Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 1.1–1.18

I did not know when my writings might reach you, Cresconius, but I never despaired that they would reach you, since yours too were able at last to reach me, though long after you wrote them. You thought you ought to write them against what I had briefly answered, as best I could and for my part, to Petilian, your bishop of Cirta, who was trying to establish the repetition of baptism and was accusing our communion not with the weight of evidence but with the lightness of abuse. For at that time not the whole of his letter had come into my hands, but only a small first part. Why that happened, what need is there to ask, since when the whole of it later reached us I did not mind answering the whole? If, then, I did not reply to this letter of yours which you addressed to me, you might think it an insult; and yet, in replying, I fear in turn that you may think it contentious. But if you, having come upon writings of mine that were not addressed to you, merely because they seemed to refute a bishop of the party of Donatus or the party of Donatus itself, judged it part of your duty, being conscious of some ability, to take up and set forth a rebuttal, because you belong to that communion although you are bound to no clerical office, how much less was it permitted to me, in keeping with the charge of my burden, to keep silent either against Petilian or against you yourself, when he was attacking the church for which I serve as a soldier, and you, in a similar undertaking, were going so far as to compose, bring out, and write up a discourse addressed to me by name!

In the first parts of it you labored to make eloquence seem suspect to people. For, as if praising my manner of speaking and then as if fearing that by this manner I might deceive you or anyone by persuading them of falsehoods, you went on to accuse eloquence itself, bringing in even a testimony against it from the holy Scriptures, where you think it was said, “From much eloquence you will not escape sin,” whereas it does not say “from much eloquence” but “from much speaking.” Much speaking is superfluous talk, a fault contracted from the love of talking. And for the most part even people who do not know what they are saying, or how they are saying it, love to talk, whether in regard to soundness of thought or in regard to that correct sound and order of words which is learned through the art of grammar. Eloquence, on the other hand, is the ability to speak that sets out fittingly what we think, and it is to be used when what we think is right. In this way the heretics did not use it. For certainly, if they had thought rightly, there would have been not only nothing evil but even something good which they could have set out eloquently. In vain, then, did you accuse eloquence by citing those examples. For a soldier is not on that account to be left unarmed for his country because some have taken up arms against their country; nor ought good and learned physicians on that account not to use medical instruments for health because the unlearned and the worst men misuse them for destruction. Who does not know that, just as medicine is useful or useless according as the things sought are useful or useless, so eloquence, that is, skill and ability in speaking, is useful or useless according as the things said are useful or useless? I do not think you are ignorant of this either.

But, I suppose, when you saw that I was thought eloquent by some, you judged that eloquence must be accused in order to frighten the reader or hearer away from paying attention to me, so that whoever was frightened by you would no longer attend to what I said, but would judge that I must be guarded against and fled from for that very reason, as one who speaks eloquently. See, then, whether what you have done does not belong to that evil art which, as you mentioned concerning Plato, some have rightly judged should be driven out of the city and out of the society of the human race. This is not eloquence (would that I had attained it as I desire, for setting out what I think!), but a certain sophistical and malicious profession, which sets itself to speak for everything and against everything, not from conviction but from contentiousness or for advantage. Of this the holy Scripture says, “He who speaks sophistically is hateful.” From this, it seems to me, the apostle Paul restrains the youth of Timothy when he says, “Do not wrangle over words; it is useful for nothing but the ruin of the hearers.” And so that he should not be thought to have restrained him from the ability to speak rightly, he at once added, “Strive to present yourself to God as an approved workman who is not ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” No doubt, then, this disposition crept into your mind: out of eagerness for contradiction, not because you thought so, but to turn away from us the attention of anyone wishing to learn, you declared us eloquent and found fault with eloquence. For how could I believe you did this from conviction, when I know how you are accustomed to extol the eloquence of Donatus, of Parmenian, and of others of yours? What could be more useful than that eloquence, if it flowed forth in so abundant a stream for the peace of Christ, for unity, truth, and love? But why speak of others? In your own case, did you not reveal how far you were a critic of eloquence not from conviction but from contentiousness, when you tried by eloquence both to persuade people of the other things you wrote and eloquently to accuse eloquence itself?

