Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 2.32–2.47

“They are dead,” you say; “but what should he do who came to them for baptism without knowing?” Let him do it now, then, when, the man having been exposed, he has recognized that he was baptized by a dead man. For if his conscience could not be harmed because he did not know, it now begins to be harmed because he knows; as, if someone unknowingly wore a tunic from a robbery, that garment becomes a garment of wickedness from the moment he learns of it, and he himself wicked unless he casts it off; and one who unknowingly married another man's wife becomes an adulterer from the moment he learns of it, unless he departs. Let this man too cast off the baptism he has learned he received from a dead man. For he has something to do: he can still be baptized again. Finally, whether he knew or did not know, he was baptized by a dead man: what does his washing profit him? The statement is strict, as you yourself proclaim; it excepts no one. He was baptized, I say, by a dead man; his washing profits him nothing. Cleanse the man by baptizing, you who are alive, or rather cleanse yourselves from this error, lest you perish by holding such views. For you contend, as if against me, so as to say that no one is excepted in what is written, “the oil of a sinner” and “he who is baptized by a dead man,” and you do not feel yourself tightening by your resistance the knot by which you are bound. For this is what I am doing, this is what I am pressing, this is how I urgently drive you to change your empty and perverse opinion: that in the oil of the sinner and the baptism of the dead man no dead man, no sinner is excepted, as you say for me while seeming to speak against me. For thus not even the hidden one is excepted, and by this everything you say is overthrown; and so those who taught you such things are compelled to rebaptize all whom they can find in this life to have been baptized by hidden evil men.

What are you doing, where are you turning? Your own words are read back to you. For not only did you fail to refute mine when I said it, but, not knowing that what you read was mine, you yourself said the same thing in other words as if it were yours, and, so that it might be heard and considered more carefully, you wrote it, so that it may be read back to you as often as one pleases. Hear, then; for these are surely your words: “But if,” you say, “you are pleased to except only the worshiper of an idol, what of him of whom it is said, ‘I do not want the oil of a sinner to anoint my head’? Is here too that man alone a sinner who worships an idol, or whoever commits what is not lawful? But if you think that a sinner is only a worshiper of an idol, then will a Christian not be said to have sinned if he does anything against the law? But if nothing more foolish or absurd can be said, it has been plainly foretold that not only the idol worshiper, but whoever among all men is a sinner, should not usurp for himself the right of baptism.” These that I have inserted are certainly your words. I did not except the worshiper of an idol, but said that their gods themselves are dead, by none of whom does it profit to be baptized; for they seem to themselves to be baptized by those very gods in whose name they think they are cleansed. But you excepted no sinner. If, then, in this passage the sinner and mortal man who baptizes is to be understood, by excepting no sinner you certainly did not except the hidden one either: “It has been plainly foretold,” you say, “that not only the idol worshiper, but whoever among all men is a sinner, should not usurp for himself the right of baptism.” Hear yourself, then. You said “whoever is a sinner”; you excepted neither the manifest nor the hidden. With what face, then, do they compel baptism after a manifest sinner, who will not after a hidden one, when they assert that no one is excepted? Flee, then, brother, from an insane interpretation to a sound one, so that in this testimony about the oil of the sinner, as the preceding words of the same psalm prescribe, you may understand the coaxing smoothness of a deceitful flatterer. For so no one will be excepted, and the hidden evil baptizer will not drive you into insurmountable straits. So too in the other testimony, where it is said, “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?”, either examine carefully the ancient manuscripts, and especially the Greek, in case the very words are written otherwise and suggest another sense from the preceding and following context of the passage; or certainly let us understand as the dead, as I said, those in whose name the worshipers of idols are baptized, so that you understand each person to have been baptized by him in whose name he believes he has been cleansed. For so there too no one is excepted; for no dead god of the pagans can cleanse those who believe in him. But if in this passage you understand every sinful man as dead, so many things you do not want follow you that you yourself cannot find how you live, since John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”; so that you would find no man at all by whom to be baptized if you wished to avoid every sinner.

And yet, even if you understood by the dead man nothing but a heretic or schismatic, so that whoever is baptized among them is baptized by a dead man, of whom it is said, “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?” (you see with what headlong presumption it is taken so, as if it said, “He who is baptized by a heretic or schismatic”), even so it would not be against us, who confess that the baptism of Christ profits a man nothing if he is baptized among heretics or schismatics, attributing to them the baptism with which he is baptized; but that it begins to profit him when he passes over to the body of Christ, which is the church of the living God. For then, under the same baptism, which was Christ's even outside but, placed outside, profited nothing, the cleansing will profit, not from him by whose hands he was dipped, but from him into whose members he was grafted.

