Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 2.16–2.31

For now is the place to show what we had put off in the first book: what can be received properly in the church, which is the holy body of Christ, which cannot be received outside it. For of those who were making schisms the same apostle says, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God”; read the first letter to the Corinthians and you will find it. Baptism, then, is the sacrament of new life and eternal salvation, which many have not for eternal life but for eternal punishment, not using so great a good well; but holy love, which is the bond of perfection, no one can have who is not good, and no one who has it can be either a schismatic or a heretic. When, therefore, anyone coming to the unity of the church is truly joined with its members, receives the Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured out in our hearts, and that same love covers the multitude of sins, so that the baptism which he first had for judgment he now merits to have for reward, how do you deny that he is cleansed, unless because you are altogether ignorant of what spiritual cleansing is? We do not, then, as you abusively say, receive your guilty men as into the asylum of Romulus. The city of God, by receiving them, makes them innocent, when they have passed over to it with a true heart; the city of which its founder says, “A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.” For it was not founded by one who in anger proudly killed his brother, but by one who, being killed, humbly redeemed his brothers. This city he gladdens with the cleansing Holy Spirit, of whom he cried, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink”; not commending the visible water which is given in the sacrament of baptism, which both good and bad can have, although without it the good cannot be saved. Although this water belongs to the church, it nevertheless flows out of doors too, since it is found also among those who went out from us but were not of us; just as the water in any of those four famous rivers cannot be denied to be water of paradise, although it is not in paradise alone, because it flowed out from there too.

It was not, then, this water that he was commending, but under the name of water the invisible gift of God, the Holy Spirit, when he said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink,” as the evangelist plainly testifies, adding, “Now he said this about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive; for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” And certainly, as far as the sacrament of the visible washing is concerned, before he was glorified by rising again he had already baptized more than John, as the gospel itself says. Hence he says to his disciples, “John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, whom you are also to receive not many days from now,” that is, at Pentecost. This Holy Spirit, coming upon them, first gave such a sign that those who had received him spoke in the tongues of all nations, because it foretold that the church would be among all nations and that no one would receive the Holy Spirit except one joined to its unity. With the abundant and invisible river of this fountain God gladdens his city, of which the prophet foretold, “The rush of the river gladdens the city of God.” For no stranger comes to this fountain, because no one does except one worthy of eternal life. This is the church of Christ's own, to which it was prophesied so long before, “Let the fountain of your water be your own, and let no stranger share it with you.” For of this church and of this fountain it is said also in the Song of Songs, “A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, a well of living water.”

Your people, taking these things of the visible sacrament of baptism, err so greatly that they are compelled against their will to admit most absurd things: namely, that to that fountain which is the own of the one dove, of which it is said, “Let no stranger share it with you,” to the garden enclosed and the well sealed, Simon Magus could come, whom we read was baptized by Philip; that so many pretenders could come, of whom Cyprian speaks with groaning, “renouncing the world by words alone and not by deeds”; so many greedy bishops, of whom the same man testifies, “seizing estates by treacherous frauds, increasing their gain by multiplying usury.” For these are found both baptized and baptizing with visible baptism; yet to that fountain which is her own, which no stranger shares, to that sealed fountain, that is, to the gift of the Holy Spirit by which the love of God is poured out in our hearts, none of these comes unless he is changed, and changed so completely that he is not a stranger, but a partaker of heavenly peace, a member of holy unity, full of undivided love, a citizen of the angelic city. And so, whoever, having laid aside the error of heresy or schism and corrected his morals, turns with a devout mind to this city, if he was already bearing the sacraments, which could flow out of doors even to the unworthy, these are honored in him, because even in strangers they are not seen as strange; but now he is flooded with that fountain of the Holy Spirit which is her own, which no stranger shares, that sealed fountain from which among you even anyone praiseworthy in the rest of his conduct is separated by the sole crime of schism or heresy.

