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

You remember, brothers, that a very small part of the letter of Petilian, the Donatist bishop of Constantina, once came into our hands, and that I wrote to your love what I had answered to that small portion. But when afterwards the whole and complete letter was sent to us by the brothers who are there, I decided to answer it from the beginning, as though we were dealing face to face, in the way you know we have always wished to deal with them: so that, without zeal for contention, what is said either by them or by us might be plain to all by comparing the arguments. For we learned that that letter is in the hands of many, who even know much of it by heart, thinking that he said something true against us. But now, if they will read what we have answered, they will surely understand what they should reject and what they should hold. For those things are not ours, as they themselves can consider if they will judge without partisanship; for all of them have been so brought forward and proved from the holy Scriptures that no one can deny them except one who professes himself an enemy of those Scriptures. But I see what the most obstinate defenders of so bad a cause may say about that work of ours: namely, that I answered the letter of an absent man, where he could not hear my words so as to answer them at once. Let him, then, defend the words of his letter and, if he can, show that they were not refuted and convicted by my answers; or, if he does not want to do this, let him himself do to this letter of mine what I did to that letter of his, which I have already answered; for he wrote that letter to his own people, as I write this to you. Let him answer it too, if he wishes.

The question that certainly lies between us is where the church is: with us or with them. It is certainly one, the church that our forefathers named catholic, to show by the very name that it is throughout the whole; for "according to the whole" is said in Greek kath' holon. This church is the body of Christ, as the apostle says: "for the sake of his body, which is the church." From this it is surely plain that one who is not among the members of Christ cannot have Christian salvation. The members of Christ are joined to one another by the charity of unity, and by the same charity they cling to their head, who is Christ Jesus. All, therefore, that is proclaimed about Christ is head and body. The head is the only-begotten Jesus Christ himself, the Son of the living God, himself "the saviour of the body," "who died for our sins and rose for our justification"; his body is the church, of which it is said: "that he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing." Between us and the Donatists the question is where this body is, that is, where the church is. What, then, shall we do? Shall we seek it in our own words or in the words of its head, our Lord Jesus Christ? I think we ought rather to seek it in his words, who is the truth and knows his own body best; for "the Lord knows those who are his."

Notice now what our words are, in which the church ought not to be sought, and see there too what difference there is between our words and theirs; and yet we do not want the church to be sought in our words. Whatever we charge against one another concerning the handing over of the divine books, the offering of incense, and persecutions, these are our words. In such matters we hold to this method: either both are counted true, what is said by us and what is said by them; or both false; or ours true and theirs false; or ours false and theirs true; and in all these cases we show that there is no crime of the Christian world with which we are in communion. For if the crimes are true, both those we charge against them and those they charge against us, let us do what the apostle says: "forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave us," so that wicked men, neither those who perhaps were or are among us nor those who were or are among them, may hinder our concord and the bond of peace, once that one crime of theirs has been corrected, that they separated themselves in vain from the unity of the world, when they had such men themselves. But if both are false, whether what we charge against them or what they charge against us concerning the handing over or the persecution of innocent people, I see no cause for dispute, except that there is cause for those who separated themselves without cause to correct themselves. But if we say what is true, since we confirm it by the proceedings we bring forward, by the letters of the emperor to whom they then first wrote and afterwards appealed, and by the communion of the whole world, while what they say is proved false by this, that in those very times, when the same question was being debated, they could not win their case at all, then a greater fury of sacrilegious animosity and persecution of innocent souls appears in them than if they were held only by the crime of schism. And those other things let them assign not to all but to whichever of their own they wish; but schism is the crime of all. Moreover, if they want the crimes of handing over and persecution that they charge to be true and those charged by us false, not even so are they cleansed from the crime of schism; for those crimes can belong to certain people, not to the whole Christian world. And if they think the world perished by contagion (I omit to say how many evils, even known ones, the saints tolerated in the gathering of men for the good of peace), this I say: let them show how they have not perished by the contagion of those sacrilegious violators of the chastity of consecrated women who they either do not now know, or at some time did not know, to be hidden or to have been hidden among them. Surely they will say that they were not defiled for the very reason that they did not know. How, then, was the world defiled, which still does not know whether the things they say are true? Let us suppose them proved and demonstrated to us just now: what shall we do about so many nations? They are deserted in their ignorance; therefore the innocent are deserted, and though that is no crime of theirs, this begins to be a most wicked crime of ours. Or should we run and teach them what we know? To what end? If it is so that they may be innocent, they are innocent even while they do not know; for we keep our innocence not by knowing men's evil deeds, but by not consenting to those we know and by not judging rashly about those we do not know. And for this reason, as I said, the world is innocent, which does not know the crimes that these men allege against certain people, even if what they allege is true; but those who separated themselves from these innocent people lost their innocence by that very crime of separation and schism. And now they would teach us that they speak the truth against certain people, so as to separate us from those against whom they have nothing true to say.

For this is what the whole world says to them, very brief in words but very strong in truth: The African bishops were in conflict among themselves. If they could not end the dissension that had arisen among them, so that, either by those who were contending wrongly being reconciled through concord or being deposed, those who had the good cause might remain in the communion of the world through the bond of unity, it certainly remained that the bishops overseas, where the greatest part of the catholic church was spread, should judge the dissensions of their African colleagues, at the instance of those who were charging others with the crime of an evil ordination. If this was not done, the fault lies with those by whom it should have been done, not with the world, which did not know what was not brought to it. But if it was done, how did the church's judges sin, who ought in no way to condemn crimes which, even if true and reported to them, were not proved to them? Could the wicked defile those to whom they could not be made known? But if they were made known to them and through some sloth or connivance they refused to remove such men from communion and, by a perverse judgment, even gave sentences in their favour, how did the world sin, which did not know that that case had had bad judges, and believed that they had judged well, about whom it could not judge? For as the crime of the accused, if it was hidden from the judges, certainly did not defile them, so also the crime of the judges, if there was any, since it was hidden from the world, certainly could not defile the world. With these innocent people, then, we innocently communicate even today, not knowing what was done then. Therefore, even if we learned today that what they say against certain people is true, there is no reason why we should withdraw from the innocent who do not know these things and pass over to those who are all entangled in the crime of schism, because they did what they persuade us to do: not to tolerate the wicked after the example of the apostles, but to desert the good after the example of heretics. But let us suppose, what cannot happen, that the world could today know clearly with us that the crimes of certain people whom these men accuse are true: could it become more innocent by this than it was before it knew? For as unknown wicked men could not stain it, even if they were still in this life, so those who have already departed from this life cannot stain it even when known. If, then, our cause in our own words about the crimes of certain people, which we charge against each other, is such that it is still unconquered even if we learned today that what we say against certain of them is false and what they say against certain of ours is true, what have they to answer, whether rather what we say is true and what they say false, or both false, or both true, since they are defeated even in that which alone they wish with all their prayers to be believed?

But, as I had begun to say, let us not listen to "This you say, this I say," but let us listen to "This says the Lord." There are certainly the Lord's books, to whose authority we both consent, to which we both yield, which we both serve: there let us seek the church, there let us argue our case. Here perhaps they will say: "Why do you look in the books that you handed over to the flames?" To this I answer: "Why are you afraid that these books will be read, if you guarded them from the flames?" He should surely be believed to have handed them over who is shown not to agree with them when they are read. Or if perhaps these books mark out their traitor as the Lord marked out Judas, let them read in them, by name and expressly, that either Caecilian or those who ordained him would be traditors of those same books; and if I do not anathematize them, let me be judged to have handed them over together with them. But neither do we find in those books that those who ordained Majorinus are designated traditors, although we recite this from elsewhere. Let those things, then, be taken out of the way which we recite against each other, not from the divine canonical books, but from elsewhere. And if they do not want them taken away, let them see that if both are true, there was no cause for their separation, so as to flee those whom they had themselves; if both are false, there was no cause for their separation, so as to flee those whom they found in no crime; if ours are true and theirs false, there was no cause for their separation, because they should rather have corrected themselves and remained in unity; and if ours are false and theirs true, there was no cause for their separation, because they ought not to have deserted the innocent world, to which they either would not or could not show these things.

Perhaps someone may ask and say to me: "Why, then, do you want those things taken out of the way, when your communion is unconquered even if they are brought forward?" Because I do not want the holy church to be shown by human documents but by divine oracles. For if the holy Scriptures have marked out the church in Africa alone, and in a few Cutzupitani or Montenses at Rome, and in the house or estate of one Spanish woman, then whatever else is brought forward from other papers, none but the Donatists hold the church. If holy Scripture locates it among a few Moors of the province of Caesarea, we must go over to the Rogatists. If among a few Tripolitanians and Byzacenians and provincials, the Maximianists have reached it. If in the East alone, it must be sought among the Arians, the Eunomians, the Macedonians, and whatever others there are there. And who could enumerate all the heresies of each nation? But if the church of Christ has been marked out in all nations by the divine and most certain testimonies of the canonical Scriptures, then whatever they bring and from wherever they recite it who say, "Look, here is Christ, look, there," let us rather listen, if we are his sheep, to the voice of our shepherd saying, "Do not believe it." For each of those sects is not found in the many nations where this church is; but this church, which is everywhere, is found even where they are. Let us, then, seek it in the holy canonical Scriptures.