As for your saying that you are unequal to us in the art of speaking and wholly uninstructed in the examples of the Christian law, what is the point of that, I ask? Did I compel you to write against my writings, so that this is the voice of one who refuses and excuses himself? If then you are wholly uninstructed, why do you not rather keep silent, or speak in such a way as to show that you desire to be instructed? You say that I press on and always challenge your people to debate with me in order to discern the question of the truth, but that your people act more prudently and patiently, who in church teach the congregations only what is commanded in the law and do not trouble to answer us, knowing that if the divine law and so many proofs from the Scriptures of the law cannot persuade us what is better and what is truer, no human authority could ever, our errors having been dispelled, call us back to the rule of truth. Why then did it seem good to you to speak against us while they keep silent? For if they do well, why do you not imitate them? If badly, why do you praise them?

You say that with intolerable arrogance I believe that I alone can settle what to others has seemed as if inexplicable and for that reason has been left to God as judge; and yet a little earlier you said that I wish to settle, after so many years, after so many judges and arbiters, what could not be settled before the emperors when so many learned men of both parties' bishops debated it. Am I really alone in busying myself about this? Am I alone in desiring that this question be settled by debate? For I think that if you had wished to blame ours alone for having attempted it, you would not have admitted that yours too were engaged in that attempt. Since then you can no longer find fault with that attempt, that will and that persistence, at least because of your own people, I do not wish to be a stranger to so good a work. What do you charge, what do you blame? Or do you envy? That must not rashly be believed of you. It remains, then, that out of eagerness for contention you blame in me what you are compelled to praise even in your own.

But, you say, it is intolerable arrogance to presume that what was not settled among so many and such men can be settled by oneself alone. Please do not think this should be attributed to me alone; we are very many who press for this to be settled, or rather, for it to be made known that it has already been settled. For those who refused to consent to that settlement said it was not settled, and they concealed it from you, so that you too, deceived by their authority, believe it was not settled. But ours, from the time it was settled, have never at any time ceased to make that settlement known, in whatever way they could do so in public and in private, so that no one persisting in a most destructive error might complain at the last judgment of the slackness of God's ministers toward him. We do not, then, wish to reopen afresh a case long since settled, but to show how it was settled, especially for the sake of those who do not know it, so that when the defenders of the error are refuted, either they themselves may be corrected and set free, or at least, once they are confuted and remain in open obstinacy, those who are more eager for truth than for contention may see what to follow.

Nor is this done without fruit, as you think. For if you could see how far and wide that error had spread through Africa, and how little of it remains that has not yet been corrected and passed over into the Catholic peace, you would in no way judge the persistence of the defenders of Christian peace and unity to be fruitless and empty; although even where the care spent on this remedy does no good, it is enough for giving account to God that it did not cease to be spent. For just as an evil persuader to sin, even if he does not persuade, will deservedly incur the punishment of a deceiver, so a faithful preacher of righteousness, even if he is rejected by men, will by no means be cheated by God of the reward of his duty. For a certain thing is done toward an uncertain end; and I call uncertain not the reward of the one who does it but the mind of the one who hears. For it is uncertain to us whether the one to whom the truth is preached will assent, but it is certain that the truth must be preached even to such, and it is certain that a fitting reward awaits those who preach it faithfully, whether they are received or spurned, or even if they suffer whatever adversities in time on that account. The Lord says in the gospel, “When you have entered, say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If those who are there are worthy, your peace will rest upon them; if not, it will return to you.” Did he make them certain that those to whom they preached it would receive their peace? Yet he made them certain that they should preach it without hesitation.