When, then, your people come to us, ceasing to be yours and beginning to be ours, they receive what they did not have, so that they begin to have to their salvation what they had the more destructively the more unworthily they had it. For they receive first the church itself, and in it peace, unity, love, through its own invisible fountain, the Holy Spirit; without which, as no one doubts, they would have perished, whatever else they had had among you that could be drawn out of the church. And they receive what they did not yet have with an easier pardon than if they had already had it and deserted it. And this is distinguished among us, so that those who have left the Catholic church are received in one way, and those who come to it for the first time in another. For the crime of desertion weighs more heavily on the former, while the bond of unity, not broken by them but recognized and kept, relieves the latter. Hence it can happen that those who rebaptized the seduced may themselves pray to the Lord for them as they do penance, if the former have been joined to the church before the latter are reconciled to it; just as it can happen that even worshipers of idols, if perhaps they had made apostates of some Christians seduced to idols, and if the seducers first became Christians and attained some great merit in the church, through them those whom they had deceived may return, through them be commended and reconciled to the Lord, through whom they had abandoned the Lord. For what the sacrament of baptism rightly received avails for cleansing the sacrileges of the Gentiles, this the love of unity truly grasped avails for cleansing the sacrileges of schismatics and heretics. Therefore, just as seducers of faithful Christians, coming to Christ, are placed before the seduced when they return (hence the former can even become bishops, the latter cannot), so those deceived by heretics ought not to be surprised, when they return to the Catholic church, that their deceivers are placed before them when they come to the Catholic church. For the latter more excusably seek what they lacked, the former more humbly seek again what they were; the latter we call with more honor to where they had not yet stood, the former we recall with more suspicion from where they had fallen.

Accordingly, you now see clearly, I think, that I did not say in vain “the sacrilegious error of the Donatist (or, as you prefer, Donatian) heretics,” if you both dissent from the Catholic church and cancel sacraments which you admit are one and the same; and yet you are not without pardon or incurable by the mercy of God, because, having laid aside your quarrelsome error and turned to Catholic truth and peace, you can be cleansed and healed through his own gift, that is, his Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured out in our hearts; not so that the church's sacraments, which you held outside to your ruin as another's, may be destroyed in you, but so that you may have those very sacraments within, now as your own, to your salvation.

Now let us see how you show that Petilian or anyone else said rightly, “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient.” To which I said, “What if the conscience of the giver is hidden and perhaps stained? How will it be able to wash the conscience of the recipient?” You in reply spoke at length, not of what a man of your acuteness would say, but of what your people say; which can all be said briefly thus: that the conscience of the giver is looked to not according to its sincerity, which cannot be seen in it, but according to its reputation, true or false; since it belongs, of course, to a man who, even if he is secretly a criminal, suffices for the recipient because he is well esteemed, not yet known, not yet judged, not yet separated from the church. See, I beg you, into what a precipice the difficulty of finding a way out has driven these men. Can the stained conscience of the giver, then, wash the conscience of the recipient if it has a good reputation, and will it be as able to wash as a good conscience if it has acquired a good reputation by deceiving? Do you notice what is being said, and do you want us now to pass over this point, or shall I turn it over again, so that you may be compelled to attend more carefully? Petilian said, “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient.” I said, “What if the conscience of the giver is hidden and perhaps stained? How will it be able to wash the conscience of the recipient?” You, or rather your people (for when would a man like you have said this?), said: “Although he has a stained conscience, yet for me, who am baptized by him, since it is hidden and I do not know it, it suffices that I receive from one whose conscience I think innocent because he is in the church. For this reason,” you say, “I look to the conscience of the giver, not that I should judge hidden things, which cannot be done, but that, if anything about him is publicly known, I may not be ignorant of it. For this reason it was said by almighty God, ‘The things that are known are for you; the things that are hidden, for me.’ I always look, then, to the conscience of the giver, and because I do not see it, I ask what is publicly known about it; nor does it matter if one thing is in the secret conscience and another in public reputation. For it suffices to know that the conscience of the one from whom I receive has not yet been condemned.”

