Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 3.55–3.74

Yet no good people in the Catholic church are pleased if anyone, even a heretic, is treated savagely to the point of death. Nor do we approve if, far short of death, the lust for revenge repays evil for evil by harassing anyone; detesting much more if anyone, taking the occasion as if of an effort for unity, covets and takes what belongs to others, not those things which under the name of the church ought not to be possessed by heretics, but the private property of anyone. All these things displease the good, and they forbid and restrain them as far as they can; but as far as they cannot, they bear them and, as I said, praiseworthily tolerate them for the sake of peace, judging them not praiseworthy but damnable; and they do not abandon Christ's crop because of the tares, nor Christ's threshing floor because of the chaff, nor Christ's great house because of the vessels for dishonor, nor Christ's nets because of the bad fish.

When kings are in error, they make laws for that error against the truth; when they are in the truth, they likewise decree against error for that truth. So the good are tested by bad laws, and the wicked corrected by good laws. King Nebuchadnezzar, when perverse, gave a cruel law that an image should be worshiped; the same man, when corrected, gave a severe one, that the true God should not be blasphemed. For in this kings serve God, as is commanded them by God, insofar as they are kings, if in their kingdom they command good things and forbid evil things, not only those which pertain to human society but also those which pertain to divine religion.

In vain you say: “Let me be left to free choice.” For why do you not proclaim that you should be left to free choice in murders, sexual crimes, and any other crimes and shameful deeds? Yet it is most useful and most salutary that all these be restrained by just laws. God did indeed give man free will, but he willed neither that a good will should be fruitless nor that a bad one should go unpunished. “Whoever persecutes a Christian,” you say, “is an enemy of Christ.” You say what is true, but only if he does not persecute in him what is hostile to Christ. For a master in his slave, a father in his son, a husband in his wife, when both are Christians, ought they not to prosecute vices contrary to Christian truth? Or, if they do not prosecute them, will they not deservedly be held guilty of negligence? But in all things a measure must be kept, suited to humanity and fitting to love, so that not all that is in one's power is put forth, and in what is put forth love is not lost, and in what is not put forth gentleness is shown. But where no power is granted by divine or human laws, nothing should be attempted shamelessly and imprudently.

Hear now about the Maximianensians what I put off a little earlier, so that you may know that your bishops lied to you, and may know that in this one case of the Maximianensians the matter is settled, not only as concerns the question of baptism or the toleration of others' sins in the church without one's own contamination, but also as concerns the odium of persecution, in which your people surpassed all Roman laws and powers against us. For if you were not reluctant to read that memorable sentence of the council of Bagai of your three hundred and ten bishops, from which I inserted above what seemed sufficient, since those words most plainly show that the twelve by whose hands, present, Maximian was ordained were condemned with him, while an extension for returning to your communion was granted to those who, though in Maximian's communion and having condemned Primian, were not present when Maximian was ordained (for not all could be present, or ought to have been by custom), I greatly wonder how you allowed yourself to be deceived by some liar, when you could have read the very words, which are not obscure and require not an acute mind to discuss them but only attention to notice them, so as not to be deceived by him. But since it may be that you did not read it, and with simple feeling readily believed a bishop or bishops suggesting something else to you, take it and read it, and notice how truly I speak to you. For they cannot correct, or rather falsify, as they please to cover their lie, the sentence which they alleged in a public trial before the proconsul, and which they so often took care to have inserted in the municipal records, as the need of their case required, when they were proceeding against those men to drive them from the basilicas.

This certainly is how that sentence begins: “When by the will of almighty God and of his Christ we were holding a council in the church of Bagai, Gamalius, Primian, Pontius, Secundianus, Januarianus, Saturninus, Felix, Pegasius, Rufinus, Fortunius, Crispinus, Florentius, Optatus, Donatus, Donatianus, and the rest, three hundred and ten in number, it pleased the Holy Spirit who is in us to establish perpetual peace and to cut off sacrilegious schisms.” Then, after it had vomited many horrible things against them, a little later it says: “Maximian, the rival of the faith, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, the thunderbolt of our sentence has struck from the bosom of peace.” You see, I think, that Maximian was condemned without any doubt. Then, after a few but very grave things which it pleased them to declaim against him, adding his ordainers and condemning them with him without extension: “Not only him,” it says, “does the just death of his crime condemn; the chain of sacrilege also drags very many into partnership in the crime.” Then, when it had poured out what it thought should be declaimed to exaggerate their crime too, it named them and concluded them condemned thus: “Know, then,” it says, “that the guilty of a notorious crime, Victorianus of Carcabia, Marcianus of Sullecthum, Beianus of Beia, Salvius of Ausafa, Theodorus of Usula, Donatus of Sabratha, Miggin of Elephantaria, Praetextatus of Assuras, Salvius of Membresa, Valerius of Melzi, Felicianus of Musti, and Martialis of Pertusa, who by the deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel from collected dregs, and also the clergy formerly of the church of Carthage, who, being present at the crime, played the pander to an unlawful incest, have been condemned by the truthful mouth of the whole council, by the judgment of God presiding.” What could be said more plainly, more manifestly, more expressly?

