On Baptism, against the Donatists 1.1–1.14

In the books we wrote against the letter of Parmenian which he addressed to Tyconius, we promised that we would treat the question of baptism more carefully; and even if we had not promised it there, we remember and acknowledge that we owe it to the brothers who ask it of us. Therefore in this work, with the Lord’s help, we have undertaken not only to refute the objections the Donatists are accustomed to raise against us on this matter, but also to say what the Lord grants us to say about the authority of the most blessed martyr Cyprian, with which they try to prop up their perversity so that it does not fall before the onrush of truth. So all who judge without being blinded by party zeal may understand that, far from being helped by Cyprian’s authority, they are above all refuted and overthrown by it.

It has already been said in the books mentioned above that baptism can be given outside the Catholic communion in the same way that it can also be possessed outside it. None of them denies that even apostates have baptism, since when they return and are converted through repentance it is not given to them again, and so it is judged that it could not be lost. So too those who depart from the communion of the church through the sacrilege of schism certainly have the baptism they received before they departed. For if they themselves return, it is not given to them again; and this shows that what they had received while placed in unity they could not lose when separated. But if it can be possessed outside, why can it not also be given? If you say, “It is not rightly given outside,” we answer: just as it is not rightly possessed outside and yet is possessed, so it is not rightly given outside, and yet it is given. And just as through reconciliation to unity what was possessed outside unity without profit begins to be possessed with profit, so through the same reconciliation what was given outside it without profit begins to be profitable. Yet it is not lawful to say that what was given was not given, or to slander anyone as not having given this, when one admits that he gave what he had received. For the sacrament of baptism is what the one who is baptized has, and the sacrament of giving baptism is what the one who is ordained has. And just as a baptized person who withdraws from unity does not lose the sacrament of baptism, so too an ordained person who withdraws from unity does not lose the sacrament of giving baptism. For no injury is to be done to any sacrament: if it departs from evil men, both depart; if it remains in evil men, both remain. So just as the baptism is accepted which a man who had left unity could not lose, so the baptism must be accepted which was given by one who had not lost the sacrament of giving it when he left. For just as those who return, having been baptized before they withdrew, are not rebaptized, so those who return, having been ordained before they withdrew, are certainly not ordained again; either they minister what they ministered before, if the good of the church requires it, or if they do not minister, they still bear the sacrament of their ordination, and so hands are not laid on them among the laity. For Felicianus, when he left them with Maximian, lost neither the sacrament of baptism nor the sacrament of giving baptism; for they now have him with them, together with those very people whom he baptized while he was outside in Maximian’s schism. Therefore the others could receive from them, while they had not joined our fellowship, what these had not lost when they withdrew from our fellowship. These facts show both that they act impiously who try to rebaptize the unity of the world, and that we act rightly who do not dare to disapprove God’s sacraments even in schism itself. For in what they agree with us, in that they are also with us; but they have withdrawn from us in that in which they disagree with us. For this approach and departure is to be measured not by bodily but by spiritual movements. Just as the joining of bodies happens through continuity of places, so a kind of contact of minds is agreement of wills. If therefore someone who has withdrawn from unity wishes to do something other than what he received in unity, in that he withdraws and is separated; but in that he wishes to act just as is done in unity, where he received and learned it, in that he remains and is joined.

So these men are with us in some things, but in some things they have gone out from us. We therefore do not forbid them to do the things in which they are with us; but in the things in which they are not with us, we urge them to receive by coming, or to recover by returning, and we labour with love, by whatever means we can, that they may choose this once corrected and amended. So we do not say to them, “Do not give,” but, “Do not give in schism”; nor do we say to those whom they seem about to baptize, “Do not receive,” but, “Do not receive in schism.” For if extreme necessity should perhaps compel someone who could find no Catholic to receive it from, and he, keeping Catholic peace in his heart, received from someone placed outside Catholic unity what he would have received in Catholic unity itself, then if he departed this life at once we count him nothing but a Catholic. But if he was delivered from bodily death, when he restores himself in bodily presence also to the Catholic congregation from which he never departed in heart, we not only do not disapprove of what he did, but praise it with complete confidence and truth, because he believed God to be present in his heart where he kept unity, and would not depart from this life without the sacrament of holy baptism, which he knew to be God’s and not men’s wherever he found it. But if someone who could receive it in the Catholic Church itself chooses, through some perversity of mind, to be baptized in schism, even though he means to come over to the Catholic Church afterward, because he is sure that there the sacrament profits, which can indeed be received elsewhere but cannot profit, he is without doubt perverse and wicked, and the more harmfully so the more knowingly. For he does not doubt that it is rightly received there, just as he does not doubt that there even what he received elsewhere profits.