See, I have set down your very words, to show that you say what I comprised briefly and plainly in my own words: that the conscience of the one who washes is looked to for this purpose, that what reputation it has may be known. It is not, then, the conscience itself that is looked to, my good man, not the conscience, which cannot be seen, but the reputation that is looked to, which can also be false, as you yourself confess and grant; for you too saw that a stained conscience has no power to wash. It is not, then, the conscience of one giving in holiness that is looked to, to wash that of the recipient, but the reputation by which even one who does not give in holiness is thought to give in holiness, and one who does not wash is thought to wash. Then the good reputation of a bad man washes the recipient, not the polluted conscience of the giver himself. Why then was it said, “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient,” unless because it does not wash the recipient's if it is not the conscience of one who gives in holiness, if it is stained and unclean? What then is looked to at that time? “The conscience itself,” you say, “is looked to when its reputation is looked to; and if the reputation is good, it makes no difference to washing the recipient even when the conscience is bad, but his good reputation washes.” Tell me, I ask you: when the conscience is bad, is his good reputation true or false? Without any doubt, false. Accordingly, when the giver's conscience is not good and is hidden, however you may think you look to it, according to this opinion nothing washes the recipient but either the false reputation or the polluted conscience of the giver. Both are insane; if such things delight you, choose which is more insane. Further, since the truth does not allow that the recipient's conscience is washed either by the giver's false reputation or by his polluted conscience, it remains that we ask you too what we asked there (since, as Petilian or anyone else says with your agreement, when it is the conscience of one giving in holiness, that is, when the conscience is good and clean, it washes the recipient's conscience): by what is the recipient washed when the giver's stained conscience is hidden? For I think you will not now repeat and say that his false good reputation fills the place of a good conscience in washing; it is enough that you declared that your people, not you, say this. Be ashamed of them, not of yourself as well. It remains, then, that at that time either God or some holy angel washes. If you say that, there will follow that horrible absurdity which I mentioned in that letter of mine; I do not say you refused to see it, since you did not touch it at all, but you saw it the more attentively and acutely the more you feared to touch it. For if you say that, when a holy man baptizes, his holy conscience washes the recipient's conscience, but when the giver's conscience is secretly unclean, then God or an angel washes, beware lest those who believe you when you say these things should wish to find hidden evil men by whom to be baptized, so that they may be washed much more holily by God himself or his angel. When you saw that this absurdity, to be either laughed at or abhorred, follows logically from Petilian's preceding words and was mentioned by me in my letter, you cautiously thought so great a matter should be passed over in silence, as though I had said none of these things; but you took refuge in something even more absurd: that when the giver's stained conscience is hidden and therefore cannot wash the recipient's, then the recipient is washed by his false reputation, and in him falsehood works truth.

Go now and slanderously accuse the dialecticians of producing, by a craft of speech to be shunned, that if something is false it is true, and if it is true it is false. See, you yourself introduce something of this kind into the sacraments of Christian regeneration, or rather something worse and more to be shunned. For they, not by their own fraud nor in the truth of things, but in the perplexity of human speech, say that certain statements seem true when they are false and false when they are true; and when these come up in a disputation they are discerned by the mind, even if they cannot be resolved in words. But you say that not any word or any thing, but the very cleansing of conscience by which we are reborn to eternal life, can be made true in a man through the false reputation of another's conscience. And so that this may not be credited to you, who have learned dialectic, you say this is the opinion of your people, with whom you have agreed not as a dialectician but plainly as a heretic. By you, then, or by your people this magnificent doctrine has been discovered or demonstrated: when the conscience of one giving in holiness is good, then the one baptized becomes good by it, then the good tree bears good fruit; but when the giver's conscience is bad and hidden, then his good reputation, which is false, is consulted, so that a man then receives true baptism from a deceiver when he has believed something false about him; and so, lest a tree be lacking to bear the fruit of heretical error, falsehood becomes the mother of truth. All this, so execrable, so wonderfully perverse and insane, is done so that what is God's may not be said to be God's, so that what is received from God may be attributed to men, so that he who said, “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient,” may not seem to have erred.

“Our people,” you say, “prove this from the Scriptures, since Judas the traitor, before he was condemned, did everything as an apostle.” What has this to do with Petilian's fixed and defined statement, “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient,” except that this Judas too is very much against you, when you try to give patronage to other men's words thoughtlessly put forward? For when Judas baptized as an apostle, since he was evil, because he was a thief and took what was put into the money bag entrusted to him, certainly it was not his conscience that was looked to, but God and Christ in whom they believed. Nor did the false good reputation of that evil man wash those who believed and received, nor did the falsehood of human opinion beget in a man the grace of divine truth.

And that testimony which you set down from the Scriptures, “The things that are manifest are for you, but the things that are hidden are for the Lord your God,” refutes and confutes these words. For if the hidden things are to be left to the Lord our God, how is the conscience of the giver, not only bad but also good, looked to when it is hidden, so as to wash that of the recipient? Or if it is not looked to when it is hidden, what do you then order the recipient to look to, by which his conscience may be washed? Come, wake up at last; say now at least: let him look to God. Why do you fear to be humbled if you glory not in man but in the Lord? “I have something to fear,” you say. “For if, when the giver's conscience is hidden, I say that the recipient should look to God and confess that his conscience is then washed by him, that horrible absurdity will follow me: that men are washed more holily when they have hidden evil baptizers than when they have manifest good ones, if man washes when the giver's conscience is good and manifest, but God when it is bad and hidden.” Say, then, what we say, since this is true, this is sound, this is Catholic: that Christ cleanses the consciences of the recipients, whether through good ministers of his baptism or through bad; since it is written of him, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word.”

