Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 2.48–3.17

“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. 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 also 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.” By these words of Cyprian those who fear God would be held in the church, if they wished to be separated from it because of known evil men; by these words you are condemned, who, separated, accuse even the good. By these words Cyprian holds us too in the house of God, whose beauty he loved, even if we could know as traitors and other evil men those accused and proved by you (which you have never been able to do), so that we may not desert it because of the vessels made for dishonor. By these words may he, peaceable as he is, bring you too, corrected, into Catholic peace, so that, offended by others' sins, whether true or false, you may not hurl such great evils against the church of Christ, bearing fruit and growing in the whole world according to the Scriptures; so that you may not accuse the wheat because of the tares, nor desert the wheat because of the chaff, nor remain outside the great house because of the vessels for dishonor.

See how much blessed Cyprian, whom you mentioned, has helped us. If he thought otherwise about repeating baptism, the Lord without doubt revealed it to him for correction on account of such great merits of most ardent love; for he remained in that vine as a branch so rich in the fruit of peace and love that, even if anything was found in him to be pruned, it was pruned, if by nothing else, certainly by the pruning knife of martyrdom. Although, then, these things might be more than enough to refute your error and, if you are willing, to correct it, yet, so that no one may think you set down anything in your letter that I could not refute, or anything in which I could not show that you made no adequate answer to our writings against Petilian, let us see the rest in the following book.

If I did not have to take care of the minds of the slow, who cannot understand that in the two previous books I have answered in many ways the whole case contained in your letter, brother Cresconius, so that even the points that remain there are already resolved and frustrated, I ought already to have put an end to this work. But since there are many whom we ought to serve, who do not think everything has been repelled unless each point is also dealt with in its own place, I shall run through the remainder of your discourse in order, refuting it briefly.

Whatever you thought fit to insert from the writings of Cyprian, the venerable martyr, and of certain Easterners, to the effect that they decided to reject the sacrament of baptism given among heretics and schismatics, does not hinder our case at all, if we keep that church which Cyprian did not desert, even when many of his colleagues refused to agree to this opinion. For in the council itself he said, “judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he thinks differently”; and he concluded the same letter to Jubaianus thus: “These things, dearest brother, we have answered you according to our poor ability, prescribing to no one and prejudging no one, so that each bishop may not do what he thinks right, having the free power of his own judgment,” and so on. Reckon us, then, for the time being among those whom Cyprian could not persuade of that point, from whom, however, even though they thought differently on this matter, he did not at all separate his communion. But your forefathers, to whom you bore such testimony, that they were separated from the communion of the Easterners because those Easterners cancelled their own judgment, by which they had decided that Cyprian and that African council should be followed on this question of baptism, acted against Cyprian. For they ought to have kept the unity of communion with their colleagues even when they thought differently on this question, as we read in his letters that Cyprian did. They answer that he wished to speak thus so that they should not perhaps be frightened by fear of excommunication from daring to say freely what they thought, not because he would remain in communion with them if they had thought differently; in which they plainly say that Cyprian lied. For if he said, “judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he thinks differently” (which the written proceedings of the council show he said), and yet, if any of those to whom he said this showed that he thought differently, he would not have shared the sacraments of Christ with him, without doubt he lied, promising such things deceitfully, not truly; and, what is worse in that lie, he deceived the simplicity of the brothers with a double heart, especially since what was said was also being written down. For whoever had thought differently from that council, how could he be condemned or excommunicated by them with their own mouth, when he could read out on his own behalf the opening of that same council? Who, then, thinks more tolerably of Cyprian: we, who say that as a man he could be mistaken on an obscure question about baptism, or you, who say that as a bishop he wished to deceive, in promising Christian communion, not one particular brother but the whole society of bishops? But if you too think it wicked to believe this of him, your forefathers acted against his opinion when they divided themselves from the communion of the Easterners because these thought differently on this matter.