The whole Christ is head and body: the head the only-begotten Son of God, and the body his church; bridegroom and bride, two in one flesh. Whoever dissent from the holy Scriptures about the head itself, even if they are found in all the places in which the church is marked out, are not in the church. And again, whoever agree with the holy Scriptures about the head itself but do not communicate with the unity of the church are not in the church, because they dissent from the testimony of Christ himself about the body of Christ, which is the church. For example, those who do not believe that Christ came in the flesh of the virgin Mary, of the seed of David, as the Scripture of God says most plainly, or that he did not rise in the very body in which he was crucified and buried, even if they are found through all the lands through which the church is, are certainly not in the church, because they do not hold the head of the church, which is Christ Jesus; nor are they deceived by some obscurity of the divine Scriptures, but they contradict their best-known and plainest testimonies. Likewise, whoever believe indeed that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, as has been said, and rose in the same flesh in which he was born and suffered, and that he himself is the Son of God, God with God, and one with the Father, and the unchangeable Word of the Father through whom all things were made, but nevertheless so dissent from his body, which is the church, that their communion is not with the whole wherever it is spread, but is found in some separated part, it is plain that they are not in the catholic church. Therefore, since our question with the Donatists is not about the head but about the body, that is, not about the Saviour Jesus Christ himself but about his church, let the head itself, about which we agree, show us his body, about which we disagree, so that through his words we may now cease to disagree. He is the only-begotten Son and Word of God, and therefore not even the holy prophets could have spoken truly unless what they should say had been revealed to them by the Truth itself, which is the Word of God, and they had been commanded to say it. So in earlier times the Word of God sounded through the prophets, then through himself, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, then through the apostles whom he sent to preach him, that there might be salvation to the ends of the earth. In all these, then, the church must be sought.

But since slanderers often turn many things said against others or for another reason against whom they wish and to what they wish; and since many things, set down figuratively and obscurely to exercise rational minds, through the image of a riddle or the double sense of ambiguity, are sometimes believed to agree and fit with a false interpretation, I declare and propose this as well: that we choose whatever is open and manifest. If such things were not found in the holy Scriptures, there would be no way at all of opening what is closed and lighting up what is obscure. For example, see how easy it is either for us to say against them or for them to say against us what the Lord said to the Pharisees: "You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful to men, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." Whether these words are said by us against them or by them against us, who of moderately sound mind does not know that, unless it is first proved by the plainest documents who they are that, though unjust, pretend to be just, they are spoken with reviling levity rather than convicting truth? For the Lord said those things against the Pharisees otherwise, as the Lord, that is, as the knower of the heart and of all human secrets, as witness and judge; but we must first find and show what we accuse, lest we ourselves rather be accused of the very grave crime of insane rashness. Certainly, if they first show us to be such, we ought by no means to refuse to be rebuked and crushed by such words of the holy Scriptures; likewise, if we show them to be such, it will similarly be in our power to strike them, once shown and convicted, with whatever rebukes of the Lord we please.

So too those things must be set aside for the time being which, being set down obscurely and wrapped in the veils of figures, can be interpreted both in our favour and in theirs. It belongs indeed to sharp-witted men to judge and decide who interprets them more probably, but we do not wish to commit our discussion to such contests of ingenuity in a cause that concerns whole peoples. None of us doubts that through Noah's ark, while keeping faith with the events, in that sinners were destroyed and the house of the righteous man was delivered from the flood, the church too was prefigured; this might perhaps seem a conjecture of human ingenuity, if the apostle Peter did not say it in his letter. But if one of us should say what he did not say there, that all kinds of animals were in it because it was foretold that the church would be in all nations, perhaps the Donatists would see it otherwise and wish to interpret it differently. Likewise, if they interpret something set down obscurely or ambiguously in favour of their opinion, and we are free to draw from it something else that sounds in our favour, what end will there be? For one of their bishops, when he was preaching to the people here at Hippo, as we have heard, said that Noah's ark was pitched inside so that it might not let out its own water, and outside so that it might not let in water from outside. He certainly meant this interpretation to serve the purpose that baptism should not be believed able to go out of the church, nor that given outside be accepted. He seemed to say something, and those who listened gladly and did not think carefully about what they had heard shouted acclamation, so that they did not notice, as was easy, that a framework of timbers cannot let in water from outside if it does not let it out from inside; and if it lets it out from the inner side, it follows that it also lets it in from the outer side. But even if what he said about joined timber were true, who would prevent me, if I could, from saying something else about the ark pitched on both sides, so that it would be uncertain which of these, or perhaps some third thing, that fact signified? For it is not absurdly said, but even much more probably, that by pitch, since it is a powerful glue and a very hot thing, charity is signified. For why is it said in the psalm, "My soul has been glued to you," except by most burning charity? And since it is commanded that charity be in us toward one another and toward all, therefore the ark was pitched inside and outside. Or certainly, since it is written, "Charity bears all things," the very strength of forbearance, which holds fast to unity, was signified by pitch, with which the ark was smeared inside and outside, because the wicked must be tolerated both inside and outside, lest the framework of peace be dissolved. In this discussion of ours, then, let us spare such interpretations and seek something plain by which the church may be manifested.

It is written, of course, in the book of Judges: "And Gideon said to the Lord: If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken, behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; and if there is dew on the fleece and dryness on all the ground, I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken. And it was so. And Gideon rose early the next day and squeezed the fleece, and dew ran out of the fleece, a basin full of water. And Gideon said to the Lord: Let not your anger be kindled against me, Lord, and I will speak once more, and test once more with the fleece: let there be dryness on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew. And God did so that night: there was dryness on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew." I do not see what else is figured and foretold here than that we should understand the threshing floor as the whole world and the place of the fleece as the people of Israel. For we know that that nation was once drenched, as with heavenly dew, by the grace of the divine mystery, while all the nations round about, lacking that gift, had as it were dryness. But this gift was among that people in the fleece, that is, in a veil and as in a cloud of secrecy, because it had not yet been revealed. Now, however, we see the whole world, the dew now revealed, fattened by the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was then figured under that covering; but that nation, having lost the priesthood it had, because it does not understand Christ in the Scriptures, has remained as in a dry fleece. Yet even in such figures of things, although I do not see what else can be understood here, I do not want us to seek the church. Let us set aside for the time being altogether whatever needs interpretation of any kind, even of this kind; not because things unravelled by interpreting such coverings in this way are false, but because, since they require an interpreter, I do not want our ingenuity to be compared in them; let the open truth cry out and shine, break into stopped ears, strike the eyes of those who pretend not to see (let no one seek a place for his false opinion in its hiding places), confound every attempt at contradiction, and crush every brazen face.

Read Genesis, Donatists: "By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not spared your most beloved son for my sake, I will surely bless you and will surely multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is by the seashore, and your seed shall possess by inheritance the cities of its adversaries; and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in your seed, because you obeyed my voice." What do you say to this? Or do you contend with us with the perversity of the Jews, so as to say that the seed of Abraham must be understood only of the people born of Abraham's flesh? But the Jews do not read the apostle Paul in their synagogues, whom you read in your conventicles. Let us hear, then, what the apostle says (for we are now asking how the seed of Abraham is to be understood): "Brothers," he says, "I speak in human terms: yet no one annuls or adds to a man's ratified testament. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, which is Christ." See in what seed all nations are blessed; see the testament of God; open your ears: "No one," he says, "annuls or adds to a man's ratified testament." Why do you annul the testament of God by saying that it has not been fulfilled in all nations and has already perished from the nations in which the seed of Abraham was? Why do you add to it by saying that Christ remains heir in no lands except where he could have Donatus as co-heir? We envy no one. Read this to us from the law, from the prophets, from the psalms, from the gospel itself, from the apostolic letters. Read it, and we believe, as we read to you both from Genesis and from the apostle that in the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, all nations are blessed.

Hear this same testament made also to Isaac, the son of Abraham: "Now there was a famine on the earth, besides the famine that had been in the time of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, to Gerar. And the Lord appeared to him and said: Do not go down into Egypt, but dwell in the land of which I shall tell you; dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you. For to you and to your seed I will give all this land, and I will establish my oath which I swore to Abraham your father, and I will enlarge your seed as the stars of heaven, and I will give to you and to your seed all this land, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in your seed, because Abraham your father obeyed my voice and kept my precepts, my justices, and my statutes." Answer this. For the seed of Abraham is this same seed of Isaac, which is Christ. For what Christian of any kind does not know how Christ came in the flesh, through a virgin, from the tribe of Judah?

Hear this same testament made to Jacob: "And Jacob went out from the well of the oath and set out for Haran. And he came to a place and slept in that place, for the sun had set. And he took a stone from the stones of the place and put it at his head and slept in that place. And he saw a vision: and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, whose top reached to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord leaned upon it and said: I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; do not fear: the land on which you sleep I will give to you and to your seed. And your seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and shall be multiplied over the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east; and in you and in your seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed. And behold, I am with you, guarding you in every way wherever you go, and I will bring you back into this land, for I will not forsake you until I have done all that I have spoken to you." See what promise you resist; see how firm a testament you annul! The Lord says, "I will not forsake you until I have done all that I have spoken to you," and you contradict, saying that we should rather believe you in whatever crime you charge against an unknowing and ignorant world, and not believe God when he says, "I will not forsake you until I have done it."