“You,” you say, “answer how those whom the church has condemned can baptize.” So now there is a retreat from Petilian's words, since, when he said, “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient,” and I asked who washes the recipient's conscience when the giver's polluted conscience is hidden, no answer could be given me. For it is as much against the truth to say that his false reputation can wash as if it were said that the conscience itself could do this. But if you ask how those whom the church has condemned baptize, I answer that they baptize in the same way as those baptize whom God has condemned before the church judged anything about them. For one who with a perverse mind seems to be inside while he is outside has already been judged by Christ himself. For he says, “He who does not believe is already judged”; and the apostle Paul says, “The church is subject to Christ.” The church, then, ought not to put itself before Christ, so as to think that those judged by him can baptize, but those judged by itself cannot; since he always judges truly, while church judges, being men, are often deceived. As far as the visible ministry is concerned, then, both good and bad baptize; but invisibly he baptizes through them to whom both the visible baptism and the invisible grace belong. Both good and bad, then, can dip, but only he who is always good can wash the conscience. And therefore, even without the church's knowledge, those condemned by Christ because of a bad and polluted conscience are already not in the body of Christ, which is the church, since Christ cannot have condemned members. Accordingly, they too baptize outside the church. For far be it altogether that all these monsters should be counted among the members of that one dove; far be it that they should be able to enter the bounds of the enclosed garden, whose keeper is he who cannot be deceived. Yet if they confess and are corrected, then they enter, then they are cleansed, then they are numbered among the trees of the enclosed garden and the members of the one dove; and yet they are not baptized anew. So too when they come from heretics, with that same baptism which they had outside, but not also with that cleansing which they receive inside, so that what was lacking may be supplied, and what was not changed may be approved.

“Your conscience,” you say, “has been condemned by the crime of handing over the books and of offering incense in your forefathers, and of persecution in yourselves.” As to the traitors and incense-offerers, who they were that committed this wickedness, you have believed not the holy Scriptures but human report. If this can be falsely good of the bad, why not also falsely bad of the good? As to persecution, I would answer you briefly and again what you were quite unable to refute when I answered it to Petilian. In the holy Scripture, which deceives no one, the church of God is called a threshing floor, and it is said that the Lord himself will come with a winnowing fan and will clean his threshing floor, to store the wheat in the barn, but to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Either, then, you suffered persecution rightly, or, if the Christian measure was exceeded, our chaff did it; and on its account the Lord's threshing floor was not to be deserted, lest anyone who fled from the chaff from the threshing floor before the time of winnowing, separated from the wheat, should himself become chaff. But you, when you tried to refute this testimony, not mine but of holy Scripture, said that no persecution can be just. Here you must be pardoned for not knowing the Scriptures, from which it might have come into your mind with how just a voice it is said, “Him who secretly slanders his neighbor I persecuted,” and by the Lord Jesus Christ himself in a most excellent prophecy, “I will persecute my enemies and overtake them, and I will not turn back until they fail,” and many other divine testimonies which it would take long to pursue; provided you do not slander me for this word, so that, because I said “it would take long to pursue” (persequi), you accuse me of being a persecutor of the divine testimonies.

You set against me words of Scripture which have been shown so often to be of no help to you: “Let not the oil of a sinner anoint my head” (though you cannot deny that among you too there are at least hidden sinners, who nevertheless baptize and are not excepted by these words; for it does not say “the oil of a manifest sinner,” but absolutely “the oil of a sinner”); and, “They have become to me like deceitful water, having no faithfulness.” Here I wonder at your prudence, how the water of a hidden pretender does not seem to you deceitful, whose false reputation you have even believed to be of some use for cleansing another's conscience; unless that you thought that trick to come to your help which is not dialectical but plainly sophistical, which you blamed in me in vain as in a dialectician: “If you lie, you speak the truth!” For what else are you trying to assert when, attributing baptism to man, since you will not recognize that it is God's, you say that an adulterer can give true baptism because by hiding himself he lies that he is chaste? So he speaks the truth in baptism when he lies in his shameful deed, and his water is not deceitful, which you would have to be in the church, spread through the whole world according to the promise of so many prophecies; whereas Jeremiah called not baptism deceitful water, but deceitful men, according to the meaning that is plain in the Apocalypse, where, when John asked what those waters shown in the vision were, the answer was that they were peoples.

