Letter to the Catholics on the Sect of the Donatists (On the Unity of the Church) 37–48

"It was said of us," they say, "'The last will be first.' For the gospel came to Africa later, and so nowhere in the apostolic writings is it written that Africa believed. But of the eastern and other nations which the holy books record as having received the Christian faith it was said, 'The first will be last,' because they were going to fall away from the faith." Is not this the cunning of heretics to be guarded against, who wish to turn the words of God from the truth for which they were spoken to the perversity in which they themselves are? For why do we not rather understand this of the Jews, who became last though they had been first, and of the Christians from the nations, who became first though they had been last? Even if I could not prove this understanding by any surer document, it should have been enough for a hearer who judges well that I have found a way out in these words, from which it appears that these men have brought nothing certain in their favour, beyond doubt; for even if it were not the Jews and the nations of whom I understood this to be said, some barbarian nations believed even after Africa, from which it is certain that Africa is not last in the order of believing. Add to this that the Lord himself explained of whom he had said this and stopped the mouths of the slanderers. For, speaking to the Jews, who would say to him, "You taught in our streets," he said: "When you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrust out. And they will come from the east and the west and the north and the south, and recline in the kingdom of God. And behold, there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last." Here certainly nothing is found to contradict.

Again they say that what the Lord said was said of the apostasy of the world: "When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth?" We understand this as said either because of the very perfection of faith, which is so difficult among men that even in the most admirable saints, as in Moses himself, something is found in which they trembled or could have trembled; or because of that abundance of the wicked and fewness of the good of which we have said enough. For this is why the Lord said it as if doubting. For he did not say, "When the Son of Man comes he will not find faith on the earth," but, "Do you think he will find faith on the earth?" It does not befit him, who knows and foreknows all things, to doubt about anything; but his doubting figured our doubting, because, on account of the many scandals springing up toward the end of the age, human weakness would at some time say this. Hence it is said in the psalms: "My soul has slumbered for weariness; strengthen me in your words." Why "my soul has slumbered for weariness," except because of what the Lord says: "Because iniquity has abounded, the love of many will grow cold"? And why "strengthen me in your words," except because of what follows: "But he who perseveres to the end will be saved"? There are, then, throughout the whole world those in whom, because iniquity abounds, the love of many grows cold; and there are again throughout the whole world those who, persevering to the end, will be saved; for "Let both grow," he says, "until the harvest," and "The harvest is the end of the age, and the field is the world." To this human weakness belongs also that cry: "Save me, O Lord, for the holy one has failed, for truths are diminished among the sons of men." And yet among these there is one heart and one soul of the faithful toward God, crying out: "Save me, O Lord." For that this man who says "Save me, O Lord" is one in such a way as to consist of many is shown a little later in the same psalm: "Because of the misery of the needy and the groaning of the poor, now I will arise, says the Lord." And again a little later it says in the plural: "But you, Lord, will keep us and guard us from this generation and for ever." From what generation, except the one of which it was said above, "The holy one has failed, and truths are diminished among the sons of men"? But both kinds are throughout the whole world until the end, because "Let both grow," he says, "until the harvest," and "The field is the world, the harvest the end of the age." For this one man, which is the body of Christ consisting of many, will, like Enoch pleasing God, be taken up, and like Lot from Sodom and like Noah from the flood, will be delivered. In him is the misery of the needy and the groaning of the poor, since his soul slumbers for weariness when he asks to be strengthened in the words of God. And in that psalm he says where that weariness comes from: "Weariness has seized me," he says, "because of sinners who forsake your law." He also cries out when his heart is in anguish with the same weariness; but let them see from where he cries: "From the ends of the earth," he says, "I have cried to you, while my heart was in anguish." He truly suffers persecution for righteousness, not only if he suffers bodily torments (for this not always), but what he always suffers as long as iniquity passes by: torments of the heart, when weariness seizes him because of sinners who forsake the law of God. For Lot did not suffer no persecution in Sodom, where no one troubled him with bodily penalties while he lived there; but the righteous man dwelling among them, by seeing and hearing, tormented his righteous soul with the wicked deeds of others. Of this the apostle says: "But all who want to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution." And of those who forsake the law of God (of whom the same body of Christ says: "I saw the senseless and wasted away"): "But evil men and evildoers," he says, "will go on from bad to worse, themselves erring and leading others into error." But both kinds are throughout the whole world until the end, because "Let both grow," he says, "until the harvest; and the field is the world, the harvest the end of the age."