Read to us from the canonical Scriptures that those whom you accuse by name handed over the divine books. Read things as plain as these which we have read to you from Genesis. We do not ask of you what that stone signifies which Jacob put at his head when he slept, what the ladder set on the earth whose top reached to heaven, what the angels of God ascending and descending on it. Let wiser and more learned men search into these things and speak of them among a peaceful people, where shameless contradiction, arming its impudence with the obscurity of the mystery and the riddle of the reading, does not make an uproar. There is no lack of faithful hearts which the Lord may remind from the gospel, where, when he had seen an Israelite in whom there was no guile, he said (because Jacob, who saw this ladder, was himself called Israel), there is no lack, I say, of those whom the Lord himself reminds from there. For there he says: "You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man," that is, upon the seed of Abraham in which all nations are blessed. But I do not press these things on those who refuse them. See what you should hear: "Your seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and shall be multiplied over the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east; and in you all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed, and in your seed." Give me this church, if it is with you. Show that you communicate with all the nations which we now see blessed in this seed. Give us this, or else, laying aside your fury, receive it, not from me but from him in whom all nations are blessed. Let it suffice to have mentioned these things from the first book of the law; more will become known to those who read without impious contention and with pious love.

What of the prophets? How many and how plain are the testimonies to the church spread through all nations in the whole world! Of these I shall mention a few, leaving more to the leisure and diligence of those who read with the fear of God. Let us receive the divine answers through the mouth of holy Isaiah and inquire of his mouth as of the oracles of God. Let the spirited and ruinous struggles of human contentions be silent. Let us incline our ear to the word of God; let Isaiah say where, by God's revelation, he foresaw the holy church, so that in the words of one who spoke of the future we may now see the present: "The whole earth," he says, "is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as much water covers the sea. And in that day there shall be the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to rule over the nations; in him the Gentiles will hope." No Christian of any kind is unaware that the root of Jesse is Christ, born of the seed of David according to the flesh; and if anyone is contentious, let him contend with the apostle, who uses this testimony in his letters. Again he says: "Israel shall bud and blossom, and the whole world shall be filled with his fruit." Israel was, of course, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, to whom it was promised that in his seed all nations would be blessed, which seed the apostle interprets as Christ. Christ came from the seed of Abraham through Isaac and through Israel and so on, as the evangelist wove together the generations leading to Christ's birth. Whoever wants to argue against this, then, let him contradict the gospel and deny that Christ came from the seed of Israel, so that he may deny what Isaiah says: "Israel shall bud and blossom, and the whole world shall be filled with his fruit." Again he says: "I, God, am the first, and in the things that are to come, I am. The nations saw and the ends of the earth feared." This is what Scripture says elsewhere, "the first and the last," so that he may be the Alpha and the Omega, letters known to all in the sign of Christ. For in place of "last" there, here is put "and in the things that are to come, I am." Those, then, contradict this manifestation who will not believe, or rather will not now see fulfilled what follows: "The nations saw and the ends of the earth feared." Again a little later: "Jacob my servant, I will uphold him; Israel my chosen, my soul has upheld him. I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth judgment to the nations. He will not cry out nor cease, nor will his voice be heard outside. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench, but he will bring forth judgment in truth. He will shine and not be broken, until he sets judgment on the earth, and in his name the nations will hope." This testimony is to be understood of Christ and is placed in the gospel. Let him who dares contradict it; but let him who does not dare hope in him with the nations, and not withdraw from the unity of the nations that hope in him, or, if he had withdrawn, return, lest he perish.

Again Isaiah says: "And now thus says the Lord, who formed me in the womb as his servant, to gather Jacob and Israel to him. I will draw him near and be honoured before the Lord, and my God will be my strength. And he said to me: It is a very great thing for you to be called my servant, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the offspring of Israel. And I have set you as a covenant of the race, as a light of the nations, that you may be salvation to the ends of the earth." And a little later: "Thus says the Lord of Israel: In a most acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you." Certainly when the apostle Paul cited these words, he showed that they are fulfilled only in Christians. For he added: "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." Let us hear, then, what Isaiah adds: "I have given you," he says, "as a covenant of the nations, that you may inhabit the earth and possess the inheritance of the desert." And after some intervening words he goes on: "Behold, these will come from afar, and these from the north and the sea, and others from the land of the Persians. Rejoice, heaven, and be glad, earth; let the mountains send forth joy, for God has had mercy on his people and has spoken to the lowly of his people. But Zion said: The Lord has forsaken me, and God has forgotten me. Can forgetfulness seize a woman concerning her son, or can it be that she does not pity the child of her womb? Even if forgetfulness seizes her, yet forgetfulness will in no way seize me concerning you, says the Lord. Behold, on my hands I have drawn your walls; you are in my sight for ever, and soon you will be built up by those by whom you were destroyed." Since, then, by the apostle's voice we are not allowed to understand this of the people of the Jews but of that of the Christians, what are we to understand in what Isaiah says in this place, "and soon you will be built up by those by whom you were destroyed," except that the kings of the earth, who first persecuted the church, would afterwards help it, as was foretold so long before? But since many of them were to die in their iniquities, he adds: "And those who laid you waste will depart from you." Then, since all nations would be joined to the church, he goes on: "Look around everywhere with your eyes and see them all. As I live, says the Lord, you shall put on all these and arrange them as the ornament of a new bride; for what was desert in you, and ruined and fallen, will now be in the greatest narrowness because of those who dwell there; let those who swallowed you up be made far from you. For your sons whom you had lost will say in your ears: The place is too narrow for us; make us now also a place to dwell in. And you will say in your heart: Who has begotten these for me, since I know that I am childless and a widow? Who, then, has brought these up for me? For I was left alone; and where were these? Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will lift up my hands to the nations and my sign to the islands, and they will bring your sons in their bosom, and they will carry your daughters on their shoulders; and kings will be your foster fathers, and their princesses your nurses; bowing their faces to the ground they will entreat you and lick the dust of your feet; and you will know that I am the Lord, and you will not be put to shame." And a little later he adds: "Hear me, hear me, my people; kings also, attend to me; for a law will go forth from me and my judgment as a light to the nations. My righteousness draws near quickly, and my salvation will go forth, and in my arm the nations will be saved." About this arm let us consult the apostolic Scriptures. For when the apostle Paul had set down the testimony of this same prophet about the unbelief of the Jews, that Christ was not revealed to them, he put this: "Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" Then Isaiah adds in what follows: "Let the deserts of Jerusalem break forth together in joy, for he has had mercy on her and has delivered Jerusalem; and the Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all nations to the ends of the earth will see the salvation that is from God." Who is so deaf, so mad, so blind in mind as to speak against such evident testimonies, unless he does not know what he is saying?

But let us come to plainer things. We certainly know in the Scriptures the most sacred marriage, the bridegroom and the bride, Christ and the church. Isaiah writes of both, lest we perhaps err about either of them; whoever does so loses both, because it is said of this marriage in a mystery, as the apostle testifies: "The two shall be in one flesh." So first the bridegroom himself is described. After many things that Isaiah says of him in such a way that even the Jews are struck dumb, to avoid the length of mentioning them all, notice just this: "He himself," he says, "will bear their sins; therefore he will possess many as an inheritance and will divide the spoils of the strong; because his soul was handed over to death, and he was counted among the wicked, and he bore the sins of many, and was handed over for our iniquities." Confess that these things were foretold and prophesied of our Lord Jesus Christ so long before. Why, then, was this bridegroom handed over to death; why was he counted among the wicked? What did he accomplish, what did he acquire, by so great a humility of his majesty? Who is so deaf as not to hear these things, so dull as not to understand, so blind as not to see? "Therefore," he says, "he will possess many as an inheritance and will divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was handed over to death and he was counted among the wicked." Why, heretics, do you boast of your fewness, if our Lord Jesus Christ was handed over to death so that he might possess many as an inheritance? And who are these many, or how wide a part of the earth do they occupy? Let us hear what follows.

Now that the bridegroom has been foretold and described, let the bride also come forward in the words of Isaiah. Let us read her in the truth of the holy pages and recognize her in the whole world. The apostle Paul too set down this testimony foretold of the holy church; there is no escape for the contentious evasion of the heretics: "Rejoice, barren one," he says, "who do not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labour; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband." Where, I say, is your boasting of your fewness? Are not these the many of whom it was said a little before, "Therefore he will possess many as an inheritance"? For what is his inheritance but his church? "Many," he says, "are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband," meaning that the synagogue of the Jews has a husband, since it had received the law. From this what we say can now be judged. Let these men compare their multitude, set among the Africans or in Africa, with the multitude of the Jews wherever they are dispersed through all lands, and see how very few they are by comparison with them. How, then, will they claim that it was said of themselves: "Many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband"? Again, let them compare the multitude of Christians throughout all the nations with which they do not communicate, and see how few all the Jews are by comparison, and at long last understand that this prophecy has been fulfilled in the catholic church spread through the whole world: "Many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband." But to which woman with a husband this desolate one was preferred in the multitude of her children, let that be obscure, let it be in a riddle; yet whoever denies that this is the church of Christ, of which it is said, "Many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband," contradicts not me but the apostle.

