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ST. AUGUSTINE
IN ANSWER TO THE LETTERS OF PETILIAN (the Donatist, Bishop of Cirta.)
[Contra litteras Petiliani Donatistae Cortensis, Episcopi]
BOOK III
[Translated by the Rev. J. R. King, M.A., Vicar of St. Peter's in the East,
Oxford; and late fellow and tutor of Merton College, Oxford; revised by the
Rev. Chester D. Hartranft, D.D., Professor of Biblical and Ecclesiastical
History in the Theological Seminary at Hartford, Connecticut.]
BOOK III.
IN THIS BOOK AUGUSTIN REFUTES THE SECOND LETTER(1) WHICH PETILIANUS WROTE
TO HIM AFTER HAVING SEEN THE FIRST OF AUGUSTIN'S EARLIER BOOKS. THIS LETTER
HAD BEEN FULL OF VIOLENT LANGUAGE; AND AUGUSTIN RATHER SHOWS THAT THE
ARGUMENTS OF PETILIANUS HAD BEEN DEFICIENT AND IRRELEVANT, THAN BRINGS
FORWARD ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF HIS OWN STATEMENTS.
CHAP. 1.--1. Being able to read, Petilianus, I have read your letter,
in which you have shown with sufficient clearness that, in supporting the
party of Donatus against the Catholic Church, you have neither been able to
say anything to the purpose, nor been allowed to hold your tongue. What
violent emotions did you endures what a storm of feelings surged within
your heart, on reading the answer which I made, with all possible brevity
and clearness, to that portion of your, letter which alone at that time had
come into, my hands! For you saw that the truth which we maintain and
defend was confirmed with such strength of argument, and illustrated with
such abundant light, that you could not find anything which could be said
against it, whereby the charges which we make might be refuted. You
observed, also, that the attention of many who had read it was fixed on
you, since they desired to know what you would say, what you would do, how
you would escape from the difficulty, how you would make your way out of
the strait in which the word of God had encompassed you. Hereupon you, when
you ought to have shown contempt for the opinion of the foolish ones, and
to have gone on to adopt sound and truthful sentiments, preferred rather to
do what Scripture has foretold of men like you: "Thou hast loved evil more
than good, and lying rather than to speak righteousness."(2) Just as if I
in turn were willing to recompense unto you railing for railing; in which
case, what should we be but two evil speakers, so that those who read our
words would either preserve their self-respect by throwing us aside with
abhorrence, or eagerly devour what we wrote to gratify their malice? For my
own part, since I answer every one, whether in writing or by word of mouth,
even when I have been attacked with insulting accusations, in such language
as the Lord puts in my mouth, restraining and crushing the stings of empty
indignation in the interests of my hearer or reader, I do not strive to
prove myself superior to my adversary by abusing him, but rather to be a
source of health in him by convicting him of his error.
2. For if those who take into consideration what you have written have
any feelings whatsoever, how did it serve you in the cause which is at
issue between us respecting the Catholic communion and the party of
Donatus, that, leaving a matter which was in a certain sense of public
interest, you should have been led by private animosity to attack the life
of an individual with malicious revilings, just as though that individual
were the question in debate? Did you think so badly, I do not say of
Christians, but of the whole human race, as not to suppose that your
writings might come into the hands of some prudent men, who would lay aside
all thoughts of individuals like us, and inquire rather into the question
which was at issue between us, and pay heed, not to who and what we were,
but to what we might be able to advance in defense of the truth or against
error? You should have paid respect to these men's, judgment, you should
have guarded yourself against their censure, lest they should think that
you could find nothing to say, unless you set before yourself some one whom
you might abuse by any means within your power. But one may see by the
thoughtlessness and foolishness of some men, who listen eagerly to the
quarrels of any learned disputants, that while they take notice of the
eloquence wherewith you lavish your abuse, they do not perceive with what
truth you are refuted. At the same time, I think your object partly was
that I might be driven, by the necessity of defending myself, to desert the
very cause which I had undertaken; and that so, while men's attention was
turned to the words of opponents who were engaged not in disputation, but
in quarrelling, the truth might be obscured, which you are so afraid should
come to light and be well known among men. What therefore was I to do in
opposing such a design as this, except to keep strictly to my subject,
neglecting rather my own defense, praying withal that no personal calumny
may lead me to withdraw from it? I will exalt the house of my God, whose
honor I have loved, with the tribute of a faithful servant's voice, but
myself I will humiliate and hold of no account. "I had rather be a door-
keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of heretics."(1)
I will therefore turn my, discourse from you, Petilianus, for a time, and
direct it rather to those whom you have endeavored to turn away from me by
your revilings, as though my endeavor rather were that men should be
converted unto me, and not rather with me unto God.
CHAP. 2.--3. Hear therefore, all ye who have read his revilings, what
Petilianus has vented against me with more anger than consideration. To
begin with, I will address you in the words of the apostle, which certainly
are true, whatever I myself may be: "Let a man so account of us as of the
ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is
required in stewards, that a man be found faithful. But with me it is a
very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea,
I judge not mine own self." With regard to what immediately follows,
although I do not venture to apply to myself the words, "For I am conscious
of nothing in myself,"(2) yet I say confidently in the sight of God, that I
am conscious in myself of none of those charges which Petilianus has
brought against my life since the time when I was baptized in Christ; "yet
am I not hereby justified, but He that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore
judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to
light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of
the hearts; and then shall every man have praise of God. And these things,
brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself; that ye might learn in
us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be
puffed up for one against another."(3) "Therefore let no man glory in men:
for all things are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."(4)
Again I say, "Let no man glory in men;" nay, oftentimes I repeat it, "Let
no man glory in men." If you perceive anything in us which is deserving of
praise, refer it all to His praise, from whom is every good gift and every
perfect gift; for it is "from above, and cometh down from the Father of
lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."(5) For
what have we which we did not receive? and if we have received it, let us
not boast as though we had not received it.(6) And in all these things
which you know to be good in us, be ye our followers, at any rate, if we
are Christ's;(7) but if, on the other hand, you either suspect, or believe,
or see that any evil is in us, hold fast to that saying of the Lord's, in
which you may safely resolve not to desert His Church because of men's ill
deeds.. Whatsoever we bid you observe, that observe and do; but whatsoever
evil works you think or know to be in us, those do ye not. For this is not
the time for me to justify myself before you, when I have undertaken,
neglecting all considerations of self, to recommend to you what is for your
salvation, that no one should make his boast of men. For "cursed be the man
that trusteth in man."(9) So long as this precept of the Lord and His
apostle be adhered to and observed, the cause which I serve will be
victorious, even if I myself, as my enemy would fain have thought, am faint
and oppressed in my own cause. For if you cling most firmly to what I urge
on you with all my might, that every one is cursed who places his trust in
man, so that none should make his boast of man, then you will in no wise
desert the threshing-floor of the Lord on account of the chaff which either
is now being dispersed beneath the blast of the wind of pride, or will be
separated by the final winnowing;(10) nor will you fly from the great house
on account of the vessels made to dishonor;(11) nor will you quit the net
through the breaches made in it because of the bad fish which are to be
separated on the shore;(12) nor will you leave the good pastures of unity,
because of the goats which are to be placed on the left when the Good
Shepherd shall divide the flock;(13) nor will you separate yourselves by an
impious secession, because of the mixture of the tares, from the society of
that good wheat, whose source is that grain that dies and is multiplied
thereby, and that grows together throughout the world until the harvest.
For the field is the world,--not only Africa; and the harvest is the end of
the world,(1)--not the era of Donatus.
CHAP. 3.--4. These comparisons of the gospel you doubtless recognize.
Nor can we suppose them given for any other purpose, except that no one
should make his boast in man, and that no one should be puffed up for one
against another, or divided one against another, saying, "I am of Paul,"
when certainly Paul was not crucified for you, nor were you baptized in the
name of Paul, much less in that of Caecilianus, or of any one of us,(2)
that you may learn, that so long as the chaff is being bruised with the
corn, so long as the bad fishes swim together with the good in the nets of
the Lord, till the time of separation shall come, it is your duty rather to
endure the admixture of the bad out of consideration for the good, than to
violate the principle of brotherly love towards the good from any
consideration of the bad. For this admixture is not for eternity, but for
time alone nor is it spiritual, but corporal. And in this the angels will
not be liable to err, when they shall collect the bad from the midst of the
good, and commit them to the burning fiery furnace. For the Lord knoweth
those which are His. And if a man cannot depart bodily from those who
practise iniquity so long as time shall last, at any rate, let every one
that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity itself.(3) For in the
meantime he may separate himself from the wicked in life, and in morals,
and in heart and will, and in the same respects depart from his society;
and separation such as this should always be maintained. But let the
separation in the body be waited for till the end of time, faithfully,
patiently, bravely. In consideration of which expectation it is said, "Wait
on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart; wait,
I say, upon the Lord."(4) For the greatest palm of toleration is won by
those who, among false brethren that have crept in unawares, seeking their
own, and not the things of Jesus Christ, yet show that they on their part
seek not to disturb the love which is not their own, but Jesus Christ's, by
any turbulent or rash dissension, nor to break the unity of the Lord's net,
in which are gathered together fish of every kind; till it is drawn to the
shore, that is, till the end of time, by any wicked strife fostered in the
spirit of pride: whilst each might think himself to be something, being
really nothing, and so might lead himself astray, and wish that sufficient
reason might be found for the separation of Christian peoples in the
judgment of himself or of his friends, who declare that they know beyond
all question certain wicked men unworthy of communion in the sacraments of
the Christian religion: though whatever it may be that they know of them,
they cannot persuade the universal Church, which, as it was foretold, is
spread abroad throughout all nations, to give credit to their tale. And
when they refuse communion with these men, as men whose character they
know, they desert the unity of the Church; whereas they ought rather, if
there really were in them that charity which endureth all things,
themselves to bear what they know in one nation, lest they should separate
themselves from the good whom they were unable throughout all nations to
fill with the teaching of evil alien to them. Whence even, without
discussing the case, in which they are convicted by the weightiest proofs
of having uttered calumnies against the innocent, they are believed with
greater probability to have invented false charges of giving up the sacred
books, when they are found to have themselves committed the far more
heinous crime of Wicked division in the Church. For even, if whatever
imputations they have cast of giving up the sacred books were true, yet
they in no wise ought to have abandoned the society of Christians, who are
commended by holy Scripture even to the ends of the world, on
considerations which they have been familiar with, while these men showed
that they were not acquainted with them.
CHAP. 4.--5. Nor would I therefore be understood to urge that
ecclesiastical discipline should be set at naught, and that every one
should be allowed to do exactly as he pleased, without any check, without a
kind of healing chastisement, a lenity which should inspire fear, the
severity of love. For then what will become of the precept of the apostle,
"Warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be
patient toward all men; see that none render evil for evil unto any
man?"(5) At any rate, when he added these last words, "See that none render
evil for evil unto any man," he showed with sufficient clearness that there
is no rendering of evil for evil when one chastises those that are unruly,
even though for the fault of unruliness be administered the punishment of
chastising. The punishment of chastising therefore is not an evil, though
the fault be an evil. For indeed it is the steel, not of an enemy
inflicting a wound, but of a surgeon performing an operation. Things like
this are done within the Church, and that spirit of gentleness within its
pale burns with zeal towards God, lest the chaste virgin which is espoused
to one husband, even Christ. should in any of her members be corrupted from
the simplicity which is in Christ, as Eve was beguiled by the subtilty of
the serpent.(1) Notwithstanding, far be it from the servants of the father
of the family that they should be unmindful of the precept of their Lord,
and be so inflamed with the fire of holy indignation against the multitude
of the tares, that while they seek to gather them in bundles before the
time, the wheat should be rooted up together with them. And of this sin
these men would be held to be guilty, even though they showed that those
were true charges which they brought against the traditors whom they
accused; because they separated themselves in a spirit of impious
presumption, not only from the wicked, whose society they professed to be
avoiding, but also from the good and faithful in all nations of the world,
to whom they could not prove the truth of what they said they, knew; and
with themselves they drew away into the same destruction many others over
whom they had some slight authority, and who were not wise enough to
understand that the unity of the Church dispersed throughout the world was
on no account to be forsaken for other men's sins. So that, even though
they themselves knew that they were pressing true charges against certain
of their neighbors, yet in this way a weak brother, for whom Christ died,
was perishing through their knowledge;(2) whilst, being offended at other
men's sins, he was destroying in himself the blessing of peace which he had
with the good brethren, who partly had never heard such charges, partly had
shrunk froth giving hasty credence to what was neither discussed nor
proved, partly, in the peaceful spirit of humility, had left these charges,
whatsoever they might be, to the cognizance of the judges of the Church, to
whom the whole matter had been referred, across the sea.
CHAP. 5.--6. Do you, therefore, holy scions of our one Catholic mother,
beware with all the watchfulness of which you are capable, in due
submission to the Lord, of the example of crime and error such as this.
With however great light of learning and of reputation he may shine,
however much he may boast himself to be a precious stone, who endeavors to
lead you after him, remember always that that brave woman who alone is
lovely only to her husband, whom holy Scripture portrays to us in the last
chapter of the Book of Proverbs, is more precious than any precious stones.