Yet I wonder that these men do not notice what they are saying when they cite, as though in their favour, what the Lord says: "When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth?", as if Africa were not on the earth. For if he said this as though he would find faith in no one at all, either he said it of some land, and it is uncertain of which land he said it, or he said it of the whole earth, and they cannot find how he did not say it of Africa. Let them indeed see whether perhaps in the following words he touched on such men as they are. For when he had said, "Do you think the Son of Man will find faith on the earth?", I believe that because a vain and puffed-up thought could arise in the hearts of certain proud heretics who separated themselves in some part of the earth from the unity of the world, that they themselves were righteous while the other nations through which the communion of the church is spread were failing and perishing from the faith, the evangelist at once went on: "And he also told this parable to some who thought themselves righteous and despised others"; and there follows the story of the two praying in the temple, the Pharisee and the tax collector, in whom are figured the proud boasting of good works and the humble confession of sins. Let these men, then, if they are preparing to answer this letter, stop citing those testimonies which we cry out together with them, either against the ruin of the Jews or against the tares, the chaff, or the bad fish of the whole world; and as we have asserted by the plainest testimonies the church spread through the whole world, so let them too bring forward something plain, from which to show that it was foretold that, while the other nations perished from the faith of Christ, Africa alone would remain, together with wherever bishops were sent from Africa.

"It is written," they say, "in the Song of Songs, where the bride, that is, the church, says to the bridegroom: Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you feed, where you lie down at noon." This is the only testimony that they think sounds in their favour, because Africa is set in the southern (noon) part of the world. Here I ask first how the church asks Christ to tell her where the church is; for there are not two, but one. Or let them show, since they do not deny that the church says these words to Christ, which is the church that asks and which the church about which she asks. For she seeks where she may come to her bridegroom, and says to him: "Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you feed, where you lie down at noon." So it is the church that speaks and asks where she is at noon. For she does not ask "where do you feed, where do you lie down," and receive the answer "at noon," as if the bridegroom answered, "I feed at noon, I lie down at noon"; but all these words belong to the question: "Where do you feed, where do you lie down at noon?" For she still says: "lest perhaps I become as one veiled over the flocks of your companions." Then he answers: "Unless you know yourself, O fairest among women," and so on. These words, then, do not show that the church is in the southern part alone, but that it is set in other parts of the world too. Perhaps she asks what belongs to her communion at noon, that is, where her bridegroom feeds and lies down at noon, since he feeds his own and lies down among his own. For certain of her members, that is, good believers, come from overseas parts to Africa, and when they hear that the party of Donatus is here, fearing to fall into the hands of some rebaptizer, they call on Christ, praying and saying: "Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you feed, where you lie down at noon," that is, who are the noon where you feed and lie down, that is, those who have charity and do not divide unity. And see what she adds: "lest perhaps I become as one veiled over the flocks of your companions"; that is, lest perhaps, as though hidden, unknown, and unrevealed (for this is what "veiled" means), I come to be not over your flock but over the flocks of your companions, who, though they were at first with you, wished to gather outside not your flock but their own flocks, and did not hear you saying, "He who does not gather with me scatters," nor what you said to Peter, "Feed my sheep," not "your sheep." But this church is not veiled, since it is not under a bushel but on a lampstand, to give light to all who are in the house (and of it it was said, "A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden"); but it is as if veiled to the Donatists, who hear such bright and manifest testimonies showing it throughout the world, and prefer with closed eyes to stumble against the mountain rather than climb it, the mountain which, being a stone cut from a mountain without hands, grew and became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

