reprove are wicked is uncertain to the world;

but that they are separated, with reckless blindness, from those whose life, set far away, they cannot know, is certain to the world; and that the known wicked are tolerated with the praise of patience, lest the unknown good be condemned, is certain to the world.

Therefore the whole world judges with security that those are not good who divide themselves from the whole world in whatever part of the earth.

4. 25. Finally, if the prophets warned those who came after them to separate themselves bodily from the chaff before the time of the final winnowing, and by such a separation to beware of touching what is unclean (See Isa 52:11) and of going in with evildoers (See Ps 26:4 (25:4)), why did the apostle Paul not do this? Or were those not chaff who proclaimed Christ not out of truth but out of envy?

Or were those not unclean who preached the Gospel not chastely (See Phil 1:15-17), whom he testifies to have been in the Church of that time, and whose most excellent love, which bears all things (See 1 Cor 13:7), those who came after also imitated? Or is avarice not an uncleanness, which Cyprian did not touch in his heart and yet most peacefully lived among avaricious colleagues? He had grown deaf, no doubt, to the words of the psalms, so as to sit in the council of vanity and go in with evildoers, not to hate the assembly of the wicked, and to sit with the impious (See Ps 26:4-5 (25:4-5)). Was there not a council of vanity among them (See Ps 26:8 (25:8)) who desired to gleam with the most lavish silver while their brothers in the Church went hungry? Were they not evildoers who seized estates by treacherous frauds? Were they not most wicked and impious who increased their gain by compounding usury? But he washed his hands among the innocent and went about the altar of the Lord (See Ps 26:6 (25:6)). For he tolerated the guilty precisely so as not to forsake the innocent with whom he washed his hands, because he loved the beauty of the house of the Lord, which beauty was in the honorable vessels. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earthenware; and some indeed are for honor, but others for dishonor (2 Tim 2:20). And he cleansed himself from such things, so that he himself too might be a vessel sanctified for honor, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work (2 Tim 2:21), nor did he separate himself from the great house on account of the vessels that were for dishonor, but, reproving them, he tolerated within the unity of that house those from whom he cleansed himself by not imitating them.

5. 26. But Parmenian knows how to set down the words of the prophet who says, I have not sat in the council of vanity, and I will not go in with evildoers. I have hated the assembly of the wicked. I will wash my hands among the innocent, and I will go about your altar, O Lord, that I may hear the voice of praise and tell of all your wondrous works. O Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Do not destroy my soul together with the sinners, nor my life with men of blood, in whose hands are crimes, whose right hand is filled with bribes (Ps 26:4-10 (25:4-10)). Parmenian knows how to set these things down, and he does not care to notice how these words may be served without any sacrilege of wicked division.

For the beauty of the house and the place where God's glory dwells (See Ps 26:8 (25:8)) is, as I have said, not in all the vessels that are nevertheless in the one great house, but in those that are sanctified for honor, useful to the Lord, always prepared for every good work (2 Tim 2:21).

Among these, whoever has loved the beauty of the house of God and the place where his glory dwells (See Ps 26:8 (25:8)) tolerates the things that are for dishonor and does not on their account abandon the house, lest he himself become not a vessel for dishonor—which is nonetheless tolerated in the house—but the dung that is thrown out of the house; and on account of this temporal congregation with the wicked in one house, he prays, saying, Do not destroy my soul together with the sinners, nor my life with men of blood, in whose hands are crimes, whose right hand is filled with bribes (Ps 26:9-10 (25:9-10)), praying precisely this: that he not perish together with those with whom love bids him to live together.

His sacrifice he set first, saying, O Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the place where your glory dwells (Ps 26:8 (25:8)). For because I have loved the beauty of your house, and on account of that very love I tolerate the vessels that are for dishonor, because love tolerates all things (See 1 Cor 13:7), do not destroy my soul together with them.

Is there not apparent in these words the voice of those who were foretold through Ezekiel as groaning and mourning over the iniquities of the people that were done in their midst, and who, because they were vessels for honor (See Rom 9:21; 2 Tim 2:21), deserved to receive their own sign, so that, when all those others began to be laid waste and destroyed, God would not destroy their souls together with the sinners?