And where she would get her many children he adds next: "For the Lord said: Enlarge the place of your tent and of your courts, fix them, do not spare; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. Spread out still to the right and to the left. And your seed will possess the nations, and you will inhabit the desolate cities. Do not fear, for you will prevail; do not be afraid because you were detested. You will forget your everlasting shame, and you will not remember the disgrace of your widowhood. For I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name; and he who delivered you, the God of Israel, will be called God of the whole earth." See how far she was commanded to stretch her cords: until her God, the God of Israel, is called God of the whole earth. Of her, indeed, and to her it is said in another place by the same prophet: "For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until my righteousness goes forth like light, and my salvation burns like a torch; and all nations will see your righteousness, and kings your glory. And he will call you by your new name, which the Lord will name; and you will be a crown of beauty in the sight of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God; and you will no longer be called forsaken, and your land will not be called desolate. For you will be called My delight, and your land the whole world." What plainer statement must still be demanded? See how many things, how clear, from one prophet! And yet there is resistance and contradiction, not to any man, but to the Spirit of God and to the most evident truth; and yet those who wish to boast of the Christian name begrudge the glory of Christ himself, lest these things, foretold of him so long before, be believed to be fulfilled, when they are no longer foretold but shown, seen, and held. If I wished to collect into this one letter the testimonies from all the prophets to the church foretold, which we see as we read of it, I fear I should myself seem to judge few what are so many that, if I wished to gather them all from Isaiah alone, I should exceed the proper measure of a discourse.

Now let us hear a few things from the psalms, sung so long before, and see them now fulfilled with great joy. And first let them hear and declare that very passage which Petilian, with what face I do not know, set in his letter: "The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession." For what Christian ever doubted that this was foretold of Christ, or understood this inheritance as anything other than the church? And since it was to hold good and bad within the same nets of the sacraments, he says: "You will rule them with a rod of iron; you will break them like a potter's vessel." For by the same firm and inflexible justice the good are ruled and the bad are broken.

Who is so far astray and so out of tune with the divine words as not to recognize the gospel itself when that psalm is sung where it is written: "They pierced my hands and feet; they numbered all my bones. They looked and stared at me; they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots"? Since the evangelist too, when he narrated that this was done, remembered this testimony. And what was bought by the price of this cross, by so great a humility of so great a majesty, by that most innocent and divine blood, except what is said there in what follows: "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 the Lord's, and he will rule over the nations"? Did not the apostle explain as said of the preachers of the new covenant what is written: "Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world"? Of whom else but Christ is it understood: "The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion the beauty of his comeliness"? Whose voice but Christ's is this: "I slept, troubled"? And as to why he was troubled, it goes on: "Sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." Whose but those who cried out, "Crucify, crucify"? To what end was all this? For whose good, whose gain? Hear what follows: "Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and your glory above all the earth." See, you have Christ sleeping in his passion and ascending above the heavens in his resurrection. And why is his glory above all the earth, unless because his church is through all the earth? In these two very short sentences I put to you, heretics, the whole matter in dispute between us: "Be exalted," it says, "above the heavens, O God, and your glory above all the earth." Why do you preach Christ the Lord exalted above the heavens and not communicate with his glory above all the earth?

The seventy-first psalm is entitled "For Solomon." But since things are said in it that cannot fit that temporal king, who afterwards sinned grievously, it is most unanswerably defended even against the Jews themselves that they were foretold of Christ. No Christian denies this; for things are said of which it cannot be doubted that they belong to Christ. There too are said things in which the church spread through the whole world is recognized, with all kings subjected to Christ: "And he will rule," it says, "from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the world"; from the river, certainly, where the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the voice from heaven made him known. Then it goes on: "Before him the Ethiopians will fall down, and his enemies will lick the dust; the kings of Tarshish and the islands will offer gifts, the kings of the Arabians and of Sheba will bring presents. And all the kings of the earth will worship him, all nations will serve him." And a little later: "And in him all the tribes of the earth will be blessed; all nations will magnify him. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who alone does wonders; and blessed be the name of his glory for ever and for ages of ages; and the whole earth will be filled with his glory. So be it, so be it." Go now, Donatists, and cry out: "Let it not be, let it not be!" The word of God has conquered you, saying, "So be it, so be it." See, the church spread through the whole world has been made manifest in the psalms, on which the glory of its king rests. Hence she herself is also the queen, his bride, of whom it is said to him in the forty-fourth psalm: "The queen stood at your right hand in a robe of gold, clothed in variety"; and the divine word is at once directed to exhorting her: "Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house, for the king has desired your beauty, for he is your God." Notice how the divine prophecy began to address the bride of Christ: "Hear," it says, "daughter, and see." But you will neither hear these things foretold nor see them fulfilled, and yet you hear and see them against your will. Hear, then, what is said to her a little later; hear from the divine page how it is foretold, and see in all the earth how it is fulfilled: "In place of your fathers," it says, "sons are born to you; you will make them princes over all the earth." How many testimonies of the Scriptures on this matter I pass over, those who read know, and I know; but I do not want to burden a letter to which I demand an answer.

What will they say to these things that we have cited from the law, the prophets, and the psalms about the church of Christ which is spread through the whole world, which in their perversity they prefer to resist rather than, corrected, to communicate with? What, I say, will they say? That these things are false, or obscure? But they do not dare to say they are false, for they are pressed by the weight of so great an authority. Confessing, then, that they are true, they contend that they cannot be fulfilled; as if it were something other than accusing prophecy of the crime of falsehood to say that what it foretold cannot be fulfilled; for that is to say that it is not prophecy but rather false prophecy. And when you ask them why these things cannot be fulfilled, they answer: "Because men do not want it." "For man," they say, "was created with free will, and if he wills he believes in Christ, if he does not will he does not believe; if he wills he perseveres in what he believes, if he does not will he does not persevere. And so, when the church had begun to grow through the world, men would not persevere, and the Christian religion failed in all nations except the party of Donatus." As if the Spirit of God did not know the future wills of men: what utter madman would say this? Why, then, did he not rather foretell what he knew would come about from the wills of men? For in the way in which these men think these things were foretold, anyone who wishes can be a prophet, so that, when what he foretold has not been fulfilled, he may answer: "Men did not want it; for they are Christians by free will." In this way someone could have prophesied that Christ would not suffer on the cross but die by the sword, so that, when it happened otherwise, he could answer: "What have I done? Men, set in free will, did not want to do to him what I had foretold, and did what they themselves wanted." Who does not now see how many things could be prophesied, or even can be, in this way by anyone at all? For who would doubt that Judas, if he had not wished, would certainly not have handed Christ over, and that Peter, if he had not wished, would not have denied the Lord three times? But there was a sure prediction about these things precisely because God foresees even future wills.

Yet although these things are open even to slow hearts, let us hear from here also the voice of the Word himself, uttered by the mouth of his own flesh. Certainly, when after the resurrection he offered himself to be touched and handled by the hands of his doubting disciples, and had taken and eaten before them what they had offered him, he said to them: "These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." Of whom but him were those things written which we too have cited from the law and the prophets and the psalms, as I showed one by one? Since, then, he who is the truth says, "Everything must be fulfilled," how do these men deny it, unless because they are enemies of the truth? But if they still say these things are obscure, let us hear from this passage the head himself, the truest demonstrator of his own body. For when he had said, "that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled," as though we were asking whether in his words "about me" the church too was to be understood there (because it is written, "The two shall be in one flesh"), so that we might hold certain divine oracles not only about the head but also about the body, the evangelist goes on: "Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them: Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day." Here the head himself is shown, who even offered himself to be handled by the disciples' hands. See how he adds about the body, which is the church, so as not to let us err either about the bridegroom or about the bride: "and that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." What is truer, what more divine, what plainer than this word? Am I reluctant to commend it in my own words, and are the heretics not ashamed to attack it in theirs?

Let them say that the testimonies I set down from the law and the prophets and the psalms are obscure and spoken figuratively and can be understood otherwise (although in their case too I have done what I could to keep them from daring to say even this); but see, let them say: Is this too spoken obscurely or shaded by the veil of a riddle, which Christ himself said: "Thus it is written, and thus 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"? If "I slept, troubled" is obscure, is "it was necessary for the Christ to suffer" obscure? If "Be exalted above the heavens, O God" is obscure, is "and to rise on the third day" obscure? Likewise, if "your glory above all the earth" is obscure, is "that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations" obscure? If "The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting" is obscure, is "that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations" obscure? For so the earth was called from the rising of the sun to its setting, as he himself says: "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." If "Out of Zion the beauty of his comeliness" is obscure, is "beginning from Jerusalem" obscure? For Zion is the same as Jerusalem. But what is that to me? Let them say that the things I set down from the law and the prophets and the psalms do not belong to these words of the Lord read in the gospel: I do not care, I do not resist. Yet certainly, unless this had been foretold in the law and the prophets and the psalms, whether in the testimonies I have used or in others, the Lord would never have said, "Everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled," and then, having opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, taught the very things written about him in the law and the prophets and the psalms by saying, "Thus it is written, and thus 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." Even if I could not have recognized these things written in the law and the prophets and the psalms, yet he who is the truth says that this is written there. And even if he did not say that these things were written there, it would undoubtedly be enough for Christians that Christ himself said that repentance and the forgiveness of sins must be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. But he wished to confirm his doubting disciples, although they had seen and handled his body, by the greater proof of the Scriptures than by his presenting himself visible and touchable to mortal senses. Let us hold, then, the church marked out by the Lord's own mouth: where it was to begin and how far it was to reach, namely, beginning from Jerusalem and reaching to all nations.