"Where you feed, where you lie down at noon" can also be understood in another way. For his is the voice in the psalms, in the person of Moses the servant of God: "Make your right hand known to me, and those instructed in heart in wisdom"; for in them there is said to be noon because of the great light of wisdom and the great heat of charity. Hence, when the Spirit of God through the prophet exhorts someone to good works, he promises him this too: "And your darkness will be like noon." But even if "at noon" were to be understood as some place in the world, the words themselves, as I said, which all make up one question, would in no way allow anyone to twist this statement to his own sense; and if, as to one asking where he fed and where he lay down, the answer "at noon" were given of an earthly place, we should not at once take it as Africa. For Africa is indeed in the southern part of the world, but toward the south-west (africus), not toward the south (auster), where noon truly is. For there the sun makes midday, and under that quarter of the sky Egypt is rather found. If, then, the bridegroom, asked by the bride about a place more familiarly loved and a kind of secret resting place of his, answered that it is at noon, the catholic church would much more probably recognize this in those of her members who are in Egypt among the thousands of the servants of God who live in holy fellowship throughout the desert, striving to keep the perfection of the gospel precept in which it was said: "Do you want to be perfect? Go, sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." For how much better would the Son of God be said to feed and lie down, that is, to rest, more secretly there than among the restless crowds of the raging Circumcellions, an evil peculiar to Africa! For of Egypt Isaiah prophesies thus: "In that day there will be an altar of the Lord in the land of the Egyptians, and a pillar to the Lord at their border; and it will be a sign for ever to the Lord in the land of the Egyptians; for they will cry to the Lord against those who oppressed them, and the Lord will send them a man who will save them; judging, he will preserve them. And the Lord will be known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will fear the Lord in that day, and they will offer sacrifices and make vows to the Lord and perform them. And the Lord will strike the Egyptians with a plague and heal them in his mercy, and they will turn to the Lord, and he will hear them and heal them." What do they say to this? Why do they not communicate with the church of the Egyptians that was foretold? Or, if in prophetic prefiguration Egypt signifies the world, why do they not communicate with the church of the whole world?

Let them search the Scriptures, then, and against so many testimonies by which the church of Christ is shown to be spread throughout the whole world, let them bring forward even one as certain and as manifest as those are, by which to show that the church of Christ has perished from the other nations and remained in Africa alone, as from another beginning, not from Jerusalem but from Carthage, where they first set up bishop against bishop. But if we wished to understand Donatus as the prince of Tyre, since Carthage is called Tyrian, what is prophesied against him through Ezekiel? There what most marks him out is what is said to him: "I will show you that you are a man and not God." For these men boast more of his name than of God's; and while God alone is without sin, and that priest who intercedes for us (for of him too it is said, "who is over all, God blessed for ever"), these imitators of Donatus want to seem so without sin that they even claim to be justifiers of men, and that their oil is not the oil of a sinner. Rightly is it said to the prince of Tyre: "You have said, I am God; but you are a man and not God," to whom it is also said: "Are you better than Daniel?" For Daniel confesses his own sins and the sins of his people. But these men, belonging to the prince of Tyre, say that when they pray they are heard for the sins of the people because they themselves are without sin. Rightly is it said to the prince of Tyre: "Are you better than Daniel?" See, we can find something apt, and this the greatest evil, arisen from the head of Africa, that is, from Carthage (for men know how fittingly Tyre is taken for Carthage); and yet we do not argue with such things. For perhaps Tyre signifies something else: how much more "noon," when the very words compel another understanding!

But that they are not allowed even to seek anything by which to prove it was foretold that, while the other nations failed from the Christian faith, the church would remain in Africa alone, let them attend to what I have often mentioned: that both grow until the harvest, and that the field is the world and the harvest the end of the age, the Lord himself, not we, interpreting his parable. There is also another most evident point that takes from them entirely the labour of seeking how to prove that the church, the world having perished, was reduced to the Africans alone. For a thing may exist and not be found; but it cannot not exist and be found. Let them stop seeking, then, what they will not be able to find, not because it is hidden, but because it does not exist. For there are still some nations in which the gospel has not yet been preached; but all that was foretold of Christ and the church must be fulfilled. It must, then, be preached in them too; and when that has been fulfilled, then will be the end. How, then, do these men say that what the Lord said has already been fulfilled, "that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem," but that afterwards, the others failing, Africa alone remained to Christ, when that is still to be fulfilled and is not yet fulfilled? And when it has been fulfilled, the end will come. For so the Lord says: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." How, then, did the perdition of the nations, except Africa, follow when the faith of all nations had been fulfilled, since the faith of all nations itself has not yet been fulfilled?

