1. 1. Brother Constantine, we are very often compelled to answer those who hold different views and who stray from the rule of truth, even concerning matters that we have dealt with again and again in successive discourses. I judge that this serves a useful purpose, both on account of the slower wits of those who suppose that something different is being said whenever they read something said in a different way, and on account of the very abundance of such debates, so that what is rare may not reach only the diligent, but so that some one of the many writings may fall even into the hands of the more careless reader. Accordingly there is the Discourse on the One Baptism composed by those who repeat baptism, which you handed to me when we were together in the country, having received it from some Donatist presbyter or other, and you earnestly begged me to answer it. With the Lord's help, see with what ease I refute it, puffed up as it is with nothing but the noise of words and made harsh with slanderous accusations.

1. 2. The first grievance raised there is "that a secret matter is being bandied about in public." Then let those be silent who think this ought not to be done. Or if they say that they are compelled to speak, in order to answer those who hold the opposite view, this too is our case, that we should answer not only those who hold the opposite view but also those who act on it. For what does harm in secret ought to be refuted openly, since it is also defended openly when men are persuaded to do harm by it in secret when it is carried out. For who baptizes anyone in the presence of the unbaptized? And yet no unbaptized person is unaware that Christians are baptized, for he hears in public what, if he believes it, he may receive in secret.

2. 3. Let us see, then, what they say about the repetition of baptism, those who are ashamed to say openly what one only wishes they were afraid to commit openly. "The question is asked," he says, "where true baptism is." Then he adds: "It is so much my own that what has been given by me as something unique is not repeated even by the sacrilegious themselves." To him we reply: He is not sacrilegious who does not dare to repeat the one baptism, which is not yours but Christ's. For the one consecration of a person in baptism is Christ's, whereas the repetition of the one baptism is yours. I correct in you what is yours; I acknowledge what is Christ's. For this is just, that when we reject the evils of men, we should approve whatever goods of God we find in them. This, I say, is just, that even in a sacrilegious person I should not violate the sacrament that I find to be true, lest in amending the sacrilegious person I should perpetrate sacrilege in him.

3. 4. For these men are evil within a good baptism just as the Jews are evil within a good law. And so, just as they will be judged by the very law that their malice has not made evil, so too these will be judged by the very baptism that, though evil men, they have held to be good. Therefore, just as when a Jew comes to us to become a Christian we do not destroy in him the goods of God but his own evils—for what he gets wrong in not believing that Christ has already come, has been born and has suffered and has risen again, this we amend, and once that unbelief is destroyed we build up the faith by which these things are believed; likewise what he gets wrong in clinging to the shadows of the old sacraments we argue him out of, and we show that the time has now come which the prophets foretold, when these things were to be removed and changed; but what he believes, that the one God who made heaven and earth is to be worshiped, that he detests all the idols and sacrileges of the gentiles, that he awaits the judgment to come, that he hopes for eternal life, that he does not doubt the resurrection of the flesh, this we praise, approve, acknowledge; we confirm what he believed as things to be believed, what he held as things to be held—so likewise, when a schismatic or a heretic comes to us to become a catholic, we cut away his schism and his heresy by arguing him out of them and destroying them; but the Christian sacraments, if we find the same ones in him, and whatever else of truth he holds, far be it from us to violate them, far be it from us, if we know they are given once for all, to repeat them, lest, while curing human faults, we should condemn the divine remedies, or, in seeking to heal what is not wounded, we should wound a wounded man where he is sound. Accordingly, if I find a heretic who dissents on some matter pertaining to the Christian and catholic faith, even, in short, on the very unity of the Trinity, and yet baptized according to the evangelical and ecclesiastical rule, I correct the person's understanding; I do not violate the sacrament of God. I am speaking of Jews and of schismatics or heretics who go astray under the name of Christ in one way or another.

4. 5. Concerning the gentiles themselves and the worshipers of idols, who certainly differ from us by a great diversity, the Apostle shows us nothing else than that in them too we should so correct whatever is wrong as to approve whatever happens to be right. For certainly he was rebuking idolaters, and, what is graver, not only the worshipers but even the very makers of images, when he says: Although they knew God they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless heart was darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and birds and animals and reptiles (Rom 1:21–23). Such, indeed, we know were the images of the Egyptians, where idolatry is reported to have been established in more manifold and far more shameful forms. Yet did he deny that the knowledge of God was in them, or did he rather confirm it, when he said: knowing God they did not glorify him as God? If, then, he were trying to refute and destroy this knowledge as a falsehood because he had found it in the sacrilegious, would he not—God forbid—stand forth as an enemy of the truth? And so it is what they exchanged into their own falsehood, for here too he said: they exchanged the glory of God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, that is, fashioning God to be such as God is not, and handing him on to men not as they knew him. And a little later he says of such people: who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Rom 1:25). For the truth of the creature is from God; it is not God; and this truth they turned into a lie, worshiping as gods the sun and the moon and whatever is in heaven or on earth. What, then, they exchanged into their own falsehood, he blames, detests, overturns; but what of the truth they kept in their teaching, though mixed and confused with many falsehoods, he approves, attests, affirms. For here too he began this passage so as to say: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of those men who hold back the truth in iniquity (Rom 1:18), not denying the truth, though it is held back in iniquity.