As for that testimony where it is written, “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit?”, notice for a little how you failed to understand what I set down in that letter, and how much you helped me by your words. For when you had thought that by the dead man in this passage I understood a worshiper of idols, as if I had excepted only those who cannot baptize, you did your best, repeating that testimony about oil, to show that he who said, “The oil of a sinner shall not anoint my head,” wished that no sinner should baptize, excepting no sinner. By this you are pressed the harder, as I showed a little before. For if no sinner is excepted, then baptize anew those baptized by hidden evil men when they are convicted. Here you will now try to except the hidden sinner, whom holy Scripture did not except. This whole interpretation of yours, then, is refuted as false by the truth, since it is shown likewise to fight against your own contention. For in truth this was not set down in the psalm about baptism but about the flattery of a fawner, as the preceding words sufficiently show; for the whole sentence is joined thus: “The righteous man will correct me in mercy and reprove me; but the oil of a sinner shall not anoint my head.” He preferred, then, to have his head bruised by one who truly reproves rather than anointed by one who deceitfully flatters, the words “oil” and “anointing” being used figuratively for the smoothness of the flatterer.

What I meant in that letter about this testimony where it is said, “He who is baptized by a dead man,” I shall show sufficiently, I think, by repeating the very words from it. For when I was discussing what a Catholic Christian ought to answer to these things, I said: When he hears, “He who is baptized by a dead man, his washing does not profit him,” he will answer: Christ lives and dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him; of whom it was said, “He it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.” But those are baptized by dead men who are baptized in the temples of idols. For they too do not think they receive what they consider sanctification from their priests, but from their gods; and since these were men and died in such a way that they live neither on earth nor in the rest of the saints, they are truly baptized by dead men. Thus far I have copied the very words from my letter, in which you now see, I think, if at least now you attend carefully, that I did not call the worshipers themselves dead (although in another way they too are dead), but the false gods they worship, because they were men and departed from the body like men, and neither rose again nor had any merit of the life promised after this life. Those, then, who are baptized by those gods, as I said, are truly baptized by the dead, that is, those who are baptized in their name; because they too think they are sanctified not in the name of their priests but of the gods about whom they hold vain opinions. But Christ has risen and lives; accordingly, whoever is baptized by him, not only through a good minister but also through a bad one who is dead in his ruined morals, is not baptized by a dead man. For he is baptized by him who lives forever, and of whom it is said in the gospel, as I mentioned there too, “He it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.”

This, as your words show, you did not understand in my letter; for I do not wish to say that, understanding it too little, you wished to deceive. But I wonder that you did not notice my words that follow there, or thought you should pretend not to see them. For a little later I added and said: “For if in this passage I understand by the dead man a sinner who baptizes, the same absurdity will follow, that whoever has been baptized even by a hidden ungodly man has been washed in vain, as being baptized by a dead man. For it does not say, ‘He who is baptized by a manifest dead man,’ but absolutely, ‘by a dead man.’” Whom would this plainness of my words there not rouse from sleep, or rather from death itself? And yet it did not rouse you; and, besides, what I had said against Petilian you confirmed even more strongly, as if speaking against me; as men often, not knowing how, in trying to pull out an arrow that has been shot into them drive it in deeper and further. For you asserted that by the dead man only a sinful baptizer is to be understood, and that no sinner is to be excepted; and so what I was saying is concluded against you: neither can the hidden sinner be excepted where none is excepted. Rebaptize, then, those who are established to have been baptized by hidden sinners, who can be helped while they are alive and know it, so that it may now harm only those who either do not know or died before, so that they can no longer be baptized once their evil baptizers were later exposed. Baptize, I say, when an adulterer has been exposed and condemned, those who are established to have been baptized by him while he was hidden; for they were baptized by a dead man, since you said that every sinner without any exception is to be understood as one who cannot baptize, adding the testimony about the oil of the sinner. You said it, you wrote it: hear yourself, read yourself. If every sinner, as being dead, cannot baptize, neither can the hidden one. For he is not alive because he is hidden, since he is far more deeply consumed by the lie of his pretense. He would be called less dead if at least he confessed; but in him happens what is written in another place: “From the dead, as from one who is not, confession perishes.” Those who are shown to have been baptized by this dead man, sunk in so great a depth of death, you do not rebaptize; and those baptized by men who in the farthest lands have never heard the name of Caecilian or Majorinus or Donatus, you do not hesitate to rebaptize if you can, casting at them, “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?”; calling dead those to whom not even the breath of the African corpses, whoever's they were, could reach, and not thinking him dead who can hide his own shameful deed, although Scripture cries out, “From the dead, as from one who is not, confession perishes.” Is he, then, not dead because he is a pretender, when rather, because of that very pretense, lacking the spirit of life he has breathed his last completely, as Scripture says again, “For the holy spirit of discipline will flee from the pretender”? Go on defending these dead men and saying that they live, so that you too may die worse by that very false defense.