Here now, whoever says that Jerusalem is not to be understood as that visible city, but is set down figuratively so as to be taken spiritually as the whole church, eternal in heaven and partly a pilgrim on earth, can also say that "it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise on the third day" was said figuratively; and whoever says that is not to be held a Christian in any way. As, then, that was set down literally, so also what was added about the church of all nations beginning from Jerusalem. For the Lord explained that these things were said of him in the law and the prophets and the psalms, and certainly that explanation itself could not be figurative; otherwise it would not be an explanation. Then, if Jerusalem, set down figuratively and understood spiritually, signifies the universal church, how does the universal church begin from the universal church, as though Jerusalem began from Jerusalem? It is plain, then, that it is said literally of that city from which the church is proved to have begun, as he makes clear again and again and leaves no lurking-place of ambush to heretical cunning. For he goes on: "And you are witnesses of these things; and I send my promise upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." In the city in which he commanded them to stay until they were clothed with power from on high, that is, with the Holy Spirit whom he had promised to send, he foretold that the church would begin. And if they do not think this is Jerusalem, let them hear what follows: "And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he departed from them. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising God." See where that city is shown in which he commanded them to stay until they were clothed with power from on high.

Here, indeed, how many days he was with them after he had shown himself alive after his passion to their eyes and hands is passed over. But it is not passed over in the Acts of the Apostles, where again, with the same plainness of the Lord's words, the church to come throughout the whole world is foretold. There no one at all is allowed to doubt, unless he doubts the faith of the holy Scriptures, that it is that visible city of Jerusalem from which the church began after the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that he wished to show nothing other than the places of this earth from which he would give it its beginning, and how he would spread it from there through all lands. For thus it is written in the Acts of the Apostles: "The first account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day when he chose the apostles through the Holy Spirit, commanding them to preach the gospel; to whom he also showed himself after his passion by many signs, appearing to them for forty days and speaking of the kingdom of God; and while he was with them he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for his promise, which you have heard, he said, from my mouth: for John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, whom you are also to receive not many days from now. So they, when they had come together, asked him, saying: Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? He answered them: It is not for you to know the times which the Father has set in his own power; but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth." See, here too it is made plain where the church was to begin and how far it was to reach.

What do they say to these things, who most proudly call themselves Christians and most openly contradict Christ? We hold this church; against these divine voices we admit no human accusations. For it moves us greatly that our Lord, whom it is sacrilegious and impious not to believe, left these saving and last proofs to the primitive church in the last words he spoke on earth. For having said these things, he soon ascended into heaven; he wished to fortify our ears against those who he had foretold would arise as time went on and say, "Look, here is Christ, look, there," whom he warned us not to believe. Nor have we any excuse if we believe against the voice of our shepherd, so clear, so open, so manifest that no one, even dull and slow of heart, can say, "I did not understand." For who does not understand: "Thus it was necessary 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"? Who does not understand: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth. Having said this he was lifted up, and a cloud received him, and they saw him going into heaven"? What is this, I ask? When the last words of a dying man about to go down to the underworld are heard, no one says that he lied, and an heir who perhaps scorns them is judged impious. How, then, shall we escape the wrath of God if, either not believing or scorning them, we reject the last words of the only Son of God, our Lord and Saviour, who was going to heaven and from there would look upon who neglects them and who observes them, and from there will come to judge all? I have the most manifest voice of my shepherd commending to me and expressing without any ambiguity the church. I shall have myself to blame if I choose to be led astray and wander from his flock, which is the church itself, by the words of men, especially since he has warned me, saying: "My sheep hear my voice and follow me." See, his voice is clear and open. Whoever has heard it and does not follow him, how will he dare to call himself his sheep? Let no one say to me, "Oh, what did Donatus say, or what did Parmenian or Pontius or any of them say?" For we must not agree even with catholic bishops if perhaps they are mistaken somewhere, so as to hold something contrary to the canonical Scriptures of God. But if they fall into this while keeping the bond of unity and charity, what the apostle says will happen in them: "And if you think otherwise in anything, God will reveal this also to you." But these divine voices about the universal church are so manifest that none but heretics can bark against them with spirited perversity and blind fury.

We have shown that the church was foretold in the word of God its bridegroom, whether through the law and the prophets and the psalms or through his own mouth, as beginning from Jerusalem and reaching to the ends of the earth. How it began from Jerusalem and, spread from there into all nations, bears fruit, is also shown in the same word of God through the apostles, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, which I have already cited, that the Lord said: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth." Then it goes on: "When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their eyes. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white clothing, who said: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying: Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these were devoting themselves with one accord to prayer, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers. In those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples and spoke; and there was a crowd of about a hundred and twenty people." Then it is narrated how, at Peter's speech, Matthias was substituted in the place of Judas, the betrayer of the Lord; and after his ordination Scripture goes on: "And when the days of Pentecost were fulfilled, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting; and there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in various tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and was confounded, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and marvelled, saying to one another: Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how do we hear each of us in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and Jews who lived in Mesopotamia and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, heard them speaking in their own languages the great works of God. And they were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another: What does this mean? But others mocked them, saying: These men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing with the eleven disciples, lifted up his voice and spoke, saying: Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you," and the rest by which he exhorts them to faith. When he had finished, Scripture goes on to narrate: "Now when they heard this they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the apostles: What shall we do, brothers? Show us. And Peter said to them: Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to us and to our children and to all who are far off, whomever the Lord our God calls. And with many other words he testified to them, saying: Be saved from this crooked generation. So those who received this word believed and were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand souls." See how the church began from Jerusalem, to go from there through all languages, which was foreshadowed in those who, gathered there and receiving the Holy Spirit, spoke in all tongues.

Next let us see how it went through other nations, which Peter himself had also foretold when he said: "The promise is to us and to our children and to all who are far off, whomever the Lord our God calls." For the things then done at Jerusalem are narrated in order up to the death of the deacon Stephen, where Saul too is mentioned as consenting to his killing. When that was accomplished, it is then narrated: "And on that day a great persecution arose against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles, who remained in Jerusalem." See how what the Lord had said in order is next fulfilled: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth." It had already been done in Jerusalem; it followed in Judea and Samaria, because they were scattered in the regions of Judea and Samaria. For this is soon said of them: "But those who had been scattered went through the cities and villages preaching the word of God." And since the apostles too had gone, having heard that Samaria had received the word of God, when the Samaritans received the Holy Spirit through the laying on of their hands, it is said of Peter and John: "Now Peter and John, having testified the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans as they passed." Then it is narrated of the eunuch who, returning from Jerusalem, was baptized by Philip, and of Philip it is said: "The angel of the Lord caught Philip away from him, and the eunuch saw him no more; and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found to have come to Azotus, and returning from there he preached the gospel in all the cities until he came to Caesarea." So the gospel is found preached through the cities of Judea and Samaria. It remained, then, that it should be preached in order through all nations as well, as the Lord had said, to the whole earth. So Saul is called from heaven, becomes a preacher instead of a persecutor, and the Lord says of him to Ananias: "Go, for he is a chosen vessel to me, to carry my name before the nations and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Now, then, we hold the church in Jerusalem and throughout all Judea and Samaria, of which it is said most plainly a little later: "The churches throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being built up and strengthened in the fear of the Lord, and were filled with the comfort of the Holy Spirit." Then, after a few things in between, we come to the place where Cornelius the centurion believed and was baptized with his household, all of whom were uncircumcised Gentiles. Before this happened, Peter, while praying, saw in an ecstasy of mind heaven opened and a certain vessel tied by four corners, like a clean linen sheet, in which were every kind of four-footed animals and wild beasts and birds of the air. And a voice came: "Peter, rise, kill and eat." But Peter said: "Lord, I have never eaten anything common and unclean." And the voice came to him again: "What God has cleansed, do not call common." That the nations who were to believe were signified by this vision we need not guess; the apostle himself explains that this was shown to him in that vessel. For when he had entered the house where Cornelius was, and many had gathered, he said to them: "You know better how abominable it is for a Jewish man to associate with or approach a foreigner; but God has shown me that I should call no man common or unclean." So he explained that voice which he had heard about the animals shown in that sheet: "What God has cleansed, do not call common." To whom is it not now plain that by that vessel the whole world with all nations was signified? That is why it was tied by four corners, because of the four best-known parts of the world, east and west, south and north, which Scripture very often mentions. How many places Paul, sent to the nations, went round, sowing the word of God and strengthening the churches that had been born, it would be long to recount. When the Jews opposed him at Antioch, he and Barnabas said to them: "It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the nations. For so the Lord has commanded us: I have set you as a light to the nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth." And it goes on: "And when the nations heard this, they received the word of God, and as many as were destined to eternal life believed." See, here too is cited the testimony from the prophet Isaiah which we also set down: "that you may be salvation to the end of the earth."