4. 6. And in the Acts of the Apostles, when he was teaching the Athenians about the one and true God, that in him we live and move and have our being, he immediately added: as some of your own poets have said (Acts 17:28). This, then, that we live and move and have our being in God, comes from that truth which even those ungodly worshipers of idols hold back in iniquity, who, knowing God, did not glorify him as God. Yet this truth, found, as we see, among the ungodly and the sacrilegious, the Apostle does not destroy but confirms, and he uses their testimony to teach those who did not know these things. A follower of this apostolic rule, the bishop Cyprian, in arguing about the one true God against the worshipers of many false gods, brings forward many testimonies from the books of those whom they hold as illustrious authors—that is, from that truth which they hold back in iniquity. But far more wonderful is what the Apostle did, when, going about their shrines, he found among the altars of the demons a certain altar on which was written: To an unknown God; and he did not destroy this by denying and refuting it, but rather, by confirming it, found here too a most opportune starting point for his discourse, saying: What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you (Acts 17:23).

5. 7. Following, then, this apostolic rule which has been handed down to us by our forebears, if we find anything right even in the perverse, once their perversity has been corrected we by no means violate what is right, so that in one person even false things may be amended out of the true things he holds, and not the true things destroyed out of the false things refuted. In the times of the apostles, those who said: I belong to Paul, I to Apollos, I to Cephas (1 Cor 1:12), although it was not by the names of ungodly men but of holy men, were nonetheless making ungodly schisms; this was their own detestable fault. But that they knew Christ to have been crucified for them, and themselves to have been baptized in his name, belonged not to their error but to the divine gift among them. This truth of God they held back in the iniquity of their schisms. Laying hold of this, the most blessed Paul does not destroy it along with those faults destroyed, but by confirming it he convicts those faults as needing amendment. Was Paul, he says, crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Cor 1:13), so that by the truth of God which they held they might blush for their own falsehood which they were doing. Just as, then, it is said to a Jew: Hold the faith of the resurrection of the dead, as you held it; but believe now that Christ has risen from the dead, which you did not believe—for you hold back the truth of God concerning the dead who are to rise in your iniquity, by which you do not believe that Christ has risen; just as it is said to a worshiper of idols: Hold that the world was created by the one true God, as you held it; but do not believe that wood and stones, and whatever particles of the world itself, which you worshiped, are gods—for you hold back the truth of God, by which you believe the world was created by him, in your iniquity, by which you wish to be a worshiper of false gods; so too it is said to a heretic who has not changed the Christian sacraments, as they are handed down in the catholic Church, by any falsehood of his own: Hold the Christian baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, as you held it; but acknowledge the Church of Christ, growing throughout the whole world, as was prophesied, which you cursed with sacrilegious voice—for you hold back the truth of God concerning the unity of baptism in the iniquity of your division. Correct the iniquity of your heretical fiction, lest it destroy you; and do not be proud of the truth of the Christian sacrament, which is there to judge you. But far be it from me so to detest your iniquity that I would deny the truth of Christ which I find in you for your condemnation; far be it from me so to correct you that I would destroy that very thing by which I correct you—unless perhaps I ought to destroy the truth I find in the soul of heretics, when the Apostle did not destroy the truth he found on the stone of the pagans.

5. 8. One God is more than one baptism, for baptism is not God, but it is something great because it is a sacrament of God; and yet that one God himself was worshiped even outside the Church by those who did not know him. So too, then, the one baptism is given even outside the Church by those who do not know. Whoever says that it could not have come to pass that the one true God was worshiped outside the Church by those who did not know him, let him see what answer he can give—not to me, but to the Apostle himself, when he says: What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you (Acts 17:23).

6. 8. Therefore, just as it profited nothing toward salvation for those who, not knowing the true God, nevertheless worshiped him—indeed it even harmed them unto ruin that, worshiping false gods at the same time, they did sacrilegious injury to the same true God—so it profits heretics nothing toward salvation that, outside the Church, they hand on and hold true baptism through ignorance; indeed it even harms them unto damnation that, in the sacrilegious iniquity of human error, they hold back the truth of the divine sacrament too, not as a means by which they may be cleansed, but as a means by which they may be more severely judged. And just as the Apostle, when he was correcting those sacrilegious men, nevertheless acknowledged rather than denied the true God who was worshiped outside the Church by them in their ignorance, so too we, when we correct the errors of heretics in their sacrilegious separation, ought nevertheless to acknowledge, not to deny, the true baptism which they hand on through ignorance outside the Church.

7. 9. "But Paul," they say, "when he had come to Ephesus, ordered certain men who said they had been baptized with the baptism of John to be baptized in Christ." Whoever thinks that by this example schismatics and heretics are to be baptized, let him dare to say, if he can, that John was a heretic or a schismatic. If it is impious to say this, then surely to those men what was lacking was given, not what was present disapproved—whether they had lied about having the baptism of John, as some suppose, or because the baptism of John was not the baptism of Christ but nevertheless served Christ, just as the old sacraments of the Law performed a kind of precursory and prefiguring office. "But if after John, the friend of the bridegroom, baptism took place," they say, "how much more must it take place after a heretic?" Another, moved with what seems an equally just indignation, can say: "If after John, who drank no wine at all, baptism took place, how much more justly must it take place after a drunkard?" Let these men do this, then, if they can: let them baptize after their drunkards, if the apostles baptized after the sober John. What do they answer to this, except that they do not baptize after such men because, through those who have been baptized, men received not their baptism but Christ's? Let them believe, then, that baptism took place after John for this reason: that either those men had no baptism at all, or did not yet have the baptism of Christ.