For there are two things we say: that there is baptism in the Catholic Church, and that it is rightly received there alone; the Donatists deny both. Again, we say two other things: that there is baptism among the Donatists, but that it is not rightly received there; of these two they strongly affirm one, namely that there is baptism there, but they refuse to admit that it is not rightly received there. Of these four statements three are ours alone, but one both sides make. For only we say that there is baptism in the Catholic Church, that it is rightly received there, and that it is not rightly received among the Donatists; but that there is baptism among the Donatists they assert and we grant. Whoever then wishes to be baptized, and is already sure that our church is to be chosen for Christian salvation and that Christ’s baptism profits in it alone, even if received elsewhere, but wishes to be baptized in the party of Donatus because not they alone nor we alone but both sides say that there is baptism there, let him attend to the other three. For if he has chosen to follow us in what they do not say, and yet puts what both sides say ahead of what we alone say, it is enough for us that he puts what they do not say and we alone say ahead of what they alone say. Now we say, and they do not, that there is baptism in the Catholic Church; we say, and they do not, that baptism is rightly received in the Catholic Church; we say, and they do not, that baptism is not rightly received in the party of Donatus. So just as he rather believes what we alone say ought to be believed, let him rather do what we alone say ought to be done. What both sides say ought to be believed, he may, if he thinks so, believe more firmly than what is said by us alone. For he will more firmly believe that Christ’s baptism is in the party of Donatus, which is said by both of us, than that baptism is in the Catholic Church, which is said only by Catholics. But again, he will more believe that Christ’s baptism is with us too, which we alone say, than that it is not with us, which they alone say. For he has already decided and is sure that, in the things on which we disagree, we are to be preferred to them. So he will more believe what we alone say, that it is rightly received with us, than that it is not rightly received with us, since only they say that. By the same rule he will more believe what we alone say, that it is not rightly received among them, than what they alone say, that it is rightly received among them. So it is vain for him to think himself safe in receiving there what both of us indeed say exists there, but not both of us say is to be received there. And in the point on which we do not both agree he himself has chosen to hold to us rather. Let him therefore receive safely here, where he is sure that it both exists and is rightly received, and not receive there what they say exists there indeed, but do not say is to be received there, whose judgment he has decided to choose. Even if he were in doubt whether what he holds certainly is rightly received in the Catholic Church is not rightly received there, he would sin gravely in matters that concern the salvation of the soul by that alone, that he preferred the uncertain to the certain. For he is sure that a man is rightly baptized in the Catholic Church by the very fact that, even when baptized elsewhere, he has decided to come over here. But let him at least regard it as uncertain that a man is rightly baptized among the Donatists, since this is said by those whose judgment he is sure must be preferred to the Donatists’; and preferring the certain to the uncertain, let him be baptized here, where he is sure it is rightly done, because even when he was thinking of doing it elsewhere he had decided that he must come over here.