Nor shall I dread that excessively severe statement of yours, in which you said, “Whoever among all men is a sinner, let him not usurp for himself the right of baptism,” except that you do not find anyone who could truly say in the Lord's Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” without confessing himself a sinner. I would like to ask one by one those who baptize among you whether they are not sinners at all. For any of them can answer me: “I am not a traitor, not an incense-offerer, not an adulterer, not a murderer, not a worshiper of idols, and finally not a heretic, not a schismatic.” But whether anyone can be found, even with heretical pride, who would dare to say, dare to think, “I am not a sinner,” I do not know; I do not know whether anyone is blinded by so great a swelling of arrogance that, I will not say he professes it aloud, but even silently within himself thinks that he does not need the petition in which we say to God, “Forgive us our debts.” For we do not ask for the forgiveness of those debts which we trust were forgiven once in baptism, but certainly for those without which human frailty does not exist, however watchful we are in keeping the Lord's commands. Finally, let whoever wishes take on the brow of this shamelessness and say: “I am not a sinner; since everything was forgiven me in baptism, no sin can be found in me.” I rather believe John and answer much more confidently: You deceive yourself, and the truth is not in you. Nor does this headlong and deceitful profession achieve that sins are not found in you, but that those which are found are not forgiven. If, then, you have already been baptized, I would like to know whom you found who, contrary to the apostle John, said, “I have no sin.” For if you could find any such man, how were you baptized by one who was deceiving himself and in whom the truth was not? But if, mindful of some humility, he said he was a sinner, how, according to your statement, did he usurp for himself the right of baptism? For you said, and you were not at all afraid to write, that whoever among all men is a sinner should not usurp for himself the right of baptism. But if you have not yet been baptized, either correct this most empty statement, or look for angels to baptize you.

But let us suppose that you, refuted, have corrected it thus: “Whoever among all men is a sinner by the crime our people charge, let him not usurp for himself the right of baptism.” Nor is this against us; because if even such a man usurps it and gives it, I say that he ought not to have usurped it, but I do not say that he did not give it. And as for the one who received it, if he was a good man receiving from an evil one, a faithful man from a faithless one, a devout man from an ungodly one, it will be destructive to the giver, not to the recipient. For that holy thing judges the one who uses it badly and sanctifies the one who uses it well. But if the one who received it also received it wickedly, even so the sacrament will not be cancelled, but recognized; and what harmed the perverse will profit the corrected.

For I shall take it that you have said, not now “whoever is a sinner,” since unless I am mistaken you now see how rashly that was said, but: “Whoever among all men is a sinner of the kind our people describe, let him not usurp for himself the right of baptism”; as it is written, “But to the sinner God says, ‘Why do you recite my statutes and take my covenant in your mouth?’” And to show to what kind of sinner he said this, so that all men should not abstain from preaching his word who dare neither think nor say that they are not sinners, it goes on and describes him: “But you hated discipline and cast my words behind you. Your mouth abounded with malice, and your tongue embraced deceit. If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you put your portion. Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against your mother's son you put a stumbling block.” To such a sinner, then, he says, “Why do you recite my statutes and take my covenant in your mouth?”, as if to say: you do this in vain; as far as you are concerned, it does not profit you; this will avail you for the judgment of damnation, not for the merit of salvation. And yet, if even when such a sinner recites God's statutes and takes his covenant in his mouth, those who hear it from his mouth believe, do it, and make progress, will they not be praised while he is rejected, justified while he is blamed, crowned while he is condemned, because they took care to obey the Lord who says, “Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do”? Just as, then, this sinner, if he usurps for himself the right of preaching the divine covenant, profits himself nothing, while to those who hear and do it not he but what he preaches is profitable, so too he who ought not to have usurped for himself the right of baptism harms himself, who wrongly usurped a good thing, not him who rightly received the good thing.