Let no one say, I will follow such an one, for it was even he that made me
a Christian; or, I will follow such an one, for it was even he that
baptized me. For "neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that
watereth, but God that giveth the increase."(3) And "God is love; and he
that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him."(4) No one also
that preaches the name of Christ, and handles or administers the sacrament
of Christ, is to be followed in opposition to the unity of Christ. "Let
every man prove his own work; and then shall he have rejoicing in himself
alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden,"(5)--
the burden, that is, of rendering an account; for "every one of shall give
an account of himself. Let us not therefore judge one another any more."(6)
For, so far as relates to the burdens of mutual love, "bear ye one
another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if a man think
himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself."(7) Let
us therefore "forbear one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace;"(8) for no one who gathers outside that
peace is gathering with Christ; but "he that gathering not with Him
scattereth abroad."(9)
CHAP. 6.--7. Furthermore, whether concerning Christ, or concerning His
Church, or any other matter whatsoever which is connected with your faith
and life, to say nothing of ourselves, who are by no means to be compared
with him who said, "Though we," at any rate, as he went on to say, "Though
an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which" ye
have received in the lawful and evangelical Scripture, "let him be
accursed."(10) While carrying out this principle of action in our dealings
with you, and with all whom we desire to gain in Christ, and, amongst other
things, while preaching the holy Church which we read of as promised in the
epistles of God, and see to be fulfilled according to the promises in all
nations of the world, we have earned, not the rendering of thanks, but the
flames of hatred, from those whom we desire to have attracted into His most
peaceful bosom; as though we had bound them fast in that party for which
they cannot find any defense that they should make; or as though we so long
before had given injunctions to prophets and apostles that they should
insert in their books no proofs by which it might be shown that the party
of Donatus was the Church of Christ. And we indeed, dear brethren, when we
hear false charges brought against us by those whom we have offended by
preaching the eloquence of truth, and confuting the vanity of error, have,
as you know, the most abundant consolation. For if, in the matters which
they lay to my charge, the testimony of my conscience does not stand
against me in the sight of God, where no mortal eye can reach, not only
ought I not to be cast down, but I should even rejoice and be exceeding
glad, for great is my reward in heaven.(1) For in fact I ought to consider,
not how bitter, but how false is what I hear, and how true He is in defense
of whose name I am exposed to it, and to whom it is said, "Thy name is as
ointment poured forth."(2) And deservedly does it smell sweet in all
nations, though those who speak evil of us endeavor to confine its
fragrance within one corner of Africa. Why therefore should we take amiss
that we are reviled by men who thus detract from the glory of Christ, whose
party and schism find offense in what was foretold so long before of His
ascent into the heavens, and of the pouring forth of His name, as of the
savor of ointment: "Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let Thy
glory be above all the earth"?(3)
CHAP. 7.--8. Whilst we bear the testimony of God to this and the like
effect against the vain speaking of men, we are forced to undergo bitter
insults from the enemies of the glory of Christ. Let them say what they
will, whilst He exhorts us, saying, "Blessed are they which are persecuted
for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are
ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner
of evil against you falsely for my sake." What He says in the first
instance, "for righteousness' sake," He has repeated in the words that He
uses afterwards, "for my sake;" seeing that He "is made unto us wisdom, and
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that, according as it is
written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."(4) And when He says,
"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven,"(5) if
I hold in a good conscience what is said "for righteousness' sake," and
"for my sake," whosoever willfully detracts from my reputation is against
his will contributing to my reward. For neither did He only instruct me by
His word, without also confirming me by His example. Follow the faith of
the holy Scriptures, and you will find that Christ rose from the dead,
ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of the Father. Follow the
charges brought by His enemies, and you will presently believe that He was
stolen from the sepulchre by His disciples. Why then should we, while
defending His house to the best of the abilities given us by God, expect to
meet with any other treatment from His enemies? "If they have called the
Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His
household?"(6) If, therefore, we suffer, we shall also reign with Him. But
if it be not only the wrath of the accuser that strikes the ear, but also
the truth of tile accusation that stings the conscience, what does it
profit me if the whole world were to exalt me with perpetual praise? So
neither the eulogy of him who praises has power to heal a guilty
conscience, nor does the insult of him, who reviles wound the good
conscience. Nor, however, is your hope which is in the Lord deceived, even
though we chance to be in secret what our enemies wish us to be thought;
for you have not placed your hope in us, nor have you ever heard from us
any doctrine of the kind. You therefore are safe, whatever we may be, who
have learned to say, "I have trusted in the Lord; therefore I shall not
slide;"(7) and "In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man
can do unto me."(8) And to those who endeavor to lead you astray to the
earthly heights of proud men, you know how to answer, "In the Lord put I my
trust: how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"(9)
CHAP. 8.--9. Nor is it only you that are safe, whatever we may be,
because you are satisfied with the very truth of Christ which is in us, in
so far as it is preached through us, and everywhere throughout the world,
and because, listening to it willingly, so far as it is set forth by the
humble ministry of our tongue, you also think well and kindly of us,--for
so your hope is in Him whom we preach to you out of His loving-kindness,
which extends over you,--but further, all of you, who also received the
sacrament of holy baptism from our ministering, may well rejoice in the
same security, seeing that you were baptized, not into us, but into Christ.
You did not therefore put on us, but Christ; nor did I ask you whether you
were converted unto me, but unto the living God; nor whether you believed
in me, but in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But if you answered
my question with truthful hearts, you were placed in a state of salvation,
not by the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but by the answer of a
good conscience towards God;(1) not by a fellow-servant, but by the Lord;
not by the herald, but by the judge. For it is not true, as Petilianus
inconsiderately said, that "the conscience of the giver," or, as he added
"the conscience of him who gives in holiness is what we look for to wash
the conscience of the recipient." For when something is given that is of
God, it is given in holiness, even by a conscience which is not holy. And
certainly it is beyond the power of the recipient to discern whether the
said conscience is holy or not holy; but that which is given he can discern
with clearness. That which is known to Him who is ever holy is received
with perfect safety, whatever be the character of the minister at whose
hands it is received. For unless the words which are spoken from Moses'
seat were necessarily holy, He that is the Truth would never have said,
"Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do." But if the men who
uttered holy words were themselves holy, He would not have said, "Do not ye
after their works: for they say, and do not."(2) For it is true that in no
way do men gather grapes of thorns, because grapes never spring from the
root of a thorn; but when the shoot of the vine has entwined itself in a
thorn hedge, the fruit which hangs upon it is not therefore looked upon
with dread, but the thorn is avoided, while the grape is plucked.
CHAP. 9.--10. Therefore, as I have often said before, and am desirous
to bring home to you, whatsoever we may be, you are safe, who have God for
your Father and His Church for your mother. For although the goats may feed
in company with the sheep, yet they shall not stand on the right hand;
although the chaff may be bruised together with the wheat, it shall not be
gathered into the barn; although the bad fish may swim in company with the
good within the Lord's nets, they shall not be gathered into vessels. Let
no man make his boast even in a good man: let no man shun the good gifts of
God even in a bad man.
CHAP. 10.--11. Let these things suffice you, my beloved Christian
brethren of the Catholic Church, so far as the present business is
concerned; and if you hold fast to this in Catholic affection, so long as
you are one sure flock of the one Shepherd, I am not too much concerned
with the abuse that any enemy may lavish on me, your partner in the flock,
or, at any rate, your watch-dog, so long as he compels me to bark rather in
your defense than in my own. And yet, if it were necessary for the cause
that I should enter on my own defense, I should do so with the greatest
brevity and the greatest ease, joining freely with all men in condemning
and bearing witness against the whole period of my life before I received
the baptism of Christ, so far as relates to my evil passions and my errors,
lest, in defending that period, I should seem to be seeking my own glory,
not His, who by His grace delivered me even from myself. Wherefore, when I
hear that life of mine abused, in whatever spirit he may be acting who
abuses it, I am not so thankless as to be grieved. However much he finds
fault with any vice of mine, I praise him in the same degree as my
physician. Why then should I disturb myself about defending those past and
obsolete evils in my life, in respect of which, though Petilianus has said
much that is false, he has yet left more that is true unsaid? But
concerning that period of my life which is subsequent to my baptism, to you
who know me I speak unnecessarily in telling of those things which might be
known to all mankind; but those who know me not ought not to act with such
unfairness towards me as to believe Petilianus rather than you concerning
me. For if one should not give credence to the panegyrics of a friend,
neither should one believe the detraction of an enemy. There remain,
therefore, those things which are hidden in a man, in which conscience
alone can bear testimony, which cannot be a witness before men. Herein
Petilianus says that I am a Manichaean, speaking of the conscience of
another man; I, speaking of my own conscience, aver that I am not. Choose
which of us you had sooner believe. Notwithstanding, since there is not any
need even of this short and easy defense on my part, where the question at
issue is not concerning the merits of any individual, whoever he may be,
but concerning the truth; of the whole Church, I have more also to say to
any of you, who, being of the party of Donatus, have read the evil words
which Petilianus has written about me, which I should not have heard from
him if I had had no care about the loss of your salvation; but then I
should have been wanting in the bowels of Christian love.
CHAP. 11.--12. What wonder is it then, if, when I draw in the grain
that has been shaken forth from the threshing-floor of the Lord, together
with the soil and chaff, I suffer injury from the dust that rebounds
against me; or that, when I am diligently seeking after the lost sheep of
my Lord, I am torn by the briars of thorny tongues? I entreat you, lay
aside for a time all considerations of party feeling, and judge with some
degree of fairness between Petilianus and myself. I am desirous that you
should be acquainted with the cause of the Church; he, that you should be
familiar with mine. For what other reason than because he dares not bid you
disbelieve my witnesses, whom I am constantly citing in the cause of the
Church,--for they are prophets and apostles, and Christ Himself, the Lord
of prophets and apostles,--whereas you easily give him credit in whatever
he may choose to say concerning me, a man against a man, and one, moreover,
of your own party against a stranger to you? And should I adduce any
witnesses to my life, however important the thing he might say would be, it
would not be believed by them, and of this Petilianus would quickly
persuade you; especially when any one would bring forward a plea for me.
Since he is an enemy of the Donatist party, in virtue of this fact he would
also continually be considered your enemy. Petilianus therefore reigns
supreme. Whenever he aims any abuse at me, of whatever character it may be,
you all applaud and shout assent. This cause he has found wherein the
victory is possible for him, but only with you for judges. He will seek for
neither proof nor witness; for all that he has to prove in his words is
this, that he lavishes most copious abuse on one whom you most cordially
hate. For whereas, when the testimony of divine Scripture is quoted in such
abundance and in such express terms in favor of the Catholic Church, he
remains silent amidst your grief, he has chosen for himself a subject on
which he may speak amidst applause from you; and though really conquered,
yet, pretending that he stands unmoved, he may make statements concerning
me like this, and even worse than this. It is enough for me,(1) in respect
of the cause which I am now pleading, that whatsoever I may be found to be,
yet the Church for which I speak unconquered.
CHAP. 12.--13. For I am a man of the threshing-floor of Christ: if a
bad man, then part of the chaff; if good, then of the grain. The winnowing-
fan of this threshing-floor is not the tongue of Petilianus; and hereby,
whatever evil he may have uttered, even with truth, against the chaff of
this threshing-floor, this in no way prejudices its grain. But
whereinsoever he has cast any revilings or calumnies against the grain
itself, its faith is tried on earth, and its reward increased in the
heavens. For where men are holy servants of the Lord, and are fighting with
holiness for God, not against Petilianus, or any flesh and blood like him,
but against principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of
this world,(2) such as are all enemies of the truth, to whom I would that
we could say, "Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the
Lord,"(3)--where the servants of God, I say, are waging such a war as this,
then all the calumnious revilings that are uttered by their enemies, which
cause an evil report among the malicious and those that are rash in
believing, are weapons on the left hand: it is with such as these that even
the devil is defeated. For when we are tried by good report, whether we
resist the exaltation of ourselves to pride, and are tried by evil report,
whether we love even those very enemies by whom it is invented against us,
then we overcome the devil by the armor of righteousness on the right hand
and on the left. For when the apostle had used the expression, "By the
armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left," he at once goes
on to say, as if in explanation of the terms, "By honor and dishonor, by
evil report and good report,"(4) and so forth,--reckoning honor and good
report among the armor on the right hand, dishonor and evil report among
that upon the left.
CHAP. 13.--14. If, therefore, I am a servant of the Lord, and a soldier
that is not reprobate, with whatever eloquence Petilianus stands forth
reviling me, ought I in any way to be annoyed that he has been appointed
for me as a most accomplished craftsman of the armor on the left? It is
necessary that I should fight in this armor as skillfully as possible in
defence of my Lord, and should smite with it the enemy against whom I wage
an unseen fight, who in all cunning strives and endeavors, with the most
perverse and ancient craftiness, that this should lead me to hate
Petilianus, and so be unable to fulfill the command which Christ has given,
that we should "love our enemies."(1) But from this may I be saved by the
mercy of Him who loved me, and gave Himself for me, so that, as He hung
upon the cross, He said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they
do;"(2) and so taught me to say of Petilianus and all other enemies of mine
like him "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'
CHAP. 14.--15. Furthermore, if I have obtained from you, in accordance
with my earnest endeavors, that, laying aside from your minds all prejudice
of party, you should be impartial judges between Petilianus and myself I
will show to you that he has not replied to what I wrote, that you may
understand that he has been compelled by lack of truth to abandon the
dispute, and also see what revilings he has allowed himself to utter
against the man who so conducted it that he had no reply to make. And yet
what I am going to say displays itself with such manifest clearness, that,
even though your minds were estranged from me by party prejudice and
personal hatred, yet, if you would only read what is written on both sides,
you could not but confess among yourselves, in your inmost hearts, that I
have spoken truth.
16. For, in replying to the former part of his writings, which then
alone had come into my hands, without taking any notice of his wordy and
sacrilegious revilings, where he says, "Let those men cast in our teeth our
twice-repeated baptism, who, under the name of baptism, have polluted their
souls with a guilty washing; whom I hold to be so obscene that no manner of
filth is less clean than they; whose lot it has been, by a perversion of
cleanliness, to be defiled by the water wherein they washed;" I thought
that what follows was worthy of discussion and refutation, where he says,
"For what we look for is the conscience of the giver, that the conscience
of the recipient may thereby be cleansed;' and I asked what means were to
be found for cleansing one who receives baptism when the conscience of the
giver is polluted, without the knowledge of him who is to receive the
sacrament at his hands.(3)
CHAP. 15.--17. Read now the most profuse revilings which he has poured
forth whilst puffed up with indignation against me, and see whether he has
given me any answer, when I ask what means are to be found for cleansing
one who receives baptism when the conscience of the giver is polluted,
without the knowledge of him who receives the sacrament at his hands. I beg
of you to search minutely, to examine every page, to reckon every line, to
ponder every word, to sift the meaning of each syllable, and tell me, if
you can discover it, where he has made answer to the question, What means
are to be found for cleansing the conscience of the recipient who is
unaware that the conscience of the giver is polluted?
18. For how did it bear upon the point that he added a phrase which he
said was suppressed by me, maintaining that he had written in the following
terms: "The conscience of him who gives in holiness is what we look for to
cleanse the conscience of the recipient?" For to prove to you that it was
not suppressed by me, its addition in no way hinders my inquiry, or makes
up the deficiency which was found in him. For in the face of those very
words I ask again, and I beg of you to see whether he has given any answer,
If "the conscience of him who gives in holiness is what we look for to
cleanse the conscience of the recipient," what means are to be found for
cleansing the conscience of the recipient when the conscience of the giver
is stained with guilt, without the knowledge of him who is to receive the
sacrament at his hands? I insist upon an answer being given to this. Do not
allow that any one should be prejudiced by revilings irrelevant to the
matter in hand. If the conscience of him who gives in holiness is what we
look for,--observe that I do not say "the conscience of him who gives," but
that I added the words, "of him who gives in holiness,"--if the conscience,
then, of him who gives in holiness is what we look for, what means are to
be found for cleansing one who receives baptism when the conscience of the
giver is polluted, without the knowledge of him who is to receive the
sacrament at his hands?
CHAP. 16.--19. Let him go now, and with panting lungs and swollen
throat find fault with me as a mere dialectician. Nay, let him summon, not
me, but the science of dialectics itself, to the bar of popular opinion as
a forger of lies, and let him open his mouth to its widest against it, with
all the noisiest uproar of a special pleader. Let him say whatever he
pleases before the inexperienced, that so the learned may be moved to
wrath, while the ignorant are deceived. Let him call me, in virtue of my
rhetoric, by the name of the orator Tertullus, by whom Paul was accused;(1)
and let him give himself the name of Advocate,(2) in virtue of the pleading
in which he boasts his former power, and for this reason delude himself
with the notion that he is, or rather was, a namesake of the Holy Ghost.
Let him, with all my heart, exaggerate the foulness of the Manichaeans, and
endeavor to divert it on to me by his barking. Let him quote all the
exploits of those who have been condemned, whether known or unknown to me;
and let him turn into the calumnious imputation of a prejudged crime, by
some new right entirely his own, the fact that a former friend of mine
there named me in my absence to the better securing of his own defense. Let
him read the titles that have been placed upon my letters by himself or by
his friends, as suited their pleasure, and boast that he has, as it were,
involved me hopelessly in their expressions. When I acknowledge certain
eulogies of bread, uttered in all simplicity and merriment, let him take
away my character with the absurd imputations of poisonous baseness and
madness. And let him entertain so bad an opinion of your understanding, as
to imagine that he can be believed when he declares that pernicious love-
charms were given to a woman, not only with the knowledge, but actually
with the complicity(3) of her husband. What the man who was afterwards to
ordain me bishop(4) wrote about me in anger, while I was as yet a priest,
he may freely seek to use as evidence against me. That the same man sought
and obtained forgiveness from a holy Council for the wrong he thus had done
me, he is equally at liberty to ignore as being in my favor,--being either
so ignorant or so forgetful of Christian gentleness, and the commandment of
the gospel, that he brings as an accusation against a brother what is
wholly unknown to that brother himself, as he humbly entreats that pardon
may in kindness be extended to him.