Now if anyone does not understand how it can be that we say what we admit exists there is not rightly given there, let him consider that we do not say it exists rightly there either, which they too say of those who depart from their communion. Let them also consider the comparison of the military mark, since it can be both held and received by deserters outside the army, yet outside the army it ought neither to be held nor received, and when the man is brought back or brought into the army it is neither changed nor repeated. However, the case of those who fall in with these heretics unwittingly, thinking it is the church of Christ itself, is one thing; the case of those is another who know that there is no Catholic Church except the one that, as was promised, is spread through the whole world and stretches to the ends of the earth; which, growing among the tares and weary of offences, longing for the rest to come, says in the psalms: “From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, when my soul was weary: you have set me high on a rock.” And the rock was Christ, in whom the apostle says we are already raised and seated in heaven, not yet in fact but in hope. And so the psalm goes on to say: “You have led me, because you have become my hope, a tower of strength in the face of the enemy.” For by his promises, set like darts and javelins in a well-fortified tower, the enemy is not only guarded against but also overcome, who clothes his wolves in sheepskins so that they say, “Look, here is Christ, look, there,” and separate many from the whole of the city set on a mountain into the little pockets of their ambushes, and slaughter and devour them. And though they know this, they choose to receive Christ’s baptism outside the communion of the unity of Christ’s body, intending afterward to move into that same communion with what they received elsewhere. Knowingly, then, they will have Christ’s baptism against Christ’s church, if only on the very day they receive it. And if that is a crime, who would say, “Let me be allowed to commit a crime for one day”? For if he is going to pass over to the Catholic Church, I ask the reason. What else will he answer but that it is evil to be in the party of Donatus and not in Catholic unity? So for as many days as you do this evil, for so many days you will be doing evil; and it can be said that a greater evil is done over more days and a lesser over few, but it cannot be said that no evil is done. What need is there to commit so detestable an evil even for one day or one hour? Whoever wishes this to be granted him might as well ask the church, or God himself, to grant him to be an apostate even for one day. For there is no reason why he should fear to be an apostate for one day and not fear to be a schismatic or heretic for one day.

“I preferred,” he says, “to receive it there, where both sides agree that Christ’s baptism exists.” But those to whom you are going to move say it is not rightly received there, while those from whom you are going to move say it is rightly received there. So what is said by those whom you yourself rank lower, against those whom you yourself rank higher, is either false or, to put it more mildly, uncertain. Put the true, then, before the false, or the certain before the uncertain. For that what you desire can rightly be received there, where you are going to move after receiving elsewhere, is admitted not only by those to whom you are going to pass but by you yourself who are going to pass over. For if you doubted whether it could rightly be received there, you would also doubt whether you ought to pass over there. So if it is uncertain that it is a sin to receive in the party of Donatus, who would doubt that it is certainly a sin not to receive it rather where it is certain that it is no sin? But those who are baptized there through ignorance, thinking it is Christ’s church itself, sin less in comparison with these, yet they are wounded by the sacrilege of schism, and not lightly just because others are wounded more gravely. For when it was said to some, “It will be more tolerable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you,” it was not said because the Sodomites will not be punished, but because the others will be punished more severely.

And yet this may perhaps once have been hidden and uncertain. But the very thing by which those who take notice and are corrected are healed is the thing by which those are weighed down who, when they are no longer permitted to be ignorant, rage stubbornly to their own ruin. For the condemnation of the Maximianists, and the reception of the condemned together with those whom they baptized outside their communion in a schism that is, as their council cries out, sacrilegious, has settled this whole question and removed the whole dispute. It leaves nothing at all between us and those Donatists who are in communion with Primian on which anyone might doubt that Christ’s baptism can be not only possessed but also given by those who are separated from the church. For just as they are forced to admit that those whom Felicianus baptized in schism received true baptism, since they now have them with them in the very baptism they received in schism, so we say that Christ’s baptism exists even outside the Catholic communion, given by those who have been cut off from that communion, because they did not lose it when they were cut off. And what they think they conferred on those whom Felicianus baptized in schism when they reconciled them to themselves, namely not that they should receive what they did not have, but that what they had received and held in schism without profit should profit them, this God truly confers and bestows through the Catholic communion on those who come from any heresy or schism where they received Christ’s baptism: not that they should begin to have the sacrament of baptism, which they did not have, but that what they had should begin to profit them.

So between us and those, so to speak, cardinal Donatists whose bishop at Carthage is Primian, there is now no controversy on this matter. For God willed it to be ended by means of the Maximianists, so that what they would not admit when love was persuading them they might admit when their own example compelled them. But we still argue on this point, so that those may not think they have something to say who are not in communion even with these, and who contend that the Donatists who have remained with them are the purer the fewer they are. Even if they were only the Maximianists, we ought not to despise their salvation; how much more, then, since the same party of Donatus is cut into many tiny fragments, all of which tiny particles blame this one much larger fragment in which Primian is for receiving the baptism of the Maximianists, and each tries to assert that true baptism has remained only with itself, and is not anywhere else at all, neither in the whole world where the Catholic Church is spread, nor in the larger party of Donatus itself, nor in the others besides this one of the tiniest fragments! If all these particles would attend to the voice not of a man but of manifest truth itself, and tame the headstrong spirit of their perversity, they would return not to the larger party of Donatus, from which they were cut off as it had been cut off, but from their own dryness to the very greenness of the Catholic root. For all of these, where they are not against us, are for us; but where they do not gather with us, they scatter.

Now, lest I seem to do this with human arguments, since the obscurity of this question in the earlier times of the church, before the schism of Donatus, drove great men, fathers and bishops endowed with great love, to debate among themselves and waver, while keeping peace, so that for a long time the differing decrees of councils in their several regions wavered, until by a plenary council of the whole world what was held most soundly was confirmed and doubts removed, I bring forth sure proofs from the gospel, by which with the Lord’s help I show how rightly and how truly according to God it was decided that in any schismatic or heretic the church’s medicine should cure the wound by which he was separated, but what remained sound should be acknowledged and approved rather than disapproved and wounded. Certainly the Lord says in the gospel: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” Yet when his disciples reported to him that they had seen someone driving out demons in his name and had forbidden him, because he did not follow him with them, he said: “Do not forbid him. He who is not against you is for you. For no one can do anything in my name and speak evil of me.” If there was nothing in that man to be corrected, then let anyone be secure who is placed outside the communion of the church and gathers in Christ’s name while severed from Christian fellowship; and so that saying will be false: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” But if there was something in him to be corrected, which the Lord’s disciples in ignorance wished to do, why did the Lord himself forbid it to be forbidden, saying, “Do not forbid him”? And how will what he says there be true: “He who is not against you is for you”? For in this deed he was not against them but for them, in that he worked healings through the name of Christ. So that both sayings may be true, as true they are, both that in which he says, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters,” and that in which he says, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against you is for you,” what remains to be understood except that the man was to be confirmed in his veneration of so great a name, in which he was not against the church but for it, and yet to be blamed for that separation by which, if he gathered, he would scatter; so that if he happened to come to the church he would not receive there what he had, but would correct that in which he had strayed?

For the prayers of Cornelius too, though he was a Gentile, were not unheard, nor were his alms unaccepted; indeed he was counted worthy that an angel should be sent to him and that he should see him when sent, through whom he could certainly have learned all he needed without any man coming to him. But since whatever good he had in his prayers and alms could not profit him unless he was incorporated into the church by the bond of Christian fellowship and peace, he is told to send to Peter, and through him he learns Christ, and through him too, being baptized, he is joined in the fellowship of communion to the Christian people, to whom he was joined only by the likeness of good works. For he would have despised to his ruin the good he did not yet have, if he had grown proud of what he had. So too those who separate themselves from the fellowship of others, violate love, and break the bond of unity: if they do none of the things they received in that fellowship, they are separated in everything, and so anyone they have joined to themselves, if he wishes to come to the church, must receive everything he has not received. But if they do some of the same things, in these they have not separated themselves and to that extent they are held in the joining of the fabric, while in the rest they are torn. So if they have joined anyone to themselves, he is knit to the church in that part in which they too are not separated; and so if he wishes to come to the church, he is healed where he was torn and straying, but where he was sound and connected he is not treated but acknowledged, lest in wishing to treat what is sound we rather wound it. So those whom they baptize they heal from the wound of idolatry or unbelief, but they strike them with the heavier wound of schism. For among the people of God the sword killed the idolaters, but the opening of the earth swallowed the schismatics. And the apostle says: “If I have all faith, so that I move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

If someone is brought to a doctor gravely wounded in some vital part of the body, and the doctor says, “He will die of it unless it is treated,” I do not suppose those who brought him are so foolish as to consider and count up his other, sound limbs and answer the doctor, “So all these sound limbs are worth nothing for his life, and that one wounded limb is enough for his death?” They certainly do not say that, but offer him for treatment. Yet because they offer him for treatment they do not ask the doctor to treat the sound parts as well, but to apply his medicine urgently to that one place from which death threatens even though the rest are whole, and will come unless it is healed. What good then is either sound faith or perhaps only the sound sacrament of faith to a man in whom the health of love has been destroyed by the deadly wound of schism, by whose destruction alone even the whole parts are dragged to death? That this may not happen, God’s mercy does not cease, through the unity of the holy church, to bid them come and be healed by the medicine of reconciliation, by the bond of peace. Let them not think themselves sound because we say they have something sound, nor again think that what is sound must be treated because we show something to be wounded. So in the soundness of the sacrament, since they are not against us, they are for us; but in the wound of schism, whatever they do not gather with Christ they scatter. Let them not be lifted up by what they have. Why do they turn their proud eyes so much on what is sound? Let them deign humbly to look at their wound, and attend not only to what is present but also to what is lacking.