You see not only that you could not refute what I said against Petilian, but with how great a light of truth what you yourself said against me is refuted in every way. And still you go on and say that we do not make our case a good one and in a way confess that we are sinners, since, when we are challenged on what license we claim the right of baptism, we do not discuss the merit of our actions or the innocence of our life, but say that it is permitted to anyone. Notice, surely, from what has been said, that we do not say it is permitted to anyone, but that there is punishment for him who handles a holy thing unlawfully, and that he must be corrected, not the holy thing he handles unlawfully unlawfully cancelled; just as we wish men who do not use the law lawfully to be corrected, but do not regard the law itself as void; just as we rebuke one who takes God's covenant in his mouth unlawfully, but do not deny or tear up the covenant itself. Nor do we therefore confess that we have sinned, because even in a sinner we reject what is his own but honor what is God's; because we do not wish one who believes in God to depend on hidden human things, but admonish him to glory in the Lord, of whom he is certain. For the apostle too did not distrust his own conscience as bad, but he did not want the hope of the believer placed in a man and set it firmly in God, when he said, “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” So, when we say what is written, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory,” we do not accuse our conscience; but you, wishing the hope of those who are baptized to be placed in men's morals, do not recognize your own pride.

What of the fact that you even dare to mention blessed Cyprian, as if he were the author of your division, he who was so great a defender of Catholic unity and peace? First be in the church which Cyprian plainly held and preached, and then dare to name Cyprian as the author of your opinion. First imitate the piety and humility of Cyprian, and then bring forward the council of Cyprian. For we do Cyprian no injury when we distinguish any writings of his from the canonical authority of the divine Scriptures. For not without reason was the church's canon established with such salutary vigilance, to which the definite books of the prophets and apostles belong, which we do not dare to judge at all, and according to which we freely judge other writings, whether of believers or unbelievers. Accordingly, since the apostle, whose letters stand in canonical authority, says, “Let as many of us as are perfect think this; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you,” so long as Cyprian thought otherwise (if the writings you think should be brought forward on your behalf are certainly his), so long, then, as he thought otherwise on this matter than the truth, more carefully considered, has made plain, until God should reveal this too to him, with an unspeakable praise of love he did not abandon Catholic unity and peace, even with his colleagues from whom he thought otherwise.

You inserted into your letter his words from the letter to Jubaianus, to show that he held that those who had been baptized in heresy or schism should be baptized in the Catholic church. I am not bound by the authority of this letter, because I do not hold Cyprian's writings as canonical, but consider them by the canonical ones; and what in them agrees with the authority of the divine Scriptures I accept with praise of him, but what does not agree I reject with his peace. And therefore, if you read what you mentioned as written by him to Jubaianus from some canonical book of the apostles or prophets, I would have nothing at all to say against it. But now, since what you read is not canonical, with that freedom to which the Lord has called us, I do not accept this point on which that man thought otherwise, whose praise I cannot attain, with whose many writings I do not compare mine, whose genius I love, whose eloquence delights me, whose love I admire, whose martyrdom I venerate. I do not accept, I say, what blessed Cyprian thought about baptizing heretics and schismatics, because the church does not accept it, for which blessed Cyprian shed his blood. But since you say that he confirmed this opinion with proofs from the law (although he could not confirm the proofs of the law; rather, he confirmed by them whatever he rightly thought), leave aside, then, the writings of Cyprian and mention those very proofs from the law which you say he used. If I do not show that they help your case not at all, you have won. Therefore I do not accept this of Cyprian, though incomparably inferior to Cyprian, just as I neither accept nor do that of the apostle Peter by which he compelled the Gentiles to live as Jews, though incomparably inferior to Peter. But you, who set the writings of Cyprian against us as supports of canonical authority, must yield to whatever we can bring forward from Cyprian against you; and it is just that, defeated, you should be silent and at last turn from the error of a most destructive dissension to Catholic unity.

Hence, not to be long, notice what I bring forward from this very letter to Jubaianus, which overthrows and destroys your error. For when holy Cyprian, or whoever wrote that letter, was trying to persuade that heretics coming to the church ought to be baptized, on the ground that no baptism was to be reckoned which they had received outside among heretics, he put a question to himself and said: “But someone will say: What then will become of those who in the past, coming from heresy to the church, were admitted without baptism? The Lord is able in his mercy to grant pardon, and not to separate from the gifts of his church those who, having been simply admitted to the church, have fallen asleep in the church.” This simplicity suffices us, to which Cyprian himself bears witness, understanding the unity of the body of Christ to be so great a good that he presumed with devout thought that even those admitted simply into it, whom he thought to be without baptism, merited pardon from the divine mercy and were not separated from the gifts of the church. This was the custom of the church before Cyprian's council; this could not be overcome and taken away even by Cyprian's council: that those coming from heresy, not indeed without baptism, as he says (for the same baptism was in them even outside, but did not profit), yet admitted simply, as he likewise says, merited pardon from God's mercy and were not separated from the gifts of the church. This simplicity rather than duplicity pleased the whole church spread over the whole world.