7. 10. This indeed the very man to whom we are replying raised against himself, and having raised it he did not resolve it. For he says: "Perhaps someone will say: But these men whom Paul baptized again had been washed with the baptism of John, not with the baptism of Jesus Christ; so I say that those need not be rebaptized who are agreed to have been baptized in the name of Christ, even though by traditors." When he had put this objection to himself, notice how vainly he tried to answer it. "To this matter," he says, "the Lord Jesus Christ replied with these words: He who does not gather with me scatters (Matt 12:30); and again: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. For many will say to me on that day: Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them: I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of iniquity (Matt 7:21–23). There is no doubt, therefore, that they have lost their false work who, though in the name of Jesus Christ, have nonetheless dared to work as sacrilegious men. Whether they wish it or not, accordingly, traditors with their sacrilegious sacraments offend Christ all the more. And if they should even dare to say: In your name we prophesied, he will say to them as to the rest: Depart from me, you workers of iniquity; I never knew you. He will rightly say this to them, since indeed in the unworthy the cases are not unlike—to baptize, to drive out demons, and to have done the other wonderful mighty works." See how many things he said, and how he was utterly unable to resolve what he had set as an objection against himself; and not only did he fail to resolve it, but he even reminded us of what we ourselves ought to say against them. For not only do these evangelical testimonies help him not at all, but they even lend the strongest support to our cause.

7. 11. The matter at issue was the baptism of John; and if the Apostle baptized certain men who had been baptized with it, he certainly did not give the baptism of John a second time to those who had the baptism of John, but he ordered those who did not have the baptism of Christ to be baptized in Christ; and by this he destroyed neither, but distinguished both. This too the man against whom we are arguing saw, since, when he had objected to himself, as from the adversary's side, that those whom they call traditors "baptize and are baptized with the baptism of Christ, not of John, and that therefore baptism after them ought neither to be rescinded nor repeated," he said that Christ had answered this question when he said: He who does not gather with me scatters (Matt 12:30)—as though Christ had said: In those who do not gather with me, even what is found to be true and what is mine, let it be denied, blown away, destroyed. He says too that, to certain men saying, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?, he would answer: I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity (Matt 7:22–23). Did he here say: For your iniquity I will deny even my truth held back in your iniquity? For he will not receive into his kingdom all in whom he finds some truth, but those in whom he finds love agreeing with the truth; and if this is lacking, there will be iniquity. Yet the truth held back in that iniquity is not to be denied, but the iniquity itself, with the truth undestroyed, is to be condemned. Hence the Apostle too says: And if I should know all the sacraments and all knowledge, and if I should have all prophecy and all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing (1 Cor 13:2). He said that he himself would be nothing if he had not love—not that the sacraments and knowledge and prophecy and faith are nothing. For these are great, even if he is nothing who has had them without love and has held their truth back in his own iniquity. This too we say to these heretics: We do not destroy the truth of baptism which you hold back in your iniquity; but when we correct you, we destroy and overthrow the iniquity, while we acknowledge and hold the truth. And so the many evangelical testimonies help this man not at all.

7. 12. But notice how they even lend the strongest support to us. Look, attend to his very words. "There is no doubt," he says, "that they have lost their false work who, though in the name of Jesus Christ, have nonetheless dared to work as sacrilegious men." This is entirely true, since those who as sacrilegious men have dared to work in the name of Jesus Christ have lost their own false work. Yet is the very name of Jesus Christ on that account sacrilegious, even when sacrilegious men work something through it? Who, even the most mad, would dare to say this? Who, even a pagan, would dare to affirm it at this present time? Hence Jesus Christ himself, though he most truly said: He who does not gather with me scatters (Matt 12:30), nevertheless, when his disciples told him that they had found a certain man casting out demons in his name, and had forbidden him because he was not following the Lord with them, answered to this: Do not forbid him; for no one does a mighty work in my name and can soon speak evil of me (Mark 9:38–39). In this man, certainly, there was his own iniquity, since he did not gather with the Lord, nor follow the shepherd, with the disciples, in the unity of his flock; and in this iniquity of his he held back a truth not his own, namely that in the name of Jesus Christ he cast out demons and did not speak evil of him. And so the Lord condemns this man's iniquity with those words, where he says: He who does not gather with me scatters; yet he does not deny or disapprove his truth in him, when he says: Do not forbid him; for no one does a mighty work in my name and can soon speak evil of me. Following this example of the Lord, we too, according to our strength, cannot deny the truth of baptism, and whatever else of truth the heretics hold, and we do not dare to disapprove and destroy it; but their iniquity, by which they do not gather with Christ but scatter, we rightly detest, and, with the truth that is in them inviolate, we condemn it, or, so far as we are permitted, we amend it.

