Letter to the Catholics on the Sect of the Donatists (On the Unity of the Church) 49–62

Setting aside these snares of delay, then, let him show that the church was to be kept either in Africa alone, so many nations having perished, or that it was to be restored and filled up from Africa in all nations; and let him show it in such a way as not to say: "It is true because I say it," or "because my colleague said it," or "my colleagues," or "those bishops or clergy or laity of ours"; or "it is true because Donatus or Pontius or someone else worked such and such miracles," or "because people pray at the shrines of our dead and are heard," or "because such and such things happen there," or "because that brother or that sister of ours saw such a vision while awake or dreamed such a dream while asleep." Let these be removed, either as the inventions of lying men or as the portents of deceitful spirits. For either the things said are not true, or, if some wonders have been done by heretics, we ought to be the more on our guard; for when the Lord had said that some deceivers would come who, by working certain signs, would deceive even the elect if it were possible, he added, commending it strongly: "See, I have told you beforehand." Hence the apostle too warns: "But the Spirit says plainly that in the last times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons." Moreover, if someone praying at the shrines of heretics is heard, he receives either good or evil not for the merit of the place but for the merit of his desire. For "the Spirit of the Lord," as it is written, "has filled the whole world," and "the ear of jealousy hears all things"; and many are heard when God is angry, of whom the apostle says, "God gave them up to the desires of their hearts"; and to many God in his favour does not grant what they want, so that he may grant what is useful. Hence the same apostle says of the thorn in his flesh, the angel of Satan which he says was given him to buffet him lest he be lifted up by the greatness of the revelations: "For this I asked the Lord three times to take it away from me; and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you; power is made perfect in weakness." Do we not read that some were heard by the Lord God himself on the high places of the mountains of Judea, though these high places so displeased God that the kings who did not destroy them were blamed and those who destroyed them were praised? From which it is understood that the disposition of the one asking counts for more than the place of asking. And about deceptive visions, let them read what is written, both that Satan himself transforms himself as an angel of light and that dreams have led many astray; let them hear also what the pagans tell of wonders done or seen in their temples and by their gods; and yet "the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens." Many, then, are heard, and in many ways, not only catholic Christians but also pagans, Jews, and heretics given to various errors and superstitions. They are heard either by seducing spirits, who yet do nothing unless they are permitted, God judging loftily and ineffably what is to be granted to each, or by God himself, either as punishment for wickedness, or as comfort in misery, or as a warning to seek eternal salvation. But no one reaches that salvation and eternal life except one who has Christ as head; and no one can have Christ as head except one who is in his body, which is the church, which, like the head himself, we must recognize in the holy canonical Scriptures, not search for in the various rumours and opinions and deeds and sayings and visions of men.

Let no one, then, who is prepared to answer me, set these things against me, since I do not say either that I am to be believed that the communion of Donatus is not the church of Christ because certain men who were bishops among them are convicted by church, municipal, and judicial records of handing over the divine documents to the flames; or because in the judgment of bishops which they had asked of the emperor they did not win their case; or because, appealing to the emperor himself, they received from him too a sentence against them; or because such leaders of the Circumcellions are among them; or because the Circumcellions commit such great evils; or because there are among them those who throw themselves over cliffs or cast themselves into fires they have lit themselves to be burned, or extort their own slaughter even from unwilling men by terrifying them, and seek so many voluntary and frenzied deaths in order to be venerated by men; or because at their tombs drunken herds of vagrant men and women, with mingled wickedness, bury themselves in wine day and night and corrupt themselves with shameful acts. Let all this crowd be their chaff, and let it not prejudice the grain, if they hold the church. But whether they hold the church, let them show only from the canonical books of the divine Scriptures; for neither do we say that we ought to be believed to be in the church of Christ because Optatus of Milevis or Ambrose of Milan or countless other bishops of our communion commended the church we hold; or because it was proclaimed by the councils of our colleagues; or because throughout the whole world, in the holy places which our communion frequents, such great wonders of answered prayers or of healings take place, so that the bodies of martyrs hidden for so many years (as those who ask can hear from many) were revealed to Ambrose, and at those very bodies a man blind for many years, very well known to the city of Milan, received back his eyes and sight; or because one man saw a dream and another, taken up in the spirit, heard that he should not go over to the party of Donatus or that he should leave the party of Donatus. Whatever such things happen in the catholic church are to be approved because they happen in the catholic church; the catholic church is not made manifest because these things happen in it. The Lord Jesus himself, when he had risen from the dead and offered his body to be seen by the disciples' eyes and touched by their hands, yet so that they might not think they were suffering some deception, judged that they should rather be confirmed by the testimonies of the law, the prophets, and the psalms, showing that what had been foretold so long before had been fulfilled in him. So too he commended his church, saying that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. He himself testified that this is written in the law and the prophets and the psalms; this we hold commended by his mouth. These are the proofs of our case, these its foundations, these its supports.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles, of certain believers, that they searched the Scriptures daily whether these things were so. What Scriptures, surely, but the canonical ones of the law and the prophets? To these were added the gospels, the apostolic letters, the Acts of the Apostles, the Apocalypse of John. Search all these and dig out something plain by which to show that the church either remained in Africa alone or that it is from Africa that what the Lord says is to be fulfilled: "This gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." But bring forward something that does not need an interpreter, and from which you cannot be convicted that it was said of another matter and that you are trying to twist it to your own sense. For you see how that single text you usually bring forward, "Where you feed, where you lie down at noon," when all the words of that passage are examined, indicates something far other than you think; and if it meant what you want, the Maximianists would beat you on it. For the province of Byzacium and Tripolis, where they are, whoever they are, is more "noon" than Numidia, where you prevail. So they can boast of "noon" more genuinely and distinctly, so that you cannot exclude them from this text unless you hold the true and catholic sense in those words, showing them that by the four corners of the world noon is from the south rather than from the south-west, and that in the figurative expressions of the Scriptures the perfect illumination of the mind and the greatest fervour of charity are called noon, whence it is written: "And your darkness will be like noon." Bring forward, then, something that is not more truly interpreted against you, but that needs no interpreter at all; as "In your seed all nations will be blessed" needs no interpreter, since not I but the apostle interprets Abraham's seed as Christ; as "For you will be called My delight, and your land the whole world" needs no interpreter, since it is said to her whom no Christian understands as other than the church of Christ; as "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before him, for the kingdom is his and he will rule over the nations" needs no interpreter, since it is said in that psalm where the Lord's passion is declared, with the gospel as witness; as "It was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise on the third day, and that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem" needs no interpreter; as "And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth" needs no interpreter (for the deeds that followed, confirmed by canonical documents, testify that the church began from Jerusalem and went from there round about Judea and Samaria and the other nations); as "And this gospel will be preached as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come" needs no interpreter (for the Lord, asked about the end of this age, when he had spoken of certain beginnings of birth pangs, said, "But the end is not yet," and foretold that the end would come after the preaching of the gospel in the whole world among all nations); as "Let both grow until the harvest" needs no interpreter, since, when it needed an interpreter, the Lord himself interpreted it, and he whom no one can contradict explained it, especially in that parable which he set forth, and he himself says that the good seed is the sons of the kingdom, the field the world, the harvest the end of the age. Bring forward something like this, even one, in which Africa is most plainly declared either left alone among the rest or alone preserved as the starting point for renewing and filling the world. For what was soon to perish would not be commended by so many testimonies, while silence was kept about what alone was to be left or from which alone the whole was to be restored and filled. But if you cannot show what we so justly demand of you, yield to the truth, be silent, fall asleep, and wake from your fury to salvation.

Or do you still say: "If the church is with you, why do you compel us to its peace by persecuting us? Or if we are wicked, why do you seek us? And if we are tares, let us grow until the harvest"? As if we were doing anything else, in whatever ways we can, than seeing that the wheat is not uprooted along with the tares while the tares are separated before the time. For whoever will be good for eternity, even if they are wicked before the time, are not tares but wheat in the foreknowledge of God. And you accuse us thus, asking why we seek you if you are wicked, as if you had not perished in being wicked, and therefore must be sought because you have perished: so that, lost, you may be sought; sought, you may be found; found, you may be called back, like that sheep by the shepherd, like that coin by the woman, like that son who was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. For he seeks you who dwells in the saints and commands that you be sought.