Accordingly, if it must be believed at all that fifty Eastern bishops held the same view as seventy Africans, or somewhat more, against so many thousands of bishops throughout the world to whom this error was displeasing, why should we not rather say that those few Easterners also corrected their judgment, not, as you put it, cancelled it? For just as it is praiseworthy not to be moved from a true opinion, so it is blameworthy to persist in a false one; never to hold a false one is the first praise, to change it the second, so that either the true opinion remains from the beginning, or, the false one having been changed, the true succeeds it. Nor does it now concern our question what kind of thing it is that the greatest part of the Christian world held with the Easterners. For if what we hold and keep about baptism is true and is to be held and kept, we charge you with two evils: one, that you err on the question of baptism; the other, that you separate yourselves from those who think the truth on this matter. But if, to speak on your terms, what you think on that question is true, you are certainly stained with that crime of having withdrawn from the church, for the sake of whose peace, as Cyprian both did and admonished, you ought to have borne even those who thought differently.

Then you exclaim that I said, “You make no distinction between the faithful and the faithless; the godly and the ungodly seem the same to you.” I did not say this; but I did say that from which you chose to exclaim, as if I had said it, and to say what I did not say: “whether,” I said, “one receives the sacrament from a faithful or a faithless steward.” In this statement I did make a distinction between the faithful and the faithless, and did not command that the godly and the ungodly should seem the same to anyone, but that the godly and the ungodly can have the same sacrament; which you too do not deny, since you grant at least that one should not baptize after hidden ungodly men. Accordingly, you join on without reason and say: “It profits nothing to live with good morals, because whatever is permitted to the righteous the unrighteous too can fulfill”; since this is both false and not said by me. For good morals distinguish the life of the good and the wicked and lead them to different ends; nor can the unrighteous fulfill whatever is permitted to the righteous, since the righteous fulfills the law of Christ through love, from which the unrighteous is a stranger; yet he can fulfill something that the righteous also fulfills, so that he too baptizes, if nothing else, certainly when he is hidden; just as such men can also preach God's commandments like the righteous, but not live according to them like the righteous, of whom it is said, “Do what they say, but do not do what they do.”

But suppose an unrighteous man, not hidden but known to some good men, cannot be separated from the church because of some sedition or faction. Hear Cyprian: tolerate the tares, be wheat. How well those words sounded to you which you repeated in various ways on one point: “What,” you say, “can be said more unjustly than this precept: let the stained purify another, the dirty wash, the unclean cleanse, the faithless give faith, the criminal make innocent?” I answer briefly: Christ is neither stained nor dirty nor unclean nor faithless nor criminal, who loved the church and gave himself up for her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word, making us certain of his own goods, so that we should not be corrupted by others' evils. For see, when the unrighteous minister is hidden, the baptism given by whom you nevertheless do not cancel, can not all these words of yours be turned back on you, since then the stained purifies, the dirty washes, the unclean cleanses, the faithless gives faith, and the criminal makes innocent? “Not he himself,” you say, “but his good reputation, however empty and false.” At this you do not want me to exclaim: O crime, O monstrosity, not, as someone says, to be exported to the farthest lands, but rather, if it were possible, to be driven beyond all heaven and all lands! I do not mean you yourself, whom I want corrected, but this error, from which I desire you to be corrected. Is it really so that, for cleansing a man, when the true life of a good minister is lacking, the false reputation of a bad minister suffices, to effect what a good life would effect, so that for sanctifying a man, when the minister's wickedness is hidden, falsehood serves God as a soldier? All this so that you may not say what we say: whether one receives the sacrament from a faithful or a faithless steward, only God sanctifies.

Next you mention my words, in which I said: “Let Christ always give faith, let Christ be the origin of the Christian, let the Christian fix his root in Christ, let Christ be the head of the Christian.” I certainly said it and I say it, and you could not answer it at all. For you seem to have yielded, as it were, to the great weight of the truth when you added, “This we too urge, this we want.” Then again you put underneath a man in whom the one about to receive should place his hope: “But we ask,” you say, “through whom this is better done.” And since we too do not say that a man can be baptized without a minister, you ask me whether it is better for the minister to be unrighteous or righteous. Here I answer that it is better for the minister to be righteous for this purpose: that the weakness of man, for whom what God commands is laborious and difficult without an example, may be raised more easily to a good life by imitating a good minister; hence the apostle Paul says, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.” But for baptizing and sanctifying a man, if what is received is better in proportion as he through whom it is handed on is better, there is as great a variety of baptisms in the recipients as there is diversity of merits in the ministers. For if, as is believed without controversy, Paul was better than Apollos, he gave a better baptism according to this empty and perverse opinion of yours; and if he gave a better baptism, he surely begrudged it to those whom he rejoices he did not baptize. Further, if among good ministers, since one is better than another, the baptism given through the better is not better, in no way is it bad when given even through a bad one, since the same baptism is given. And therefore, through unequal ministers God's gift is equal, because it is not theirs but his. We do not, then, as you vainly inveigh, make no distinction between the faithful and the faithless; but we distinguish human merits, not divine sacraments, which you too, led by the force of truth and forgetting heretical contention, said were for us and for you not other but one and the same.