8. 13. Let this man, then, see clearly with what error he said what he went on to add: "Whether they wish it or not, accordingly, traditors with their sacrilegious sacraments offend Christ all the more." It is one kind of rashness, but somehow tolerable, that he calls men traditors whom he does not prove to be such; but who could bear that he calls the sacraments of Christ sacrilegious—even if, as he slanderously charges, they were truly held by traditors—which are celebrated in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit by the evangelical rite? Here perhaps he will say that what is given by sacrilegious men is no longer the sacrament of Christ. Why then does he not say that the name of Christ is no longer the name of Christ, when it is spoken by sacrilegious men? This he by no means dared to say. For he says: "There is no doubt, therefore, that they have lost their false work who, though in the name of Jesus Christ, have nonetheless dared to work as sacrilegious men." "Though," he says, "in the name of Jesus Christ": did he say that it was not the name of Jesus Christ? Just as, then, it profits the sacrilegious nothing that they work in the name of Jesus Christ, so it profits heretics nothing that they baptize or are baptized in the baptism of Jesus Christ; but nevertheless, as that name is the name of Jesus Christ, so this baptism too is the baptism of Jesus Christ. And both are to be acknowledged and approved, not denied and destroyed, lest injury be done to such great gifts of God when the life of sacrilegious men who misuse those same goods is corrected.

8. 14. He says that the Lord will say to the sacrilegious, Depart from me, you who work iniquity (Matt 7:23), those who outside the Church baptize, or cast out demons, or work any mighty deeds in the name of Jesus Christ; but we say—indeed, Truth itself says—that the Lord will say this to all, even to those who within the very nets of unity swim, evil fish among the good, right up to the shore. For what else will be said to them, when, the good having been gathered into vessels, those evil ones, separated, are cast out, except: Depart from me, you who work iniquity? Yet we do not destroy the sacraments of Christ in them, when we acknowledge such men either baptizing or baptized within the same nets of unity. I do not think they themselves are so shameless as to dare to say that to so many evil and wicked men who are on their side, ruined and defiled by manifest disgraces and crimes—that is, to the greedy and to robbers, or to brutal moneylenders, or to bloody circumcellions—the Lord will not say: Depart from me, you who work iniquity; and yet they know, they see, they hold, that many such men baptize, that many are baptized by such men, and they do not violate the sacrament of Christ in them, even those of them who are displeased by the crimes of those men. And so not only did he say nothing against us when he brought forward these evangelical testimonies, but he even reminded us of what we should say against them.

9. 15. Accordingly, as for what follows, and what he says with exultation—"I have briefly resolved the question"—he has indeed resolved it, but in our favor; since, in saying that "in the unworthy the cases are not unlike—to baptize, to drive out demons, and to have done the other not unlike mighty works—to whom, saying, In your name we did these things, he will say: I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of iniquity (Matt 7:23)," he has shown that it is as true that they baptize with the baptism of Jesus Christ, even those who are separated from the Church, as it is true that they drive out demons in the name of Jesus Christ; but that both of these neither lead them to eternal life nor deliver them from eternal punishments. And therefore, just as, if any one of those from whom that man cast out demons—the man whom the disciples saw separated from the flock of Jesus Christ, casting out demons in the name of Jesus Christ—were to come to the Church, the power that had been wrought in him would by no means be denied, but what was lacking would be added to him; so whoever has been outside the Church, consecrated by the baptism of Christ by heretics or schismatics, when he comes to the Church, the sacrament of truth with which he is imbued must not be denied, but the devotion of unity, from which he was separated, must be added, the unity without which that sacrament could be present in him but could not profit him. This we do, this we have received as handed down from our forebears, this we keep in the catholic Church, which is spread throughout the whole world, against all the mists of falsehood. What more, then, need be argued by us about this, when he himself briefly resolved the question by recalling the evangelical testimonies, by which, surely, if he were not contentious, he would both condemn his own error and recognize the truth of baptism?

9. 16. What need is there, then, to unweave all his words, by which he thinks he speaks cleverly to himself and turns over with much loquacity the point that true baptism is among them because it is acknowledged by us and not denied? For whoever holds firm and unshaken what the most true and inviolable rule of truth shows—that in each person what is false and faulty is to be disapproved or amended, but what is true and right is to be acknowledged and accepted—at once sees both what we detest in the heresy of the Donatists and what we ought by no means to violate. For since they hold back the truth of baptism in the iniquity of their separation, their iniquity is blamed by us, but the truth of baptism is everywhere acknowledged and approved.

10. 17. For whoever says that the baptism of Christ must be destroyed when heretics baptize with it, it follows that he says Christ himself too must be denied when the demons confess him. Hence Peter was praised when he said: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt 16:16); the demons were cast out, saying this very thing: We know who you are, the Son of God (See Mark 1:24). Therefore this confession, fruitful for Peter, ruinous for the demons, was in both cases nevertheless not false but true; not to be denied but to be acknowledged; not to be detested but to be approved. So too the truth of baptism is given by upright catholics, as that confession was by Peter; it is given by perverse heretics, as that same confession was by the demons; it helps the former, it condemns the latter; in both, however, it is to be approved by acknowledging it, in neither to be violated by denying it. Hence too the apostle James, when he was rebuking certain men who said that true faith was enough for a man and did not join to it the works of love, convicted them by this comparison with the demons, lest they should suppose that they belonged to God because they believed what is true about God, even if they did not take care to join good works to faith. You believe, he says, that God is one; you do well; the demons also believe, and tremble (Jas 2:19). Those, then, who believe what is true about God and live wickedly, he compared to the demons; yet he did not, out of hatred of the demons, destroy by denying that very truth about God which the demons believe. Therefore, since this very man against whom we are arguing has set forth that the Apostle says: One God, one faith, one baptism (Eph 4:5)—look, we find the same God worshiped outside the Church by those who do not know him; look, we find the same faith in one God confessed outside the Church not only by certain men but even by demons; but both are confirmed rather than denied by the apostles—why do we not likewise also confirm rather than deny the one baptism, in whatever persons established outside the Church we find it, so that we may not, from what is wrong in them, deprave also what is right, but, from what is right which they hold, correct also that in which they have been depraved?