But these wretched people, who presume that they have been cleansed from the congregation of all the wicked as wheat from chaff, have through this vanity prejudged their own case, so that, in the peoples over whom they preside, they do not dare to correct the most wicked and most disgraceful throngs so that they may be corrected, lest by this they be forced to confess that they are wicked, and it be said to them, "Surely you are speaking to cleansed wheat; why do you confess by these utterances that so much chaff has been mixed in with it?"

And therefore, because they are not just, they do not amend and reprove in mercy, but with the oil of flattery they anoint the heads (See Ps 141:5 (140:5)) of those over whom they themselves wish to be heads, since they refuse to be under the one head that is in heaven, in the unity of the body that is throughout all the earth, so that it may deservedly be said to their congregations, Those who call you happy lead you into error and trouble the paths of your feet (Isa 3:12).

5. 27. Therefore, let one who does not wish to sit in the council of vanity (See Ps 26:4 (25:4)) not vanish in the swelling of pride by seeking councils of the just separated from the unity of the whole world, which he cannot find. For the just, throughout the universal city that cannot be hidden because it is set upon a mountain (See Matt 5:14)—I mean that mountain of Daniel into which that stone, cut without hands, grew and filled the whole earth (See Dan 2:34-35)—throughout, then, this whole city spread over the whole world, the just groan and mourn over the iniquities that are done in their midst.

Let him not, therefore, seek the just in separation, but rather let him groan in concord with them in the temporal mingling with the wicked. For he will not sit in the council of vanity, because he will sit where he has his life's conversation, and he will hear the Apostle saying, Our conversation is in heaven (Phil 3:20). There he will not be with evildoers, there he will not endure the assembly of the wicked, there he will not sit with the impious (See Ps 26:4-5 (25:4-5)). Let him dwell in such hope that he may deserve at some time to attain the thing of which he now has hope.

For we have not yet risen as Christ has, nor do we yet sit with him in the heavens, and yet, because he has given us such hope and through that very hope we already in a certain way have our conversation there, the Apostle says, But if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:1-3). In that life of ours, which is hidden with Christ in God, we do not sit in the council of vanity, because, as the same Apostle says, he raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavens (Eph 2:6)—but in hope, not yet in reality. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it through patience (Rom 8:24-25).

This patience these wretched people have lost, and by hastening to separate themselves from the chaff before the time, they have shown that they themselves are the lightest chaff, carried off from the threshing floor by the wind. Let us, then, hold to what Wisdom says: But he who listens to me will dwell in hope and will rest secure, without fear of any evil (Prov 1:33).

While, then, we dwell in hope, thinking not of what we are but of what we shall be—because we are indeed the children of God, but what we shall be has not yet appeared; for when it appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2)—dwelling in such hope, because this dwelling of thought has no wicked people, we endure neither councils of vanity, nor evildoers, nor the unjust, nor the impious; and yet we endure them not in hope but in the reality that is seen, in the Catholic congregation spread over the whole world, until iniquity passes away, until at the time of harvest the weeds are gathered, until at the final winnowing the chaff is separated from the wheat (See Matt 13:30), until the good fish are picked out on the shore from the bad fish with which they were gathered within the same nets (See Matt 13:48), until the goats are at last set apart at the left from the sheep, with which they pastured so long under one shepherd in the same pastures (See Matt 25:33).

5. 28. There is, therefore, no security of unity except in the Church made manifest by the promises of God, which, as has been said, is set upon a mountain and cannot be hidden, and therefore it must of necessity be known in all the parts of the earth.

Let us hold unshaken and firm that no good people can divide themselves from her—that is, that no good people, even if they endure wicked people known to them wherever they live, may on their account separate themselves by the reckless sacrilege of schism from good people who are set far away and unknown to them—

so that, in whatever part of the earth these things either have been done, or are being done, or are to be done, the firm security of the rest of the parts of the earth—which are set far away, and which do not know whether these things were done or why they were done, and which nevertheless remain with the whole world in the bond of unity—lies in this: that no one could have done such a thing except those made furious by the swelling of pride, or made insane by the venom of envy, or corrupted by worldly advantage, or made perverse by carnal fear.