CHAP. 17.--20. Let him further go on, in his discourse of many but
manifestly empty words, to matters of which he is wholly ignorant, or in
which rather he abuses the ignorance of the mass of those who hear him, and
from the confession of a certain woman, that she had called herself a
catechumen of the Manichaeans, being already a full member of the Catholic
Church, let him say or write what he pleases concerning their baptism,--not
knowing, or pretending not to know, that the name of catechumen is not
bestowed among them upon persons to denote that they are at some future
time to be baptized, but that this name is given to such as are also called
Hearers, on the supposition that they cannot observe what are considered
the higher and greater commandments, which are observed by those whom they
think right to distinguish and honor by the name of Elect. Let him also
maintain with wonderful rashness, either as himself deceived or as seeking
to deceive, that I was a presbyter among the Manichaeans. Let him set forth
and refute, in whatever sense seems good to him, the words of the third
book of my Confessions, which, both in themselves, and from much that I
have said before and since, are perfectly clear to all who read them.
Lastly, let him triumph in my stealing his words, because I have suppressed
two of them, as though the victory were his upon their restoration.
CHAP. 18.--21. Certainly in all these things, as you can learn or
refresh your memory by reading his letter, he has given free scope to the
impulse of his tongue, with all the license of boasting which he chose to
use, but nowhere has he told us where means are to be found for cleansing
the conscience of the recipient, when that of the giver has been stained
with sin without his knowing it. But amid all his noise, and after all his
noise, serious as it is, too terrible as he himself supposes it to be, I
deliberately, as it is said, and to the purpose,(5) ask this question once
again:" If the conscience of him who gives in holiness is what we look for,
what means are to be found for cleansing one who receives baptism without
knowing that the conscience of the giver is stained with sin? And
throughout his whole epistle I find nothing said in answer to this
question.
CHAP. 19.--22. For perhaps some one of you will say to me, All these
things which he said against you he wished to have force for this purpose,
that he might take away your character, and through you the character of
those with whom you hold communion, that neither they themselves, nor those
whom you endeavor to bring over to your communion, may hold you to be of
any further importance. But, in deciding whether he has given no answer to
the words of your epistle, we must look at them in the light of the passage
in which he proposed them for consideration. Let us then do so: let us look
at his writings in the light of that very passage. Passing over, therefore,
the passage in which I sought to introduce my subject to the reader, and to
ignore those few prefatory words of his, which were rather insulting than
revelant to the subject under discussion, I go on to say, "He says, 'What
we look for is the conscience of the giver, to cleanse that of the
recipient.' But supposing the conscience of the giver is concealed from
view, and perhaps defiled with sin, how will it be able to cleanse the
conscience of the recipient, if, as he says, 'what we look for is the
conscience of the giver, to cleanse that of the recipient?' For if he
should say that it makes no matter to the recipient what amount of evil may
be concealed from view in the conscience of the giver, perhaps that
ignorance may have such a degree of efficacy as this, that a man cannot be
defiled by the guilt of the conscience of him from whom he receives
baptism, so long as he is unaware of it. Let it then be granted that the
guilty conscience of his neighbor cannot defile a man so long as he is
unaware of it; but is it therefore clear that it can further cleanse him
from his own guilt? Whence then is a man to be cleansed who receives
baptism, when the conscience of the giver is polluted without the knowledge
of him who is to receive it, especially when he goes on to say, 'For he who
receives faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt?'"(1)
CHAP. 20.--23. All these statements in my letter Petilianus set before
himself for refutation. Let us see, therefore, whether he has refuted them;
whether he has made any answer to them at all. For I add the words which he
calumniously accuses me of having suppressed, and, having done so, I ask
him again the same question in an even shorter form; for by adding these
two words he has helped me much in shortening this proposition. If the
conscience of him who gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse that
of the recipient, and if he who has received his faith wittingly from one
that is faithless, receives not faith but guilt, where shall we find means
to cleanse the conscience of the recipient, when he has not known that the
conscience of the giver is stained with guilt, and when he receives his
faith unwittingly from one that is faithless? I ask, where shall we find
means to cleanse it? Let him tell us; let him not pass off into another
subject; let him not cast a mist over the eyes of the inexperienced. To end
with, at any rate, after many tortuous circumlocutions have been interposed
and thoroughly worked out, let him at last tell us where we shall find
means to cleanse the conscience of the recipient when the stains of guilt
in the conscience of the faithless baptizer are concealed from view, if the
conscience of him who gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse that
of the recipient, and if he who has received his faith wittingly from one
that is faithless, receives not faith but guilt? For the man in question
receives it from a faithless man who has not the conscience of one who
gives in holiness, but a conscience stained with guilt, and veiled from
view. Where then shall we find means to cleanse his conscience? whence then
does he receive his faith? For if he is neither then cleansed, nor then
receives faith, when the faithlessness and guilt of the baptizer are
concealed, why, when these are afterwards brought to light and condemned,
is he not then baptized afresh, that he may be cleansed and receive faith?
But if, while the faithlessness and guilt of the other are concealed, he is
cleansed and does receive faith, whence does he obtain his cleansing,
whence does he receive faith, when there is not the conscience of one that
gives in holiness to cleanse the conscience of the recipient? Let him tell
us this; let him make reply to this: Whence does he obtain his cleansing,
whence does he receive faith, if the conscience of him that gives in
holiness is what we look for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient,
seeing that this does not exist, when the baptizer conceals his character
of faithlessness and guilt? To this no answer has been made whatever.
CHAP. 21.--24. But see, when he is reduced to straits in the argument,
he again makes an attack on me full of mist and wind, that the calm
clearness of the truth may be obscured; and through the extremity of his
want he becomes full of resources, shown not in saying what is true, but in
unbought empty revilings. Hold fast, with the keenest attention and utmost
perseverance, what he ought to answer,--that is, where means may be found
for cleansing the conscience of the recipient when the stains in that of
the giver are concealed,--lest possibly the blast of his eloquence should
wrest this from your hands, and you in turn should be carried away by the
dark tempest of his turgid discourse, so as wholly to fail in seeing whence
he has digressed, and to what point he should return; and see where the man
can wander, whilst he cannot stand in the matter which he has undertaken.
For see how much he says, through having nothing that he ought to say. He
says "that I slide in slippery places, but am held up; that I neither
destroy nor confirm the objections that I make; that I devise uncertain
things in the place of certainty; that I do not permit my readers to
believe what is true, but cause them to look with increased suspicion on
what is doubtful." He says "that I have the accursed talents of the
Academic philosopher Carneades."(1) He endeavors to insinuate what the
Academics think of the falseness or the falsehood of human sensation,
showing in this also that he is wholly without knowledge of what he says.
He declares that "it is said by them that snow is black, whereas it is
white; and that silver is black; and that a tower is round, or free from
projections, when it is really angular; that an oar is broken in the water,
while it is whole."(2) And all this because, when he had said that "the
conscience of him that gives," or "of him that gives in holiness, is what
we look for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient," I said in reply,
What if the conscience of the giver be hidden from sight, and possibly be
stained with guilt? Here you have his black snow, and black silver, and his
tower round instead of angular, and the oar in the water broken while yet
whole, in that I suggested a state of the case which might be conceived,
and could not really exist, that the conscience of the giver might be
hidden from view, and possibly might be stained with guilt
25. Then he continues in the same strain, and cries out: "What is that
what if? what is that possibly? except the uncertain and wavering
hesitation of one who doubts, of whom your poet says'--
'What if I now return to those who say, What if the sky should
fall?'"(2)
Does he mean that when I said, What if the conscience of the giver be
hidden from sight, and possibly be stained with guilt? that it is much the
same as if I had said, What if the sky should fall? There certainly is the
phrase What if, because it is possible that it may be hidden from view, and
it is possible that it may not. For when it is not known what the giver is
thinking of, or what crime he has committed, then his conscience is
certainly hidden from the view of the recipient; but when his sin is
plainly manifest, then it is not hidden. I used the expression, And
possibly may be stained with guilt, because it is possible that it may be
hidden from view and yet be pure; and again, it is possible that it may be
hidden from view and be stained with guilt. This is the meaning of the What
if; this the meaning of the Possibly. Is this at all like "What if the sky
should fall?" O how often have men been convicted, how often have they
confessed themselves that they had consciences stained with guilt and
adultery, whilst men were unwittingly baptized by them after they were
degraded by the sin subsequently brought to light, and yet the sky did not
fall! What have we here to do with Pilus and Furius,(3) who defended the
cause of injustice against justice? What have we here to do with the
atheist Diagoras,(4) who denied that there was any God, so that he would
seem to be the man of whom the prophet spoke beforehand, "The fool hath
said in his heart there is no God?"(5) What have we here to do with these?
Why were their names brought in, except that they might make a diversion in
favor of a man who had nothing to say? that while he is at any rate saying
something, though needlessly, about these, the matter in hand may seem to
be progressing, and an answer may be supposed to be made to a question
which remains without an answer?
CHAP. 22.--26. Lastly, if these two or three words, What if, and
Possibly, are so absolutely intolerable, that on their account we should
have aroused from their long sleep the Academics, and Carneades, and Pilus,
and Furius, and Diagoras, and black snow, and the falling of the sky, and
everything else that is equally senseless and absurd, let them be removed
from our argument. For, as a matter of fact, it is by no means impossible
to express what we desire to say without them. There is quite sufficient
for our purpose in what is found a little later, and has been introduced by
himself from my letter: "By what means then is he to be cleansed who
receives baptism when the conscience of the giver is polluted, and that
without the knowledge of him who is to receive the sacrament?"(1) Do you
acknowledge that here there is no What if, no Possibly? Well then, let an
answer be given. Give close heed, test he be found to answer this in what
follows. "But," says he, "I bind you in your cavilling to the faith of
believing, that you may not wander further from it. Why do you turn away
your life from errors by arguments of folly? Why do you disturb the system
of belief in respect of matters without reason? By this one word I bind and
convince you." It was Petilianus that said this, not I. These words are
from the letter of Petilianus; but from that letter, to which I just now
added the two words which he accuses me of having suppressed, showing that,
notwithstanding their addition, the pertinency of my question, to which he
makes no answer, remains with greater brevity and simplicity. It is beyond
dispute that these two words are, In holiness, and Wittingly: so that it
should not be, "The conscience of him who gives," but "The conscience of
him who gives in holiness;" and that it should not be, "He who has received
his faith from one that is faithless," but "He who has wittingly received
his faith from one that is faithless." And yet I had not really suppressed
these words; but I had not found them in the copy which was placed in my
hands. It is possible enough that it was incorrect; nor indeed is it wholly
beyond the possibility of belief that even by this suggestion Academic
grudge should be roused against me, and that it should be asserted that, in
declaring the copy to be incorrect, I had said much the same sort of thing
as if I had declared that snow was black. For why should I repay in kind
his rash suggestion, and say that, though he pretends that I suppressed the
words, he really added them afterwards himself, since the copy, which is
not angry, can confirm that mark of incorrectness, without any abusive
rashness on my part?
CHAP. 23.--27. And, in the first place, with regard to that first
expression, "Of him who gives in holiness," it does not interfere in the
least with my inquiry, by which he is so much distressed, whether I use the
expression, "If the conscience of him that gives is what we look for," or
the fuller phrase, "If the conscience of him that gives in holiness is what
we look for, to cleanse the conscience of the recipient," by what means
then is he to be cleansed who receives baptism if the conscience of the
giver is polluted, without the knowledge of him who is to receive the
sacrament? And with regard to the other word that is added, "wittingly," so
that the sentence should not run," He who has received his faith from one
that is faithless," but "He who has wittingly received his faith from one
that is faithless, receives not faith but guilt," I confess that I had said
some things as though the word were absent, but I can easily afford to do
without them; for they caused more hindrance to the facility of my argument
than they gave assistance to its power. For how much more readily, how much
more plainly and shortly, can I put the question thus: "If the conscience
of him who gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse the conscience
of the recipient," and "if he who has wittingly received his faith from one
that is faithless receives not faith but guilt," by what means is he
cleansed, from whom the stain on the conscience of him who gives, but not
in holiness, is hidden? and whence does be receive true faith, who is
baptized unwittingly by one that is faithless? Let it be declared whence
this shall be, and then the whole theory of baptism will be disclosed; then
all that is matter of investigation will be brought to light,--but only if
it be declared, not if the time be consumed in evil-speaking.
CHAP. 24.--28. Whatever, therefore, he finds in these two words,--
whether he brings calumnious accusations about their suppression, or boasts
of their being added,--you perceive that it in no way hinders my question,
to which he can find no answer that he can make; and therefore, not wishing
to remain silent, he takes the opportunity of making an attack upon my
character,--retiring, I should have said, from the discussion, except that
he had never entered on it. For just as though the question were about me,
and not about the truth of the Church, or of baptism, therefore he says
that I, by suppressing these two words, have argued as though it were no
stumblingblock in the way of my conscience, that I have ignored what he
calls the sacrilegious conscience of him who polluted me. But if this were
so, the addition of the word "wittingly," which is thus introduced, would
be in my favor, and its suppression would tell against me. For if I had
wished that my defense should be urged on the ground that I should be
supposed to have been unacquainted with the conscience of the man that
baptized me, then I would accept Petilianus as having spoken in my behalf,
since he does not say in general terms, "He that has received his faith
from one that is faithless," but "He that has wittingly received his faith
from one that is faithless, receives not faith but guilt;" so that hence I
might boast that I had received not guilt, but faith, since I could say I
did not receive it wittingly from one that was faithless, but was
unacquainted with the conscience of him that gave it. See, therefore, and
reckon carefully, if you can, what an amount of superfluous words he wastes
on the one phrase, "I was unacquainted with" which he declares that I have
used; whereas I never used it at all,--partly because the question under
discussion was not concerning me, so that I should need to use it; partly
because no fault was apparent in him that baptized me, so that I should be
forced to say in my defense that I had been unacquainted with his
conscience.
CHAP. 25.--29. And yet Petilianus, to avoid answering what I have said,
sets before himself what I have not, and draws men's attention away from
the consideration of his debt, lest they should exact the answer which he
ought to make. He constantly introduces the expressions, "I have been
unacquainted with," "I say," and makes answer, "But if you were
unacquainted with;" and, as though convicting me, so that it should be out
of my power to say, "I was unacquainted with," he quotes Mensurius,
Caecilianus, Macarius, Taurinus, Romanus, and declares that "they had acted
in opposition to the Church of God, as I could not fail to know, seeing
that I am an African, and already well advanced in years," whereas, so far
as I hear, Mensurius died in the unity of the communion of the Church,
before the faction of Donatus separated itself therefrom; whilst I had read
the history of Caecilianus, that they themselves had referred his case to
Constantine, and that he had been once and again acquitted by the judges
whom that emperor had appointed to try the matter, and again a third; time
by the sovereign himself, when they appealed to him. But whatever Macarius
and Taurinus and Romanus did, either in their judicial or executive
functions, in behalf of unity as against their pertinacious madness, it is
beyond doubt that it was all done in accordance with the laws, which these
same persons made it unavoidable should be passed and put in force, by
referring the case of Caecilianus to the judgment of the emperor.
