Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 1.40–2.15

Let this suffice for the present, since because of people's excessive obstinacy I thought much should be said against those who, having a bad main case, wish to turn the judges away from examining it by a preliminary objection, when they say they must in no way speak with us. For I have proved, both from the holy Scriptures and by as clear a reasoning as I could, that neither eloquence of whatever degree nor dialectic of whatever kind is to be feared by the defenders of truth, so as to keep them from refuting the defenders of falsehood by disputing with them and confuting them. There I also showed how little it follows from the point by which you said you were moved apart from my letter that, if we grant that baptism exists in the party of Donatus, we should at the same time grant that anyone ought to be baptized in that society; because, just as the reprobate people of the Jews could have a good law, so the reprobate society of heretics can have a good sacrament. But what is properly given in the church, which is not given at all outside it, will be shown without difficulty in its place. For we would not be right in dealing with heretics, whom we admit to have baptism, so that they should by all means come to the Catholic church, unless by coming they received something which they could not receive elsewhere, and without which whatever other things, however good and belonging to the law of God, they could receive anywhere, they would have in vain and to their ruin. For whatever this is, which according to the Scriptures and the most certain reasoning can be found to be given or received only in the holy church, this will belong to the sealed fountain, the well of living water, the garden with the fruit of apples, of which you made mention as well as you could; but you showed that you did not understand what it is, since you think this was said of visible baptism. Though that is holy and in no way to be omitted, since it excels in a most sacred meaning, yet how many receive it, not only the good, who are called according to his purpose, conformed to the image of the Son of God, but also those who will not possess the kingdom of God, among whom, as the apostle says, the drunkards and the greedy are counted! I think that, if you lay aside obstinacy and reflect, you will easily answer yourself that I speak the truth, so that you will seek the sealed fountain and the well of living water only where those who displease God are by divine power not allowed to come.

By the long discourse of the previous book I think we have at last persuaded you that your bishops are not to be praised or approved in this: that they refuse to hold a conference with us about the cause of the dissension which divides our communion. For by this, as by a preliminary objection, they think themselves most safe in a very bad cause; and this, unless I am mistaken, I have cut away entirely, both by true and certain reasons and especially by the examples of the divine Scriptures. By these I taught most clearly that the holy preachers and defenders of the truth held discourse even against its adversaries face to face, and not only against those of the same people as themselves, but also against foreigners and strangers, and (the point from which you especially throw empty fears into the unskilled) against those who most professed dialectic; so that a most diligent preacher should not be held most contentious, nor a tireless disputant thought a quarreler, pressing on, according to the apostle's command, in season and out of season, so that those who contradict are refuted by sound teaching, empty talkers confuted, the unruly corrected, the faint-hearted comforted, the weak supported, while the word of the gospel's salvation is defended with patience against all who resist and preached without misgiving. I also showed how little you ought to think that a man must be baptized among you because we too agree that baptism can be both had and given by you; since we say that it is had to ruin and given to ruin, because those holy things which even the wicked can use are handled by them the more uselessly and penally the holier they are. Hence, when they come to the holy church, they themselves are to be corrected, and those things are not to be violated by the good which were not changed even by the wicked.

Listen, then, Cresconius, while I briefly show this too: that in your whole letter you said nothing by which to refute mine, unless perhaps that you taught me to derive or decline names, so that from Donatus I should say Donatians rather than Donatists; though you grant that this is at least a Greek formation, namely that Donatists are named from Donatus as evangelists from the evangel, which you say pleases you, so that the formation of the word is borrowed by likeness from your people's preaching the gospel. See, then, whether perhaps they themselves first wished to be called this because they hold Donatus as their gospel. For these men are as unwilling to depart from the fellowship of Donatus as all the saints are from that of the gospel, and so they are pleased to be called Donatists like evangelists; and you rather do them an injury when you write that in Latin speech, approving only the Latin rule, they are better called Donatians from Donatus, as Arians and Novatians from Arius and Novatus. For when I was writing, this name was already sounding in my ears, spread by I know not whom, and I did not take care to change it, since I thought it sufficient for the distinction I wanted. For if Demosthenes, the most famous of orators, who cared as much for words as our authors care for things, nevertheless, when Aeschines charged him with some unusualness of diction, denied that the fortunes of Greece depended on whether he had used this word or that, or stretched out his hand this way or that, how much less ought we to labor over the rules for deriving names, when, whether we say this or that, what we say is understood without ambiguity, and our greater concern is not the polishing of speech but the demonstration of truth! But if one of ours first formed this name, he does not seem to me at all to have had in view that likeness by which evangelists are named from the evangel; but because through Donatus (not only Donatus of Carthage, who is said to have strengthened this heresy most of all, but also the elder Donatus of Casae Nigrae, who first set up altar against altar in the same city) a great scandal was caused, perhaps he wished to call Donatists from Donatus as one might call scandalists from scandal.

But in a matter in which nothing of our case is diminished I show myself most accommodating, and when I deal with you I now call you Donatians; but when with others, I rather follow usage, which rightly rules over these sounds. Only remember that I, to whom you attributed so much eloquence, do not yet know how to decline names, and announce to your people that they may be at ease and no longer fear me as a dialectician, since you see I still need a grammarian. But if the discipline of disputing, whether you wish to call it dialectic or something else, teaches soberly enough that when there is agreement about the thing one should not labor over the name, then just as I do not care whether that very thing is called dialectic, but do care, as far as I can, to know and to be able to dispute, that is, to distinguish truth from falsehood in speaking (since unless I care for this I shall err most destructively), so I do not care whether you are more skillfully and correctly called Donatists or Donatians; nor, finally, whether the name by which we distinguish you when we speak ought to be taken from Donatus, either the one who first offered sacrifice outside the church or the one who most strengthened this dissension, or from Majorinus, who was the first bishop of your party ordained against Caecilian. But that you are heretics, and therefore to be most carefully avoided lest you deceive, unless I take care to show diligently, I shall incur no small blame of negligence, given the burden of my office.

And yet you think that what has happened between us ought to be called schism rather than heresy, and (something dialecticians rarely dare) you even distinguish them by definitions; and how much you help us there I cannot sufficiently show unless I insert your own words from your letter. “What do you mean,” you say, “by saying ‘the sacrilegious error of heretics’? For heresies arise only among those who follow different things, and a heretic is only one who worships a contrary or differently interpreted religion, as are the Manichees, Arians, Marcionites, Novatians, and the rest, whose differing doctrine against the Christian faith stands among themselves. Among us, for whom the same Christ was born, died, and rose again, one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance, it is called a schism that has occurred, not a heresy; since heresy is the sect of those who follow different things, but schism the separation of those who follow the same things. Therefore you see how much error you have incurred in this eagerness to accuse, when you call heresy what is schism.” These, of course, are your words, which I have set down from your letter.

Now notice, if you are not stubborn, by how easy a short cut you yourself have settled what was at issue between us. For if for us and for you the same Christ was born, died, and rose again, there is one religion, the same sacraments, and nothing perverse in Christian observance, is not rebaptizing perverse? For you set down three things, of which, if you had set down one, it would have been more than enough. But, as if you were acting faithfully against the Donatians, so that no one, however acute, should try to interpret otherwise what you had said once and briefly, you took care to plunge and drive your statement even into blunted ears and hearts: “One religion,” you say, “the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance.” And still we labor against each other! Now at long last check the dissension, mend the rent, end the quarrel, love peace. What do you reject, what do you exorcise, why do you rebaptize? There is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance. For if for us and for you there is not one baptism, how is there one religion? But you said “one religion”; therefore also one baptism. If for us and for you baptism is not the same, how are the sacraments the same? But you said “the same sacraments”; therefore baptism too is the same. Likewise, if for us and for you baptism is different, how is there nothing different in Christian observance? But you said “nothing different in Christian observance”; therefore baptism is not different either. Since this is so, we rightly neither reject nor exorcise nor repeat what is one and the same and not different, but recognize, receive, and accept it; whereas you impiously, what is one and the same and not different, pretend not to recognize, refuse to receive, will not accept, but choose to reject, dare to exorcise, do not fear to repeat. And since in this very thing, in which we receive and you repel what has not been changed between us, we judge as given what was given by you, while you repeat as not given what was given by us, you follow such different things and yet scorn to be called heretics.