By all these causes it comes about that either good people are defamed by false charges, or false things are rashly believed about the good, or even the wicked—who, tolerated for the sake of the bond of unity, do the good no harm—are most perversely fled from, with the peace of the good broken, when no mercy is shown to the harassment of the wheat, while people usurp for themselves before the harvest what the angels will do at the harvest.

6. 29. Since this is so, sacrilegious schisms and impious heresies even dare, if by some scourge they are admonished to correct themselves, to count the penalties of their own madness among the sufferings of martyrs. Thinking this, Parmenian too at the end of his letter exhorts Tychonius to remain in the party of Donatus and to endure persecutions, saying that "they ought not to join by their own will those to whom they did not join when persecution compelled them," and he even adduces the testimony of Scripture, which says, Woe to those who have lost endurance and have turned aside into crooked ways! And what will they do when the Lord begins to look upon them? (Sir 2:16-17)

After his manner, he sets forth everything from the divine Books against himself. For who have lost endurance, if not those who were unwilling to tolerate, for the peace of Christ, the people whom they could not convict of the crimes they charged—so that, thinking later, too late, that their own party ought not to be divided into many fragments, they tolerated for the false peace of Donatus even the most manifest sacrilegious people whom they themselves had condemned, taking them back again? And let them now at last at some time recognize and correct what they have impiously done, since they have learned it at least from what they have suffered at the hands of Maximian.

But they blush, of course, to be corrected by the most manifest reasons, because they resisted the commands of the emperors, lest, once corrected, they should seem to have lost those very things that they complain they suffered. As though they do not lose those things better than they perish! For if it has any shadow—and, however false and deceptive, still some image—of fortitude not to yield to an emperor's command, what allurement even of human praise is there in contradicting the most manifest truth? Why, with closed eyes, do they bring forth so many testimonies from the Scriptures, which, once understood and turned against them, they reject—testimonies that, even if they are taken according to their own understanding, nonetheless convict them of their own perversity? Is it not written, Do not in any way contradict the truth (Sir 4:30)? But whom does one contradict, if not the truth, when one resists even a king commanding something out of the truth? But a king who is a man—what he threatens or what he punishes is troublesome only for a time;

not so that King who is also called the Truth, who even now cries out to them through the prophet, In vain have I struck your children; they have not received instruction (Jer 2:30), who for this reason now mercifully admonishes them through human powers, lest at the end he take such vengeance that the proud cannot boast about their own condemnation. For under the vengeance of kings the obstinacy of human beings can wish to be praised under the false name of virtue; but to be burned up by eternal fires neither will be nor will be called fortitude.

For on that day there will not be those who anoint the head with the oil of flattery, or who, deceived by empty deceit, dream of crowns for the condemned, saying, "Well done, well done," and swearing by the gray hairs of those who had no sound head, and by the boots of those who have not known the way of peace (Isa 59:8).

Turning such throngs away from the unity of Christ and desiring to convert them to their own name, these people meanwhile dare to count the temporal punishments of their schism among the sufferings of martyrs, so that the anniversaries of their own penalties may be celebrated for them by a great gathering of frenzied people—of whose number are those who, even with no one persecuting them, throw themselves headlong of their own accord over the cliffs of the mountains, so as to end a bad life by a worse death.

On that day there will not be foolish crowds to whom it is said, "We are the just who suffer persecution," and to the blind there will not be sold a rejected stone for a precious gem—that is, carnal hardness for spiritual patience. There will not be those who recite at the altars the names of the leaders of their madness, whether of those whom they divided from the unity of Christ or of those whom they set up under the name of Christ against the Church of Christ.