How do you say, “This we too urge and want: that Christ always give faith, that Christ be the origin of the Christian, that the Christian fix his root in Christ, that Christ be the head of the Christian,” when you defend the letter of Petilian, where most plainly, commending the merit of the baptizer and trying to show, for the cause he had undertaken, how much human righteousness avails for giving baptism, he says: “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient. For he who knowingly receives faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt”? And as if he were asked, “How do you prove this?”, he went on to add: “For everything consists in its origin and root, and if something does not have a head, it is nothing.” Why, I ask, since you have fallen into the defense of rash falsehood, do you labor to pour clouds over plain things? The man says plainly that the origin, root, and head of a man to be regenerated through baptism can be no other than the one by whose ministry he is baptized. And you say, “This we too want: that Christ be the origin, root, and head of the Christian; but we ask through whom this is better done.” What you say is one thing, what Petilian said another; what you say, even if it is true, is not what he said.

Accordingly, if you too want this, that Christ be the origin, root, and head of the Christian, resist Petilian, not me; since “neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” When I had set this down from the apostle in my letter, you chose to answer it by saying: “To give the growth is indeed God's; but just as for planting and watering only a faithful and diligent farmer is sought, so too in the sacrament of baptism only a faithful and most righteous workman is employed.” As if what a faithless farmer has planted does not sprout because of his faithlessness! The power of the seed, the fertility of the earth, and the mildness of the sky have received this efficacy from God, that for producing fruit they wait only for a workman to plant or water; with what mind he works, with what intention he labors, they do not care, whether he faithfully loves the master of the field or seeks his own gain, not his. You add also a prophetic testimony, saying, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, and they will feed you, feeding with discipline.” I know; it has been fulfilled. Such were the apostles; such there are even now, though very few for the breadth of the church, yet they are not lacking. But you ought to have sought, read, and considered what is said through the prophet Ezekiel against bad shepherds. For there he says, “I will feed,” not “the shepherds.”

Accordingly, when he dispenses his word and sacrament both through good shepherds and through bad, he himself feeds, since he says of himself, “that there may be one flock and one shepherd.” For “it is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man,” and, “Cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man.” You show that you understand what I mentioned in that letter in such a way as to say that you seek a righteous and faithful man to celebrate this sacrament all the more because you have hope and trust in God, not in man, and that faith and righteousness, which you always look for in his ministers, belong to God. This you say truly, since of all good things we have nothing that we have not received, and therefore faith and righteousness are ours from God. But when you say that God cannot give it to you unless the man by whom you are baptized has it, you certainly place your hope in a man, of whom you do not know whether he is a partaker of righteousness; and if he is not, you then look to his reputation, and when you find a false good reputation of a hidden bad man, you believe it suffices for your sanctification. I ask you: if you have trust in God, not in man, and therefore seek all the more that he through whom this sacrament is celebrated be righteous, good, and faithful, because faith and righteousness are God's, is the falsehood of reputation God's too, which, if a bad minister has a good one, you say suffices for your sanctification? I would rather you trusted in man, from which I was most vehemently forbidding you, than in the falsehood of reputation itself. For a man, whatever he is, as far as being a man is concerned, is God's creature; but no falsehood is God's creature. Further, if he is cursed who puts his hope in man, how much more he who puts his hope in the falsehood of human opinion, so as to fall into that other thing that is written: “He who trusts in falsehoods feeds the winds,” that is, becomes food for evil spirits!

“If baptism given by anyone and in any way,” you say, “ought not to be cancelled, why did the apostles baptize after John?” How much more forcefully it is put thus: if the apostles baptized after John, why does not one who is better or equal baptize also after any holy man? So that from this at least you may be compelled to understand that the baptism of John does not belong to this question! “And to the Jews,” you say, “baptized by Moses, Peter said, ‘Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.’” If the Jews were already baptized because Moses had baptized their ancestors through the Red Sea so long before, then those born of baptized Christians are baptized today without reason. And yet you say these things and write these things, are heard and read, and are thought to answer our writings, as if being unwilling to keep silent were the same as being able to answer.