The apostle Paul too says, “The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, teachable, patient, correcting with modesty those who think otherwise, in case God may give them repentance to know the truth and they may come to their senses from the snares of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.” Notice how he did not want him to quarrel and yet wanted him to correct with modesty those who think otherwise, so that the servant of God should not take the prohibition of insolence as an occasion for laziness. But because many, either favoring their own sins or finding nothing to answer and yet not yielding to the truth, take even correction that is made with modesty as burdensome and annoying, they call those who deal with them diligently and do not neglect to refute their error quarrelsome and contentious. For falsehood, which fears being stripped bare and refuted, accuses the diligence of truth under the name of those faults which truth condemns. Must one then desist from this persistence on that account? See how the same apostle binds Timothy, so that no slackness in preaching should creep upon him because of people to whom the preaching of the truth is unpleasant: “I charge you,” he says, “before God and Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, press on in season, out of season; reprove, exhort, rebuke with all patience and teaching.” Who, hearing this, if he serves God faithfully, if he is not a deceitful workman, would rest from this diligence and persistence? Who under so solemn a charge would dare to be slack? Let not your fluency, then, make a din against us in this case. With the help of the Lord our God we preach altogether the usefulness, the piety, and the holiness of Christian unity; we preach it in season to the willing, out of season to the resisting; and with all the strength we have we show that this question between us and the party of Donatus was long ago settled, and for whom and against whom.

Let those recognize in themselves the name and the charge of contentious animosity who either with stubborn cunning provide patronage for falsehood or with envious boasting serve as heralds of the truth. The apostle Paul described both kinds of contentious people: the first in Alexander, of whom he says, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm; the Lord will repay him according to his works. You too beware of him, for he strongly opposed our words”; and the other in those of whom he says, “Some indeed proclaim Christ from envy and contention, not sincerely, thinking to stir up affliction for my bonds.” For these without doubt proclaimed the very same thing as Paul, yet not with that mind, not with that will, not from love but from envy, as he said, and from contention, wishing with a proud mind to excel in that very proclamation and to be placed before the apostle Paul. He did not take this ill, but even rejoiced that he saw them preaching what he desired to be made known more widely: “What then?” he says. “So long as in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.” For they proclaimed the truth, that is, Christ, though not with truth of heart, since not with a sincere intention but with rival contention. Since, then, you cannot be the judge of the inner parts of our heart, only consider whether we resist the truth or desire to refute those who resist the truth. For without doubt, if we urge the truth and refute error, even if we do it not with truth of our own intention but seeking the profit of this world and human glory, the lovers of truth ought to rejoice, because by this occasion too the truth is proclaimed, as the apostle does when he says, “And in this I will rejoice.” But if, as God knows best and as you yourself could have known as far as human capacity allows if you lived with us, we are engaged in the labor of this stewardship out of the devout concern of love, I think our ministry is in no way justly blamed if we contend for the truth with fervent spirit against any adversaries of the truth whatever.

For if anyone who takes care either to start or to answer a verbal dispute with someone is regarded by you as contentious or hot-tempered and a provoker of quarrels, see what you think of the Lord Jesus Christ himself and of his servants the prophets and apostles. Surely the Lord himself, the Son of God, did not hold discourse about the truth only with the disciples or with the crowds who believed in him, did he, and not also with enemies who tempted, disparaged, questioned, resisted, and reviled him? Did he think it irksome to dispute even with a single woman on the question of prayer against the opinion or heresy of the Samaritans? “But,” you say, “he foreknew that she would believe.” What then? How many things he spoke so often to the faces of the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, who not only were not going to believe but were going to contradict and persecute him most of all! Did he not of his own accord, when he wished, ask them what he wished, so as to refute them by their own reply? Did he not answer without any ambiguity when they asked him deceitfully to tempt him, answers by which they were refuted and fell silent? And when he did this, none of them is read to have been converted to follow him. And certainly he knew, since he had foreknowledge, that he would do nothing for their salvation when he said these things to them, about them, or against them. But perhaps he strengthened us by his example, who are unable to know beforehand the future faith or unbelief of men, so that if at any time we speak without fruit for their salvation to the exceedingly hard and perverse, we may not lose heart and give up our persistence in preaching because it vexes us to labor in vain. What of the fact that even the devil himself, who, as neither God nor even men can doubt, will in no way be converted to righteousness, the Son of God nevertheless refuted by answering from the holy Scriptures when he tempted him treacherously and set snares of questions from the holy Scriptures? Nor did Christ judge it unworthy to hold converse with Satan about the divine words; and what did he foresee in this, if not that what did no good to the Jews and the devil would do good to the Gentiles who were to believe?