As for your complaint of persecution, it will be quieted if you consider and understand first that not all persecution is blameworthy; otherwise it would not be said in praise: "Whoever secretly slanders his neighbour, him I persecuted." For every day we see a son complain of his father as of his persecutor, a wife of her husband, a slave of his master, a tenant of his landlord, a defendant of his judge, a soldier or provincial of his general or king, when these, often by a most orderly authority, restrain and check the men subject to them from graver evils through the fear of light penalties, though often also they frighten them away from a good life and good deeds by threats and cruelty. But when they restrain from what is evil and unlawful, they are correctors and counsellors; when from what is good and lawful, persecutors and oppressors. Even those who restrain from evil are blamed if the measure of coercion exceeds the measure of the sin. Likewise those are rightly to be blamed who in a disorderly and riotous way leap upon people to coerce them who are subject to them by no law.

Therefore we justly rebuke the disorderly licence and proud madness of your Circumcellions, even when they are violent against some of the worst men, because it is not good to punish unlawful things unlawfully and to deter from unlawful things unlawfully. But when they persecute even the innocent, either without knowing the case or out of the most unjust enmities, who would not shudder at their most wicked robberies? But that you thought the fury of the Maximianists should be coerced by public laws, so that, driven by the orders of judges, the execution of officials, and the help of the cities from the basilicas they held, you might urge them to consider their crime, this we do not rebuke, except that you attacked in them what you yourselves did, and indeed far more lightly than you did. For they set up an altar of sacrilegious dissension against the party of Donatus, but you against the whole world and against the words of him who commended his church beginning from Jerusalem through all nations. Moreover, if the Maximianists dared to resist unlawfully and furiously the orders of judges obtained against them, would they not bring judgment on themselves, as the apostle says: "For whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God; and those who resist bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good work but to evil"? Since, then, theirs was an evil work which you were trying to restrain through the ordained authorities, if they chose to oppose the laws for the sake of that evil work with a worse work, would they suffer whatever evil befell them from you and not from themselves? Just as, if anyone had chosen to speak blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and had been destroyed with his house according to the king's edict, would he suffer those deserved evils from those three men, after whose deliverance from the fire the king, moved, had issued that edict, or even from the king himself, and not rather from himself? If those forty Jews who had sworn to kill Paul had also rushed upon the armed men by whom, as an ordained protection, Paul was being escorted, would Paul have killed them, and not they themselves by resisting the authorities?

Therefore you too, without agitation of mind, without turbulent contention, without the bitterness of hatred, consider carefully the measures that the kings of our communion are enacting against you, for what cause you suffer; and if you find that you are in the church of Christ, rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in heaven. For you are being crowned as martyrs, and they are judged as persecutors of martyrs. But if the holy and canonical Scripture convicts you of having set up an altar against the church of Christ, of being separated by sacrilegious schism from the Christian unity which is spread through the whole world, and of opposing the body of Christ, which is the church spread through the whole world, by rebaptizing and blaspheming and attacking it as much as you can, then you are impious and sacrilegious; and they, who decree that you should be deterred and restrained from so great a crime by such light admonitions of loss, the deprivation of places or honours or money, so that by considering why you suffer these things you may recognize and flee your sacrilege and be freed from eternal damnation, are counted most diligent rulers and most devoted counsellors. Catholic Christian emperors owe you this love: that, because of Christian gentleness, they decree that your sacrileges be punished not as they deserve, and, because of Christian solicitude, that they not be left entirely unpunished. This God works in them, whose mercy you will not recognize even in these troubles of which you complain. But we, as far as lies in us, as far as the Lord grants and permits, do not even set in motion these laws of the mildest coercion against you, except that the catholic church, for the sake of the frailty of the weak, so that they may be free to choose without fear what to hold or follow, may be kept free from your terrors; so that if any of your people do something violent against ours, then you, whom we hold as hostages, as it were, on estates and in cities, may suffer not such things as your people do, but, subjected to the laws through ordered judicial process, be punished with a fine. If this seems heavy to you, let your people spare you and keep quiet; but if those who are either under you or with you rage by not keeping quiet against you, you have nothing to complain of in us, who have put it in your power, or in your people's, that you suffer no penalties even while following your heresy, if the catholic church suffers no violence either from you or from yours. But if some violence has been done against your will and when you could not restrain it, you are mercifully and justly admonished by these very penalties what sort of people you have, by whom you think you are not defiled; and from this you are compelled to understand how empty are the slanders you bring against the church of Christ spread through the whole world; and do not now charge us with persecuting you, but rather your own people, if they prefer that we be harassed by their violence and you be crushed by the public laws rather than be calmed from their accustomed fury. If indeed you suffer anything hateful and harmful from those of ours who do not keep the measure and intention of Christian charity, I would quickly say that they are not ours, but either will be if they correct themselves, or are to be separated at the end if they persist in malice; yet we neither break the nets because of bad fish nor desert the great house because of vessels made for dishonour. And if you too, by the same rule, say that those from whom the catholic church suffers such things are not yours, prove your mind, correct your error, embrace the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. For if neither do they defile you nor these us, let us not slander one another with others' crimes: let us grow as grain in one charity, and together tolerate the chaff until the winnowing fan.