Unless perhaps this remains for men's madness: to say that the preaching of the gospel to all nations is not fulfilled from those churches founded by the labours of the apostles, but that, since they perished, their restoration is to come from Africa through the party of Donatus, together with the winning of the remaining nations. I think that even they laugh when they hear this; and yet unless they say this, which they blush to say, they have nothing at all to say. But what is it to us? We envy no one. Let them read this to us from the holy Scriptures, and we believe it; let them read to us, I say, from the canon of the divine books, that so many cities, which to this day have kept the baptism handed down to them through the apostles, have perished from the faith of Christ because of crimes of Africans unknown to them, and must be baptized again by the party of Donatus, and that from there the gospel must be preached to the other nations that have not yet heard it. Let them read this to us (why do they delay, why do they evade, why do they hinder the salvation of the nations?); let them read this, and with the reading itself let them send new apostles to rebaptize so many nations and to baptize the rest.

But let them see clearly, when they come to the Colossians, how they either read or hear the letter given to them, where the apostle says to them: "We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, always praying for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you, as in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing, as also among you, since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth." For these words agree with the gospel, where it is said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field," and afterwards the field is explained to be this world. For as this was foretold to grow from the time it was sown until the harvest, so the apostle also says: "in the whole world bearing fruit and growing, as also among you, since the day you heard." And it grows until the end, because until the harvest; for the harvest is the end of the age. Not only the Colossians, then, to whom it was sent, but also all the others among whom this letter is read, where it is established by the apostolic writings that the good seed was sown and had already then begun to grow and bear fruit, will say: "What new thing are you bringing us? Must the good seed be sown again, when from the time it was sown it grows until the harvest?" If you say that what was sown by the apostles in those places has perished and must therefore be sown again from Africa, the answer will be: "Read this to us from the divine oracles." This you certainly cannot read unless you first show that what is written is false, that the seed sown there before grows until the harvest. And since the divine words in no way contradict themselves, you will in no way find in them anything you could recite against this so manifest statement. It remains, then, that you say these things not from the divine books but from yourselves. Therefore the most fitting answer will be given: "Let you be anathema." For the churches founded by apostolic labour hold with how great care it was foretold to them: "If anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what you received, let him be anathema."

Since, then, in the holy Scriptures the church is plainly recognized as beginning from Jerusalem and growing through other nations until it occupies all of them until the end of the age, and not only its grain but also its refuse is mentioned, first be corrected and communicate with the grain, and then you will see what you ought to call tares or chaff among them. Otherwise you are compelled by a detestable error both to adorn the wicked with the praises of the good and to accuse the good with the crimes of the wicked. For indeed we carry in our hands documents by which we prove that your forefathers, whose schism you follow, handed the holy books over to the flames, as the municipal records show, and could not deny it in the church records; and that the same men were among the judges who passed sentence at Carthage against Caecilian and his absent colleagues. Indeed, the same men are read in both the municipal and the church records as traditors who are afterwards brought forward by you as condemners of absent traditors. Indeed, Nundinarius, your deacon at that time, before Zenophilus the consular, laid bare all the bargaining of Lucilla, who bought the condemnation of Caecilian from the bishops, having become his enemy because he spoke the truth. Indeed, they themselves afterwards gave letters to the emperor Constantine, and when bishops had been given by him as arbiters, as they had asked, they did not accept them, and afterwards accused them before him as unjust judges; and from others given them at Arles they appealed to the emperor himself; and when he heard the parties, they were found to be slanderers and condemned, and remained in the same obstinacy of fury. Indeed, you yourselves, who say that Christian holiness has been utterly destroyed from so many nations where the apostles left it most firmly founded, because they communicated with those whom your forefathers had condemned in a council of seventy bishops at Carthage: do you not now communicate with those whom three hundred and ten of you condemned with Maximian at the council of Bagai? Is not Praetextatus of Assuras read as condemned in that very council and accused and attacked by you in the proconsular records, and yet received in the rank in which he had been condemned and died in your communion? Is not Felicianus of Musti, condemned in the same way, in the same cause, at the same council by the bishops, accused before the judges, afterwards received by you, now living as a bishop with you? Do not those who were baptized by these condemned men now communicate with you in the same baptism? But of course so many churches overseas founded by apostolic labour, if they have shared the sacraments with men whom they neither condemned when accused before them and heard afterwards cleared and absolved by others, lose salvation and the Christian religion; while the party of Donatus both condemns whom it will, and in that very condemnation so exaggerates the sacrilege of their schism that it does not hesitate to compare them with those whom the earth swallowed alive, and again, when it will, receives them in the same rank and communicates with them, and remains holy and whole! O rule of Numidian law! O privileges of Bagai! The baptism of Christ is blown upon in those who received it in the apostolic churches, but in those whom the condemned sacrilegious men, as is written in the council of Bagai, Praetextatus and Felicianus, had baptized, the baptism of Christ is spared, not because it is the baptism of Christ, but because it was given by men who deserved to depart as bishops from those who condemned them and to return as bishops to those who condemned them.