11. 18. What is it, then, that he says: "There is true baptism where there is true faith"? It can quite well happen that some have true baptism and do not have true faith, just as it can happen that they have the true gospel, of which, by not understanding it rightly, they believe something false about God. Shall we, on account of the very falsity of their faith, suppose that even the gospel, which is found true among them, must be detested or amended? Nor do I think that those Corinthians, whom he rebuked for having broken apart into schisms, had true faith in what they said: I belong to Paul (1 Cor 1:12); for this was false. Yet they had baptism, by whose truth, that they might correct that falsity, they hear from him: Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Cor 1:13) There were also there those who did not believe that the dead rise, and in that, certainly, they did not hold and have true faith; yet from what they had that was true, since they believed that Christ had risen, in whom they had been baptized, the Apostle gives his effort to cure also that in which their faith was not sound, saying: If the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen (1 Cor 15:16); so that, since they had believed Christ to have risen, and this in them was sound, that too might be healed, in that they did not believe, by a most ruinous error, that the dead rise. Wherefore, since in the holy canonical Scriptures neither do they find heretics coming to the catholic Church baptized anew, nor do we find them received in the same baptism which they had received in heresy—in this matter at least our case is equal, since neither what they do, that they baptize heretics, or those whom they think heretics, anew, nor what we do, that we receive even the baptism of Christ given among heretics, is confirmed by any express example of the apostolic times. But we, finding that the apostles, in any persons whatever who erred, or who were sacrilegious by whatever impiety, confirmed rather than denied whatever truth they recognized, but, with what was found true in them preserved, amended or condemned the error and impiety of men—we follow this rule also in the truth of baptism, so that in those in whom we find it thus retained and preserved, as it is retained and preserved in the catholic Church, we may not deny or destroy it; but, with it remaining, may cure, correct, amend whatever has been faulty, perverse, or false in each; or, if we cannot, may shun it, detested and condemned.

11. 19. Accordingly, when we receive them, we do not receive their iniquity, by which they divided themselves from the Church of Christ in a sacrilegious sundering; by which they assail with slanderous and abusive accusations the Christian world, to which God gives so many testimonies through the Law, through the Prophets, through the Gospel, through the Psalms, through the apostles; nor do we receive that very error by which they refuse to acknowledge, dare to destroy, and do not hesitate to repeat the baptism of Christ, preserved by the ecclesiastical rule even among heretics. Indeed, if they are able in any way to seduce and transfer to themselves any persons—not only laymen, but even clergy, and not just any clergy, but even presbyters and bishops, even if they were baptized in those Churches which the apostles themselves founded by their own labor—they make them catechumens. These detestable evils of theirs we by no means receive, since, unless these are corrected, they cannot cross over to us.

12. 20. Nor do we pass over without distinction that those who, being already among the faithful, deserted the catholic Church should do a humbler penance than those who were not yet in it. Nor should they be admitted to the clergy, whether they have been rebaptized by heretics, or, having first been received among us, returned to those men, whether they were clergy or laymen among them. And those of our own who handle these matters carelessly, and perhaps make such men clergy in the Catholic Church, or allow them to remain so—though they are blamed by the more diligent in fraternal right—nevertheless even they think the clerical office must not be conferred on them except on those whom they have known or believe to have been amended of those evils. And by this, whoever are separated from the Church's unity by a wicked crime slander the catholic Church in vain. For, to use the Apostle's words rather: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of the men who hold back the truth in iniquity (Rom 1:18). This wrath, if they do not correct themselves, will find these men too, who hold back the truth of Christian baptism in the iniquity of their sacrilegious separation.

13. 21. But the catholic Church, which, as was foretold of her, is spread through all nations with abundant fruitfulness, so amends no one's iniquity as to destroy in him the truth not of himself but of his Lord. What, then, does this man as it were licentiously and confidently exclaim: "I baptized in security one whom you, sacrilegious man, had defiled; I baptized, I say, I did what Paul the apostle did"? Let him read where the apostle Paul did this. But if he wishes it to be understood of those at Ephesus, let him then dare to say that John, the sacrilegious one, defiled them. But if he does not dare to say it, since it is a most manifest impiety, let him at last cease to stir up the mists of a false likeness about a matter so very unlike.