We read also that prophets were sent to people so disobedient that God himself, who sent the prophets, foretold concerning those to whom he sent them that they would not obey their words. I pass over the fact that by the prophetic Spirit by which they saw things to come they could certainly have known this too, that those people would despise their words; yet they did not keep silent before them, but pressed them vehemently. Most plainly the Lord says to the prophet Ezekiel: “Go and enter the house of Israel and speak my words to them, for you are not sent to a people of unknown tongue; to the house of Israel, nor to many peoples speaking different or difficult tongues, whose words you cannot understand. And if I had sent you to such, perhaps they would have listened to you; but the house of Israel will not listen to you, because they will not listen to me. For all the house of Israel is of restless and hard heart. But I have made your face strong against their face, and I will strengthen your contest against their contest.” Behold, a servant of God is sent and commanded to speak to those who would not listen to him, the very Lord who sent him and commanded him to speak foretelling that they would not listen. For what reason, to whose benefit, with what fruit or effect is he sent to the contest of preaching the truth against people who would contend and not obey? Will anyone dare to say that God's holy prophets fell under the reproach you have cast at me, when you said: “If you know that the matter at issue cannot be settled by you, why do you undertake labor to no purpose, why do you spend empty effort, why do you contend superfluously and without fruit? Is it not a great error to want what you cannot accomplish, when the law too warns, saying, ‘Do not seek things too high for you, and do not search out things too strong for you,’ and again, ‘A hot-tempered man prepares quarrels, and an angry man heaps up sin’?” You would certainly not say this to Ezekiel, who is sent with the word of God to bring a contest to people who would not obey, who would think against it, speak against it, and act against it. For if you did say it, he would perhaps answer you what the apostles answered those same Jews: “Whom ought one to obey, God rather or men?” This I too would answer you.

Here, if you demand that I show where God has commanded me too to do what you forbid, remember that the apostolic letters were written not only for those who heard them at the time they were written but also for us (for they are read in church for no other reason). Notice too what the apostle says: “Or do you wish to have proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?” And recall now not what Paul but what Christ spoke through him, which I mentioned a little earlier: “Preach the word, press on in season, out of season,” and so on. Notice also how, when he set out to Titus what a bishop ought to be, he said that he must also hold fast to the faithful word according to the teaching, “so that he may be able,” he says, “both to exhort in sound teaching and to refute those who contradict. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers of the mind, especially those of the circumcision, who must be refuted.” He does not say, then, that only those of the circumcision are such, but especially they; yet he established by an undoubted command that empty talkers and deceivers of the mind must be refuted and confuted in sound teaching by a bishop. Hence I recognize that this has been commanded to me too; this I do according to my strength; at this work I persevere, as far as he who commanded it helps me. Why do you stand in the way, why do you make a din, why do you forbid, why do you find fault? Ought one to obey you, or God?

Unless perhaps you think the proofs I have brought from the holy Scriptures are to be taken in such a way that, as you praised your people for regularly doing, congregations are taught in church only what is commanded in the law. For there perhaps you think those who think otherwise are to be corrected and refuted, so that each teacher corrects by disputing and preaching only the error of his own people; but if he sets about doing anything of the kind with those who are outside, then he is to be regarded as hot-tempered, then as contentious or quarrelsome, because Ezekiel himself, you say, and the other prophets were sent with the words of God to their own people, Israelites, that is, to Israelites.