Indeed, all these things that I have been mentioning for a long time we recite as done from royal letters and from church, municipal, and proconsular records. Yet, O Donatists, if you held the church spread through the whole world, which is marked out and expressed by the plainest testimonies of the canonical Scriptures, all these things should have no force against you; for neither would the crimes of the chaff prejudice you, if you were the wheat in it, nor, if you were chaff and the crimes yours, would you prejudice in any way the wheat of the Lord's crop, which was so sown in the Lord's field as to grow until the harvest, that is, so sown in the world as to grow until the end of the age. In the same way, then, even if (what you have never yet proved to us) you carried such documents against our chaff, and we did not have these great things I have mentioned against you, even so nothing at all would prejudice our grain spread through the whole world, whatever you said against its chaff, however true, however manifest, however well proved. So let all delaying evasions be removed. Whatever false charge is brought about men's sins, let conscience be appealed to, and let it not be brought; whatever true charge is brought about men's sins but either cannot be proved or could not be proved when it should have been, let it not be brought; whatever charge about men's sins is both true and proved, yet belongs not to the grain hidden among the chaff but to the chaff itself, which will be separated at the end, let it not be brought. For we too can bring such charges far more abundantly and more credibly, not with the emptiness with which they do, so as to rest our case on them, but to show them that we do not refuse to rely on such things because we find nothing of the kind to say, but so as not to waste time useful for necessary things on unnecessary ones. They do this because they cannot find documents resting on strong and firm truth by which to defend their case, and they want to seem to say something, while they blush to be silent and do not blush to speak emptily. Let them, then, removing all such things, show their church, if they can, not in the talk and rumours of Africans, not in the councils of their bishops, not in the writings of any disputants whatever, not in deceptive signs and wonders (for against these too we have been prepared and made cautious by the Lord's word), but in the prescription of the law, in the predictions of the prophets, in the songs of the psalms, in the voice of the one shepherd himself, in the preaching and labours of the evangelists, that is, in all the canonical authorities of the holy books; and not so as to collect and cite things said obscurely, ambiguously, or figuratively, which each may interpret as he likes according to his own sense. For such things cannot be rightly understood and explained unless first the things said most plainly are held with firm faith.

Whoever, then, prepares to answer this letter, I warn beforehand not to say to me: "Those men handed the Lord's books over to the flames, those men sacrificed to the idols of the nations, those men waged a most unjust persecution against us, and you agreed with them in everything." For I answer briefly what I have often answered: either you say what is false, or, if it is true, what you say belongs not to Christ's grain but to its chaff. The church does not perish because of this; winnowed at the last judgment, it will be cleansed by the separation of all these. I seek the church itself: where it is, which by hearing and doing the words of Christ builds on the rock, and by hearing and doing tolerates those who, hearing and not doing, build on the sand; where the wheat is that grows among the tares until the harvest, not what the tares themselves have done or are doing; where Christ's neighbour is among the bad daughters like a lily among thorns, not what the thorns themselves have done or are doing; where the good fish are that, until they reach the shore, tolerate the bad fish caught together with them, not what the bad fish themselves have done or are doing.