So, not to mention the nations that believed and came to the church after the times of the apostles, let these men tell us how those very ones alone, which we find in the holy writings, in the Acts and the letters of the apostles and in the Apocalypse of John, which we both embrace and to which we both submit, perished through an African sedition. For we have received these not from the councils of contending bishops, not from new-fangled disputations, not from court or municipal records, but from the holy canonical writings. How could the church of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, perish by the crimes of Africans? What south wind was so violent that it could carry and scatter a plague so far, to places where not even the names of those through whom or about whom this evil arose could be known: Athens, Iconium, Lystra? Who destroyed the churches founded by apostolic labour? At the end of the letter to the Romans the same apostle, the teacher of the nations, says: "But on some points I have written to you rather boldly, as reminding you, because of the grace given me by God, to be a minister of Christ Jesus among the nations, consecrating the gospel of God, so that the offering of the nations may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. I have therefore glory in Christ Jesus toward God. For I do not dare to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me for the obedience of the nations, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ." Ask, Donatists, if you do not know, ask how many stages there are on the land roads from Jerusalem round about as far as Illyricum; if we count so many churches, tell us how they could perish through African quarrels. To the Corinthians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Thessalonians, to the Colossians: you keep only the apostle's letters in your reading; we keep both the letters in reading and faith and the churches themselves in communion. Galatia, moreover, is not one church, but in that region they are innumerable. And see how he greeted the Corinthians: "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in all Achaia." How many churches do you think there are in all Achaia? Perhaps you do not know where Achaia is, and about so unknown a province you judge with such blindness as to say it perished by the crimes of Africans. Are not all the places that Peter names, Pontus, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, full of most flourishing churches? What of those to whom John wrote, the churches at Smyrna, Pergamum, Sardis, Thyatira, Philadelphia, Laodicea (for we have already mentioned Ephesus)? Let one of you tell me where they are and how far apart they are. Perhaps you are only now trying to find this out by reading or hearing. Learn, then, also how far they are from Africa, and tell us why with such sacrilegious rashness you accuse churches entirely unknown to you and made manifest in the apostolic writings, and with such madness say they perished by the crimes of Africans. Finally, I know what is written of them in the holy canonical books; I do not know what you say of them. Certainly, as we read that these are churches of Christ from the books that you too venerate, so you too read to us from the books that we too venerate how they perished. Or do you want us to believe, against the churches that are members of the one church spread through the whole world, which the Holy Spirit has commended and handed down to us through his Scriptures, any curses of men brought from anywhere? This pleases you, but it does not please us. Which of us is more justly pleased, you yourselves see; but, overcome by animosity, you will not be overcome by truth. See, here are the Scriptures of God; see, in them the churches are marked out and described, both by the universal name of the whole world and by name. Your forefathers did not know what they charged against their colleagues, nor did they know what judges that case had: how, then, did they perish? See, here are the Scriptures I believe; see, here are the churches with which I communicate: where I read you their names, there read me their crimes.

But if you cry out or recite something from elsewhere, after the voice of our shepherd declared to us most plainly through the mouths of the prophets, through his own mouth, and through the mouths of the evangelists, we do not admit your voice, we do not believe it, we do not accept it. "My sheep," says the heavenly shepherd, "hear my voice and follow me." His voice about the church is not obscure. Whoever does not want to wander from his flock, let him hear this voice and follow it. His most faithful steward, the teacher of the nations in faith and truth, since Christ himself spoke in him, says this: "I marvel that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you in the grace of Christ to another gospel, which is not another; only there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what you received, let him be anathema." The church that was to be throughout the whole world has been preached to us as gospel. The Lord himself testified that this was foretold in the law and the prophets and the psalms; he foretold that it would begin from Jerusalem and spread through all nations; when he was already ascending into heaven, he foretold that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth. Deeds followed these words: how it began from Jerusalem and then advanced into Judea and Samaria and from there into the whole earth, where the church is still growing, until to the end it takes hold also of the remaining nations where it is not yet, is shown in sequence with the holy Scriptures as witnesses. Whoever preaches another gospel, let him be anathema. And he preaches another gospel who says that the church has perished from the rest of the world and remained in the party of Donatus in Africa alone. Let him, then, be anathema; or let him read this to me in the holy Scriptures, and not be anathema.

"I do read it," he says. "For Enoch alone among all men pleased God and was taken up; and afterwards, when the whole world had been destroyed by the flood of waters, Noah alone with his wife and sons and daughters-in-law deserved to be delivered in the ark." They add also about Lot, that he alone with his daughters was delivered from Sodom; and about Abraham himself, Isaac, and Jacob, that they were few pleasing God on an earth given over to idols and demons. Finally, when the people of Israel had multiplied, in the times of the kings in the land of promise, which had been divided among all twelve tribes, they mention that ten tribes were divided off and handed over to Solomon's servant, while two remained to Solomon's son for the kingdom of Jerusalem. "So now too," they say, "the whole world has apostatized; but we, like those two tribes, have remained in the temple of God, that is, in the church." They also say that when very many disciples followed the Lord Jesus Christ, seventy-two fell away, and the twelve alone remained with him. By these and such examples the heretics try to commend their fewness, and they do not cease to blaspheme the multitude of the holy church spread through the whole world. But I ask them: if (which God forbid) I refused to believe that these very examples they cite are true, by what would they convince me? Would it not be from the holy Scriptures, where they are read with such plainness that whoever accepts those writings in faith cannot but confess these things too to be most true? Further, if I were compelled to believe these examples true because they are written there, where I cannot say that what is written is false, why do they not themselves also believe the same Scriptures about the church spread through the whole world? See, we believe all those things. Let them also believe what the Lord says: "that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem"; let them believe what he said last as he was about to ascend into heaven: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth." Let both those things and these be believed true, and no dispute will remain between us, since neither are these hindered by those being true, nor those by these. "We also believe these things," they say, "and confess that they were fulfilled; but afterwards the world apostatized, and the communion of Donatus alone remained." Let them read this to us, as they read about Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and about those two tribes that were left when ten had separated, and about the twelve apostles who remained when the others fell away. Let them read this likewise, and we make no resistance. But if they do not read it from the holy Scriptures, but try to persuade by their own contentions, I believe what is read in the holy Scriptures; I do not believe what is said by vain heretics. And since they think they should be compared with those two tribes that remained with Solomon's son, let them read, and they will regret having chosen this. For in the Scriptures the two peoples are mentioned thus: the part that was at Jerusalem is named Judah, while the other, which was separated in greater number with Solomon's servant, is called Israel. Let them read what the prophets say of both, how they call Judah worse than Israel, so that they say that apostate Israel was justified by the sins of treacherous Judah, that is, that the sins of the latter were so grave that by comparison the former must be called righteous. Yet the sins of neither harmed in any way the righteous who are found to have been both here and there. For even in that part which they set forth as an example of perdition, that is, in Israel, there were holy prophets. There was that memorable Elijah, to say nothing of others, to whom it was even said: "I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal." Therefore that part of the people is by no means to be counted as a heresy. For God had commanded those tribes to be separated, not that religion but that the kingdom should be divided, and that in this way vengeance might be taken on the kingdom of Judah. But God never commands a schism or a heresy to be made. Nor, because kingdoms are often divided in the world, is Christian unity therefore divided, since the catholic church is found on both sides.

I thought this about Judah and Israel worth mentioning chiefly so that these men might be reminded that whatever is said against those peoples because of the multitude of the ungodly does not harm the righteous placed among the ungodly; and so that they may stop collecting the testimonies, whatever they find said through the prophets, through the Lord's mouth, or through the evangelists, against the tares or the chaff of the world. For the divine word often rebukes the ungodly crowds of the church, which are not counted in the church, yet because of the sacraments they have in common with the saints, since there is in them a certain form of godliness whose power they deny (as the apostle says, "having the form of godliness but denying its power"), it rebukes them as though all were such and no good person at all remained. From this, indeed, we are warned that they are called "all" within their own number, that is, all the sons of Gehenna, the number to which God foreknew they belong. These men, then, acting either ignorantly or deceitfully, collect from the Scriptures such things as are found said either against the wicked mixed with the good until the end, or about the devastation of the former people of the Jews, and want to twist them against the church of God, so that it may seem to have failed and perished from the whole world. Let them stop bringing forward such things, then, if they wish to answer this letter. For we do not say that the church is spread through the whole world in such a way as to say that only the good are in its sacraments and not also the wicked, and these far more numerous, so that by comparison with them the good are few, though in themselves they make up a vast number.