To this too I answer you. I have already mentioned above that the Lord Jesus himself, who offered himself to his disciples to be imitated, did not disdain to assert the truth and to answer about the law not only to the Jews but also to the Pharisees and Sadducees and Samaritans and to the devil himself, the prince of all deceits and errors. But so that you may not think this was permitted to the Lord but is not permitted to his servants, hear what is read in the Acts of the Apostles: “Now a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, came to Ephesus, mighty in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit he spoke and taught most accurately the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John. He also began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him and expounded the way of the Lord to him more accurately. And when he wished to go to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to receive him. When he came, he greatly helped those who had believed there; for he vehemently refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.” What do you say of him, what do you think? Would you not perhaps accuse him as a contentious and hot-tempered agitator and maker of quarrels, if you were not held down by such great authority of the holy book?

Or is it that, because he was a Jew who had believed in Christ, he ought for that reason publicly to refute the Jews who resisted the Christian faith and denied that Jesus is the Christ, whereas we, because we were never of the party of Donatus, ought not for that reason to refute the party of Donatus as it resists Christian unity? Was the apostle Paul ever a worshiper of idols, or ever of the sect of the Epicureans or the Stoics? Yet he was neither ashamed nor reluctant to hold discourse with them on the question of the living and true God. Hear what is written about this in the same book: “While Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was given over to idols. So he disputed with the Jews in the synagogue and with the Gentiles and the worshipers, and in the marketplace every day with those who were there. And some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conversed with him, and some said, ‘What does this sower of words want to say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign demons.’” See, the apostle Paul did not refuse to converse with the Stoics and Epicureans, sects differing not only from him but also among themselves and opposed to each other, disputing with them not only outside the church but even outside the synagogue; nor, frightened by their abuse, did he cease from preaching the Christian truth as if avoiding quarrels and contentions. For see what the holy Scripture testifies next: “And they took hold of him,” it says, “and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what these things are that you are saying? For you bring some strange things to our ears; we wish therefore to know what these things mean.’ Now the Athenians and the strangers staying there had leisure for nothing else than to tell or to hear something new. And Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said, ‘Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked about and looked at your images, I found also an altar on which was written: To an unknown god. What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you,’” and the rest, which would take long to recount in full. But what suffices for the question we are now discussing, notice, I beg you: the apostle of Christ, a Hebrew of Hebrews, standing and discoursing not in the synagogue of the Jews nor in the church of the Christians, but in the Areopagus of the Athenians, that is, of the most contentious and ungodly Greeks. For there the most talkative sects of the philosophers arose, some of which, like the very Stoics mentioned here, fight more over opposition of words than of things, which the apostle forbade Timothy, saying it is useful for nothing but the ruin of the hearers. For of them, as you know, Tullius says: “A controversy over a word has long tormented these little Greeks, more eager for contention than for truth.” Yet our Paul undertook to address and correct them; nor was he frightened by the very name of the place, which echoes its derivation from Mars, whom they call the god of wars. There he spoke peaceful things fearlessly to those who would believe; there, girded with spiritual arms, he overthrew destructive errors; and, being most gentle, he did not fear the contentious, nor, being most simple, the dialecticians.