Notice carefully what you say and what I say. You certainly defined and said: “Heresy is the sect of those who follow different things, but schism the separation of those who follow the same things.” Likewise you said that for us and for you there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance. If there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance, why then do you rebaptize a Christian? But if, in that you rebaptize a Christian and I do not rebaptize, we certainly follow different things, why do you not wish to be called a heretic? I think it is no small sign by which we recognize heretics, that while they admit that for them and us there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance, they will not recognize us as baptized. Or do you contend with such obstinacy, resist the truth with such dissension, as to separate baptism from religion, from the sacraments, from Christian observance? If you do this, you are heretics in that you will not have baptism belong to religion, to the sacraments, to Christian observance. But if you do not do this, you are heretics in that you rebaptize those who have with you one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance, although you admit that baptism too belongs to religion, to the sacraments, to Christian observance. For notice carefully your definition, in which you said, “Heresy is the sect of those who follow different things,” and see whether you do not follow different things, either by separating baptism from the religious observance of the Christian sacraments, with which we join it among the great things, or by nevertheless rebaptizing those with whom, in one religious observance of the Christian sacraments, baptism too is one, which we abhor.

How I would wish, if I could, when your people receive one of our faithful who has been deceived, to be killed by their wicked snares; when they say that one already baptized among us has not even begun to be a Christian; when they exorcise him like a pagan; when they make him a catechumen, so as then to prepare him to be dipped again, or rather to be extinguished: how I would wish suddenly to appear from somewhere with this letter of yours, and to hold out this very passage of it, reading it aloud in the midst of their daring, and to cry out: “What are you doing? See, hear, look, read: ‘For us and for you there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance.’ First ask in whose name this man was baptized, and then, if you name another, better one in your baptism, give it.” Then perhaps, if they did not tremble at the very evidence of the facts, they would at once bring out their counsel, great and acute, of course, and say: “Who is this man to us, whose letter you carry? He is our layman; he was winning for us, he is beaten for himself.” Then I, if I were present, would turn to you and say: “You at least, I beg you, tell us what these men are doing. See, they are arranging to rebaptize one baptized among us. Surely, then, for us and for you there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance?” Or would you answer: “But the baptism of Christ is not religion, is not a sacrament, is not Christian observance”? God forbid this madness from your mind. What then would you answer me as I pressed and said: For us and for you there is one religion; but those for whom baptism is not one do not have one religion; therefore for us and for you baptism is one. For us and for you the sacraments are the same; but those for whom baptism is not the same do not have the same sacraments; therefore baptism is the same for us and for you. For us and for you nothing is different in Christian observance; but those for whom baptism is different certainly do not have nothing different in Christian observance; therefore baptism is not different for us and for you. Why is what is one rejected, why is what is the same exorcised, why is what is not different repeated?

If I acted thus in your presence and pressed you thus, to what evasions would you take refuge? No doubt they would despise the grammarians in your letter, and you would accuse the dialecticians in ours; but the truth would overcome the heretics from both, showing that the only thing in them different from us is what is plainly perverse: that we recognize our sacraments and correct another's error, while you admit the same sacraments and repeat them as if they were nothing, rejecting by a great difference what you grant is not different.

Accordingly, although I rather approve the distinction between schism and heresy by which schism is said to be a recent dissension of a congregation arising from some difference of opinions (for a schism cannot arise either unless those who make it follow something different), and heresy a schism grown old, yet why should I labor over this, when your definitions help me so much that, if your other people too granted it to me, I would more gladly call you schismatics than heretics? For if those make a schism who have with those from whom they divide themselves one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance, then your rebaptizing is the more damnable, because in one religion, with the same sacraments and nothing different in Christian observance, baptism cannot be other and different. But since what you follow that is different is neither nothing nor something small, since, being separated from the bond of unity, you also disagree with us about the repetition of baptism, it follows that according to that very definition of yours in which you said, “Heresy is the sect of those who follow different things,” you are both heretics and shown to be defeated: heretics, because you are not only divided but also follow something different in rebaptizing; defeated, because you repeat the baptism given by us as though it were not the same or were nothing, although you admit it is one and the same and not different. For these are your words: that for us and for you there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance.

Therefore, if the party of Donatus subscribed to your letter and then reflected on what you and I have said, without insane obstinacy or shamelessness, it would no longer think or say anything against us. But since it is you whom I am answering, I think you yourself now see how far I said it not from eagerness to accuse but to refute a destructive deceit: “the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics.” Of these four words or names, since this pleases you or the art of grammar, the first, “Donatists,” I correct and change and say “Donatians”; but the other three, since you now feel, I think, that they were said most truly, you must correct, you must change. Change, I say, and correct the sacrilegious error of the heretics, of the Donatians or whatever else you are to be called. For you are heretics, either because you have remained in an inveterate schism, or by your own definition, because you follow something different concerning the church, which is the body of Christ, or concerning the repetition of Christian baptism; and it is a sacrilegious error not only to separate from Christian unity but also to violate and cancel sacraments which, by your own confession, are one and the same. But if you correct and change it, how do we receive you such as you were? Hence you spoke so much in vain, and though you have so acute a wit, you are blunted by the habit of hearing vanity, so that it seems to you that, when they pass from you to us, we receive them such as they were, because in them we approve the Christian tradition, which neither those who estranged themselves had estranged nor the perverse had perverted; sacraments which you too, though not such as we are, could not confess except as such, and not as such in the sense of other, similar ones, but as altogether the same.

I beg you, tell me, how is he such as he was who now reveres the church he used to blaspheme, holds the unity he did not hold, has the love he did not have, receives the peace he rejected, approves the sacrament he used to exorcise? Or are all things so turned upside down by falsehoods that those are not said to be changed in whom things that were different are corrected by truth, and those are said to be changed in whom things that were one and the same are repeated by vanity? Do not, then, any longer think about this matter not only carnally but also childishly, so as to suppose that your people are received by us such as they were, who by a conversion of the will from error to truth, from division to unity, from dissension to peace, from enmities to love, from human presumption to the authority of the divine Scriptures, do not begin to be ours before they have ceased to be yours. This conversion of the will suddenly changed not only the sinner at the tax booth but even the robber on the cross; unless you think that Christ would have wished to have with him in paradise a bloodstained and criminal man, if that conversion of heart had not at once made him innocent, so that on that day, from that place, from that wood, he passed to the immortal reward of faith on which he had received the punishment of death for his wickedness. For whether toward evil or toward good, the mind is changed in a brief moment, but what it merits is not therefore small. In bodily and temporal goods and benefits themselves, a single blow kills a life of any age nourished for a long time, and the Lord, as soon as he deigned to command it, healed an illness of thirty-eight years. Believe certain things, not empty words. Your people pass over to us changed (far be it that they should be what they were); and would that you too would do it, and believe in your own case how true this is!

You thought you were saying something great when you named Candidus of Villa Regia and Donatus of Macomades, who, having been bishops of yours, were also bishops among us and, their life approved, came to the merit of a more honorable old age; as though the sacraments and the invocation of God's name made among you were themselves hostile to us, when even in those who are outside the church they are nothing but the church's. In this question, if I labored with my own words, I would be helped by yours. For if you thought that nothing of the church could exist outside the church, you yourself would not have said that for us and for you there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance. With these words of yours I do not agree entirely: for you lack the Christian church, you do not have Christian love. I do indeed recognize Christian sacraments in you, and among them I reject and refuse this difference, that, though you have the same sacraments even in schism, you exorcise the same in Catholics. The church recognizes in you absolutely everything that is hers, and they are not therefore not hers because they are found among you too. Among you they are another's; but when she to whom they belong receives you corrected, they become yours too, to your salvation, which you held to your ruin as another's. Discord possesses you under the title of peace; therefore let discord be driven out and peace brought in. What reason is there for the title to be laid aside? “He is a bishop,” you say, “you receive a bishop; a presbyter, a presbyter.” You could also say to me: “He is a man; you receive a man.” For I recognize in him the Christian sacraments as I recognize human limbs, and I do not care through whom they were sown, but by whom they were created. If he wishes to use them badly, he becomes evil by that very fact, because he offends the Creator with his gifts; but if he begins to use them well, he will correct himself, not change them.