13. 22. Now as for what he adds about the Carthaginian bishop Agrippinus, about the renowned martyr Cyprian, about the seventy predecessors of Cyprian, that they did this and ordered it to be done: O how detestable is the error of men who think they are praiseworthily imitating certain things not rightly done by illustrious men, while they are strangers to those men's virtues! For so too some wish to be compared to the apostle Peter if they have denied Christ; but if they have even compelled the gentiles to judaize, they aspire to be called his brothers. These things were blameworthy in so great a man, but the apostolic grace so shone forth that they were at once blotted out; nor can any Christian of our times, or even a bishop, who has neither denied Christ nor compelled the gentiles to judaize, be—I will not say preferred to him, but even put on a level with him, or compared as nearly so. So too in the most glorious martyr Cyprian: if he was unwilling to acknowledge the baptism of Christ given among heretics or schismatics, while he detested too much those whom he grieved to see separated from the catholic unity which he greatly loved, his merits were so great, even up to the triumph of martyrdom, that both by the light of the love in which he excelled that shadow was put to flight, and that the fruitful branch might become more fruitful, if it had anything to be purged, if by no other means, certainly it would be taken away at the last by the pruning-knife of his passion. Nor are we, because we acknowledge rather than deny the truth of baptism even in the iniquity of heretics, on that account better than Cyprian, just as we are not better than Peter because we do not compel the gentiles to judaize. This is what I would answer concerning Agrippinus and the other bishops who are reported to have held those councils, who held such differing views that they nevertheless remained in unity with those against whom they held this question, where love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet 4:8). For as they walked thus in the truth of the Church, to which they had come, God was able, as the Apostle says, to reveal to them also that which they thought otherwise. For it was then a new question, how heretics were to be received, which by its very novelty disturbed some brothers who rightly detested the heretical ruin most vehemently, so that they believed that this too was to be disapproved in them, namely the good which they held to their own harm. But, to say briefly what I think about this matter: to rebaptize heretics, which they are said to have done, was then a matter of human error; but to rebaptize catholics, which these men still do, is always a matter of diabolical presumption.

14. 23. But I want this man to resolve a question for me: since, when he was recalling in order the bishops of the Roman Church, among them he recalled Stephen too, whom he confessed to have held the episcopate unblemished. Since, then, Stephen not only did not rebaptize heretics, but even judged that those who did this, or who decreed that it should be done, ought to be excommunicated—as the letters both of other bishops and of Cyprian himself show—nevertheless Cyprian remained with him in the peace of unity. What will they say to this? Let them shake out their wits as much as they can, and consider whether they are able to answer. Look, there were two men at one time, to say nothing of others, who held differing views; there were two bishops of the most eminent Churches, namely the Roman and the Carthaginian, Stephen and Cyprian, both established in catholic unity: of whom Stephen judged that the baptism of Christ was in no case to be repeated, and was gravely angry with those who did this; while Cyprian thought that those baptized in heresy or schism, as not having the baptism of Christ, must be baptized in the catholic Church. Many held with the former, certain ones held even with the latter, both groups standing with them in unity. If, then, what these men say is true, and from which they try to assert or excuse the cause of their separation—"In one communion of the sacraments the evil stain the good, and therefore one must withdraw by bodily separation from the contagion of the evil, lest all alike perish"—then it must be confessed that the Church already perished in the times of Stephen and Cyprian, and that none was left to posterity, in which Donatus himself might be spiritually born. But if they judge it wicked to say this, because it really is wicked; if the Church remained from those times up to the times of Caecilian and Majorinus or Donatus, and those could not by staining destroy her who according to these men were admitted into her without baptism, full of all their sins and crimes, and no division was made by Cyprian, and by those who thought alike about baptism, from the communion of those men—since they did not think that in the unity and communion of the sacraments of Christ they could be stained by the evils of others—so too the Church was able thereafter to remain, which, growing throughout the whole world, as was foretold of her, the alien crimes of any traditors and criminals whatever could in no way stain; just as on one threshing-floor, up to the time of winnowing, the grain cannot be stained by the chaff, just as within one net, up to the time of reaching the shore, the evil fish do not destroy the good while swimming together with them.

14. 24. There was therefore no reason, but the greatest madness, by which these men, as though guarding against the communion of the evil, separated themselves from the unity of Christ which is spread throughout the whole world. Unless perhaps they distinguish crimes from crimes by a wonderful art, producing rules of distinction not from the Scriptures but from their own hearts, and saying that in the unity of the communion of the sacraments some alien crimes are tolerated without contamination, but that by the crime of betrayal all who have shared the sacraments with such men are held bound. But it is superfluous to argue about this at greater length, especially since they dare to say this only very rarely, themselves too feeling ashamed and sensing that they are speaking empty things; and when they do say it, they do not strive to support it by any divine testimony. For they are more accustomed to have in their mouth, when they charge some men with the sins of others, to excuse the wickedness of their own separation: You saw a thief, and you ran along with him (Ps 50:18 (49:18)); and: Do not share in the sins of others (1 Tim 5:22); and: Depart, go out from there, and touch no unclean thing (Isa 52:11); and: He who touches what is defiled is defiled (See Hag 2:13); and: A little leaven corrupts the whole lump (1 Cor 5:6); and others of this kind, by which the crime of betrayal is not distinguished from other crimes by any peculiar property, but all association in sin is forbidden. Yet these divine testimonies, or precepts, if Cyprian had understood them in the way these men do, would surely have separated him from Stephen, and he would not have remained with him in the communion of catholic unity. For Stephen, according to the opinion about baptism which these men think must be held, by admitting into the Church heretics and schismatics—who, as they suppose, do not have baptism—was sharing in the sins of others; because, namely, the sins of those who had not been washed by true baptism certainly remained in them. Cyprian ought therefore to have withdrawn from communion with this man, lest he run along with a thief, lest he share in the sins of others, lest he be defiled by the contagion of the unclean, lest he become polluted by touching the polluted, lest his heart be corrupted by the leaven of others. Since, then, he did not do this, but remained in unity with them, the whole lump of that very unity was at that time corrupted, and the Church did not endure, which afterward was to bring forth those saints of theirs, Majorinus and Donatus. Since they in no way dare to say this, it remains that they confess that the good remained with the evil in the communion of the Christian sacraments without any stain of their own, and that the Church of Christ endured up to the time of Caecilian, not without any evil men, as though already stored in the granary, but, with chaff still mingled, as though set in the threshing-floor. So too, then, it was able thereafter to remain, as indeed it does remain, until on the last day of judgment it is cleansed by winnowing.