Hear now to whom an extension of time was granted, so that you may see that they are those who were not present when hands were laid on Maximian at his ordination: “But those,” it says, “whom the shoots of the sacrilegious branch did not pollute, that is, who with the modest shame of faith withdrew their hands from Maximian's head, we have permitted to return to mother church.” You see how they do not say these are condemned, but that they are to be held by the same sentence of condemnation then, if they refuse to return after the appointed day has passed; which day they appoint thus: “And lest,” it says, “the narrow time for those returning should take away the hope of salvation by the pressure of a restricted day, for those who acknowledge it, to whom it is permitted, the previous statutes remaining, we open to all the door of acknowledgment until the eighth day before the Kalends of January next, so that those who return may have the foundations of honor and faith intact. If anyone through sluggish slackness cannot enter it, let him know that by his own will the way to all pardonable approaches has been taken away from him. For the sentence pronounced will remain upon them, and a fixed penance for those returning after the appointed day.”

Surely you now see, most eloquent man, that you ought rather to turn back against those from whom you heard the lie all the things you thought should be said against us, as if we had lied about this matter. Surely you see that those two with whom we are dealing are of the number of those who were condemned with Maximian, twelve, without extension, not of those to whom time for returning was granted. Surely it is clear, bright, and prominent, and can in no way be confused, obscured, or covered over, what he who pronounced that sentence distinguished, illuminated, and expressed with such eloquence. Why are words still given? Why is a manifest error still contended for against the clearest truth? Why do men deceive themselves? If they tie and wrap more tightly the snares of the devil which they ought to undo and break, hear still more, so that they may blush the more, and would that it were with some fruit of correction.

In the council of Bagai mentioned, the day and consul are written not only of the day on which the council's decree was made, but also of the extension itself. From the eighth day before the Kalends of May, in the year after the third consulship of Theodosius Augustus and of Abundantius, which is the day of the council of Bagai, to the eighth day before the Kalends of January, which is the day of the extension, nearly eight months are counted. But a petition is found before the proconsul Herodes (see how long after) against Felicianus and Praetextatus, to have them excluded from the places of Musti and Assuras, of which I have added a few lines: “In the year after the consulship of our lords Arcadius, for the third time, and Honorius, for the second time, Augusti, on the sixth day before the Nones of March, at Carthage, in the council chamber of the praetorium, Titianus said: Peregrinus the presbyter and the elders of the church of Musti and of the region of Assuras pursue the following petition: When Donatus, a man of venerable memory, was asserting the holiness of the Catholic church against the error of faithlessness, the observance of almost the whole world, nourished in his name and worship, grew together. But when the poisons of a certain Maximian polluted the praiseworthy and admirable purpose of that religion, an assembly of many bishops, gathered into one by God's inspiration, condemned the man, or rather the plague, which displeased the supreme majesty, by the proper restraint of a pure mind. Those also whom the error of another's presumption had drawn away, having first offered a harbor of repentance, if they wished to return within the time to the path of religion they had abandoned, it restrained with an equally vigorous admonition. But wickedness delights in its own institutions and does not desert itself once it has fallen headlong. For the same Maximian nourishes the audacity he began and associates others with himself in his madness; among whom also a certain Felicianus, who at first followed the right way, is darkened by the contamination of this depravity, and, placed in the city of Musti, thought that walls consecrated to almighty God, the venerable church, should be held as if by a kind of siege. Praetextatus too imitates him in the parts of Assuras. But when the fellowship of the priests became known to the power of your equity, you ordered, as the records testify, that, every effect of opposition being rejected, the churches claimed from profane minds should be restored to the most sacred priests.” You see, surely, that up to the day of this petition about three months had passed since that granted extension. And this conflict was drawn out, as far as we have been able to trace from the proconsular and municipal records, until the proconsul Theodorus, that is, until the eleventh day before the Kalends of January of the next year; on which day the clergy and elders acting under the bishop Rogatus, who had been put in the place of the condemned Praetextatus of Assuras, cited the order of that proconsul, while those men were outside your communion and were being accused in public courts as enemies of that communion of yours, and were sought to be expelled from places consecrated to the most high God as sacrilegious.