30. Among many other things which are wholly irrevelant, he says that
"I was so hard hit by the decision of the proconsul Messianus, that I was
forced to fly from Africa." And in consequence of this falsehood (to which,
if he was not the author of it, he certainly lent malicious ears when
others maliciously invented it), how many other falsehoods had he the
hardihood not only to utter, but actually to write with wondrous rashness,
seeing that I went to Milan before the consulship of Banto, and that, in
pursuance of the profession of rhetorician which I then followed, I recited
a panegyric in his honor as consul on the first of January, in the presence
of a vast assembly of men; and after that journey I only returned to Africa
after the death of the tyrant Maximus: whereas the proconsul Messianus
heard the case of the Manichaeans after the consulship of Banto, as the day
of the chronicles inserted by Petilianus himself sufficiently shows. And if
it were necessary to prove this for the satisfaction of those who are in
doubt, or believe the contrary, I could produce many men, illustrious in
their generation, as most sufficient witnesses to all that period of my
life.
CHAP. 26.--31. But why do we make inquiry into these points? Why do we
both suffer and cause unnecessary delay? Are we likely to find out by such
a course as this what means we are to use for cleansing the conscience of
the recipient, who does not know that the conscience of the giver is
stained with guilt: whence the man is to receive faith who is unwittingly
baptized by one that is faithless?--the question which Petilianus had
proposed to himself to answer in my epistle, then going on to say anything
else he pleased except what the matter in hand required. How often has he
said, "If ignorant you were,"--as though I had said, what I never did say,
that I was unacquainted with the conscience of him who baptized me. And he
seemed to have no other object in all that his evil-speaking mouth poured
forth, except that he should appear to prove that I had not been ignorant
of the misdeeds of those among whom I was baptized, and with whom I was
associated in communion, understanding fully, it would seem, that ignorance
did not convict me of guilt. See then that if I were ignorant, as he has
repeated so often, beyond all doubt I should be innocent of all these
crimes. Whence therefore should I be cleansed, who am unacquainted with the
conscience of him who gives but not in holiness, so that I may be least
ensnared by his offenses? Whence then should I receive faith, seeing that I
was baptized unwittingly by one that was faithless? For he has not repeated
"If ignorant you were" so often without purpose, but simply to prevent my
being reputed innocent, esteeming beyond all doubt that no man's innocence
is violated if he unwittingly receives his faith from one that is
faithless, and is not acquainted with the stains on the conscience of him
that gives, but not in holiness. Let him say, therefore, by what means such
men are to be cleansed, whence they are to receive not guilt but faith. But
let him not deceive you. Let him not, while uttering much, say nothing; or
rather, let him not say much while saying nothing. Next, to urge a point
which occurs to me, and must not be passed over,--if I am guilty because I
have not been ignorant, to use his own phraseology, and I am proved not to
have been ignorant, because I am an African, and already advanced in years,
let him grant that the youths of other nations throughout the world are not
guilty, who had no opportunity either from their race, or from that age you
bring against me, of knowing the points that are laid to our charge, be
they true, or be they false; and yet they, if they have fallen into your
hands, are rebaptized without any considerations of such a kind.
CHAP. 27.--32. But this is not what we are now inquiring. Let him
rather answer (what he wanders off into the most irrelevant matters in
order to avoid answering) by what means the conscience of the recipient is
cleansed who is unacquainted with the stain on the conscience of the giver,
if the conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we look for to
cleanse the conscience of the recipient? and from what source he receive
faith who is unwittingly baptized by one that is faithless, if he that has
wittingly received his faith from one that is faithless receives not faith
but guilt? Omitting, therefore, his revilings, which he has cast at me
without any sound consideration, let us still notice that he does not say
what we demand in what follows. But I should like to look at the garrulous
mode in which he has set this forth, as though he were sure to overwhelm us
with confusion. "But let us return," he says, "to that argument of your
fancy, whereby you seem to have represented to yourself in a form of words
the persons you baptize. For since you do not see the truth, it would have
been more seemly to have imagined what was probable." These words of his
own, Petilianus put forth by way of preface, being about to state the words
that I had used. Then he went on to quote: "Behold, you say, the faithless
man stands ready to baptize, but he who is to be baptized knows nothing of
his faithlessness."(1) He has not quoted the whole Of my proposition and
question; and presently he begins to ask me in his turn, saying, "Who is
the man, and from what corner has he started up, that you propose to us?
Why do you seem to see a man who is the produce of your imagination, in
order to avoid seeing one whom you are bound to see, and to examine and
test most carefully? But since I see that you are unacquainted with the
order of the sacrament, I tell you this as shortly as I can: you were bound
both to examine your baptizer, and to be examined by him." What is it,
then, that we were waiting for? That he should tell us by what means the
conscience of the recipient is to be cleansed, who is unacquainted with the
stain on the conscience of him that gives but not in holiness, and whence
the man is to receive not guilt but faith, who has received baptism
unwittingly from one that is faithless. All that we have heard is that the
baptizer ought most diligently to be examined by him who wishes to receive
not guilt but faith, that the latter may make himself acquainted with the
conscience of him that gives in holiness, which is to cleanse the
conscience of the recipient. For the man that has filled to make this
examination, and has unwittingly received baptism from one that is
faithless, from the very fact that he did not make the examination, and
therefore did not know of the stain on the conscience of the giver, was
incapacitated from receiving faith instead of guilt. Why therefore did he
add what he made so much of adding,--the word wittingly, which he
calumniously accused me of having suppressed? For in his unwillingness that
the sentence should run, "He who has received his faith from one that is
faithless, receives not faith but guilt," he seems to have left some hope
to the man that acts unwittingly. But now, when he is asked whence that man
is to receive faith who is baptized unwittingly by one that is faithless,
he has answered that he ought to have examined his baptizer; so that,
beyond all doubt, he refuses the wretched man permission even to be
ignorant, by not finding out from what source he may receive faith, unless
he has placed his trust in the man that is baptizing him.
CHAP. 28.--33. This is what we look upon with horror in your party;
this is what the sentence of God condemns, crying out with the utmost truth
and the utmost clearness, "Cursed is every one that trusteth in man."(2)
This is what is most openly forbidden by holy humility and apostolic love,
as Paul declares, "Let no man glory in men."(3) This is the reason that the
attack of empty calumnies and of the bitterest invectives grows even
fiercer against us, that when human authority is as it were overthrown,
there may remain no ground of hope for those to whom we administer the word
and sacrament of God in accordance with the dispensation entrusted unto us.
We make answer to them: How long do you rest your support on man? The
venerable society of the Catholic Church makes answer to them: "Truly my
soul waiteth upon God: from Him cometh my salvation. He only is my God and
my helper; I shall not be moved."(1) For what other reason have they had
for removing from the house of God, except that they pretended that they
could not endure those vessels made to dishonor, from which the house shall
not be free until the day of judgment? whereas all the time they rather
appear, by their deeds and by the records of the time, to have themselves
been vessels of this kind, while they threw the imputation in the teeth of
others; of which said vessels made unto dishonor, in order that no one
should on their account remove in confusion of mind from the great house,
which alone belongs to the great Father of our family, the servant of God,
one who was good and faithful, or was capable of receiving faith in
baptism, as I have shown above, expressly says, "Truly my soul waiteth upon
God" (on God, you see, and not on man): "from Him cometh my salvation" (not
from man). But Petilianus would refuse to ascribe to God the cleansing and
purifying of a man, even when the stain upon the conscience of him who
gives, but not in holiness, is hidden from view, and any one receives his
faith unwittingly from one that is faithless. "I tell you this," he says,
"as shortly as I can: you were bound both to examine your baptizer, and to
be examined by him."
CHAP. 29.--34. I entreat of you, pay attention to this: I ask where the
means shall be found for cleansing the conscience of the recipient, when he
is not acquainted with the stain upon the conscience of him that gives but
not in holiness, if the conscience of him that gives in holiness is waited
for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient? and from what source he is
to receive faith, who is unwittingly baptized by one that is faithless, if,
whosoever has received his faith wittingly. from one that is faithless,
receives not faith but guilt? and he answers me, that both the baptizer and
the baptized should be subjected to examination. And for the proof of this
point, out of which no question arises, he adduces the example of John, in
that he was examined by those who asked him who he claimed to be,(2) and
that he also in turn examined those to whom he says, "O generation of
vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"(3) What has
this to do with the subject? What has this to do with the question under
discussion? God had vouchsafed to John the testimony of most eminent
holiness of life, confirmed by the previous witness of the noblest
prophecy, I both when he was conceived, and when he was born. But the Jews
put their question, already believing him to be a saint, to find out which
of the saints he maintained himself to be, or whether he was himself the
saint of saints, that is, Christ Jesus. So much favor indeed was shown to
him, that credence would at once have been given to whatever he might have
said about himself. If, therefore, we are to follow this precedent in
declaring that each several baptizer is now to be examined, then each must
also be believed, whatever he may say of himself. But who is there that is
made up of deceit, whom we know that the Holy Spirit flees from, in
accordance with the Scripture,(4) who would not wish the best to be
believed of him, or who would hesitate to bring this about by the use of
any words within his reach? Accordingly, when he shall have been asked who
he is, and shall have answered that he is the faithful dispenser of God's
ordinances, and that his conscience is not polluted with the stain of any
crime, will this be the whole examination, or will there be a further more
careful investigation into his character and life? Assuredly there will.
But it is not written that this was done by those who in the desert of
Jordan asked John who he was.
CHAP. 30.--35. Accordingly this precedent is wholly without bearing on
the matter in hand. We might rather say that the declaration of the apostle
sufficiently inculcates this care, when he says, "Let these also first be
proved; then let them use the office of a deacon, being found
blameless."(5) And since this is done anxiously and habitually in both
parties, by almost all concerned, how comes it that so many are found to be
reprobates subsequently to the time of having undertaken this ministry,
except that, on the one hand, human care is often deceived, and, on the
other hand, those who have begun well occasionally deteriorate? And since
things of this sort happen so frequently as to allow no man to hide them or
to forget them, what is the reason that Petilianus now teaches us
insultingly, in a few words, that the baptizer ought to be examined by the
candidate for baptism, since our question is, by what means the conscience
of the recipient is to be cleansed, when the stain on the conscience of him
that gives, but not in holiness, has been concealed from view, if the
conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse the
conscience of the recipient. "Since I see," he says, "that you are
unacquainted with the order of the sacrament, I tell you this as shortly as
I can: you were bound both to examine your baptizer, and to be examined by
him." What an answer to make! He is surrounded in so many places by such a
multitude of men that have been baptized by ministers who, having in the
first instance seemed righteous and chaste, have subsequently been
convicted and degraded in consequence of the disclosure of their faults:
and he thinks that he is avoiding the force of this question, in which we
ask by what means the conscience of the recipient is to be cleansed, when
he is unacquainted with the stain upon the conscience of him that gives but
not in holiness, if the conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we
look for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient,--he thinks, I say,
that he is avoiding the force of this question, by saying shortly that the
baptizer ought to be examined. Nothing is more unfortunate than not to be
consistent with truth, by which every one is so shut in, that he cannot
find a means of escape. We ask from whom he is to receive faith who is
baptized by one that is faithless? The answer is, "He ought to have
examined his baptizer." Is it therefore the case that, since he does not
examine him, and so even unwittingly receives his faith from one that is
faithless, he receives not faith but guilt? Why then are those men not
baptized afresh, who are found to have been baptized by men that are
detected and convicted reprobates, while their true character was yet
concealed?
CHAP. 31.--36. "And where," he says, "is the word that I added,
wittingly? so that I did not say, He that has received his faith from one
that is faithless; but, He that has received his faith wittingly from one
that is faithless, receives not faith but guilt." He therefore who received
his faith unwittingly from one that was faithless, received not guilt but
faith; and accordingly I ask from what source he has received it? And being
thus placed in a strait, he answers, "He ought to have examined him."
Granted that he ought to have done so; but, as a matter of fact, he did
not, or he was not able: what is your verdict about him? Was he cleansed,
or was he not? If he was cleansed, I ask from what source? For the polluted
conscience of him that gave but not in holiness, with which he was
unacquainted, could not cleanse him. But if he was not cleansed, command
that he be so now. You give no such orders, therefore he was cleansed. Tell
me by what means? Do you at any rate tell me what Petilianus has failed to
tell. For I propose to you the very same words which he was unable to
answer. "Behold the faithless man stands ready to baptize; but he who is to
be baptized knows nothing of his faithlessness: what do you think that he
will receive--faith, or guilt?"(1) This is sufficient as a constant form of
question: answer, or search diligently to find what he has answered. You
will find abuse that has already been convicted. He finds fault with me, as
though in derision, maintaining that I ought to suggest what is probable
for consideration, since I cannot see the truth. For, repeating my words,
and cutting my sentence in two, he says, "Behold, you say, the faithless
man stands ready to baptize; but he who is to be baptized knows nothing of
his faithlessness." Then he goes on to ask, "Who is the man, and from what
corner has he started up, that you propose to us?" Just as though there
were some one or two individuals, and such cases were not constantly
occurring everywhere on either side! Why does he ask of me who the man in
question is, and from what corner he has started up, instead of looking
round, and seeing that the churches are few and far between, whether m
cities or in country districts, which do not contain men detected in
crimes, and degraded from the ministry? While their true character was
concealed, while they wished to be thought good, though really bad, and to
be reputed chaste, though really guilty of adultery, so long they were
involved in deceit; and so the Holy Spirit, according to the Scripture, was
fleeing from them.(2) It is from the crowd, therefore, of these men who
hitherto concealed their character that the faithless man whom I suggested
started up. Why does he ask me whence he started up, shutting his eyes to
all this crowd, from which sufficient noise arises to satisfy the blind, if
we take into consideration none but those who might have been convicted and
degraded from their office?
CHAP. 32.--37. What shall we say of what he himself advanced in his
epistle, that "Quodvultdeus, having been convicted of two adulteries, and
cast out from among you, was received by those of our party?"(1) What then
(I would speak without prejudice to this man, who proved his case to be a
good one, or at least persuaded men that it was so), when such men among
you, being as yet undetected, administer baptism, what is received at their
hands,--faith, or guilt? Surely not faith, because they have not the
conscience of one who gives in holiness to cleanse the conscience of the
recipient. But yet not guilt either, in virtue of that added word: "For he
that has received his faith wittingly from one that is faithless, receives
not faith but guilt." But when men were baptized by those of whom I speak,
they were surely ignorant what sort of men they were. Furthermore, not
receiving faith from their baptizers, who had not the conscience of one
that gives in holiness, and not receiving guilt, because they were baptized
not knowing but in ignorance of their faults, they therefore remained
without faith and without guilt. They are not, therefore, in the number of
men of such abandoned character. But neither can they be in the number of
the faithful, because, as they could not receive guilt, so neither could
they receive faith from their baptizers. But we see that they are reputed
by you in the number of the faithful, and that no one of you declares his
opinion that they ought to be baptized, but all of you hold valid the
baptism which they have already received. They have therefore received
faith; and yet they have not received it from those who had not the
conscience of one that gives in holiness, to cleanse the conscience of the
recipient. Whence then did they receive it? This is the point from which I
make my effort; this is the question that I press most earnestly; to this I
do most urgently demand an answer.