What testimony Cyprian himself bears to this church, hear from the letter he wrote on unity: “Tear a ray of the sun from its body,” he says; “the unity of light admits no division. Break a branch from a tree; broken, it will not be able to bud. Cut off a stream from its source; cut off, it dries up.” In these words of Cyprian we do not find, nor do we understand, that the light does not admit division except in the saints predestined to the kingdom of God, who can in no way be divided from the church; and we take the broken branch's failure to bud as the bud of eternal salvation, and we recognize the drying up of the stream cut off from the source in this, that those who are separated from unity are emptied of the Holy Spirit; not in the sacrament of baptism, which both good and bad can have, separated from the holiness of the church as openly outside as secretly inside. But notice what Cyprian thought of the fruitfulness of the church herself, spread over the whole world (about which no one doubts), in what he adds: “So too the church of the Lord, flooded with light, stretches out her rays through the whole world; yet it is one light that is spread everywhere, and the unity of the body is not separated. She extends her branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness; she spreads her abundantly flowing streams more widely; yet there is one head and one origin and one mother, rich in the successes of fruitfulness.” This church, promised in the holy Scriptures and fulfilled in the whole world, Cyprian loved, held, and commended; which the lost schismatics or heretics, as if wishing to distinguish and separate themselves from the wicked, abandoned by ungodly seditions. So that they should not try to wash their ungodly departures with empty excuses, the holy Scripture foretold: “The wicked son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his going out”; because the good, who are truly inside, are not to be deserted on account of the wicked who seem to be inside.

What blessed Cyprian thought about this, hear from the letter he wrote to the presbyter Maximus and the others, whom he congratulates on returning from schismatic and heretical error to the church: “For even if there seem to be tares in the church,” he says, “our faith or our love ought not to be hindered, so that, because we see that there are tares in the church, we ourselves should withdraw from the church. We must only labor that we may be wheat, so that when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's barns we may receive fruit for our work and labor. The apostle says in his letter, ‘In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earthenware, and some for honor, some for dishonor.’ Let us strive and labor as much as we can to be a vessel of gold and silver. But to break the earthen vessels is granted to the Lord alone, to whom the rod of iron has been given. The servant cannot be greater than his lord, nor can anyone claim for himself what the Father has given to the Son alone, so as to think that he can already carry the fan or winnowing shovel to winnow and purge the threshing floor, or separate all the tares from the wheat by human judgment. That is proud obstinacy and sacrilegious presumption, which depraved fury takes upon itself. And while some always take upon themselves more than gentle justice requires, they perish from the church; and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their own swelling they lose the light of truth.” You see, brother, that Cyprian commanded according to the divine Scriptures that, even because of the wicked, who, though spiritually separated from the good in life and morals, yet seem to be bodily mixed with them in the church until the day of judgment, when they will be separated bodily too for the punishments due, the church is not to be deserted, as the wheat is not because of the chaff or the tares, as the great house is not because of the vessels for dishonor. You see, hear, perceive, grasp, understand with how great a crime you separate yourselves, because of those who displease you, whether rightly or when you are mistaken, from the church which is spread over the whole world, to which, according to the divine Scriptures, Cyprian bears so great, so firm, so clear and brilliant a testimony.

Therefore notice carefully my brief reasoning on this whole question. If those coming from heretics are rightly received into the church, so that their own error is corrected but the divine sacrament is not cancelled, we rejoice over those who live well there as over the Lord's wheat. But if, as you think, and boast that Cyprian favors you in this opinion, they do not have baptism, certainly, admitted simply to the church, according to the same Cyprian, they merit God's pardon on account of the merit of unity itself and are not separated from the gifts of the church. And whoever admits them simply according to the former custom, of which Cyprian did not keep silent, and lives rightly and peaceably, is counted among the same wheat destined for the barn; while those who either knowingly fight contentiously against the truth in receiving them, or live with depraved and perverse morals, are tolerated among the tares and chaff destined for the flames. Yet on their account God commands, and Cyprian is witness, that the church which spreads with abundant increase through the whole world (that is, the Lord's wheat, which grows together until the harvest or is threshed together until the winnowing) is not to be deserted. And therefore, if in the communion of the sacraments the wicked defile the good, when in the times of Cyprian or before Cyprian heretics were received without baptism, as you think, say that the church perished, and show from where you were born. But if, as the truth teaches even through Cyprian, the wheat is not defiled when even known tares are tolerated for the peace of the church, “the wicked son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his going out,” because he ought not to have gone out from the church on account of the wicked.