Therefore, if the testimonies of the canonical Scriptures which commend the church as consisting in the communion of the whole world need no interpreter, and you can find no such support from the same books for your separation set up in Africa, neither do you justly complain of persecutions; for the church itself suffers heavier ones the more widely it is spread, and with faith, hope, and charity tolerates all things, not only such things as your Circumcellions and those like them inflict on its members wherever they can, but all the scandals of various iniquities swarming throughout the whole world, of which the Lord cried out: "Woe to the world because of scandals!" For a son persecutes his father more gravely by living badly than a father his son by chastising him; and the maidservant persecuted Sarah more gravely by her unjust pride than Sarah persecuted her by due discipline; and those of whom it was said, "Zeal for your house has consumed me," persecuted the Lord more gravely than he did them when he overturned their tables and drove them out of the temple with a whip.

What more have you to say? Or shall we now bring forward that last argument of yours? "See," they say, "you hold the church: how do you receive us if we want to come over to you?" I answer briefly: we receive you as the church receives which we find in the holy canonical books. For, laying aside the animosity of contradiction with which all swell who will not be conquered by the truth of God and are conquered by their own perversity, you can easily understand that the divine sacraments are both in the good and in the wicked, but in the former for salvation, in the latter for damnation; and though there is so great a difference between those who have handled them worthily and unworthily, yet the sacraments themselves are the same, availing to the former for reward, to the latter for judgment.

Therefore, when the Lord baptized more than John, as is written in the gospel, where the evangelist added, "although he himself did not baptize, but his disciples," though there was so great a difference between Peter and Judas, there was yet no difference between the baptism given through Peter and that given through Judas. For what was given through them was one, though they themselves were not one; and it was Christ's, while of them one belonged to the members of Christ and the other to the devil's party. But though John the Baptist and the apostle Paul were one, since both were friends of the bridegroom, yet, because the baptism given by John and that given by Paul were not one, Paul commanded those who had been baptized with John's baptism to be baptized with the baptism of Christ. So that was called the baptism of John, but what was given through Paul was not called the baptism of Paul; rather, "he commanded them," it says, "to be baptized in Christ." See, John and Paul are one, and do not give one thing; see, Peter and Judas are not one, and give one thing; but Peter and Paul are both one and give one thing. Abraham and Cornelius, justified by faith, are one, and did not receive one sacrament; likewise Cornelius and Simon Magus are not one, and received one sacrament; but Cornelius and that eunuch whom Philip baptized on the road are both one and received one sacrament. When, then, the sacrament is one, neither different givers nor different receivers make what is one not to be one.