Nor did you refute, as you think you did, at the beginning of this letter, what you thought should be passed over, which I said: “If those erred who wished to be of Paul, what hope, pray, is there for those who chose to be of Donatus?” For who does not see that this division arose from this source, and from this source persists even today in this plague, so long as hope is placed in a man's righteousness, so that the baptism of Christ is acceptable only if one is dipped by a righteous man? Against this error, against those who had already begun to make schisms because of the differing merits of men, Paul himself cries out: “I thank God that I baptized none of you, lest anyone should say that I baptized in my own name”; suggesting what else than that the baptism of Christ belongs only to him in whose name it is given, and therefore does not become better when given through a better man, nor worse through a worse?

In vain, then, do you next exult and say: “It follows that I conclude that all those things which were written by holy Petilian, or whosesoever the discourse is, were rightly said.” For the very words which you conclude were rightly said are shown not to have been rightly said; since the conscience of one giving in holiness is not looked to, to wash that of the recipient, when the giver's stained conscience is hidden. Defeated there, when you ought to have yielded to the truth, you appealed to his false reputation as to an unhappy judge deceived by a lie; since the conscience is not looked to when its reputation is looked to, and no one can be cleansed by anyone's false reputation any more than by a bad life; and no one receives the Christian faith from a man, whether faithless or faithful, but from him of whom it is written, “cleansing their hearts by faith.” If through a faithful man he hears what is to be believed, he imitates him indeed, yet is not justified by him. For if the minister justifies the ungodly, it follows that one may rightly believe in the minister too; for the apostolic statement is clear and certain: “To one who believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Accordingly, if the minister does not dare to say, “Believe in me,” let him not dare to say, “You are justified by me.”

Now as for what follows, “Everything consists in its origin and root, and if something does not have a head, it is nothing”: if the baptizing minister is the origin, root, and head of the baptized, Christ is not; if Christ is, he is not. Finally, when the minister is secretly evil, what is the origin, what the root, what the head of the baptized? His false reputation? That is indeed what Cresconius says, but the truth contradicts it. If then Christ is the origin, root, and head at that time, he is so also when the minister is good; otherwise, what is most absurd, the condition of one baptized through a hidden evil man, when Christ is the head, would be better than that of one baptized through a manifest good man, if then the minister is the head. This I would say also of the good seed; for there follows: “Nor does anything regenerate well unless it is regenerated by good seed.”

And what follows from Petilian's letter as set down by you, where he says: “Since this is so, brothers, what perversity can it be that one who is guilty of his own crimes should make another innocent, when it is written, ‘A good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit. Do they gather grapes from thorns?’ and again, ‘Every good man brings forth good things from the treasure of his heart, and an evil man brings forth evil things from the treasure of his heart’?”: these show clearly and plainly enough that Petilian referred all this to nothing but the man through whom baptism is ministered; so that he is understood, if innocent, to make innocent the one he baptizes; he is the good tree whose fruit is the one baptized; he is the good man from the treasure of whose heart the sanctification of the baptized comes. And therefore, when he is secretly evil, tell me, by whom is that man made innocent? Tell me, whose tree's fruit will he be? Tell me, from the treasure of whose heart will the baptized be sanctified? Or if then he merits to have as the maker of his innocence, as the tree from which good fruit is born, not the man who ministers baptism but Christ, he has fallen more happily upon a hidden bad minister than if he had fallen upon a manifest good one. But if this is said most absurdly and most insanely, the one sanctified by Christ's baptism is Christ's fruit, by whatever minister's work he is baptized. Unless perhaps one is to have recourse to your counsel, when one comes upon a stained and hidden conscience in a minister, so as to show him as the tree from which he is born the falsely good reputation of a bad man; whose root, if you look for it, you will find to be the cunning of a deceiver; and if good fruit can be born of that (God forbid!), Christ lied, who said, “A bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” But since Christ spoke the truth, let a good man, as a good tree, have good fruit, a good work, as a bad man, as a bad tree, has bad fruit, a bad work; but let the one who is baptized be born not of any man but of the Spirit of Christ, if he wishes to be fruit which is not spoiled by the wind and a tree which is not uprooted. Since this is so, when you said, “So it follows that I conclude that all those things which were written by holy Petilian, or whosesoever the discourse is, were rightly said,” I think that I rather conclude that all those things were not rightly said.

Now let us see what you next wove into your letter: how your people taught you the case of Optatus and of the Maximianists, or rather, that I may become more learned from you, the Maximianensians. And about Optatus, of whom I can read out nothing written, I readily grant you whatever you think. One thing I know: if the things are true which were, I will not say shown, but certainly said about him, he was neither good nor had a good reputation. Hence whoever were baptized by him could be washed neither by his conscience, according to Petilian, nor by his reputation, according to you. But if envious report spread false evils about him, as often happens, see how rightly we do not readily believe what you have never been able to prove to us about the traitors you accuse, since bad report is accustomed to lie even about the good. If, then, it is not their innocence, nor finally (which is true and firm) the grace of God and our conscience, that makes baptism valid for us, let at least your opinion do so.

For you, when speaking of Optatus, said: “I neither acquit nor condemn Optatus.” If I, or rather not only I but the whole Catholic church of Africa, and how much more the church overseas spread so far and wide, say of Caecilian and his ordainers, “I neither acquit nor condemn them,” do you think it too little for those whom these men had baptized, none of whom ever saw Caecilian, when you believe it suffices, concerning Optatus, for those whom he baptized even with his own hands? Or because you read out a council of your forefathers concerning Caecilian, while we read out none concerning Optatus, do you think none of us may say, “I neither acquit nor condemn Caecilian,” which you were allowed to say of Optatus? But a later judgment overseas was made in Caecilian's favor, at the urging of your people before the emperor Constantine that it should be made. Or if church judgments made earlier can no longer be overturned, what will you do about Primian, your bishop of Carthage, against whom first a hundred bishops (certainly more than judged Caecilian) gave judgment, and, having deposed him from the episcopate, set up Maximian in his place? Does not Primian rely on a later judgment, which was made in his favor in the town of Bagai, according to which judgment he will not have any doubt about himself, but extorts acquittal from all of you? Hence we too, according to the later judgment about Caecilian, acquit him entirely and without hesitation. Yet it suffices for the case if we say of him what you said of Optatus: “We neither acquit nor condemn Caecilian. Let those, whether yours or ours, see how they judged him; let them give account of their own judgments; let them bear the burden of their own work, whether bad or good. Allow us at least to be in doubt about others' deeds, so that we may not be compelled to condemn in ourselves those sacraments about which it is not lawful to doubt.” But, as I have already said, think what you will of Optatus; for we have nothing by which to convict one who committed his deeds not in recorded proceedings, though he committed them in such a way that he was held, kept, and died as a chief among the satellites of Gildo. Are we also allowed to prattle whatever we please about Felicianus and Praetextatus, associates of Maximian, whom three hundred and ten of your bishops, with others likewise expressly named, condemned by one and the same sentence of the council of Bagai, and whom, not long after, they received as bishops, as they had been, with all whom they had baptized while condemned?

Therefore it is superfluous to wish to clear away whatever you said against us or our people, as if sparing us and passing over it, without names, without witnesses, without any evidence at all, partly blaming things that are not to be blamed, partly not proving things that are to be blamed. These men, these men look at again: consider somewhat more carefully Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, whose whole case I shall set out in its place, if the Lord permits, in such a way that, even if you choose to be an excessive enemy of the truth, you cannot defend or deny the lie of your people. But for the present I am content to proceed on the basis of what they told you; I do not yet examine how untruly they spoke; I do not yet show with what wonderful blindness of shamelessness they lied. Certainly, when you read in my letter, as you write, about those whom I called Maximianists, both condemned by your council and received back, you were greatly moved, since (I shall use your words) you still did not know what the truth was. Then at once, as you relate, you inquired more carefully of your bishops, and, with them teaching you, you learned both the decree of the council and the sentence pronounced against those who were condemned, and the order of the whole affair; and since you believed that I too did not know what had been done, exhorting me to learn what the truth was, you then related everything in order. See that in this case I set down your very words from your letter; for they are most necessary to me.