Again I say, see, I do not allow you to pretend not to see this most invincible reasoning: if the wicked destroy the good who do not share in their sins, merely because of the communion of the sacraments, then, when in the past those coming from heresy to the church were admitted without baptism, they certainly destroyed the good by their contagion. Already then, therefore, there was no church for Cyprian to hold and preach, nor any from which Donatus could later go out. But if that contagion did not destroy the good, neither could the contagion of those you accuse destroy the Christian world. Do not slander while separated, but return to the church corrected. Caecilian and his associates, against whom Secundus of Tigisi then gathered and held a council, you must accuse; I need not defend them. Accuse them with all the strength you can. If they were innocent, your windiness will not harm them at all, as wheat; if they were guilty, the wheat ought not to have been deserted because of those tares, to which they did no harm. Accuse as much as you can. I win if you do not prove it; I win if you prove it; I win, I say, if you do not prove it, with you yourself as judge; I win if you prove it, with Cyprian as witness. What do you want them to have been? If innocent, why do you, who are tares, slander the Lord's wheat? If guilty, why do you separate from the Lord's wheat because of tares? The church stands out, clear and conspicuous to all, being the city that cannot be hidden, set on a mountain, through which Christ rules from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth, as the seed of Abraham, multiplied like the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea, in which all nations are blessed. This too blessed Cyprian commends so as to say that, flooded with the Lord's light, she stretches out her rays through the whole world and extends her branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness. Either she should not be accused in her wheat, or she should not be deserted because of the tares. Answer the one of these to yourselves, learn the other from Cyprian's admonitions. For these are his words, as he testifies and says: “For even if there seem to be tares in the church, our faith or our love ought not to be hindered, so that, because we see that there are tares in the church, we ourselves should withdraw from the church.”

You say that by the contagion of wicked Africans the church has perished from the world, and that its remnant has remained in the party of Donatus, as in wheat separated from tares and chaff; thinking most plainly against Cyprian, who says that the good do not perish in the church by being mixed with the wicked, and that those same wicked cannot be separated from mixture with the good before the time of the divine judgment. And so, according to your error, or rather your madness, you are compelled to accuse not only Caecilian and those who ordained him, but also those churches which we read alike in the apostolic and canonical Scriptures: not only that of the Romans, to which you are accustomed to ordain a bishop from Africa for a few of your people, but also those of the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Thessalonians, the Colossians, the Philippians, to which the apostle Paul most plainly writes; the church of Jerusalem, which the apostle James first ruled by his episcopate; that of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians; those of Smyrna, Thyatira, Sardis, Pergamum, Philadelphia, Laodicea, to which the Apocalypse of the apostle John is addressed; so many other churches of Pontus, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, to which the apostle Peter writes; and whatever else Paul testifies that he filled with the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum; to say nothing of other parts of the earth, so wide and immense, into which the church, extended from these apostolic labors and plantings, has grown and is growing. These churches certainly, which I have named from the divine and canonical writings, situated so far from Africa, you are compelled to accuse as having perished from the sins of Africans, so as not to correct the error that drives you to so great a crime by an impious dissension.

But we, in order to refute this error of yours more easily, are not compelled to defend even those Africans, whose false crimes you dare to pour out even on other nations; we are not compelled, I say, to defend even them. For they share the kingdom with those churches overseas if they were innocent; but if guilty, as tares among the wheat, they could not harm even in Africa those who would not separate themselves from the unity of the church because of them, even when they were known. For, to pass over how many believed them innocent, to whom their crime, even if there was some, could not be demonstrated (and certainly you cannot say that these could be defiled by others' unknown sins); but to pass over these, I say, those very people who either knew or thought them guilty, though placed in the African churches, when they saw that they could not be convicted before the churches overseas, nor their crimes demonstrated to the members of the church spread far and wide, if they had wished to separate themselves, because of those whom they knew to be evil, from the communion of so many nations to whom they could not show them, as from fear of a pestilent contagion, they would have been held back not by me, not by you, not by Donatus, not by Caecilian, but by him whom you dared to name, Cyprian, and he would say those words which he wrote to Maximus: