Summary of the Collation with the Donatists 3.5–3.19

Then the commissioner ordered them now to prove the charges they had brought, and said that the person of the plaintiff was not to be shown from the requesting of the conference, if both parties were proved to have requested it. Here the Donatists again began to ask that he pronounce on the person. And the commissioner pronounced, saying that if both parties had asked for the conference, the plaintiff was the one who brought charges. And the Donatists demanded that the Catholics prove whether both had asked for the conference. When the commissioner said, “The Catholics will have to prove this,” there arose again a delaying conflict about the Catholic name and about “Donatists” and “Caecilianists.” Then the Catholics offered the minutes of a hearing in the prefect’s court, by which they would prove that the Donatists too had asked for a conference. When the commissioner had ordered these to be read, the Donatists again went back to past matters and began to demand that the commissioner pronounce on those things on which he had pronounced so many times, namely the person and the envoys’ mandate, which they had so often needlessly asked to have issued to them. They did this, as was understood, fearing that the prefect’s minutes would be read, in which they had wounded their own case by some thoughtless and rash answers. So there was long conflict on their part, above all with the commissioner himself, since they asked that the mandate given to the envoys be issued to them or that he pronounce that they had asked for it needlessly; while he said that he had pronounced, and pronounced that this had nothing at all to do with the present hearing, in which it was declared by imperial letters what had been asked and what had been granted. And at length, at his order, the prefect’s minutes began to be read. When the day and the consuls of those minutes had been read, the Donatists at once interrupted again and began to demand those same past matters. But when the commissioner ruled that the minutes should be read, so that the person of the plaintiff might be established, they on their side began to say that there were earlier minutes which ought rather to be read. Against this the Catholics said that the Donatists did not want the prefect’s minutes read because they dreaded their own statements in them.

So the Donatists offered the minutes of the proconsul and of the deputy prefecture, in which the Catholics had asked that the Donatists be summoned by municipal records, so that, by a conference of both, error might be removed from their midst, long before the Catholics asked the emperor for the conference itself. And by these minutes they wished to show that the Catholics stood in the place of plaintiffs, because there they had said that the Donatists, as heretics, committed many things against divine and human laws. Against this the Catholics said that even then they had demanded a conference in order to answer for the church against the Donatists’ charges. And so they asked repeatedly that, if those minutes were to be read which were established as earlier, then rather those should be read in which the Donatists had first sent the case of Caecilian to the emperor Constantine, accusing him through the proconsul Anullinus. And after the minutes that the Donatists produced had been read, those that had been held before the prefects, whose reading had already begun, were not read. And a conflict began: if the minutes produced by the Donatists had been preferred to those produced by the Catholics because they were found to be earlier, so that they should rather be read, then at least after their reading those far earlier ones should also be read, in which the Donatists would be seen to have been the first accusers in this whole case being argued, before the emperor through the proconsul. The Donatists struggled vehemently against these being read, resisting with many and manifold statements, just as they had struggled and wrung it out that the prefect’s minutes should not be read. In this struggle they often repeated that worn-out demand, rejected by so many rulings of the commissioner, about having the envoys’ mandate issued to them. They also repeated the question that had already been settled earlier, whether the Catholics preferred to plead from the testimonies of the law or from public records; and they said that if the Catholics chose the testimonies of the divine law, they should give up all public laws and records; but if they preferred to plead from public laws and records, they should leave aside the divine documents. And yet, if the Catholics chose to plead rather from the documents of public records, the Donatists said they would not allow even this, that the records offered by the Catholics be read, because they had a valid plea of prescription by time: namely the one to which both the Catholics and the commissioner himself had answered them sufficiently, since they said the case itself had lapsed and could no longer be heard, because the day had passed on which the four months were completed. For it was plain that they greatly feared the reading of records showing that Caecilian had first been accused before the emperor by their forebears and then acquitted and cleared by both ecclesiastical and imperial judgments; that is, they feared that the very case for which they had come would be argued at all, in which they felt they could most evidently be defeated. So much did they not want it, and fear it, that they were even forced to admit it, saying that they were being drawn into the case gradually, that is, little by little, and being led down into the inner parts of the case: which they certainly ought to have wished for, if they had trusted not in empty and delaying pleas but in the truth of the case itself.