CHAP. 33.--38. See now how Petilianus, to avoid answering this
question, or to avoid being proved to be incapable of answering it, wanders
off vainly into irrelevant matter in abuse of us, accusing us and proving
nothing; and when he chances to make an endeavor to resist, with something
like a show of fighting for his cause, he is everywhere overcome with the
greatest ease. But yet he nowhere gives an answer of any kind to this one
question which we ask: If the conscience of one that gives in holiness is
what we look for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient, by what means
is he to be cleansed who received baptism while the conscience of the giver
was polluted, without the knowledge of him who was to receive it? for in
these words, which he quoted from my epistle, he set me forth as asking a
question, while he showed himself as giving no answer. For after saying
what I have just now recited, and when, on being brought into a great
strait on every side, he had been compelled to say that the baptizer ought
to be examined by the candidate for baptism, and the candidate in turn by
the baptizer; and when he had tried to fortify this statement by the
example of John, in hopes that he might find auditors either of the
greatest negligence or of the greatest ignorance, he then went on to
advance other testimonies of Scripture wholly irrelevant to the matter in
hand, as the saying of the eunuch to Philip, "See, here is water; what doth
hinder me to be baptized?"(2) "inasmuch as he knew," says he, "that those
of abandoned character were prevented;" arguing that the reason why Philip
did not forbid him to be baptized was because he had proved, in his reading
of the Scriptures, how far he believed in Christ,--as though he had
prohibited Simon Magus. And again, he urges that the prophets were afraid
of being deceived by false baptism, and that therefore Isaiah said, "Lying
water that has not faith,"(3) as though showing that water among faithless
men is lying; whereas it is not Isaiah but Jeremiah that says this of lying
men, calling the people in a figure water, as is most clearly shown in the
Apocalypse.(4) And again, he quotes as words of David, "Let not the oil of
the sinner anoint my head," when David has been speaking of the flattery of
the smooth speaker deceiving with false praise, so as to lead the head of
the man praised to wax great with pride. And this meaning is made manifest
by the words immediately preceding in the same psalm. For he says, "Let the
righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; and let him reprove me: but the
oil of the sinner shall not break my head."(5) What can be clearer than
this sentence? what more manifest? For he declares that he had rather be
reproved in kindness with the sharp correction of the righteous, so that he
may be healed, than anointed with the soft speaking of the flatterer, so as
to be puffed up with pride.
CHAP. 34--39. Petilianus quotes also the warning of the Apostle John,
that we should not believe every spirit, but try the spirits whether they
are of God,(6) as though this care should be bestowed in order that the
wheat should be separated from the chaff in this present world before its
time, and not rather for fear that the wheat should be deceived by the
chaff; or as though, even if the lying spirit should have said something
that was true, it was to be denied, because the spirit whom we should
abominate had said it. But if any one thinks this, he is mad enough to
contend that Peter ought not to have said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God,"(1) because the devils had already said something to the
same effect.(2) Seeing, therefore, that the baptism of Christ, whether
administered by an unrighteous or a righteous man, is nothing but the
baptism of Christ what a cautious man and faithful Christian should do is
to avoid the unrighteousness of man, not to condemn the sacraments of God.
40. Assuredly in all these things Petilianus gives no answer to the
question, If the conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we look
for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient, by what means is he to be
cleansed who receives baptism, when the conscience of the giver is polluted
without the knowledge of the proposed recipient? A certain Cyprian, a
colleague of his from Thubursicubur, was caught in a brothel with a woman
of most abandoned character, and was brought before Primianus of Carthage,
and condemned. Now, when this man baptized before he was detected and
condemned, it is manifest that he had not the conscience of one that gives
in holiness, so as to cleanse the conscience of the recipient. By what
means then have they been cleansed who at this day, after he has been
condemned, are certainly not washed again? It was not necessary to name the
man save only to prevent Petilianus from repeating, 'Who is the man, and
from what corner has he started up, that you propose to us?" Why did not
your party examine that baptizer, as John, in the opinion of Petilianus,
was examined? Or was the real fact this, that they examined him so far as
man can examine man, but were unable to find him out, as he long lay hid
with cunning falseness?
CHAP. 35.--Was the water administered by this man not lying? or is the
oil of the fornicator not the oil of the sinner? or must we hold what the
Catholic Church says, and what is true, that that water and that oil are
not his by whom they were administered, but His whose name was then
invoked? Why did they who were baptized by that hypocrite, whose sins were
concealed, fail to try the spirit, to prove that it was not of God? For the
Holy Spirit of discipline was even then fleeing from the hypocrite? Was it
that He was fleeing from him, but at the same time not deserting His
sacraments, though ministered by him? Lastly, since you do not deny that
those men have been already cleansed, whom you take no care to have
cleansed now that he is condemned, see whether, after shedding over the
subject so many mists in so many different ways, Petilianus, after all, in
any place gives any answer to the question by what means these men have
been cleansed, if what we look for to cleanse the conscience of the
recipient is the conscience of one that gives in holiness, such as the man
who was secretly unclean could not have had.
41. Making then, no answer to this which is so urgently asked of him,
and, in the next place, even seeking for himself a latitude of speech, he
says, "since both prophets and apostles have been cautious enough to fear
these things, with what face do you say that the baptism of the sinner is
holy to those who believe with a good conscience?" Just as though I or any
Catholic maintained that that baptism was of the sinner which is
administered or received with a sinner to officiate, instead of being His
in virtue of belief in whose name the candidate is baptized! Then he goes
off to an invective against the traitor Judas, saying against him whatever
he can, quoting the testimony of the prophets uttered concerning him so
long a time before, as though he would steep the Church of Christ dispersed
throughout the world, whose cause is involved in this discussion, in the
impiety of the traitor Judas,--not considering what this very thing should
have recalled to his mind, that we ought no more to doubt that that is the
Church of Christ which is spread abroad throughout the world, since this
was prophesied with truth so many years before, than we ought to doubt that
it was necessary that Christ should be betrayed by one of His disciples,
because this was prophesied in like manner.
CHAP. 36.--42. But after this, when Petilianus came to that objection
of ours, that they allowed the baptism of the followers of Maximianus, whom
they had condemned,(4)--although in the statement of this question he
thought it right to use his own words rather than mine; for neither do we
assert that the baptism of sinners is of profit to us, seeing that we
maintain it to belong not only to no sinners, but to no men whatsoever, in
that we are satisfied that it is Christ's alone,--having put the question
in this form, he says, "Yet you obstinately aver that it is right that the
baptism of sinners should be of profit to you, because we too, according to
your statement, maintained the baptism of criminals whom we justly
condemned." When he came to this question, as I said before, even all the
show of fight which he had made deserted him. He could not find any way to
go, any means of escape, any path by which, either through subtle watching
or bold enterprise, he could either secretly steal away, or sally forth by
force. "Although this," he says, 'I will demonstrate in my second book, how
great the difference is between those of our party and those of yours whom
you call innocent, yet, in the meantime, first extricate yourselves from
the offenses with which you are acquainted in your colleagues, and then
seek out the mode of dealing with those whom we cast out." Would any one,
any man upon the earth, give an answer like this, save one who is setting
himself against the truth, against which he cannot find any answer that can
be made? Accordingly, if we too were to use the same words: In the
meantime, first extricate yourselves from the offenses with which you are
acquainted in your colleagues, and then bring up against us any charge
connected with those whom you hold to be wicked amongst us,--what is the
result? Have we both won the victory, or are we both defeated? Nay, rather
He has gained the victory for His Church and in His Church, who has taught
us in His Scriptures that no man should glory in men, and that he that
glorieth should glory in the Lord.(1) For behold in our case who assert
with the Eloquence of truth that the man who believes is not justified by
him by whom he is baptized, but by Him of whom it is written, "To him that
believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for
righteousness,"(2) since we do not glory in men, and strive, when we glory,
to glory in the Lord in virtue of His own gift, how wholly safe are we,
whatever fault or charge Petilianus may have been able to prove concerning
certain men of our communion! For among us, whatever wicked men are either
wholly undetected, or, being known to certain persons, are yet tolerated
for the sake of the bond of unity and peace, in consideration of other good
men to whom their wickedness is unknown, and before whom they could not be
convicted, in order that the wheat may not be rooted up together with the
tares, yet they so bear the burden of their own wickedness, that no one
shares it with them except those who are pleased with their
unrighteousness. Nor indeed have we any apprehension that those whom they
baptize cannot be justified, since they believe in Him that justifieth the
ungodly that their faith may be counted for righteousness.(3)
CHAP. 37.--43. Furthermore, according to our tenets, neither he of whom
Petilianus said that he was cast forth by us for the sin of the men of
Sodom, another being appointed in his place, and that afterwards he was
actually restored to our college,--talking all the time without knowing
what he was saying,--nor he whom he declares to have been penitent among
you, in whatever degree their respective cases do or do not admit of any
defense, can neither of them prejudice the Church, which is spread abroad
throughout all nations, and increases in the world until the harvest. For
if they were really wicked members of it that you accuse, then they were
already not in it, but among the chaff; but if they are good, while you
defame their character with unrighteous accusations, they are themselves
being tried like gold, while you burn after the similitude of chaff. Yet
the sins of other men do not defile the Church, which is spread abroad
throughout the whole world, according to most faithful prophesies, waiting
for the end of the world as for its shore, on which, when it is landed, it
will be freed from the bad fish, in company with which the inconvenience of
nature might be borne without sin within the same nets of the Lord, so long
as it was not right to be impatiently separated from them. Nor yet is the
discipline of the Church on this account neglected by constant and diligent
and prudent ministers of Christ, in whose province crimes are in such wise
brought to light that they cannot be defended on any plea of probability.
Innumerable proofs of this may be found in those who have been bishops or
clergy of the second degree of orders, and now, being degraded, have either
gone abroad into other lands through shame, or have gone over to you
yourselves or to other heresies, or are known in their own districts; of
whom there is so great a multitude dispersed throughout the earth, that if
Petilianus, bridling for a time his rashness in speaking, had taken them
into consideration, he would never have fallen into so manifestly false and
groundless a misconception, as to think that we ought to join in what he
says: None of you is free from guilt, where no one that is guilty is
condemned.
CHAP. 38.--44. For, to pass over others dwelling in different quarters
of the earth,-for you will scarcely find any place in which this kind of
men is not represented, from whom it may appear that overseers and
ministers are wont to be condemned even in the Catholic Church,--we need
not look far to find the example of Honorius of Milevis. But take the case
of Splendonius, whom Petilianus ordained priest after he had been condemned
in the Catholic Church, and rebaptized by himself, whose condemnation in
Gaul, communicated to us by our brethren, our colleague Fortunatus caused
to be publicly read in Constantina, and whom the same Petilianus afterwards
cast forth on experience of his abominable deceit. From the case of this
Splendonius, when was there a time when he might not have been reminded
after what fashion wicked men are degraded from their office even in the
Catholic Church? I wonder on what precipice of rashness his heart was
resting when he dictated those words in which he ventured to say, "No one
of you is free from guilt, where no one that is guilty is condemned."
Wherefore the wicked, being bodily intermingled with the good, but
spiritually separated from them in the Catholic Church, both when they are
undetected through the infirmity of human nature, and when they are
condemned from considerations of discipline, in every case bear their own
burden. And in this way those are free from danger who are baptized by them
with the baptism of Christ, if they keep free from share in their sins
either by imitation or consent; seeing that in like manner, if they were
baptized by the best of men, they would not be justified except by Him that
justifieth the ungodly: since to those that believe on Him that justifieth
the ungodly their faith is counted for righteousness.
CHAP. 39.--45. But as for you, when the case of the followers of
Maximianus is brought up against you, who, after being condemned by the
sentence of a Council of 310 bishops;(1) after being utterly defeated in
the same Council, quoted in the records of so many proconsuls, in the
chronicles of so many municipal towns; after being driven forth from the
basilicas of which they were in possession, by the order of the judges,
enforced by the troops of the several cities, were yet again received with
all honor by you, together with those whom they had baptized outside the
pale of your communion, without any question respecting their baptism,--
when confronted, I say, with their case, you can find no reply to make.
Indeed, you are vanquished by an expressed opinion, not indeed true, but
proceeding from yourselves, by which you maintain that men perish for the
faults of others in the same communion of the sacraments, and that each
man's character is determined by that of the man by whom he is baptized,--
that he is guilty if his baptizer is guilty, innocent if he is innocent.
But if these views are true, there can be no doubt that, to say nothing of
innumerable others, you are destroyed by the sins of the followers of
Maximianus, whose guilt your party, in so large a Council, has exaggerated
even to the proportions of the sin of those whom the earth swallowed up
alive. But if the faults of the followers of Maximianus have not destroyed
you, then are these opinions false which you entertain; and much less have
certain indefinite unproved faults of the Africans been able to destroy the
entire world. And accordingly, as the apostle says, "Every man shall bear
his own burden;"(2) and the baptism of Christ is no one's except Christ's;
and it is to no purpose that Petilianus promises that he will take as the
subject of his second book the charges which we bring concerning the
followers of Maximianus, entertaining too low an opinion of men's
intellects, as though they do not perceive that he has nothing to say.
CHAP. 40.--46. For if the baptism which Praetextatus and Felicianus
administered in the communion of Maximianus was their own, why was it
received by you in those whom they baptized as though it were the baptism
of Christ? But if it is truly the baptism of Christ, as indeed it is, and
yet could not profit those who had received it with the guilt of schism,
what do you say that you could have granted to those whom you have received
into your body with the same baptism, except that, now that the offense of
their accursed division is wiped out by the bond of peace, they should not
be compelled to receive the sacrament of the holy layer as though they had
it not, but that, as what they had was before for their destruction, so it
should now begin to be of profit to them? Or if this is not granted to them
in your communion, because it could not possibly be that it should be
granted to schismatics among schismatics, it is at any rate granted to you
in the Catholic communion, not that you should receive baptism as though it
were lacking in you, but that the baptism which you have actually received
should be of profit to you. For all the sacraments of Christ, if not
combined with the love which belongs to the unity of Christ, are possessed
not unto salvation, but unto judgment. But since it is not a true verdict,
but your verdict, "that through the baptism of certain traditors the
baptism of Christ has perished from the world in general," it is with good
reason that you cannot find any answer to make respecting the recognition
of the baptism of the followers of Maximianus.
47. See therefore, and remember with the most watchful care, how
Petilianus has made no answer to that very question, which he proposes to
himself in such terms as to seem to make it a starting-point from which to
say something. For the former question he has dismissed altogether, and has
not wished to speak of it to us, because I suppose it was beyond his power;
nor is he at any time, up to the very end Of his volume, going to say
anything about it, though he quoted it from the first part of my epistle as
though it were a matter calling for refutation. For even though he has
added the two words which he accused me of having suppressed, as though
they were the strongest bulwarks of his position, he yet lies wholly
defenseless, unable to find any answer to make when he is asked, If the
conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse the
conscience of the recipient, where are we to find means for cleansing the
conscience of the man who is unacquainted with the conscience of him gives,
but not in holiness? and if it be the case that any one who has received
his faith from one that is faithless, receives not faith but guilt, from
what source is he to receive not guilt but faith, who is unwittingly
baptized by one that is faithless? To this question it has long been
manifest from what he says that he has made no answer.
48. In the next place, he has gone on, with calumnious mouth, to abuse
monasteries and monks, finding fault also with me, as having been the
founder of this kind of life.(1) And what this kind of life really is he
does not know at all, or rather, though it is perfectly well known
throughout all the world, he pretends that he is unacquainted with it.
Then, asserting that I had said that Christ was the baptizer, he has also
added certain words from my epistle as though I had set this forth as my
own sentiment, when I had really quoted it as his and yours, and it was
inveighed against with most copious harshness, as if it were I who had said
these things against myself, when what he reprehended was not mine, but his
and your sentiment, as I will presently show clearly to the best of my
ability.(2) Then he has endeavored to show us, in many unnecessary words,
that Christ does not baptize, but that baptism is administered in His name,
at once in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;
of which Trinity itself he has said, either because it was what he wished,
or because it was all that he could say, that "Christ is the centre of the
Trinity." In the next place, he has taken occasion of the names of the
sorcerers Simon and Barjesus to vent against us what insults he thought
fit. Then he goes on, keeping in guarded suspense the case of Optatus of
Thamugas, that he might not be steeped in the odium that arose from it,
denying that neither he or his party could have passed judgment upon him,
and actually intimating in respect of him, that he was crushed in
consequence of suggestions from myself.