We have countless testimonies both about the mixing of the wicked with the good in the same communion of the sacrament, as Judas, wicked from the beginning, lived among the eleven good, and about the fewness of the good by comparison with the many wicked, and again about the multitude of the good considered in itself. Of these, to be brief, I mention a few. There is in the Song of Songs what every Christian recognizes as said of the holy church: "As a lily among thorns, so is my neighbour among the daughters." Why does it call them thorns, except because of the wickedness of their ways, and why the same ones daughters, except because of the communion of the sacraments? Ezekiel too sees certain people marked so that they might not perish together with the wicked, of whom it is said to him: "those who sigh and grieve over the sins and iniquities of my people that are done in their midst." He would not call "my people" the people whom he soon commands to perish, sparing only those, unless it were the people that bore his sacraments. And the Lord says of the tares sown over the wheat: "Let both grow until the harvest," that is, the wheat and the tares; and he himself explains that the harvest is the end of the age, and the field where both were sown is the world. So both must grow throughout the world until the end of the age. Hence these men are no longer allowed to suspect or assert what they say, that all the good have failed from the world so as to remain in the party of Donatus alone. For they strive against the most open statement of the Lord, who says, "The field is the world," and "Let both grow until the harvest," and "The harvest is the end of the age." There is also another most open likeness of the mixing of good and bad within the same communion and bond of the sacraments, which the Lord himself both sets forth and explains: "The kingdom of heaven," he says, "is like a net cast into the sea, which gathers fish of every kind; and when it was full, they drew it to the shore and sat down and chose the best into their vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age: the angels will come out and separate the wicked from the midst of the righteous and cast them into the furnace of fire; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." No mixing of the wicked, then, frightens the good into wanting to break the nets, as it were, and leave the congregation of unity so as not to endure men who do not belong to the kingdom of heaven in the fellowship of the sacraments; for when they come to the shore, that is, to the end of the age, the due separation will be made, not by human rashness but by divine judgment.

About the fewness of the good the Lord himself says most plainly: "Enter by the narrow gate. How wide and spacious is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who go by it; how narrow is the gate and strait the way that leads to life, and few are those who enter by it." The Donatists think they are these few, and therefore say that the world has perished, while they have remained in this fewness that the Lord praised. When they are compared with them, we set against them the far fewer Rogatists or Maximianists who separated from them, if they think they should boast of fewness. Yet let them read that this fewness was commended by the Lord by comparison with the multitude of the wicked, but that the Scriptures have not been silent about the multitude of the good when it is considered in itself, and let them see how many testimonies are found. For why is that very seed of Abraham promised like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea, except because of its countless multitude, since the apostle says that it was said, "In Isaac your seed will be called," because not the children of the flesh but the children of the promise are counted as seed? Why are "many the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband"? Why will "many come from the east and the west and recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will go into the outer darkness," that is, the ungodly Jews? Why does the apostle say, "to cleanse for himself a people abounding, zealous for good works"? Why does the Apocalypse say that the holy sons of the church are thousands of thousands? See, the same people are called many who are also called few. Why, unless they are many considered in themselves, but few in comparison with the wicked?

"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.

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.

Let the heretic now say to me: "How do you receive me?" I answer quickly: As the church receives, to which Christ bears witness. Can you know better how you are to be received than our Saviour, the physician of your wound? Here perhaps you say: "Read me, then, how Christ commanded those to be received who want to come over to the church from heretics." This neither I read openly and evidently, nor do you. For if John had been a heretic and had baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, after whose baptism Paul commanded people to be baptized, you would win your point so that I would have nothing to say against it. Again, if Peter had been baptized by heretics in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, to whom the Lord said, "He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again," I would win my point so that you would have nothing to say against it. But now, since we do not find in the Scriptures that any came over to the church from heretics and were received either as I say or as you say, I think that if some wise man had appeared to whom the Lord Christ bore witness, and we consulted him on this question, we should in no way hesitate to do what he said, lest we be judged to resist not so much him as the Lord Christ, by whose testimony he was commended. Now Christ bears witness to his church. See, read the gospel where he says: "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." As, then, this church through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem, receives, so, all ambiguities and evasions removed, are you to be received. If you will not, you resist most ruinously, against your own salvation, not me or any man who wishes to receive you so, but the Saviour himself, since you will not believe that you are to be received as that church receives which he commends by his testimony, whom you confess it is wicked not to believe.

"But Jeremiah said: It has become to me like lying water that has no faithfulness." He did not say this of the water you think; read carefully. For in the prophetic manner, as they are accustomed to speak figuratively, he called the multitude of lying men itself "lying water," just as we know that in the Apocalypse peoples are called by the name of waters. For Jeremiah says: "Why do those who grieve me prevail? My wound is severe: how shall I be healed? It has become to me like lying water that has no faithfulness." He said that his wound had become to him like lying water, and he called those who grieved him his wound. For what he says first, "those who grieve me," he says afterwards as "my wound"; and what he said above, "prevail," he said afterwards as "is severe."

You do the same in the place where it is written: "Abstain from foreign water, and do not drink from a foreign spring." For you think it was said of the baptism that is among heretics, so that it is foreign water because heretics will not possess the kingdom of God. As if this were not so also with drunkards, the envious, and the rest of that kind, of whom it was equally said, "They will not possess the kingdom of God"; and yet in all such people, if they were baptized according to the gospel, the baptism is Christ's, not theirs. Hence that water is not foreign, though they themselves are foreign, to whom he will say, "I do not know you." Why, then, should I not rather understand the foreign water and the foreign spring as the doctrine of the evil spirit, by which those alienated from God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart are deceived and led astray, as the apostle commends more expressly: "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"? This is the foreign water and the foreign spring. For if water is understood in a good sense as the Holy Spirit, why should not water be understood in a bad sense as the evil spirit? For it is not always, where Scripture names water, that it wants this visible sacrament of baptism to be understood; but sometimes this, sometimes something else. For the Lord's disciples had already baptized others too with this visible baptism before the Holy Spirit came upon them according to his promise; and yet of the Spirit the same Jesus says: "If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his belly." And the evangelist goes on to explain why this was said: "Now this he said of the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive; for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified." See, he calls water the Spirit who had not yet been given, when that water of baptism had already been given to many.

Hence also what is written, which you likewise do not understand: "Drink water from your own vessels and from the springs of your own wells, and let the fountain of your water be your own, and let no stranger share it with you; and let not your waters overflow outside, and let your waters run in your streets," commends not visible baptism, which even strangers can have, that is, those who will not possess the kingdom of God, but this gift of the Holy Spirit, which belongs only to those who will reign with Christ for ever, since "the love of God," as the apostle says, "has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." For that very breadth of heart which charity makes, for which reason he says it is poured out, and for which he speaks thus to the Corinthians, "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is enlarged," is signified by the name of streets.

What, then, we hear openly, "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit that is from God," we hear figuratively: "Abstain from foreign water, and do not drink from a foreign spring." And what we hear openly, "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us," we hear figuratively: "Let the fountain of your water be your own, and let no stranger share it with you." For strangers can have many gifts of God: not only those common with stones and trees, such as existing and flourishing, nor only those common with cattle, such as breathing and feeling, but also greater ones proper to men, such as reason, speech, countless useful arts, and many others. Even of the gifts given to the house of God strangers have some, that is, those who will not possess the kingdom of God, to whom it will be said at the end, "I do not know you," even when they have said, "In your name we prophesied and did many mighty works"; for "even if I have prophecy," he says, "and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing." This, then, is the gift of the Holy Spirit proper to the saints, of which no stranger partakes. This is lacking to all the wicked and the sons of Gehenna, even if they are baptized with the baptism of Christ, as Simon had been baptized. This is lacking to heretics too; this they receive when they come corrected and sincerely embrace the bond of unity. If they did not receive it, even having the baptism of Christ they would not possess the kingdom of Christ, because they had not entered that fountain of their own, of waters running in the streets of the saints and not running outside, the fountain by which the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Stop, then, citing those testimonies which either you do not understand or understand to be for us and against you. And if, being set down ambiguously, they could be interpreted both for us and for you, they would certainly not help your case at all; for we too, if we wished to use such things, would use countless ones, which would likewise not help our case at all. But clearly such things prop up a bad cause, or at least cause delays.

"See," they say, "water flowed from the Lord's body." And how does this help you, heretic? "Much," he says; "for it signifies that baptism exists only in the Lord's body, that is, in the church." You would have done better to say "from the Lord's body, that is, from the church," even if it were already established (which perhaps must still be examined more carefully) that baptism was signified by that water. For we too say that the baptism you have is from the Lord's body, that is, from the church, though you yourselves are not in it, like all who do not build on the rock but on the sand. Yet why do you not notice that the water by which you say baptism was signified was not only in the Lord's body but also went out from his body, and that through the wound made by a persecutor? For heretics and all the wicked would not have drawn the sacraments outside with them, if they had kept the integrity of unity in the Lord's body. But you see how deep this too is and hidden in how great a depth of mystery.