15. 25. What, then, does this great madness of theirs intend, this separation from the unity of the body of Christ, which, as we read was prophesied, and as we now see being fulfilled, is spread throughout the whole earth and among all nations? Here certainly, as it is written: The evil son calls himself just, but does not wash away his going-out (See Prov 30:12)—that is, he does not excuse, does not wipe away, does not defend the fact that in schismatic madness he did not fear to go out from the house of God into the heretical plague. For if he were truly just, like the apostle Paul with the false brethren over whom he groaned in his Epistles, and like Cyprian with those whom he supposed to be full of their past sins, without baptism, and whom he knew were admitted to the Church by Stephen, so he would persevere in the Church of Christ, with those whom he either knew or thought to be unjust, without any defilement of himself, and would not desert the good on account of the evil, but rather tolerate the evil on account of the good, like a grain bearing the threshing with the chaff by the weight of love, not like the lightest dust yielding to the blasts even before the winnowing. For in that way, persevering in catholic unity even with the wicked, whom these nets must necessarily contain up to the shore, he would nonetheless not run along with a thief, nor share in the sins of others, nor be stained by handling anyone's uncleanness, nor be polluted by touching the polluted, nor be corrupted by anyone's leaven. For these things happen by consent to sins, by which the serpent, through the woman, deceived the first man even in the happiness of paradise; not by the communion of the sacraments, in which Judas, unclean himself, could not contaminate his clean fellow-disciples. But from the evil, with whom they share the sacraments of God, even now in the threshing-floor, not yet in the granary, the good do nevertheless depart and separate by the unlikeness of their conduct, not by a setting-apart of bodies; by living differently, not by coming to other assemblies; so they neither become one with the evil, nor depart from the unity of the Church.

15. 26. Why, then, do they magnify against us the crime of certain traditors or other, whom they have nevertheless never been able even to convict? But if we defend these men against their slanders, we shall seem to be pleading the cause of certain men, not of the Church. Assuredly, whoever and wherever there were traditors, and not only the sin of the traditors but even of those who compelled men to hand over the books, and of absolutely all the criminal, disgraceful, and sacrilegious—Stephen, according to these men, admitted them into the Church; for if they did not have baptism, all the sins, however grave and horrible, that they had committed remained in them, and held them guilty without any remission. Such men Stephen admitted; with such men Cyprian was in catholic unity; and yet the Church did not perish, but endured. Therefore the sins of others stain no one in her unity. In vain did the evil son hasten to go out from the family of his father; in vain does he call himself just; but he does not wash away his going-out (See Prov 30:12). Or will they perhaps say that those whom Stephen thus admitted were cleansed by the participation in that unity itself, since love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet 4:8)? Would that they would say it; for this is what we too say, when we either urge them to return to unity, or admonish them. And on these terms there will now no longer remain any question of baptism between us. For if those baptized among heretics or schismatics are cleansed, when they come to the Church, by the love of that very unity, then surely they are rebaptized without cause.

16. 27. You see, then, in this discourse, to which you wished me to reply, how many things that man said in our favor. What need is there, then, that we now wipe away the crimes objected by him against the bishops of the Roman Church, whom he has assailed with incredible slanders? Marcellinus, and his presbyters Miltiades, Marcellus, and Silvester, are accused by him of the crime of handing over the divine books and of offering incense; but are they on that account also convicted, or shown to be convicted by any firmness of documents? He says they were wicked and sacrilegious; I answer that they were innocent. Why should I labor to prove my defense, when he has not even slightly tried to prove his accusation? If there is any humanity in human affairs, I think we can more justly be reproved if we have believed unknown men, whom enemies charge, and whose crime they demonstrate by no testimony, to be guilty rather than innocent. For if perhaps the truth is otherwise, certainly what is due to humanity itself is rendered when a man rashly suspects nothing evil about a man, and does not easily believe anyone making a charge, when, objecting a crime without a witness and without any document, he has stood forth as a slanderous reviler rather than a truthful accuser.

16. 28. To this is added that, while Miltiades was then presiding as bishop over the Roman Church, by the command of the emperor Constantine—to whom the accusing bishops referred that whole case against Caecilian of the Church of Carthage through the proconsul Anulinus—that same Caecilian was pronounced innocent. And when the elders of these men, with most importunate stubbornness, complained of this judgment to the said emperor, that it had not been fully or rightly examined and set forth, they said nothing about Miltiades' handing over of the books or offering of incense. To his hearing they ought certainly not even to have come, suggesting rather beforehand to the emperor—or insisting that it be suggested—that they ought not to plead their case before a man who had handed over the divine books and was defiled by sacrifices to idols. Since, then, they neither suggested this beforehand, nor, after it had been judged against them in favor of Caecilian, thought it should be objected at least when defeated and angry, why do they now so belatedly weave together these empty slanders, as if to darken the innocence of Caecilian by the besmirching of Miltiades his judge, and the Roman Church itself, where they could neither condemn anyone by any judgment of their own, nor substitute any one of their own as it were in the place of a condemned man—they who, against the very few Africans of their party, secretly and from afar at first sent foreign intermeddlers, whom this man was not ashamed to name expressly, until they ordained them as it were proper bishops over the deceived common folk? Indeed, after the clearing of Caecilian, they accused Felix, the bishop of Abthugni, before the emperor, that he himself was a most manifest traditor, and that therefore Caecilian could not be a bishop, since he had been ordained by that traditor. Then Constantine did not refuse a hearing even to this accusation of theirs, although he had found them slanderous in the feigned crimes of Caecilian; and so he commanded that the case of Felix be examined. In Africa it was examined by the proconsul Aelianus. Felix too was declared innocent. The proconsular acts are extant: whoever wishes, let him take and read them. And this pertains not only to the heaping up of the demonstration of Caecilian's innocence, and to the most evident clearing of Felix himself, and to the exposing of the slanders of those who had called him the source of all evils in their council; but also to the considering of the most pure life of Miltiades from their charges. Unless perhaps anyone is so foolish as to believe that they, when they did not spare Felix, by whom Caecilian had been ordained, could have spared Miltiades, by whom he had been absolved, if any rumor, however slight, had blamed that bishop's life, even though no wound of conscience had destroyed it. Or, indeed, would what had been fabricated about the forum of the Abthugnians be accused by these men, and what had been done in the Capitol of the Romans be passed over in silence?