CHAP. 41.--49. Lastly, he has ended his epistle with an exhortation and
warning to his own party, that they should not be deceived by us, and with
a lamentation over those of our party, that we had made them worse than
they had been before. Having therefore carefully considered and discussed
these points, as appears with sufficient clearness from the words of the
epistle which he wrote, Petilianus has made no answer at all to the
position which I advanced to begin with in my epistle, when I asked,
Supposing it to be true, as he asserts, that the conscience of one that
gives--or rather, to add what he considers so great a support to his
argument--that the conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we look
for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient, by what means he who
receives baptism is to be cleansed, when, if the conscience of the giver is
polluted, it is without the knowledge of the proposed recipient? Whence it
is not surprising that a man resisting in the cause of falsehood, pressed
hard in the straits of the truth that contradicts it, should have chosen
rather to gasp forth mad abuse, than to walk in the path of that truth
which cannot be overcome.
50. And now I would beg of you to pay especial attention to the next
few words, that I may show you clearly what he has been afraid of in not
answering this, and that I may bring into the light what he has endeavored
to shroud in obscurity. It certainly was in his power, when we asked by
what means he is to be cleansed, who receives baptism when the conscience
of the giver is polluted without the knowledge of the proposed recipient,
to answer with the greatest ease, From our Lord God; and at any rate to say
with the utmost confidence, God wholly cleanses the conscience of the
recipient, when he is unacquainted with the stain upon the conscience of
him that gives but not in holiness. But when a man had already been
compelled by the tenets of your sect to rest the cleansing of the recipient
on the conscience of the giver, in that he had said, "For the conscience of
him that gives," or "of him that gives in holiness, is looked for to
cleanse the conscience of the recipient," he was naturally afraid lest any
one should seem to be better baptized by a wicked man who concealed his
wickedness, than by one that was genuinely and manifestly good; for in the
former case his cleansing would depend not on the conscience of one that
gave in holiness, but on the most excellent holiness of God Himself. With
this apprehension, therefore, that he might not be involved in so great an
absurdity, or rather madness, as not to know where he could make his
escape, he was unwilling to say by what means the conscience of the
recipient should be cleansed, when he does not know of the stain upon the
conscience of him that gives but not in holiness; and he thought it better,
by making a general confusion with his quarrelsome uproar, to conceal what
was asked of him, than to give a reply to his question, which should at
once discomfit him; never, however, thinking that our letter could be read
by men of such good understanding, or that his would be read by those who
had read ours as well, to which he has professed to make an answer.
CHAP. 42.--51. For what I just now said is put with the greatest
clearness in that very epistle of mine, in answering which he has said
nothing; and I would beg of you to listen for a few moments to what he
there has done. And although you are partisans of his, and hate us, yet, if
you can, bear it with equanimity. For in his former epistle, to the first
portion of which--the only portion which had then come into our hands--I
had in the first instance made my reply, he had so rested the hope that is
found in baptism in the baptizer, as to say, "For everything consists of an
origin and root; and if anything has not a head, it is nothing." Since then
Petilianus had said this, not wishing anything to be understood by the
origin and root and head of baptizing a man, except the man by whom he
might be baptized, I made a comment, and said "We ask, therefore, in a case
where the faithlessness of the baptizer is undetected, if then the man whom
he baptizes receives faith and not guilt? if then the baptizer is not his
origin and root and head, who is it from whom he receives faith? where is
the origin from which he springs? where is the root of which he is a shoot?
where the head which is his starting-point? Can it be that, when he who is
baptized is unaware of the faithlessness of his baptizer, it is then Christ
who is the origin and root and head?" This therefore I say and exclaim now
also, as I did there as well: "Alas for human rashness and conceit! Why do
you not allow that it is always Christ who gives faith, for the purpose of
making a man a Christian by giving it? Why do you not allow that Christ is
always the origin of the Christian, that the Christian always plants his
root in Christ, that Christ is the Head of the Christian? Will it then be
urged that, even where spiritual grace is dispensed to those that believe
by the hands of a holy and faithful minister, it is still not the minister
himself who justifies, but that One of whom it is said, ' He justifieth the
ungodly'?(1) But unless we admit this, either the Apostle Paul was the head
and origin of those whom he had planted, or Apollos the root of those whom
he had watered, rather than He who had given them faith in briefing;
whereas the same Paul says, 'I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave
the increase. So that neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that
watereth; but God that giveth the increase."(2) Nor was the apostle himself
their root, but rather He who says, 'I am the vine, ye are the
branches.'(3) How, too, could he be their head, when he says that 'we,
being many, are one body in Christ."(4) and expressly declares in many
passages that Christ Himself is the Head of the whole body? Wherefore,
whether a man receives the sacrament of baptism from a faithful or a
faithless minister his whole hope is in Christ, that he fall not under the
condemnation, that ' Cursed is he that placeth his hope in man!"'(5)
CHAP. 43.--52. These things, I think, I put with clearness and truth in
my former epistle, when I made answer to Petilianus. These things I have
also now quoted, intimating and commending to you the truth that our faith
rests on something else altogether than man, and that we believe that the
Lord Christ is the cleanser and the justifier of men that believe in Him
that justifieth the ungodly, that their faith may be counted unto them for
righteousness, whether the man who administers the baptism be righteous, or
such an impious and deceitful man as the Holy Spirit flees. Then I went on
to point out what absurdity would follow were it otherwise, and I said, as
I say now: "Otherwise, if each man is born again in spiritual grace of the
same sort as he by whom he is baptized, and if, when he who baptizes him is
manifestly a good man, then he himself gives faith, he is himself the
origin and root and head of him who is being born; whilst, when the
baptizer is faithless without its being known, then the baptized person
receives faith from Christ, then derives his origin from Christ, then he is
rooted in Christ then he boasts in Christ as his head; in that case all who
are baptized should wish that they might have faithless baptizers, and be
ignorant of their faithlessness. For however good their baptizers might
have been, Christ is certainly beyond comparison better still, and He will
then be the Head of the baptized if the faithlessness of the baptizer shall
escape detection. But if it be perfect madness to hold such a view (for it
is Christ always that justifieth he ungodly, by changing his ungodliness
into Christianity; it is from Christ always that faith is received; Christ
is always he origin of the regenerate, and he Head of the Church), what
weight then will those words have, which thoughtless readers value by their
sound, without inquiring what their inner meaning is?"(1) This much I said
at that time; this is written in my epistle.
CHAP. 44.--53. Then a little after, as he had said, "This being so,
brethren, what perversity must that be, that he who is guilty by reason of
his own faults should make another free from guilt, whereas the Lord Jesus
Christ says, ' Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt
tree bringeth forth evil fruit: do men gather grapes of thorns?(2) and
again, 'A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart, bringeth forth
good things: and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil
things,'"3--by which words Petilianus showed with sufficient clearness,
that the man who baptizes is to be looked on as the tree, and he who is
baptized as the fruit: to this I had answered, If the good tree is the good
baptizer, and his good fruit he whom he has baptized, then any one who has
been baptized by a bad man, even if his wickedness be not manifest, cannot
by any possibility be good, for he is sprung from an evil tree. For a good
tree is one thing; a tree whose quality is concealed, but yet bad, is
another. What else did I wish to be understood by those words, except what
I had stated a little above, that the tree and its fruit do not represent
him that baptizes and him that is baptized; but that the man ought to be
received as signified by the tree, his works and his life by the fruit,
which are always good in the good man, and evil in the evil man, lest this
absurdity should follow, that a man should be bad when baptized by a bad
man, even though his wickedness were concealed, being, as it were, the
fruit of a tree whose quality was unknown, but yet bad? To which he has
answered nothing whatsoever.
CHAP. 45.--54. But that neither he nor any one of you might say that,
when any one of concealed bad character is the baptizer, then he whom he
baptizes is not his fruit, but he fruit of Christ, I went on immediately to
point out what a foolish error is consequent also on that opinion; and I
repeated, though in other words, what I had said shortly before: If, when
the quality of the tree is concealed, but evil, any one who may have been
baptized by it is born, no of it butt of Christ, then they are justified
with greater holiness who are baptized by wicked men, whose wickedness is
concealed, than they who are baptized by men that are genuinely and
manifestly good.(4) Petilianus then, being hemmed in by these embarrassing
straits, said nothing about the earlier part on which these remarks
depended, and in his answer so quoted his absurd consequence of his error
as though I had stated it as my own opinion, whereas it was really stated
in order that he might perceive the amount of evil consequent on his
opinion, and so be forced to alter it. Imposing, therefore, this deceit on
those who hear and read his words, and never for a moment supposing that
what we have written could be read, he begins a vehement and petulant
invective against me, as though I had thought that all who are baptized
ought to wish that they might have as their baptizers men who are
faithless, without knowing this themselves, since, however good the men
might be whom they had to baptize them, Christ is incomparably better, who
will then be the head of the person baptized, if the faithless baptizer
conceal his true character. As though, too, I had thought that those were
justified with greater holiness who are baptized by evil men, whose
character is concealed, than those who are baptized by men that are
genuinely and manifestly good; when this marvellous piece of madness was
only mentioned by me as following necessarily on the opinion of those who
think with Petilianus, that a man, when baptized, bears the same relation
to his baptizer as fruit does to the tree from which it springs,--good
fruit springing from a good tree, evil fruit from an evil tree,--seeing
that they, when they are bidden by me to answer whose fruit they think a
man that is baptized to be when he is baptized by one of secretly bad
character, since they do not venture to rebaptize him, are compelled to
answer, that then he is not the fruit of that man of secretly bad
character, but that he is the fruit of Christ. And so they are followed by
a consequence contrary to their inclination, which none but a madman would
entertain,--that if a man is the fruit of his baptizer when he is baptized
by one that is genuinely and manifestly good, but when he is baptized by
one of secretly bad character, he is then not his fruit, but the fruit of
Christ,--it cannot but follow that they are justified with greater holiness
who are baptized by men of secretly bad character, than those who are
baptized by men who are genuinely and manifestly good.
CHAP. 46.--55. Now, seeing that when Petilianus attributes this to me
as though it were my opinion, he makes it an occasion for a serious and
vehement invective against me, he at any rate shows, by the very force of
his indignation, how great a sin it is in his opinion to entertain such
views; and, accordingly, whatever he has wished it to appear that he said
against me for holding this opinion will be found to have been really said
against himself, who is proved to entertain the view. For he shows heroin
by how great force on the side of truth he is overcome, when he cannot find
any other door of escape except to pretend that it was I who entertained
the views which really are his own. Just as if those whom the apostle
confutes for maintaining that there was no resurrection from the dead, were
to wish to bring an accusation against the same apostle, on the ground that
he said, "Then is Christ not risen," and to maintain that the preaching of
the apostle was vain, and the faith of those who believed in it was also
vain, and that false witnesses were found against God in those who had said
that He raised up Christ from the dead. This is what Petilianus wished to
do to me, never expecting that any one could read what I had written, which
he could not answer, though very anxious that men should believe him to
have answered it. But just as, if any one had done this to the apostle, the
whole calumnious accusation would have recoiled on the head of those who
made it so soon as the entire passage in his epistle was read, and the
preceding words restored, on which any one who reads them must perceive
that those which I have quoted depend, in the same way, so soon as the
preceding words of my epistle are restored, the accusation which Petilianus
brings against me is cast back with all the greater force upon his own
head, from which he had striven to remove it.
56. For the apostle, in confuting those who denied that there was any
resurrection of the dead, corrects their view by showing the absurdity
which follows those who entertain this view, however loth they may be to
admit the consequence, in order that, while they shrink in abhorrence from
what is impious to say, hey may correct what they have ventured to believe.
His argument continues thus: "But if there be no resurrection of the dead,
then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching
vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of
God: because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ; whom He
raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not."(1) in order that, while
they fear to say that Christ had not risen, with the other wicked and
accursed conclusions which follow from such a statement, they may correct
what they said in a spirit of folly and infidelity, that there is no
resurrection of the dead. If, therefore, you take away what stands at the
head of this argument, "If there be no resurrection of the dead," the rest
is spoken amiss, and yet must be ascribed to the apostle. But if you
restore the supposition on which the rest depends, and place as the
hypothesis from which you start, "There is no resurrection of the dead,"
then the conclusion will follow rightly, "Then is Christ not risen, and our
preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain," with all the rest that is
appended to it. And all these statements of the apostle are wise and good,
since whatever evil they have in them is to be imputed to those who denied
the resurrection of the dead. In the same manner also, in my epistle, take
away my supposition, If every one is born again in spiritual grace of the
same character as he by whom he is baptized, and if, when the man who
baptizes is genuinely and manifestly good, he does of himself give faith,
he is the origin and root and head of him who is being born again; but when
the baptizer is a wicked man, and undetected in his wickedness, then each
man who is baptized receives his faith from Christ, derives his origin from
Christ, is rooted in Christ, makes his boast in Christ as his Head:--take
away, I say, this hypothesis, on which all that follows depends, and there
remains a saying of the worst description which must fairly be ascribed to
me, viz., that all who are baptized should desire that they should have
faithless men to baptize them, and be ignorant of their faithlessness. For
however good men they may have to baptize them, Christ is incomparably
better who will then be the Head of the baptized, if the baptizer be a
faithless man, but undetected.(1) But let the statements that you make be
restored, and then it will forthwith be found that this which depends upon
it and follows in close connection from it is not my sentiment, and that
any evil which it contains is retorted on the opinion which you maintain.
In like manner, take away the supposition, If the good baptizer is the good
tree, so that he whom he has baptized is his good fruit, and if, when the
character of an evil tree is concealed, then any one that has been baptized
by it is born, not of it, but of Christ,--take away this hypothesis, which
you were compelled to confess had its origin in your sect and in the letter
of Petilianus, and the mad conclusion which follows from it will be mine,
to be ascribed to me alone, Then they are justified with greater holiness
who are baptized by undetected evil men, than they who are baptized by men
that are genuinely and manifestly good.(2) But restore the hypothesis on
which this depends, and you will at once see both that I have been right in
making this statement for your correction, and that all that with good
reason diseases you in this opinion has recoiled upon your own head.
CHAP. 47--57. Furthermore, in like manner as those who denied the
resurrection of the dead could in no way defend themselves from the evil
consequences which the apostle proved to follow from their premises, in
order to refute their error, saying, "Then is not Christ raised," with the
other conclusions of similar atrocity, unless they changed their opinions,
and acknowledged that there was a resurrection of the dead; so is it
necessary that you should change your opinion, and cease to rest on man the
hope of those who are baptized, if you do not wish to have imputed to you
what we say for your refutation and correction, that they are justified
with greater holiness who are baptized by undetected evil men than those
that are baptized by men that are genuinely and manifestly good. For if you
make your first assertion, see what I say, unless some one shall suppress
this a second time, and make out that I have entertained the opinion which
I quote for your refutation and correction. See what I lay down as my
premiss, from which hangs the statement which I shall subsequently make: If
you rest the hope of those who are to be baptized on the man by whom they
are baptized, and if you maintain, as Petilianus wrote, that the man who
baptizes is the origin and root and head of him that is baptized; if you
receive as the good tree the good man who baptizes, and as his good fruit
the man who has been baptized by him; then you put it into our heads to ask
from what origin he springs, from what root he shoots up, to what head he
is joined, from what tree he is born, who is baptized by an undetected bad
man? For to this inquiry, belongs also the following, to which I have over
and over again maintained that Petilianus has given no reply: By what means
is a man to be cleansed who receives baptism while he is ignorant of the
stain upon the conscience of him that gives but not in holiness? for this
conscience of him that gives, or of him that gives in holiness, Petilianus
wishes to be the origin, root, head, seed, tree from which the
sanctification of the baptized has its existence,--springs, begins, sprouts
forth, is born.
CHAP. 48.--58. When we ask, therefore, by what means the man is to be
cleansed whom you do not baptize again in your communion, even when it has
been made clear that he has been baptized by some one who, on account of
some concealed iniquity, did not at the time possess the conscience of one
that gives in holiness, what answer do you intend to make, except that he
is cleansed by Christ or by God, although, indeed, Christ is Himself God
over all, blessed for ever,(3) or by the Holy Spirit since He too is
Himself God, because this Trinity of Persons is one God? Whence Peter,
after saying to a man, "Thou hast dared to lie to the Holy Ghost,"
immediately went on to add what was the nature of the Holy Ghost, saying,
"Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God."(4) Lastly, even if you were to
say that he was cleansed and purified by an angel when he is unacquainted
with the pollution in the conscience of him that gives but not in holiness,
take notice that it is said of the saints, when they shall have risen to
eternal life, that they shall then be equal to the angels of God.(5) Any
one, therefore, that is cleansed even by an angel is cleansed with greater
holiness than if he were cleansed by any kind of conscience of man. Why
then are you unwilling that it should be said to you, If cleaning is
wrought by the hands of a man when he is genuinely and manifestly good; but
when the man is evil, but undetected in his wickedness, then since he has
not the conscience of one that gives in holiness, it is no longer he, but
God, or an angel, that cleanses; therefore they who are baptized by
undetected evil men are justified with greater holiness than those who are
baptized by men that are genuinely and manifestly good? And if this opinion
is displeasing to you, as in reality it ought to be displeasing to every
one, then take away the source from which it springs, correct the premiss
to which it is indissolubly bound; for if these do not precede as
hypotheses, the other will not follow as a consequence.
CHAP. 49.--59. Do not therefore any longer say, "The conscience of one
that gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse the conscience of the
recipient," lest you be asked, When a stain on the conscience of the giver
is concealed, who cleanses the conscience of the recipient? And when you
shall have answered, Either God or an angel (since there is no other answer
which you possibly can make), then should follow a consequence whereby you
would be confounded: Those then are justified with greater holiness who are
baptized by undetected evil men, so as to be cleansed by God or by an
angel, than those who are baptized by men who are genuinely and manifestly
good, who cannot be compared with God or with the angels. But prevail upon
yourselves to say what is said by Truth and by the Catholic Church, that
not only when the minister of baptism is evil, but also when he is holy and
good, hope is still: not to be placed in man, but in Him that justifieth
the ungodly, in whom if any man believe, his faith is counted for
righteousness.(1) For when we say, Christ baptizes, we do not mean by a
visible ministry, as Petilianus believes, or would have men think that he
believes, to be our meaning, but by a hidden grace, by a hidden power in
the Holy Spirit as it is said of Him by John the Baptist, "The same is He
which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost."(2) Nor has He, as Petilianus says,
now ceased to baptize; but He still does it, not by any ministry of the
body, but by the invisible working of His majesty. For in that we say, He
Himself baptizes, we do not mean, He Himself holds and dips in the water
the bodies of the believers; but He Himself invisibly cleanses, and that He
does to the whole Church without exception. Nor, indeed, may we refuse to
believe the words of the Apostle Paul who says concerning Him, "Husbands,
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for
it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the
word."(3) Here you see that Christ sanctifies; here you see that Christ
also Himself washes, Himself purifies with the self-same washing of water
by the word, wherein the ministers are seen to do their work in the body.
Let no one, therefore, claim unto himself what is of God. The hope of men
is only sure when it is fixed on Him who cannot deceive, since "Cursed be
every one that trusteth in man,"(4) and "Blessed is that man that maketh
the Lord His trust."(5) For the faithful steward shall receive as his
reward eternal life; but the unfaithful steward, when he dispenses his
lord's provisions to his fellow-servants, must in no wise be conceived to
make the provisions useless by his own unfaithfulness. For the Lord says,
"Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after
their works."(6) And this is therefore the injunction that is given us
against evil stewards, that the good things of God should be received at
their hands, but that we should beware of their own evil life, by reason of
its unlikeness to what they thus dispense.
CHAP. 50.--60. But if it is clear that Petilianus has made no answer to
those first words of my epistle, and that, when he has endeavored to make
an answer, he has shown all the more clearly how incapable he was of
answering, what shall I say in respect of those portions of my writings
which he has not even attempted to answer, on which he has not touched at
all? And yet if any one shall be willing to review their character, having
in his possession both my writings and those of Petilianus, I think he will
understand by what confirmation they are supported. And that I may show you
this as shortly as I can, I would beg you to call to mind the proofs that
were advanced from holy Scripture, or refresh your memory by reading both
what he has brought forward as against me, and what I have brought forward
in my answer as against you, and see how I have shown that the passages
which he has brought forward are antagonistic not to me, but rather to
yourselves; whilst he has altogether failed to touch those which I brought
forward as especially necessary, and in that one passage of the apostle
which he has endeavored to make use of as though it favored him, you will
see how he found himself without the means of making his escape.
61. For the portion of this epistle which he wrote to his adherents--
from the beginning down to the passage in which he says, "This is the
commandment of the Lord to us, 'When they persecute you in this city, flee
ye into another;'(1) and if they persecute you in that also, flee ye to a
third"--came first into my hands, and to it I made a reply; and when this
reply of ours had fallen, in turn, into his hands, he wrote in answer to it
this which I am now refuting, showing that he has made no reply to mine. In
that first portion, therefore, of his writings to which I first replied,
these are the passages of Scripture which he conceives to be opposed to us:
"Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth
forth evil fruit. Do men gather grapes of thorns?"(2) And again: "A good
man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things: and
an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things."(3) And
again: "When a man is baptized by one that is dead, his washing profiteth
him nothing."(4) From these passages he is anxious to show that the man who
is baptized by one that is dead, his washing profiteth him nothing."(4)
From these passages he is anxious to show that the man who is baptized is
made to partake of the character of him by whom he is baptized; I on the
other hand, have shown in what sense these passages should be received, and
that they could in no wise aid his view. But as for the other expressions
which he has used against evil and accursed men, I have sufficiently shown
that they are applicable to the Lord's wheat, dispersed, as was foretold
and promised, throughout the world, and that they might rather be used by
us against you. Examine them again, and you will find it so.
62. But the passages which I have advanced to assert the truth of the
Catholic Church,, are the following: As regards the question of baptism,
that our being born again, cleansed, justified by the grace of God, should
not be ascribed to the man who administered the sacrament, I quoted these:
"It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man:"(5) and
"Cursed beevery one that trusteth in man;"(6) and that, "Salvation
belongeth unto the Lord;"(7) and that, "Vain is the help of man;"(8) and
that, "Neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but
God that giveth the increase;"(9) and that He in whom men believe
justifieth the ungodly, that his faith may be counted to him for
righteousness.(10) But in behalf of the unity of the Church itself, which
is spread abroad throughout all the world, with which you do not hold
communion, I urged that the following passages were prophesied of Christ:
that "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto
the ends of the earth;"(11) and, "I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession;"(12)
and that the covenant of God made with Abraham may be quoted in behalf of
our, that is, of the Catholic communion, in which it is written, "In thy
seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed;"(13) which seed the apostle
interprets, saying, "And to thy seed, which is Christ."(14) Whence it is
evident that in Christ not only Africans or Africa, but all the nations
through which the Catholic Church is spread abroad, should receive the
blessing which was promised so long before. And that the chaff is to be
with the wheat even to the time of the last winnowing, that no one may
excuse the sacrilege of his own separation from the Church by calumnious
accusations of other men's offenses, if he shall have left or deserted the
communion of all nations; and to show that the society of Christians may
not be divided on account of evil ministers, that is, evil rulers in the
Church, I further quoted the passage, "All whatsoever they bid you observe,
that observe and do; but do not ye after their works; for they say and do
not."'(15) With regard to these passages of holy Scripture which I advanced
to prove my points, he neither showed how they ought to be otherwise
interpreted, so as to prove that they neither made for us nor against you,
nor was he willing to touch them in any way. Nay, his whole object was
could it have been achieved, that by the tumultuous outpouring of his
abuse, it might never occur to any one at all, who after reading my epistle
might have been willing to read his as well, that these things had been
said by me
CHAP. 51.--63. Next, listen for a short time to the kind of way in
which he has tried to use, in his own behalf, the passages which I had
advanced from the writings of the Apostle Paul. "For you asserted," he
says, "that the Apostle Paul finds fault with those who used to say that
they were of the Apostle Paul, saying, 'Was Paul crucified for you? or were
ye baptized in the name of Paul?'(16) Wherefore, if they were in error, and
would have perished had they not been corrected, because they wished to be
of Paul, what hope can there possibly be for those who have wished to be of
Donatus? For this is their sole object, that the origin, and root, and head
of him that is baptized should be none other than he by whom he is
baptized."(17) These words, and this confirmation from the writings of the
apostle, he has quoted from my epistle, and he has proposed to himself the
task of refuting them. Go on then, I beg of you, to see how he has
fulfilled the task. For he says, "This assertion is meaningless, and
inflated, and childish, and foolish, and something very far from a true
exposition of our faith. For you would only be right in asserting this, if
we were to say, We have been baptized in the name of Donatus, or Donatus
was crucified for us, or we have been baptized in our own name. But since
such things as this neither have been said nor are said by us,--seeing that
we follow the formula of the holy Trinity,--it is dear that you are mad to
bring such accusations against us. Or if you think that we have been
baptized in the name of Donatus, or in our own name, you are miserably
deceived, and at the same time confess in your sacrilege that you on your
part defile your wretched selves in the name of Caecilianus." This is the
answer which Petilianus has made to those arguments of mine, not supposing-
-or rather making a noise that no one might suppose--that he has made no
answer at all which could bear in any way upon the question which is under
discussion. For who could fail to see that this witness of the apostle has
been adduced by us with all the more propriety, in that you do not say that
you were baptized in the name of Donatus, or that Donatus was crucified for
you, and yet separate yourselves from the communion of the Catholic Church
out of respect to the party of Donatus; as also those whom Paul was
rebuking certainly did not say that they had been baptized in the name of
Paul, or that Paul has been crucified for them, and yet they were making a
schism in the name of Paul. As therefore in their case, for whom Christ,
not Paul, was crucified, and who were baptized in the name of Christ, not
of Paul, and who yet said, "I am of Paul," the rebuke is used with all the
more propriety, "Was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the
name of Paul?" to make them cling to Him who was crucified for them, and in
whose name they were baptized, and not be guilty of division in the name of
Paul; so in your case, also, the rebuke, Was Donatus crucified for you? or
were ye baptized in the name of Donatus? is used all the more appositely,
because you do not say, We were baptized in the name of Donatus, and yet
desire to be of the party of Donatus. For you know that it was Christ who
was crucified for you, and Christ in whose name you were baptized; and yet,
out of respect to the name and party of Donatus, you show such obstinacy in
fighting against the unity of Christ, who was crucified for you, and in
whose name you were baptized.
CHAP. 52.--64. But if you wish to see that the object of Petilianus in
his writings really was to prove "that the origin, and root, and head of
him that is baptized is none other than he by whom he is baptized," and
that this has not been asserted by me without meaning, or childishly, or
foolishly, review the beginning of the epistle itself to which I made my
reply, or rather pay careful attention to me as I quote it. "The
conscience," he says, "of one that gives in holiness is what we look for to
cleanse the conscience of the recipient; for he who has received his faith
from one that is faithless, receives not faith but guilt." And as though
some one had said to him, Whence do you derive your proof of this? he goes
on to say, "For everything has its existence from a source and root; and if
anything has not a head, it is nothing; nor does anything well confer a new
birth, unless it be born again of good seed. And this being so, brethren,
what perversity must it be to maintain that he who is guilty by reason of
his own offenses should make another free from guilt; whereas our Lord
Jesus Christ says, 'A good tree bringeth forth good fruit: do men gather
grapes of thorns?' And again, 'A good man, out of the good treasure of his
heart, bringeth forth good things; and an evil man, out of the evil
treasure, bringeth forth evil things.' And again, 'When a man is baptized
by one that is dead, his washing profiteth him nothing.'" You see to what
end all these things tend, viz., that the conscience of him that gives in
holiness (lest any one, by receiving his faith from one that is faithless,
should receive not faith but guilt) should be itself the origin, and root,
and head, and seed of him that is baptized. For, wishing to prove that the
conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse the
conscience of the recipient, and that the receives not froth but guilt,
who wittingly receives his faith from one that is faithless, he has added
immediately afterwards, "For everything has its existence from a source and
root; and if anything has not a head, it is nothing; nor does anything well
confer a new birth, unless it be born again of good seed." And for fear
that any one should be so dull as still not to understand that in each case
he is speaking of the man by whom a person is baptized, he explains this
afterwards, and says, "This being so, brethren, what perversity must it be
to maintain that he who is guilty by reason of his own offenses should make
another free from guilt; whereas our Lord Jesus Christ says, 'A good tree
bringeth forth good fruit: do men gather grapes of thorns?'" And lest, by
some incredible stupidity of understanding, the hearer or seer should be
blind enough not to see that he is speaking of the man that baptizes, he
adds another passage, where he actually specifies the man. "And again," he
says, "'A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth
good things; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil
things;' and again, 'When a man is baptized by one that is dead, his
washing profiteth him nothing,'" Certainly it is now plain, certainly he
needs no longer any interpreter, or disputant, or demonstrator, to show
that the object of his party is to prove that the origin, and root, and
head of him that is baptized is none other than he by whom he is baptized.
And yet, being overwhelmed by the force of truth, and as though forgetful
of what he had said before, Petilianus acknowledges afterwards to me that
Christ is the origin and root of them that are regenerate, and the Head of
the Church, and not any one that may happen to be the dispenser and
minister of baptism. For having said that the apostles used to baptize in
the name of Christ, and set forth Christ as the foundation of their faith,
to make men Christians, and being fain to prove this, too, by passages and
examples from holy Scripture, just as though we were denying it, he says,
"Where is now that voice, from which issued the noise of those minute and
constant petty questionings, wherein, in the spirit of envy and self-
conceit, you uttered many involved sayings about Christ, and for Christ,
and in Christ, in opposition to the rashness and haughtiness of men? Lo,
Christ is the origin, Christ, in the head, Christ is the root of the
Christian." When, therefore, I heard this, what could I do but give thanks
to Christ, who had compelled the man to make confession? All those things,
therefore, are false which he said in the beginning of his epistle, when he
wished to persuade us that the conscience of one that gives in holiness
must be looked for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient; and that
when one has wittingly received his faith from one that is faithless he
receives not faith but guilt. For, wishing as it were to show clearly how
much rested in the man that baptizes, he had added what he seems to think
most weighty proofs, saying "For everything has its existence from a source
and root; and if anything has not a head, it is nothing." But afterwards,
when be says what we also say, "Lo, Christ is the origin, Christ is the
head, Christ is the root of the Christian," he wipes out what he had said
before, "that the conscience of one that gives in holiness is the origin,
and root, and head of the recipient." The truth, therefore, has prevailed,
so that the man who is desirous to receive the baptism of Christ should not
rest his hope upon the man who administers the sacrament, but should
approach in all security to Christ Himself, as to the source which is not
changed, to the root which is not plucked up, to the head which is not cast
down.
CHAP. 53.--65. Then who is there that could fail to perceive from what
a vein of conceit it proceeds, that in explaining as it were the
declaration of the apostle, he says, "He who said, 'I planted, Apollos
watered, but God gave the increase,' surely meant nothing else than this,
that 'I made a man a catechumen in Christ, Apollo baptized him; God
confirmed what we had done?'" Why then did not Petilianus add what the
apostle added, and I especially took pains to quote, "So then neither is he
that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the
increase"?(1) And if he be willing to interpret this on the same principle
as what he has set down above, it follows beyond all doubt, that neither is
he that baptizeth anything but God that giveth the increase. For what
matter does it make in reference to the question now before us, in what
sense it has been said, "I planted, Apollos watered. "whether it is really
to be taken as equivalent to his saying, "I made a catechumen, Apollos
baptized him;" or whether there be any other truer and more congruos
understanding of it?--for in the mean time, according to his own
interpretation of the words, neither is he that makes the catechumen
anything, neither he that baptizes, but God that gives the increase. But
there is a great difference between confirming what another does, and doing
anything oneself. For He who gives the increase does not confirm a tree or
a vine, but creates it. For by that increase it comes to pass that even a
piece of wood planted in the ground produces and establishes a root; by
that increase it comes to pass that a seed cast into the earth puts forth a
shoot. But why should we make a longer dissertation on this point? It is
enough that, according to Petilianus himself neither he that maketh a
catechumen, nor he that baptizes, is anything, but God that gives the
increase. But when would Petilianus say this, so that we should understand
that he meant, Neither is Donatus of Carthage anything, neither Januarius,
neither Petilianus? When would the swelling of his pride permit him to say
this, which now causes the man to think himself to be something, when he is
nothing, deceiving himself?(1)
CHAP. 54.--66. Finally, again, a little afterwards, when he resolved
and was firmly pub posed, as it were, to reconsider once more the words of
the apostle which he had brought up against him, he was unwilling to set
down this that I had said, preferring something else in which by some means
or other the swelling of human pride might find means to breathe. "For to
reconsider," he says, "those words of the apostle, on which you founded an
argument against us; he said, 'What is Apollos, what is Paul, save only
ministers of Him in whom ye have believed?'(2) What else for example, does
he say to all of us than this What is. Donatus of Carthage, what is
Januarius, what is Petilianus, save only ministers of Him in whom ye have
believed?" I did not bring forward this passage of the apostle, but I did
bring forward that which he has been unwilling to quote, "Neither he that
planteth is anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the
increase." But Petilianus was willing to insert those words of the apostle,
in which he asks what is Paul, and what is Apollos, and answers that "They
are ministers of Him in whom ye have believed." This the muscles of the
heretic's neck could bear; but he was wholly unable to endure the other, in
which the apostle did not ask and answer what he was, but said that he was
nothing. But now I am willing to ask whether it be true that the minister
of Christ is nothing. Who will say so much as this? In what sense,
therefore, is it true that "Neither is he that planteth anything, neither
he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase," except that he who is
something in one point of view may be nothing in another? For ministering
and dispensing the word and sacrament he is something, but for purifying
and justifying he is nothing, seeing that this is not accomplished in the
inner man, except by Him by whom the whole man was created, and who while
He remained God was made man,--by Him, that is, of whom it was said,
"Purifying their hearts by faith;"(3) and "To him that believeth on Him
that justifieth the ungodly."(4) And this testimony Petilianus has been
willing to set forth in my words, whilst in his own he has neither handled
it nor even touched it.
CHAP. 55.--67. A minister, therefore, that is a dispenser of the word
and sacrament of the gospel, if he is a good man, becomes a fellow-partner
in the working of the gospel; but if he is a bad man, he does not therefore
cease to be a dispenser of the gospel. For if he is good, he does it of his
own free will; but if he is a bad man,--that is, one who seeks his own and
not the things of Jesus Christ,--he does it unwillingly, for the sake of
other things which he is seeking after. See, however, what the same apostle
has said: "For if I do this thing willingly," he says, "I have a reward;
but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto
me;"(5) as though he were to say, If I, being good, announce what is good,
I attain unto it also myself; but if, being evil, I announce it, yet I
announce what is good. For has he in any way said, If I do it against my
will, then shall I not be a dispenser of the gospel? Peter and the other
disciples announce the good tidings, as being good themselves. Judas did it
against his will, but yet, when he was sent, he announced it in common with
the rest. They have a reward; to him a dispensation of the gospel was
committed. But they who received the gospel at the mouth of all those
witnesses, could not be cleansed and justified by him that planted, or by
him that watered, but by Him alone that gives the increase. For neither are
we going to say that Judas did not baptize, seeing that he was still among
the disciples when that which is written was being accomplished, "Jesus
Himself baptized not, but His disciples."(6) Are we to suppose that,
because he had not betrayed Christ, therefore he who had the bag, and bare
what was put therein,(7) was still enabled to dispense grace without
prejudice to those who received it, though he could not be an upright
guardian of the money entrusted to his care? Or if he did not baptize, at
any rate we must acknowledge that he preached the gospel. But if you
consider this a trifling function, and of no importance, see what you must
think of the Apostle Paul himself, who said, "For Christ sent me not to
baptize, but to preach the gospel."(8) To this we may add, that according
to this, Apollos begins to be more important, who watered by baptizing,
than Paul, who planted by preaching the gospel, though Paul claims to
himself the relation of father towards the Corinthians in virtue of this
very act, and does not grant this tire to those who came to them after him.
For he says," Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have
ye not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the
gospel."(1) He says, "I have begotten you" to the same men to whom he says
in another place, "I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and
Gaius, and I baptized also the household of Stephanus."(2) He had begotten
them, therefore, not through himself, but through the gospel. And even
though he had been seeking his own, and not the things of Jesus Christ, and
had been doing this unwillingly, so as to receive no reward for himself,
yet he would have been dispensing the treasure of the Lord; and this,
though evil himself, he would not have been making evil or useless to those
who received it wall.
CHAP. 56.--68. And if this is rightly said of the gospel, with how much
greater certainty should it be said of baptism, which belongs to the gospel
in such wise, that without it no one can reach the kingdom of heaven, and
with it only if to the sacrament be added righteousness? For He who said,
"Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God,"(3) said Himself also, "Except your righteousness shall
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case
enter into the kingdom of heaven."(4) The form of the sacrament is given
through baptism, the form of righteousness through the gospel Neither one
without the other leads to the kingdom of heaven. Yet even men of inferior
learning can baptize perfectly, but to preach the gospel perfectly is a
task of much greater difficulty and rarity. Therefore the teacher of the
Gentiles, that was superior in excellence to the majority, was sent to
preach the gospel, not to baptize; because the latter could be done by
many, the former only by a few, of whom he was chief. And yet we read that
he said in certain places, "My gospel;"(5) but he never called baptism
either his, or any one's else by whom it was administered. For that baptism
alone which John gave is called John's baptism.6 This that man received as
the special pledge of his ministry, that the preparatory sacrament of
washing should even be called by the name of him by whom it was
administered; whereas the baptism which the disciples of Christ
administered was never called by the name of any one of them, that it
should be understood to be His alone of whom it is said, "Christ loved the
Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with
the washing of water by the word."(7) If, therefore, the gospel, which is
Christ's, but so that a minister also may call it his in virtue of his
office of administering it, can be received by a man even at the hands of
an evil minister without danger to himself, if he does according to what he
says, and not after the example of what he does, how much more may any one
who comes in good faith to Christ receive without fear of contagion from an
evil minister the baptism of Christ, which none of the apostles so
administered as to dare to call it his own?
CHAP. 57.--69. Furthermore, if, while I have continued without
intermission to prove how entirely the passages of Scripture which
Petilianus has quoted against us have against us have failed to hurt our
cause, he himself has in some cases not touched at all what I have quoted,
and party, when he has endeavored to handle them, has shown that the only
thing that he could do was to fail in finding an escape from them, you
require no long exhortation or advice in order to see what you ought to
maintain, and what you should avoid. But it may be that this has been the
kind of show that he has made in dealing with the testimony of holy
Scripture, but that he has not been without force in the case of the
documentary evidence found in the records of the schism itself. Let us then
see in the case of these too, though it is superfluous to inquire into them
after testimony from the word of God, what he has quoted, or what he has
proved. For, after pouring forth a violent invective against traditors, and
quoting loudly many passages against them from the holy books themselves,
he yet said nothing which could prove his opponents to be traditors. But I
quoted the case of Silvanus of Cirta, who held his own see some little time
before himself, who was expressly declared in the Municipal Chronicles to
have been a traditor while he was yet a sub-deacon. Against this fact he
did not venture to whisper a syllable. And yet you cannot fail to see how
strong the pressure was which must have been urging him to reply that he
might show a man, who was his predecessor, not only one of his party, but a
partner, so to speak, in his see, to have been innocent of the crime of
delivering up the sacred books, especially as you rest the whole strength
of your cause on the fact that you give the name of traditor to all whom
you either pretend or believe to have been the successors of traditors in
the path of their communion. Although, then, the very exigencies of your
cause would seem to compel him to undertake the defence of a citizen even
of Russicadia, or Calama, or any other city of your party, whom I should
declare to be a traditor, on the authority of the Municipal Chronicles, yet
he did not open his mouth even in defense of his own predecessor. For what
reason, except that he could not find any mist dark enough to deceive the
minds of even the slowest and sleepiest of men? For what could he have
said, except that the charges brought against Silvanus were false? But we
quote the words of the Chronicles, both as to the date of the fact, and as
to the time of the information laid before Zenophilus the ex-consul.(1) And
how could he resist this evidence, being encompassed on every side by the
most excellent cause of the Catholics, while yours was bad as bad could be?
For which reason I quote these words from my epistle to which he would fain
be thought to have replied in this which I am now refuting, that you may
see for yourselves how impregnable the position must be against which he
has been able to find no safer weapon than silence.
CHAP. 58.--70. For when he quoted a passage from the gospel as making
against us, where our Lord says, "They will come to you in sheep's
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves; ye shall know them by
their fruits,"(2)--I answered and said, "Then let us consider their
fruits;" and then I at once went on to add the following words: "You bring
up against them their delivery of the sacred books. This very charge we
urge with greater probability, against their accusers themselves. And not
to carry our search too far: in the same city of Constantina, your
predecessors ordained Silvanus bishop at the very outset of his schism. He,
while he was still a sub-deacon, was most unmistakably entered as a
traditor in the archives of the city. If you, on your side, bring forward
documents against our predecessors, all that we ask is equal terms, that we
should either believe both to be true, or both to be false. If both are
true, you are unquestionably guilty of schism, who have pretended that you
avoid offenses in the communion of the whole world, though these were
common among you in your own fragmentary sect. But again, if both are
false, you are unquestionably guilty of schism, who, on account of the
false charges of traditors, are staining yourselves with the heinous
offense of severance from the Church. But if we have something to urge in
accusation, while you have nothing, or if our charges are true, while yours
are false, it is no longer matter of discussion how thoroughly your mouths
are closed. What if the holy and true Church of Christ were to convince and
overcome you, even if we held no documents in support of our cause, or only
such as were false, while you had possession of some genuine proof of
delivery of the sacred books, what would then remain for you, except that,
if you would, you should show your love of peace, or otherwise should hold
your tongues? For whatever in that case you might bring forward in
evidence, I should be able to say with the greatest ease and with the most
perfect truth, that then you are bound to prove as much to the full and
Catholic unity of the Church, already spread abroad and established
throughout so many nations, to the end that you should remain within, and
that those whom you convict should be expelled. And if you have endeavored
to do this, certainly you have not been able to make good your proof; and,
being vanquished or enraged, you have separated yourselves, with all the
heinous guilt of sacrilege, from the guiltless men who could not condemn on
insufficient proof. But if you have not even endeavored to do this, then
with most accursed and unnatural blindness you have cut yourselves off from
the wheat of Christ, which grows throughout His whole fields, that is,
throughout the whole world until the end, because you have taken offense at
a few tares in Africa."(3) To this, which I have quoted from my former
epistle, Petilianus has made no answer whatsoever. And, at all events, you
see that in these few words is comprised the whole question which is at
issue between us. For what should he endeavor to say, when, whatever course
he chose, he was sure to be debated?
71. For when documents are brought forward relating to the traditors,
both by us against the men of your party, and by you against the men of our
party, (if indeed any really are brought forward on your side, for to this
very day we are left in total ignorance of them; nor indeed can we believe
that Petilianus would have omitted to insert them in ibis letter, seeing
that he has taken so much pain to secure the quotation and insertion of
those portions of the Chronicles which bear on the matter in opposition to
me),--but still, as I began to say, if such documents are brought forward
both by us and by you, documents of whose existence we are wholly ignorant
to this very day,--surely you must acknowledge that either both are true,
or both false, or ours true and yours false, or yours true and ours false;
for there is no further alternative that can be suggested.
CHAP. 59.--But according to all these four hypotheses, the truth is on
the side of the communion of the Catholic Church. For if both are true,
then you certainly should not have deserted the communion of the whole
world on account of men such as you too had among yourselves. But if both
are false, you should have guarded against the guilt of most accursed
division, which had not even any pretext to allege of any delivery of the
sacred books. If ours are true and yours are false, you have long been
without anything to say for yourselves. If yours are true and ours are
false, we have been liable to be deceived, in common with the whole world,
not about the truth of the faith, but about the unrighteousness of men. For
the seed of Abraham, dispersed throughout the world, was bound to pay
attention, not to what you said you knew, but to what you proved to the
judges. Whence have we any knowledge of what was done by those men who were
accused by your ancestors, even if the allegations made against them were
true, so long as they were held to be not true but false, either by the
judges who took cognizance of the case, or at least by the general body of
the Church dispersed throughout the world, which was only bound to pay heed
to the sentence of the judges? God does not necessarily pardon any human
guilt that others in the weakness of human judgment fail to discover; yet I
maintain that no one is rightly deemed guilty for having believed a man to
be innocent who was not convicted. How then do you prove the world to be
guilty, merely because it did not know what possibly was really guilt in
the Africans,--its ignorance arising either from the fact that no one
reported the sin to it, or from its having given credence, in respect of
the information which was given, rather to the judges who took cognizance
of the case, than to the murmurers who were defeated? So far then,
Petilianus deserves all praise, in that, when he saw that on this point I
was absolutely impregnable, he passed it by in silence. Yet he does not
deserve praise for his attempts to obscure in a mist of words other points
which were equally impregnable, which yet he thought could be obscured; or
for having put me in the place of his cause, when the cause left him
nothing to say; while even about myself he could say nothing except what
was either altogether false, or undeserving of any blame, or without any
bearing whatsoever upon me. But, in the meantime, are you, whom I have made
judges between Petilianus and myself, possessed of discrimination enough to
decide in any degree between what is true and what is false, between what
is mere empty swelling and what is solid, between what is troubled and what
is calm, between inflammation and soundness, between divine predictions and
human assumptions, between bringing an accusation and establishing it,
between proofs and fictions, between pleading a cause and leading one away
from it? If you have such power of discrimination, well and good; but if
you have it not, we shall not repent of having bestowed our pains on you,
for even though your heart be not converted unto peace, yet our peace shall
return unto ourselves.
Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF I/IV, Schaff). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible
Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.
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