Let them see how many great things profit nothing if one thing is lacking, and let them see what that one thing is; and let them not hear me on this, but the apostle: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,” he says, “but have not love, I have become sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” What then does it profit them if they have even an angel’s tongue in the sacred mysteries, and prophecy like Caiaphas and Saul, so that they sometimes prophesy, whom holy Scripture testifies to have been damnable; if they not only know the sacraments but have them, as Simon Magus had them; if they have faith, as the demons confessed Christ (for they did not fail to believe when they said, “What have we to do with you, Son of God? We know who you are”); if they themselves distribute their goods to the poor, as many do not only in the Catholic Church but in various heresies; if, when some persecution breaks out, they hand over their body to the flames along with us for the faith they confess alike? Yet because they do these things separated, not bearing with one another in love nor eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, by not having love they cannot reach eternal salvation even with all those things, which profit them nothing.

But they think they ask a very clever question: whether Christ’s baptism in the party of Donatus begets sons or not; so that if we grant that it does, they may insist that theirs is the mother church, which could beget sons from Christ’s baptism, and, since there must be one church, may charge from this that ours is not the church. But if we say it does not beget, “Why then,” they say, “are those who pass from us to you not reborn by baptism among you, since they were baptized among us, if they have not yet been born?”

As if it begets from that by which it is separated and not from that by which it is joined! For it is separated from the bond of love and peace, but joined in one baptism. So there is one church, which alone is called Catholic; and whatever of its own it has in the communions of various groups separated from its unity, it is certainly the church that begets through what it has of its own in them, not they. For it is not their separation that begets, but what they have kept of this church; and if they give that up too, they beget nothing at all. So she whose sacraments are retained begets in them all, since it is from these that any such thing can be begotten anywhere, although not all whom she begets belong to her unity, which will save those who persevere to the end. For not only do those not belong to her who are manifest in the open sacrilege of separation, but also those who are mixed in her unity in body but are separated by a very wicked life. For she herself had given birth through baptism to Simon Magus, to whom it was nevertheless said that he had no part in the inheritance of Christ. Did he lack baptism, did he lack the gospel, did he lack the sacraments? But because he lacked love, he was born in vain, and it would perhaps have been better for him not to be born. Were they not born to whom the apostle says, “As to little ones in Christ I gave you milk to drink, not solid food”? Yet he calls them back from the sacrilege of schism, into which they were rushing because they were carnal: “As to little ones in Christ,” he says, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able. And even now you are not able; for you are still carnal. For while there is envy and strife among you, are you not carnal, and walking according to man? For when one says, ‘I am of Paul,’ and another, ‘I of Apollos,’ are you not men?” Of these he says earlier: “I beseech you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you, but that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers, by those of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now I say this, that each of you says, ‘I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, I of Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” If these, then, had remained in this obstinacy and perversity, they had certainly been born, and yet they would not have belonged through the bond of peace and unity to the very church from which they had been born. So she begets both through her own womb and through the wombs of handmaids, from the same sacraments as from the seed of her husband. For the apostle does not say in vain that all those things were done as a figure. But those who are proud and are not joined to the lawful mother are like Ishmael, of whom it was said: “Cast out the handmaid and her son; for the son of the handmaid shall not be heir with my son Isaac.” But those who peaceably love their father’s lawful wife, by whose lawful right they were begotten, are like the sons of Jacob who, though born of handmaids, nevertheless took the same inheritance. And those who are born within, in unity, from the womb of the mother herself, and neglect the grace they received, are like Esau, son of Isaac, who was rejected, as God testifies and says, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” though both were conceived from one union and born from one womb.