Enough now; stop dealing in such things. All that you bring forward of this kind is either for us or, to make the least of our case, it is uncertain for whom it is; but you gladly linger in hidden things so as not to be compelled to confess open ones. See the church, I ask: what is the matter with you? See the church commended and expressed, foretold and shown by so many most manifest testimonies of the holy Scriptures: as we have heard, so have we seen. Why do you evade the question of how you are to be received? Why do you refuse to be received as that church receives, to which he bears witness who could not lie? Show that the canonical Scriptures have said openly that one who has been baptized among heretics in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit must be baptized in the catholic church. And if you cannot show this, show that some open and manifest testimony is borne by the canonical Scriptures to this communion of yours, that is, to the party of Donatus, where you learned it, and I will confess that I must go over to you, and that heretics are to be received no otherwise than as the church you are in receives them, since it has been declared by such testimony. Why do you fret, why are you disturbed? You do not find in the canonical Scriptures what we most justly demand of you. For what you usually say, "Where you feed, where you lie down at noon," you see what it is and how it is not for you. Do not, then, seek such things; for if the party of Donatus were in the northern parts, which are opposite to the southern, it would say it was said of itself: "Mount Zion, the sides of the north, the city of the great king." For the city of the great king is surely nothing but the church, and this sounds more undoubtedly of the church than "Where you feed, where you lie down at noon." But perhaps the heretic Marcion would use that testimony, who is said to have been from Pontus, which lies toward the north. Again, if the party of Donatus were in the west, it would say it was said of itself: "Make a way for him who ascends above the west; the Lord is his name." For perhaps it would say that "ascends above the west" is loftier than "lies down at noon." These things are mystical, hidden, figurative; we demand from you something manifest that needs no interpreter.

I, then, receive you as the seed of Abraham receives, in which all nations are blessed. This would perhaps be obscure if Paul had not disclosed that the seed of Abraham is Christ. I receive you as that barren woman receives, whose children are more than those of her who has a husband (which would be obscure if Paul had not said that she is the church, our mother, to whom it was said, "The Lord who delivered you will himself be called God of the whole earth," to whom it was said, "Your land is the whole world"); as that queen receives of whom it is said in the psalms, "The queen stood at your right hand," and to whom it is said, "In place of your fathers sons are born to you; you will make them princes over all the earth." Finally, not to mention many things, I receive you as the church receives through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem; as the church receives which is witness to Christ in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth. For he receives you who said this of her, who showed her in such words that no one might doubt about her. I receive you as the wheat sown in the field receives, which grows with the tares until the harvest; for these are the sons of the kingdom, and the field is the world, the harvest is the end of the age. The Lord explained it; it is the gospel; they are the Lord's words; they are manifest. I could say to you: I receive you as you received those whom Praetextatus and Felicianus, condemned by you, baptized outside your communion; and to this you have nothing at all to say against it. But I will rather say this, which is most invincibly valid also against the Maximianists themselves, who beat you entirely on two testimonies which you use most ignorantly yet most often, about fewness and about noon. I will say this, then, which extinguishes all of you, as if you rose up together against us: we receive you, if you will be corrected, as the church receives which the Lord Jesus said would begin from Jerusalem, and which we read in the Acts of the Apostles began from there; which he said would go through all nations, and which we read in the Acts of the Apostles went through many before it came to Africa; and which will go through all before the end comes, since the Lord himself says, "This gospel will be preached in all nations, and then the end will come." See its refuse: "Because iniquity has abounded, the love of many will grow cold." See its grain: "But he who perseveres to the end will be saved." Where here is Africa named in the party of Donatus? See again its grain: "That you may know," says the apostle, "how you ought to behave in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. And without doubt great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, appeared to angels, preached among the nations, believed in the world, taken up in glory." See its refuse: "But the Spirit says plainly that in the last times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, doctrines of demons," and the rest. Where here too is Africa named in the party of Donatus, so that the pillar and foundation of the truth, or the mystery of godliness, should remain in it, of which he ran on to the end so as to say, "preached among the nations, believed in the world, taken up in glory"?

Why, then, should I hold you with more? Whoever thinks of answering this letter, let him search the Scriptures and either bring forward a manifest testimony about Africa, in which alone or from which alone the party of Donatus is (which he cannot bring forward, because Scripture cannot contradict those most manifest testimonies we have brought forward); or, if he seeks credulous followers of his suspicions, accusations, or slanders, and wants to lead us over to another gospel, which is not another, and to announce to us anything beyond what we have received, even if he were an angel from heaven, let him be anathema. For if the devil, who fell from heaven because he did not stand in the truth, had been anathema to man when he announced to him something beyond what he had received from the Lord God, the first parents of our flesh would neither have fallen into the penalty of death nor gone out from the place of happiness.

Therefore you, dearly beloved, to whom I write this letter, keep with a most faithful and firm heart the command of the shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep and now, glorified and exalted, sits at the right hand of God the Father, who says: "My sheep hear my voice and follow me." You have heard his most manifest voice, not only through his law and prophets and psalms, but also through his own mouth, commending his church that was to be; and how what he foretold followed in order you see by reading the Acts and the writings of the apostles, which complete the canon of the divine Scriptures. It is not an obscure question in which those can deceive you whom the Lord himself foretold would come and say, "Look, here is Christ, look, there; look, in the desert," as though where there is no thronging multitude, "look, in the inner rooms," as though in secret traditions and doctrines. You have the church spread everywhere and growing until the harvest; you have the city of which he who founded it says, "A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden." It is she, then, who is most well known, not in some part of the earth, but everywhere. She sometimes suffers temporal storms even in her grain, so that in some places they are not recognized; yet even there they lie hidden. For the divine sentence cannot be deceived, since they grow until the harvest.

So too in other nations some members of the church have often been pressed down and overshadowed by prevailing seditions of heresies and schisms, and yet, because they were there, a little later they shone out with no one doubting. And in Africa itself, after that seditious and turbulent council of Secundus of Tigisis at Carthage, where the corruption worked by the noble lady Lucilla was afterwards recorded in judicial proceedings, when letters had been sent from it through almost all Africa, wherever the churches of Christ had already sprung up, the letters of the council were believed (nor ought it to have been otherwise), and it seemed as though in some part of the field the Lord's grain had failed. But it had in no way failed, the grain that was truly predestined and sown and sprouting fruitfully with deep roots. For they had believed the council's letters with a clear conscience; for nothing incredible was being said by men about other men, nor was anything believed by them against the gospel. But after those men, with furious obstinacy, carried their most stubborn contention as far as sacrilegious dissension against the whole Christian world, and it became known to the good faithful whom false accusation had alienated from Caecilian, they saw that, if they persisted in that communion, they would be holding a perverse judgment no longer about some man or some men but about the church spread through the whole world; and they preferred to believe the gospel of Christ rather than the council of their colleagues. So, leaving them, many bishops, clergy, and people soon returned to catholic peace; and even before they did so they were counted as wheat. For they were not then acting against the church of God, which grows in all nations, but their opposition was directed against men badly represented to them by their colleagues. So in Africa too the wheat that the Son of Man had sown remained wheat, and from then until now has grown and grows, and will go on bearing fruit and growing until the harvest, as in the whole world.

Some too of good will, through fleshly darkness, went on erring for a longer time in that dissension even after the fury of the malicious against the church of God had become fixed, as if the grain were still tender and being trampled, and the vigour of the plant worn down though its root was alive. Yet God knew even these as his grain, though they had to be rebuked and reproved so as to revive. For it was not said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan," in the same way as it was said of Judas, "One of you is a devil." Some also contradicted the most manifest truth with evil intent. These were indeed uprooted or cut off, but, not remaining in unbelief, as the apostle says of certain broken branches, they were replanted or grafted in again by the divine hand. For each person is unfruitful, but not yet cut off from the root, when by evil desire he does those works of which it is said, "Those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God"; but when, on behalf of those very works, he begins to resist even the most manifest truth by which he is reproved, then he is cut off. And many such people are in the communion of the sacraments with the church, and yet are no longer in the church. Otherwise, if each is cut off when he is visibly excommunicated, it will follow that he is grafted in again when he is visibly restored to communion. What, then, if he approaches feignedly and bears a most hostile heart against the truth and the church, though that solemn rite is performed on him: is he reconciled, is he grafted in? Far from it. As, then, one who communicates again is not yet grafted in, so whoever bears a hostile mind against the truth by which he is convicted and reproved is already cut off even before he is visibly excommunicated. So it comes about that both the good seed and the bad seed grow through the field until the harvest, that is, both the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the evil one grow through the world until the end of the age, the former bearing fruit with patience, the latter embittered with barrenness.

But you, relying on so many most evident testimonies of the law, the prophets, the psalms, the Lord himself, and the apostles about the holy church spread throughout the whole world, demand of these men that they show from Africa, as concerns the party of Donatus, some manifest testimonies from the canonical books. For, as I have already said, it could in no way be that the church, if (as they say, and God forbid) it was so soon to perish from so many nations, should be proclaimed by so many testimonies so loftily and so indubitably, while silence was kept about that church which they want to be theirs, which, as they contend, was to remain until the end. For remember what was said to that rich man when he was tormented in the underworld and wanted someone from the dead to be sent to his brothers: "They have Moses and the prophets there," he says. And when he said that they would not believe unless someone from the dead went to them: "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets," he says, "neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead." Moses said that in the seed of Abraham all nations would be blessed; the prophets said, "You will be called My delight, and your land the whole world," and, "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord." These men would not believe these and such manifest prophecies showing the church. The Lord rose from the dead and said that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Those who had not believed Moses and the prophets did not believe the Lord risen from the dead either. What remains but that they share the torments of that rich man? Fleeing these while there is still time, before departing from this life, cling steadfastly to the divine words, so that you may neither be troubled in life nor, after this life, fail to deserve to receive what was promised to the seed of Abraham.