The receiving of bishops or clergy is indeed another question. For although, when they are ordained among you, the name not of Donatus but of God is invoked over them, yet they are received as seems to suit the peace and benefit of the church. For we are not bishops for our own sake, but for the sake of those to whom we minister the Lord's word and sacrament; and therefore we ought either to be or not to be what we are, not for our own sake but for others, as the need of governing them without scandal requires. Indeed, some men endowed with holy humility, because of certain stumbling blocks in themselves by which they were piously and religiously moved, laid down the office of bishop not only without blame but even with praise. Would they likewise lay down the Christian name and faith praiseworthily, and not rather damnably? Just as in accepting these offices there can be just reasons why someone excuses himself from being made a bishop, yet there cannot likewise be any just reason why anyone should excuse himself from being made a Christian. Why so, unless because we can be saved without the episcopate or the clergy, but cannot without the Christian religion?

Accordingly, your bishops or any clergy, as far as the church offices themselves are concerned, have been received into Catholic unity as seemed expedient for those whose salvation was served by their office being either exercised or set aside. But even concerning those who have held the same honors among us too, could you say, as you could say, “He is a bishop; you receive a bishop,” likewise, “He is a heretic; you receive a heretic,” or, “He is a schismatic; you receive a schismatic,” or, “He is a Donatian; you receive a Donatian”? For by these names what is distinguished is not a rank of honor from the standing of the laity, but the crime of error from Catholic truth. Accordingly, those things, as church offices found even in outsiders, who by leaving you and passing over to us become ours, are either received or not received for the benefit of the peoples whom we serve in this stewardship. But those things that are faulty and properly yours are healed, corrected, changed; while those sacraments without which a man cannot become a Christian are so handled even in heretics that, when they come to the church, what was lacking is added and what is recognized is approved, so that, while we are too much offended by the evils which they brought forth against the church, we may not also persecute the goods which they drew with them in departing from the church. For even a broken branch, if, as the apostle says, it is to be grafted in again, has its root restored to it; its form is not changed.

“But since,” you say, “you call our people heretics and sacrilegious, which is a wicked and inexpiable crime, should or can such men be pardoned without any expiation? Why then,” you say, “do you not cleanse the one who comes, why do you not first wash and purify him, and so let him communicate with you?” What if someone else were to say, much more consistently with these words of yours, that such men neither should nor can now be pardoned, and were to show that you spoke against yourself, saying that such men must be pardoned with some expiation because what is charged is inexpiable? How then is what is inexpiable expiated? How can I hope that you will hear what I say, when so close at hand you do not hear what you yourself say, contradicting yourself at once by judging that what you called inexpiable must be expiated? But we call your error heretical and sacrilegious in such a way that we do not call it inexpiable; otherwise we would have judged in vain that we must deal with you by whatever means we can, so that you may abandon it and pass over corrected to the Catholic church. Nor should you think you are using a word of ours, as you write, as if we said this evil is without pardon and without a physician; which we do not say at all, because those who repent of this evil merit pardon, and the physician is almighty who says through the prophet, “If you turn and groan, then you will be saved.” Therefore, if perhaps you came across someone either less instructed in these matters or paying less attention to what he said, though the one who said this to you seemed to be of the Catholic communion, let him rather obtain pardon for this inconsiderate word; as you too, though so liberally educated and no mean scholar in the art of words, yet paying little attention to what you say, judge that what you called inexpiable must be expiated, and, what is more monstrous, must be expiated because it is inexpiable. But it is not Catholic to exhort to correct their error and be saved those whom we asserted to err inexpiably and incurably. But they do not seem to you to be cleansed when they pass over to us from you because they are not baptized anew; as if people were cleansed from error only by baptism, which ought not to be repeated since it is the same and one. They are cleansed also by the word of truth, by him who says, “You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” They are cleansed also by the sacrifice of a contrite heart, by him of whom it is said, “The sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise.” They are cleansed also by almsgiving, by him who says, “Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.” They are cleansed by love itself, which surpasses all, by him who said through the apostle Peter, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” If this one thing is present, all those things are done rightly; but if it is lacking, all those things are done in vain. And where this comes from, hear the apostle saying, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Hence it is rightly believed that those who received the church's baptism outside the church do not have the Holy Spirit, except when they cleave to the church itself in the bond of peace through the joining of love.