Whatever number, then, they belonged to (though it is plain enough which they belonged to), those who did not return to your communion within the appointed day of the extension, how could they baptize during all that time while estranged from you? How did they return with those whom they baptized outside your communion, not expiated by another baptism? In this deed we do not blame you: that you recognized the baptism of Christ as in no way sacrilegious even in a sacrilegious schism; that, the perversity of men being corrected, you approved what had been right even in the perverse; that you did not confuse human faults with divine seals; that you judged that the gifts of the church, which could be had and given outside the church too, to the punishment of those who have and receive them, were neither to be condemned in the condemned nor changed in those received.

Nor do we blame you for this: that those very men, guilty of a notorious crime, even after the sentence of their condemnation and after the day of extension set for others, you nevertheless believed should be gathered in without any degradation and expiated by the very abundance of love, for the sake of the weak peoples who adhered to them, remembering, I suppose, the householder's care lest the wheat be rooted up together with the tares. Nor do we blame you for this: that, while they were still held in the notorious sacrilege of schism, you prosecuted them even through the earthly powers. For this was done, as far as the outcome itself showed, with the aim of correcting, not harming, so that, harassed by those troubles, they would be compelled to reflect on their crime and, the furies of animosity being checked, to amend it. But because we do not blame these things, we therefore rightly find fault with the crime of your schism, deservedly detest it, and by every reason refute it, by which you separate yourselves from us, or rather from the Catholic communion of the whole world, charging us with such things as you cannot deny, I think, that you yourselves did in the case of the Maximianensians. For if the baptism given through Felicianus and Praetextatus, when, separated from you, they were joined to Maximian, condemned with him by you for the crime of wicked schism, is Christ's baptism and therefore in no way to be destroyed, how is the baptism given in the church which, to use Cyprian's words, extends its branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness, not Christ's baptism, or how is it to be destroyed; the baptism given, finally, in those churches which you have never ceased to read in the apostolic writings and have never condemned in any council, as you did Felicianus and Praetextatus? If it pleased you to restore the condemned in full for the sake of patching up the party of Donatus, why are you offended by the unity of Christ spread over the whole world, which either could not condemn men unheard, or altogether neither condemned nor acquitted men unknown, or believed innocent those whom it learned were acquitted? If you drove from their seats the Maximianensians who split from you, by prosecuting them through the orders of judges, why do you complain that you suffer undeserved things through the emperors who send those same judges, you who by a wicked schism have split from the church of him of whom it is written that all the kings of the earth will worship him, all nations will serve him, and that he will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth?

See, I no longer say, “If it is not lawful to persecute, Optatus persecuted,” lest you still say that whatever Optatus did without your people's knowledge does not concern them, although they will not allow lands most remote from Africa to say, “Whatever Caecilian did without our knowledge does not concern us.” Who were traitors in Africa, what evil the African bishops did, we do not know; but I plainly say: if it is not lawful to persecute, your people persecuted the Maximianensians, in a way you cannot deny. If those who suffer persecution are innocent, the Maximianensians suffered it. Will you now also say, “The people destroyed the basilica, or the cave, of Maximian without any of our people being its author”? Although, if it were asked of what communion that crowd was (supposing they are not believed to have been sent in by your people), they would perhaps be found to be your people, or at least mixed with yours as helpers. But what is that to us? For you answer: “We did not do it, we did not send them; who they were we do not know.” Yet, since the fact is plain, that he whom you admit to be unrighteous suffered persecution from whomever it was, the things you suffer cannot prove you righteous. But by whom the Maximianensians also suffered persecution, the proconsular records testify. Advocates were briefed, courts approached and stirred up as against heretics; those men asked protection for themselves as possessors; your people alleged the council of Bagai and demanded that the condemned be driven from the sacred seats; it was pressed, the case was pleaded, when, in the presence of Salvius of Membresa, you showed them to be heretics, won, and expelled them. I see, then, that they suffered persecution and that you carried it out. I ask who are the righteous; you will claim that you are; I conclude: so the one who suffers it is not, as a consequence, righteous, nor the one who carries it out, as a consequence, unrighteous.