Against this, then, the Catholics, while striving vehemently to reach the case, which they saw the Donatists absolutely did not want to reach, still answered again and again the very points that the Donatists kept repeating though they had been settled so many times. Since there were two matters that had come up, one about issuing the mandate given to the envoys, the other whether the Catholics preferred to plead from divine testimonies or public records: about issuing the mandate, the Catholics answered that it had nothing at all to do with them or with the present case, and the commissioner himself pronounced again what he had pronounced many times, that he could by no means examine the person of the envoys and the mandate they had received, and must not depart from what had been entrusted to him, since it was plain enough from the imperial letters by which he had been appointed judge in this case that the conference had been granted by the emperor. About the other matter, where they asked which the Catholics chose, divine documents or public records, the Catholics answered repeatedly: if the Donatists did not bring the charges against men which they are accustomed to bring against them as betrayers, but only the question were asked what or where the church is, they would deal with nothing from public records, but only from the testimonies of the divine Scriptures; but if they persisted in that accusation and charge against men, then, since they themselves could not demonstrate such things except by such records, the Catholics too would without doubt defend against charges of this kind from public records, since otherwise such things could be neither accused nor defended. These things were repeated and pressed on them many times, both by the Catholics and by the commissioner himself, while they returned to the same things and repeated the same things in many and various ways in many statements, so that the case would not be argued and the records that they saw already in hand would not be read. But at length the commissioner overcame such long obstinacy and ordered the documents given by the Catholics to be read, and the case at last began to be argued for which so many bishops of both parties had gathered. And it happened wonderfully that, while the Donatists were inquiring into the person of the plaintiff so that the case would not be reached, that very inquiry into the plaintiff suddenly put the case into the open.

Third, then, these things were done. The report of the proconsul Anullinus to the emperor Constantine was read. When the Donatists asked where it had been brought from, the Catholics answered that, if they doubted, it was to be sought in the proconsul’s archive. In that report it is most evidently contained that they themselves had first sent to the emperor Constantine, through the proconsul mentioned, the charges they were bringing against Caecilian, as accusers. When it had been read, the Donatists began to ask whom the Catholics called their father. When the Catholics answered them according to the Gospel, where it is written, “Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your Father, God,” even having heard this they nonetheless began to ask whether Caecilian was their father or their mother. When the Catholics had already said that he was neither father nor mother to them, but a brother, either good if he was good, or bad if he was bad, since even a bad man is a brother because of the sacraments held in common, there was then a somewhat longer conflict, the Donatists repeating the same things and the Catholics giving the same answers. For the Donatists also objected how, then, the apostle said, “Even if you have many tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel.” And the Catholics answered that this was said as a mark of honor because of the mystery of the gospel which the apostle was administering; for there is no Father to faith and eternal salvation except God. Nor could the apostle speak contrary to Christ, so that, when Christ said, “Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your Father, God,” the apostle, as though resisting the words of Christ, would on the contrary call himself the father of those to whom he had proclaimed the gospel, unless indeed one must distinguish what is said on account of divine grace and what on account of human honor.

They also asked who had ordained Augustine, preparing some slanders or other, as was being bragged about. When he answered them fearlessly that he had been ordained by Megalius, who was then primate of the bishops of the Catholic Church in Numidia, and pressed them urgently to bring out at once what they had prepared, so that they might be shown slanderers there too, they turned their aim elsewhere, returning to the person of Caecilian, which the Catholics said did not harm the church even if his crimes were shown to be real, though even these could not be shown to be real.

Then the Donatists brought out a letter which they said they had received from their whole council, answering the Catholics’ mandate, which had been entered on the first day of the proceedings and which the Donatists, on the next day, before the second session on the third day, had asked by a notice to be issued to them so that they could come prepared to the hearing. And perhaps it was in order to write this letter carefully that they asked for a postponement in the second session as well, and were granted six days. Fourth, then, these things were done. The said letter of the Donatists was read, in which they tried to answer the Catholics’ mandate, which was inserted in the minutes of the first session. Whoever is willing to read and consider both will find that they could not answer that mandate. First, the testimonies drawn from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the apostolic and Gospel writings, which show that the Catholic Church is spread through the whole world beginning from Jerusalem, from where, growing into places near and far, it came also into Africa and into the other places and cities through which it first spread, in which many churches belonging to the one church were founded by apostolic labor, with which it is plain that the Donatists are not in communion: these testimonies they were unwilling not only to discuss but even to touch at all. Nor did they dare to bring forward in so long a letter any testimony from the holy Scriptures by which to assert that the church of the party of Donatus was foretold and announced beforehand, as the Catholics brought forward so many for the church with which they are in communion, which, beginning from Jerusalem, is spread over the whole world. So, having not touched these parts consisting of so many testimonies at all, but passed them over as if they had not been said in the Catholics’ mandate which they appeared to answer, they tried to show, by bringing forward many testimonies of the divine Scriptures, that the church of God was foretold as one that would not be mixed with bad people. And yet afterward, when they came to the Gospel likeness which the Catholics had put in their mandate, of the nets cast into the sea, in which the Lord said all kinds of fish are gathered and the good separated from the bad on the shore, that is, at the end of the age, they too admitted that at least hidden bad people are mixed in the church; but the weeds among the wheat they said were mixed not in the church but in the world itself, since the Lord says, “The field is this world.” As for the threshing floor, to which the Catholics had said chaff was mixed until the time of winnowing, they did not even try to explain this likeness, as though nothing of the kind were written in the Gospel at all; but as though the Catholics had said it of themselves, they merely found fault with it, as if from the testimony of the prophet Jeremiah, who says, “What has chaff to do with wheat?”, not attending to the context in which he said it. For he was speaking not of the church but of the divine visions of the prophets and human dreams, that they are in no way to be compared. That likeness too of the sheep and the goats, which are pastured together and will be separated at the end of the age, which the Catholics had put among others from the Gospel, they were wholly unwilling to touch. For they could not say there that the goats too go unnoticed by the shepherds in the common pastures, as they had said that the bad fish within the nets in the sea are not seen by the fishermen.

Likewise, the Catholics in their mandate, wishing to show that bad people were tolerated by the good in the church and the good were not polluted by the contagion of the bad, had recalled the examples of the prophets, of the Lord Christ himself, of the apostles, and after them also of good bishops, and the judgment of the Donatists themselves, who denied that some of their own who were in the schism of Maximian had been polluted by Maximian’s contagion. In their letter the Donatists, trying to answer this, said something or other about the prophets and the Lord Christ and the apostles, but about the bishops and the Maximianists they were silent. For on the bishops they were pressed by the authority of Cyprian, whose words, brought out from his letter, the Catholics had placed in their mandate, by which it was most clearly shown both that he had taught that bad people should be tolerated in the church for the sake of unity and that the church should not be abandoned because of them, and that he himself had tolerated in the church certain colleagues of his, from whose bad conduct he was far removed and about whose very bad deeds he did not keep silent. So, overpowered by his authority, the Donatists, though they said something about the prophets and the Lord Christ and the apostles to the effect that bad people mixed in the church are not to be tolerated, wished to say nothing at all about the bishops. And yet, about Judas the betrayer and about those whom Paul tolerated as they proclaimed Christ out of envy, Cyprian himself understood and wrote just as the Catholics put it in their mandate: that the Lord bore with Judas as an example of tolerating bad people in the church, and that Paul bore with those of whom he said such things not outside but inside the church. And what were they to answer about the Maximianists, while men were still alive by whom they could be convicted most openly and easily? Accordingly, to what the Catholics had said in their mandate, that the same Maximianists had been driven from their basilicas by the Donatists through the public courts, they tried to answer somehow that they had not accused anyone criminally nor compelled anyone against his will into their communion, but had reclaimed their own property or that of their people by civil suit; forgetting that Primian once instructed his advocates to say on record, “They take away what is others’; we let go what has been taken.” But to what was said about the Maximianists in the Catholics’ mandate, that they received back with their honor intact those they had condemned, that they denied that Maximian’s associates were polluted by him, and that they preferred to approve the baptism given by them in schism rather than annul and repeat it, they did not even try to answer lightly, but passed over all of it with a strange silence, as if it had not been said.

On baptism too: the Catholics had said in that mandate that the apostle said of certain people, “They hold the truth in unrighteousness,” to show that it is possible for a truth that is not to be destroyed to be held in an unrighteousness that is to be destroyed. This the Donatists either did not understand, or what they had understood they wished to obscure with their words so that others would not understand it, saying that the apostle said this of the error of the Gentiles; as if it mattered whose error he spoke of, when he showed that truth can be held in unrighteousness, so that, when these two are found in one man, the truth is approved and the unrighteousness corrected; as the Catholic Church does when it recognizes and embraces the truth of the sacrament in the Donatists, but detests and corrects in them the heretical unrighteousness. And what the Catholics said in the mandate, that the baptism of Christ is not to be destroyed because heretics too hand it on, just as Christ is not to be denied because demons too confess him, they likewise either did not understand or wished to obscure, saying that the Catholics had spoken against the martyrs, though without stating which martyrs they meant, and saying too that the Catholics wished to be in communion with demons. But there is no communion with heretics when their unrighteousness is anathematized, even though the baptism found in their consecration is not destroyed; just as the unrighteousness of demons is anathematized, even though the name of the Lord heard in their confession is not denied.

On the persecutions too, which they complain they suffer, they put much in their letter, and yet they did not dare to answer what was said in the Catholics’ mandate: that it was they who first accused Caecilian before the emperor Constantine, they who complain about the laws of the emperors, magnifying, to stir ill will against the Catholics, either the deaths which their circumcellions inflict on themselves, or everything they suffer through public laws and penalties, not for the communion of Donatus, but for the crimes with which they rage violently and live wickedly; as they even dared to recall about the town of Bagai, where it was made plain how great the evils were that they committed and how much less they suffered.

To what was said in the Catholics’ mandate about the clearing and acquittal of Caecilian and of Felix of Abthugni, about whose crimes they used to stir up great ill will against the Catholics among the unlearned, though the whole case for which they had come turned on this, they wished to answer nothing at all in so long a letter. For in saying, and as it were supporting with divine testimonies, that bad people are not to be tolerated in the church but are to be withdrawn from because of the contagion of sins, they showed that they spoke in such a way as nevertheless to admit that no one can be stained by others’ sins that are unknown. For they had said this about the bad fish: just as the fishermen do not see them hiding in the waves, though already within the nets, so priests do not know the bad people hiding in the church and are therefore by no means polluted by them. And yet in a letter so long, and written after so long a postponement had been received, they did not try even lightly or faintly to prove what was most of all brought up in the Catholics’ mandate: that they should prove not only that Caecilian’s crimes were real, for this is too little, but also that they could have been proved and made known to the church which is spread through all nations to the ends of the earth, so that, consequently, at least according to their own view, it could be stained by the contagion of known sins.

So when the Donatists’ letter had been read, the commissioner wished the documents that the Catholics had given to be read as well. But the Donatists began to demand an answer to what they had written; and the Catholics wanted this more, so that their letter would not remain as if it could not be answered. So when the Catholics began to answer, the Donatists began to interrupt and make noise, so that the speech of the one answering would not run on continuously, as their letter had been read with no one interrupting. When the Catholics wished to show how the divine testimonies which they had put forward, and those which the Donatists had recalled, were to be understood, so that they would not be found contrary to each other, since both were divine and so must be in harmony, not discord, they began first to speak of the likeness of the threshing floor. Then the Donatists, interrupting, said that nothing was read in the Gospel about a threshing floor. And when the Catholics cited the place in the Gospel more precisely, they said, interrupting again, that the hidden bad were called the chaff to be winnowed later. From there, amid their noise and interruptions, a disagreement arose about the weeds and the wheat because of the word “world,” which the Donatists would not have understood as the church, since it is written, “The field is this world”; and they brought forward many testimonies in which holy Scripture had spoken of the world as meaning only the bad, such as, “Whoever loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” and others like it, so as to show from this, as it were, that the church could by no means be signified by the name “world.” Against this the Catholics brought forward other testimonies showing the word “world” used in a good sense, such as, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” and others of this kind, in which the church is shown, since it is precisely the church that is reconciled to God through Christ. And this went on while the Catholics tried to keep their speech going continuously, and the Donatists made noise so that it would not happen; since they did not hold back their reply, as the Catholics had done when their letter was read, but by inserting frequent contradictions they hindered the Catholics’ statement from proceeding undisturbed.

So the Catholics, asking for the Donatists’ patience and barely obtaining it through many rulings of the commissioner, answered their letter. They showed by many testimonies and examples of the holy Scriptures that the bad are now so mixed in the church that, although church discipline must be watchful to correct them not only by words but also by excommunications and degradations, yet not only are those hidden in it unknown, but often even those known are tolerated for the sake of the peace of unity. They showed that the divine testimonies agree in this way: those in which the church is presented with the bad mixed in signify this time of hers, such as she is in the present age; and those testimonies in which she is presented as having no bad mixed in signify that time of hers, such as she will be forever in the age to come. Just as she is now mortal, that is, made up of mortal people, but will then be immortal, when no one in her will die; just as Christ himself was mortal for her in this time, but after the resurrection he no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over him, which he will also grant to his church at the end of the age. These two times of the church, as she is now and as she will be then, were also signified, they said, by two catches of fish: one before Christ’s resurrection, when he ordered the nets to be let down without naming either the left or the right side, to teach that within the nets of his sacraments there would be neither the bad alone nor the good alone, but the bad mixed with the good; the other after the resurrection, when he ordered the nets to be cast on the right side, so that we might understand that after our resurrection there will be only the good in the church, where there will no longer be heresies and schisms, by which the nets are now torn. For the Gospel did not fail to mention that in the first catch the nets were torn, and in the last it is said, “And though the fish were so large, the nets were not torn.” Of such a church it is said that the uncircumcised and unclean will not pass through her; for schismatic separations belong to the unclean, and these will not exist then, since the nets were not torn. They said that this was also signified by the raven, an unclean bird, going out of the ark and not returning; yet the ark, when the raven went out, was certainly not without all unclean animals, but in it were both clean and unclean until the flood, as in the church there are good and bad until the end of the age. But just as Noah offered sacrifice not from the unclean but from the clean animals, so it is not those in the church who are bad, but those who are good, who come to God.

About the prophets too, since the Donatists had said in their letter that they were not in communion with those against whom they spoke such evils, the Catholics answered that there was one temple which all used, and that none of the prophets who spoke such things against the wicked set up for himself another temple, other sacrifices, other priests. And since the Donatists had put in their letter testimonies of the Scriptures to show that the sins of parents extend to the children too, though this has never been rightly understood except of those children who imitate their parents’ iniquities, the Catholics answered: although such great and such bitter things were said against that people by the divine oracles, which the Donatists themselves recalled in their letter, so that it might seem as if no good person had remained there, yet not only were those same holy prophets there, but from that very people arose those whom the Lord himself found praiseworthy at the coming of his flesh, such as Zechariah and Elizabeth, and John their son, and the old man Simeon and the widow Anna. From this it is plain how impiously and slanderously the crimes of Caecilian were charged against the Catholics spread over the whole world, when the crimes of that people could not be charged against Simeon and Anna and others like them, who were born among that people and consecrated with that same people’s sacraments, crimes which not human opinion but the divine word had charged against that same people. The prophetic testimony was also recalled in which those who groaned over the evil deeds done in their midst were marked so as not to perish with the wicked, and yet they were not separated bodily.

Then it was recalled there what kind of separation from the impious and wicked the good ought to make in this time so as not to share in others’ sins: namely, by the heart and by unlikeness of life and conduct; and that what is written, “Go out from their midst, depart from there, and touch no unclean thing,” should not be understood otherwise, that is: be distinguished by living differently, and do not consent to uncleanness. There too, at a most fitting point, the Donatists were answered on what they had said when the commissioner asked them to sit, that it was written for them not to sit with such people. For the Catholics said, when answering their letter, that separation from the wicked in this time is not to be understood as they had understood it, who did not sit with them as with the impious because it is written, “I have not sat in the council of the impious”; since surely, if they thought them impious, they ought not to have passed over what is forbidden next in the same psalm. For there follows: “And I will not go in with those who do wicked things.” Since, then, they had gone in with those whom they thought impious, why did they not also sit, so that in both they would be seen to have avoided not a bodily but a spiritual sitting together and going in? There was also recalled the case of the Maximianists, so often already charged against them, in which they said that they themselves, and those to whom they granted a period of grace while they were in Maximian’s schism and his partners in condemning Primian, had nevertheless not been polluted by his contagion; they who contended that the Christian world, to the ends of the earth, had perished through the crimes of Caecilian.

To this the Donatists, since they could not answer the very strong proofs of the Scriptures and their own example of the Maximianists, went back to what had already been dealt with, saying that the world in which the wheat and the weeds were ordered to grow together is not rightly understood as the church; although the Catholics had already recalled so many divine testimonies showing that “world” is also used in a good sense and that in that sense it can be understood only as the church, and that, however “world” is taken, since both seeds grow throughout the world, the wheat of the whole world should not be deserted because of the weeds. So when these things had already been said and the question itself seemed settled, they went back to it again out of utter lack, unrolling the same things by the same means: asking how the devil could have sown weeds in the church; then slandering the Catholics as having spoken of two churches, one that now has the bad mixed in, another that after the resurrection would not have them; as if the saints who are to reign with Christ would not be the same who now, while living justly for his name, tolerate the bad.