For you know that dialectic flourished most among the Stoics; although even the Epicureans, who were not only not ashamed but even delighted by their ignorance of the liberal disciplines, boasted that they rather held and taught certain rules of disputing which would keep anyone who used them from being deceived. For what else is dialectic than skill in disputing? I thought this should be made plain because you wished to cast this too at me, as though it did not befit Christian truth, and as though your teachers had for that reason rightly judged that I, as a dialectician, should be fled from and guarded against rather than refuted and overcome. Though they did not persuade you of this (for you were not reluctant to dispute against us even in writing), you nevertheless accused me of dialectic, to deceive the unskilled and to praise those who had refused to meet me in disputation. But of course you do not use dialectic when you write against us! Why then did you throw yourself into such a danger of disputation, when you do not know how to dispute? Or if you do know, why do you, a dialectician, accuse dialectic, being so either rash or ungrateful that you either do not restrain the unskillfulness by which you are defeated or accuse the learning by which you are helped? I examine your discourse, this very one you have written to me: I see you setting out some things abundantly and with ornament, that is, eloquently, and discussing other things subtly and acutely, that is, dialectically. And yet you find fault with eloquence and dialectic. If they are harmful, why do you do these things? If they are not, why do you accuse them? But let not a controversy over a word torment us as well. When the thing itself is understood, there is less need to labor over what people have been pleased to call it. Accordingly, if he is to be called eloquent who speaks not only abundantly and with ornament but also truthfully, and likewise if he is to be called a dialectician who discusses not only subtly but also truthfully, you are neither eloquent nor a dialectician; not because your style is meager and unadorned, nor because your disputation is blunt and dull, but because you misuse that very fluency and skill in defense of falsehood. If, however, it can rightly be called eloquence or dialectic when one pleads skillfully or forcefully not only for the truth alone but also for a bad cause, then you are both eloquent and a dialectician, because you both speak empty things fluently and dispute false things acutely. But of you I shall see.

The Stoics were certainly great dialecticians. Why then did the apostle Paul not most carefully avoid them, so that they should not converse with him, as you praise your bishops for refusing to hold discourse with us as with dialecticians? Or if Paul too was a dialectician, and for that reason did not fear to converse with the Stoics because he disputed not only acutely, as they did, but also truthfully, which they did not, then beware of casting dialectic at anyone as a crime, since you admit that the apostles used it. For when you cast this at me, I do not think you are deceived by unskillfulness, but deceive by cunning. Dialectic, after all, is a Greek name; if usage allowed, it might perhaps be called in Latin “disputatoria,” just as men most learned in both languages called grammar in Latin “litteratura.” For as grammar is named from letters, since in Greek letters are called grammata, so dialectic took its name from disputation, since disputation in Greek is called dialogē or dialexis. And as the grammarian was called by the ancients in Latin “litterator,” so one who in Greek is called a dialectician is in Latin far more usually and more tolerably called a disputant. I suppose you will not now deny that the apostle was a disputant, even if you deny he was a dialectician. To disapprove, then, in a Greek word what you are compelled to approve in a Latin one, what else is it than to hold out a deception to the unlearned and to do injury to the learned? Or if you deny that the apostle was a disputant too, who disputed so constantly and so excellently, you know neither Greek nor Latin; or, what is more credible, you deceive with the Greek word those who do not know Greek, and with the Latin those who do not know Latin either. For what is, I do not say more unskilled (for you are not ignorant of these things), but altogether more deceitful than, when you hear and read so many and so varied discourses of the apostle asserting the truth and refuting falsehood, to deny that he was accustomed to dispute, when this cannot be done except by disputing?

But if you admit that he regularly did this, because you are compelled by his letters to admit it, and yet you contend that these should be called not disputations but discourses or letters, why should I argue with you any longer in this way, so that those who do not know these things may approve whichever of us they wish and reject whichever they wish? From the divine writings themselves, to which you must yield, I teach this; I bring forward the very words, the very names of the things. You have in the same testimony I mentioned from the Acts of the Apostles this said about Paul himself: “So he disputed with the Jews in the synagogue and with the Gentiles and the worshipers in the marketplace.” You have it written in another place, though he was dealing with the Christian people and the brothers were gathered in church: “A certain young man named Eutychus, sitting in a window, was overcome by deep sleep as Paul disputed.” You have it also in the book of Psalms: “May my disputation be pleasing to him.” You have it also in the prophet Isaiah: “Come, let us dispute, says the Lord.” And read in many other places of the divine Scriptures where you find this word, and look at the Greek manuscripts at those same testimonies of the holy Scriptures, and you will see where dialectic got its name; so that you may not, with foolish rashness, make a crime of what all the righteous do even with God, to whom it was said, “Come, let us dispute, says the Lord,” instead of imitating it with wise piety.