For these are the prices that, in order to receive them, while they wish to have something to sell, they stir up the severity of the powers against themselves by their headstrong perversity,

nor do those who are seduced by them, and who think them just for this reason, that they pay the penalties of iniquity, return to their heart and consider why they suffer the things they glory in suffering. For how easy it would have been for them to notice, even a little, that Parmenian says such things to Tychonius about enduring persecutions and the glory of endurance as all heretics say, about whose coercion or punishment similar commands of kings are issued—

such things, certainly, as even Salvius now says to his own people of Membressa—Salvius, on whom the people of Abitina inflicted such great blows and insults, the people through whom these had earned that he be expelled from the Church, so that they bound to his neck even the carcasses of dead dogs, so that finally they danced with him to shameful shouts and songs. What sort of sermon do we suppose he delivered to his own people—the wretches whom he deceived—after he had suffered so much, that they might build him another basilica?

How much did he say about his own righteousness, for which he had earned to suffer such things, persuading himself that he was holy because he had suffered, and that they were most wicked because they had done these things! The ancient cruelty of the Tuscan tyrants is recalled, that they used to bind dead bodies to the living—but human bodies to human; whether anyone recalls having ever either heard or read of canine bodies bound to human, and these the limbs of a bishop, I do not know.

It is known to all that trifling and disgraceful dances are usually checked by bishops; who has ever remembered men whom bishops sought for help dancing together with the bishops? Or was Salvius perhaps not a bishop at that time, since his condemnation is recited in the sentence of the Council of Bagai? What then? If he too were afterward reconciled to Primian—just as Felician was reconciled to him, Felician who was condemned "by the truthful mouth of that same plenary council," as their words are recited there—would he then be a bishop, or would he perhaps not be admitted, on the ground that the sacrilege of schism can be cleansed in the man it has defiled, just as Felician could be cleansed, but the man whom dead dogs hung from his neck have made unclean cannot be expiated?

I should like to know what those people say to these things, so manifest, so public, so recent—those who fling at us their ancient slanders as if they were our crimes. Whoever among them thinks that I am boasting of false things, what great or difficult thing is it that, taking care of his own soul, he go to Membressa, ask whether these things were done, and defend them, if he can?

For if he says that these things are rightly done to the schismatics whom three hundred and ten Donatist bishops condemned, then let them not murmur when they suffer anything, although they have never suffered such things—they whom we convict of having made a schism from the unity of Christ not by the authority of three hundred and ten, but of the whole world.

But if he says that what Salvius suffered was trivial, I ask whether, if the emperor were to compel one of the Donatist bishops to dance and were to threaten the beasts and the fires to him if he refused, he would not rather endure those things than admit this—and whether, once he had suffered, these people would not recite him among the holy martyrs. Salvius, then, with whom they danced, suffered graver things than if he had been burned alive.

For if these two were set before any one of them—whether he would rather not dance himself, but have dancing done with him, or be burned alive—there is no doubt what they would answer that he would choose. But if he says that the Primianists obtained nothing else from the proconsul except that Salvius be expelled from his basilica by the people of Abitina, but that those people of their own accord did whatever they afterward did to him cruelly and disgracefully, why does he not say to himself that the Catholics too can in this way ask nothing else of the emperors except that these people be shut out from the basilicas that they hold under a sacrilegious name, but that those people of their own accord—with royal power and honor preserved—take vengeance on the sacrilegious far more mildly than the people of Abitina took vengeance on Salvius of Membressa, with no imperial law, with no judicial command?

Having considered these things, let them attend first to what they do and afterward to what they suffer, lest, when they close their eyes to their own deeds and open their eyes to their own penalties, they both suffer temporal things in vain here and, at the last judgment of God, be punished with eternal torment even for this very thing—that he admonished them in vain by such troubles in order to amend them.

I do not rehearse old matters, where they deceive whom they can; I speak briefly, I press present matters, I point with my finger: the condemned Maximianists are received, unknown nations are charged; the baptism of the Maximianists is accepted, the baptism of the whole world is blown away. Behold the people of Assuras, behold the people of Mustis, behold Praetextatus, dead not long ago, behold Felician, still alive, behold their names cited among the condemned in the records of the proconsul at the Council of Bagai;

by such recent and present deeds they sufficiently show what sort of people they were from the beginning. If they suffer anything for perversities and iniquities of this kind, then, if they are unwilling to be corrected, let them at least not dare to boast.