But these men, while they want what is Christ's to belong to men, try to persuade people of the falsest and most absurd things, so that there would be almost as many baptisms as the men through whom they are given. So they try to twist what the Lord said about a man and a man's work, "A good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit," to mean that one baptized by a good man is good and one baptized by a bad man is bad. From this it follows, even against their will, that one baptized by a better man is better and one baptized by a lesser man is lesser. From which it follows that those whom, before the Lord's passion, Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples, would have been born much more holily if they had been baptized by him. For who could even imagine how great the difference was between him and his disciples by whom they were being baptized? Did he then begrudge a holier birth to those whom, while he was here, he preferred to be baptized by his disciples? Anyone who believes this is certainly mad. What, then, did the Lord deign to show by this very fact, except that what was given was his, through whomever it was given, and that it is he who baptizes, of whom that friend of the bridegroom had said, "This is he who baptizes," by whatever minister's hands the one who believed in him was baptized? Paul too says: "I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I baptized in my own name." Is he, then, to be believed to have begrudged men a better sanctification, if, the better he was, the better those baptized by him could be baptized? Rather, the intention of a most careful and faithful steward watched precisely for this: that no one should think himself baptized more holily because he was baptized by a holier minister, and attribute to the servant what was the Lord's.

Since, then, the good and the wicked both give and receive the sacrament of baptism, and only the good, spiritually reborn, are built together into the body and members of Christ, that church is surely in the good to which it is said, "As a lily among thorns, so is my neighbour among the daughters." For in them are those who build on the rock, that is, who hear the words of Christ and do them; since to Peter, when he confessed him as the Christ, the Son of God, he said: "And on this rock I will build my church." It is not, then, in those who build on the sand, that is, who hear the words of Christ and do not do them. For he himself said: "Whoever hears these words of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who builds his house on the rock"; and a little later in the same place: "Whoever hears these words of mine and does not do them, I will liken him to a foolish man who builds his house on the sand." Those, then, who by the bond of charity are incorporated into the building set on the rock and into the lily shining among thorns will certainly possess the kingdom of God; but those who build on the sand or are counted among the thorns, who would doubt that they will not possess the kingdom of God? The sacrament of baptism certainly profits such people nothing; yet because of their unstable foundation and barren malice no injury is to be done even to the sacrament they have.

Notice, then, without zeal for contention, in that passage of the letter of the apostle Paul which he wrote to the Galatians, how right it is that, when heretics correct their error, if they have the sacrament which they ought to have had, they should receive what they lacked, and what was in them should not be rejected and blasphemed. "The works of the flesh," he says, "are manifest, which are fornications, impurities, debaucheries, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strifes, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and the like, of which I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God." All these, then, are not in the lily nor on the rock; and among these heretics too are placed. Why, then, to pass over the rest, do you not baptize after drunkards, the debauched, and the envious, who will not possess the kingdom of God and so are not on the rock, and, because they are not on the rock, are undoubtedly not counted in the church (for "on this rock," he says, "I will build my church"), and yet want us to baptize after heretics, who are listed among the same thorns that will not possess the kingdom of God and in whom the sacraments are likewise present, since they are the same, but do not profit, because, while the sacraments are right, they themselves are perverse?

Considering and reflecting on these things without obstinacy, you can easily understand that in each person what is crooked must be corrected, but what is right must be approved; and what will be lacking must be given, but what will be present must be acknowledged. So let the heretic who comes to become a catholic correct his own error, not violate the sacrament of Christ; let him receive the bond of peace which he did not have, without which the baptism he had could not profit him. For both are necessary to obtain the kingdom of God, baptism and righteousness. In one who despises the baptism of Christ there cannot be righteousness; but baptism can be even in one who does not have righteousness, though it cannot profit him. For as the Truth said, "Unless someone is born again of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven," so the same Truth said, "Unless your righteousness abounds beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven"; so that not baptism alone, but righteousness too, leads to the kingdom, and whoever lacks either both or one of them cannot reach it. Therefore, since it is said to heretics, "You lack righteousness, which no one can have without charity and the bond of peace," and since they themselves confess that many have baptism and do not have righteousness (and, if they do not confess it, divine Scripture convicts them), I wonder how they think that, when we refuse to baptize again those who have not their own but Christ's baptism, we act as if we judged that they now lack nothing; and how, since the baptism they are found to have is not given to them in the catholic church, they think they receive nothing there, where they receive that without which what they have avails to their ruin, not to their salvation. If they will not understand this, it is enough for us that we hold that church which is shown by the plainest testimonies of the holy and canonical Scriptures.