16. 29. But what shall I answer concerning Mensurius, since in his time, up to the day of his death, no part of the people of unity was torn away; and the very letters of Secundus of Tigisis, by which he is asserted to have been reproved, confirm that they wrote to one another peaceably, and that he remained in the fellowship of their college? And now, as for what he wished to say even about the Church of Cirta, and assailed with curses the catholic bishops there, whomever he wished—what else did he accomplish, except that, by reviling holy men even of our own times, very well known to us, he sufficiently showed what we ought also to think about unknown men, whom he likewise reviles? Accordingly, if Profuturus, who died very few years ago, and Fortunatus, who is still in the body and succeeded that bishop, were Manichees in the way these men were traditors—whom they do not cease to accuse, men most unknown, far from our times—then the pure life of those men too, free from these men's reproaches, is most well known to us.

16. 30. Surely it is no small and not inglorious consolation to any of us, if we are charged along with the Church herself by the enemies of the Church; yet her defense does not consist in the defense of those men whom these people assail by name with false accusations. Assuredly, whatever sort Marcellinus, Marcellus, Silvester, Miltiades, Mensurius, Caecilian, and the others against whom they object what they please for their own dissension may have been, they prejudice nothing against the catholic Church spread throughout the whole earth: in no way are we crowned by their innocence, in no way are we condemned by their iniquity. If they were good, they have been cleansed in the threshing of the catholic floor like grains; if they were evil, they have been crushed in the threshing of the catholic floor like straw. Within this floor both the good and the evil can be; outside it the good cannot be. Whoever is separated from this unity by the wind of pride, like mere chaff, why does he slander the Lord's threshing-floor on account of the mingled chaff?

17. 31. We too say—and not only say, but also prove by the monuments of ecclesiastical and public records: that Secundus of Tigisis, by whose convened council they say Caecilian was condemned, gave peace to confessed traditors, lest a schism should arise, although the crime of betrayal had been objected to that same man himself by Purpurius of Limata. We say that Victor of Rusicade, Donatus of Calama, Donatus of Masculula, Marinus of Aquae Tibilitanae, and Silvanus of Cirta were traditors, and these same men as it were the most severe condemners of traditors. This we prove both by ecclesiastical and by municipal and judicial records. But neither are all in the party of Donatus traditors on that account, because these men were in it; nor is the party of Donatus innocent on that account, if these men should be shown innocent of the iniquity of betrayal. For we listen better to holy Scripture than either slander anyone over the sins of others, or dread anyone's like slander. For the soul that sins, it shall die (Ezek 18:4); and: Each one shall bear his own burden (Gal 6:5); and: He who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment, not on another, but on himself (1 Cor 11:29). And both are allowed to grow until the harvest, lest, when the weeds are gathered before the time, the wheat too be rooted up along with them; and the kids and the lambs are pastured, mingled in the best pastures, until they are separated by the shepherd, who cannot err; and the nets of unity are filled from every kind of fish, until they are brought to the judgment of the shore. Except that these men prejudge themselves by their own perverse and false opinion, who say that they are justly separated from the communion of the Christian world on account of the sins of others; for by this absurd and insane opinion they themselves bring it about that the sins of certain of their own are imputed to all of them. And if they judge this just, then they are all guilty of any most manifest crime found among them in one man; but if they recognize this to be unjust, as it is unjust, then they are all guilty of a most iniquitous separation.

18. 32. But now, since in this discourse the question is rather about the one baptism, so that our argument may be concluded where it began: just as in the very unity of the Lord's threshing-floor neither are the evil to be praised on account of the good, nor the good to be deserted on account of the evil; just as in one man neither, on account of what is whole in him, is his perversity to be accepted, nor, on account of what is perverse in him, ought his wholeness to be denied—since both in the iniquity of the Jews the truth of the resurrection of the dead is held back; and in the iniquity of the gentiles the truth of the one God, who founded the world, is held back; and in the iniquity of those who, because they do not gather with Christ, scatter, the truth is held back by which in his name they drive out the unclean spirit; and in the iniquity of the sacrilegious temples the truth was found by which they worshiped an unknown God; and in the iniquity of the demons the truth was found by which they confessed Christ—so too, in the iniquity of heretics, the truth that is found is not to be denied, by which the sacrament of baptism is held back.