You will again accuse the arts of dialectic; yet you will at least silently approve that I speak the truth, and will choose to correct your opinion, in which you said that no persecution is just, rather than call unrighteous the persecutors of the Maximianensians, whom you have at last recognized from the proconsular records to be your own people. Indeed, it was not without fruit that you persecuted the error of your schismatics; for by that same conflict and those troubles you corrected Felicianus and Praetextatus. And it is said that the people of Musti and Assuras, as I too heard from them in person, feared Optatus the Gildonian when he threatened heavier destruction, and compelled their bishops to return to Primian's communion. But since Optatus exacted this by no public records, why should I use such things against you, who are ready to deny whatever you can deny? There exist proconsular and municipal records, by reading which we have shown with how much force the men mentioned were pressed by your people to give up their places. We do not blame, we do not grudge it: you did not labor in vain, you did not frighten to no purpose, you did not harass uselessly. Their animosity displeased them when afflicted; they were broken, amended, corrected, and received back, after their condemnation, after the extension for others, after your persecution. And they were received as they had been honored, neither expiated nor degraded by any humiliation of a heavier penance, neither they themselves nor those with whom they were received, whom they had separated with them against you, baptized outside you, and perhaps rebaptized after you.

You no longer have anything by which to heap dark lies on people ignorant of things long past. That your people accused Caecilian before the emperor Constantine at that time, public records proclaim. That the case was pleaded and brought to its due end, including the clearing of Felix of Abthugni, Caecilian's ordainer, whom in the council of Carthage they called the source of all evils and accused before the same Constantine with constant petitions, as he himself indicates in his writings, the proconsular archives testify. You resist, you protest, you fight against the plainest truth; you say that the judges overseas were also corrupted by Caecilian, and the emperor himself perverted by some favor; a defeated accuser is all the more shameless for becoming also a slanderer of the judge. Yet among all those lies of yours by which you slander the judges overseas, we at least establish this: that your forefathers were the first to bring this case before the emperor, the first to accuse Caecilian and his ordainer before the emperor, the first to persecute Caecilian and his associates before the emperor. Hence you stir up, as it seems to you, very great odium against us, because, defeated, you suffer what you would certainly have done as victors; as if they wished to blame Daniel, who, when he, the innocent, was freed, were themselves devoured by the lions by which they had wished him to be devoured through slander. We establish also that, whatever you think or pretend about the judges by whom Caecilian, present, was acquitted in the judgment overseas, and about the emperor Constantine himself, before whom your forefathers accused Caecilian and whose judgment, finally, they chose in preference to the bishops' judgment, as though he were corrupted by favor, all the Catholic Christians then living, in near or distant lands spread so far and wide, whom the report about Caecilian and his colleagues could reach, ought to have believed not the defeated accusers but the church judges. For where we cannot all be judges, we do better to believe those who could be, than, by believing defeated litigants whose judges we could not be, to dare to judge the judges themselves.

Accordingly, since those at whose accusation Caecilian, present, was acquitted tried with most audacious wickedness to drench with Caecilian's crimes, whether invented or at least not proved, not only those by whom he was acquitted but also all Catholic Christians placed among any nations, who either knew nothing at all of that African dissension or chose rather to believe the judges pronouncing, as it seemed to them, at their own peril than the defeated accusers, and to deny that they all are Christians, at last the case of the Maximianensians was sent to you, in which you yourselves should condemn, yourselves persecute the condemned, yourselves receive the persecuted in the same honor, yourselves accept the baptism of the condemned; so that those who dared to accuse the innocent should be compelled to acquit the guilty, not men whom they had believed innocent, but men whom, as they say, they had condemned by the judgment of God presiding through the truthful mouth of their plenary council. Who ever said to anyone: “Because you believed the judge who acquitted rather than me who accused, you are guilty along with those whom I accused”? And yet this is said to the Christian world, which, if it were said to one man, would seem, I do not say most unjust, but most insane. O wonderfully unworthy thing! Africans accused Africans of the crime of handing over; judges overseas acquitted the accused; and the peoples of the nations became traitors because they believed the judges who acquitted rather than the accusers who charged.

Rightly, party of Donatus, has the case of the Maximianensians been given you to drink: drink the cup from the hand of the Lord who rebukes and admonishes. If you understand and yield, this is the mercy of one who corrects, lest you fall into the judgment of one who punishes. It is said to you: proud and stiff-necked, be reconciled to the Christian peoples everywhere whom you have unjustly accused, now that you have been reconciled at least to your own condemned. Why do you cancel the baptism of Christ in those, or from those, churches which the apostles founded? You have already received the baptism which your condemned gave before they were reconciled to you. Why do you boast of the persecution you suffer? If it is a sign of righteousness, the party of Maximian is more righteous; for it suffered from you and suffers with you. Hear the divine psalm: “Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.” For you call us your persecutors, when, desiring you to be saved, we pursue medicinally your wounds which we wish to heal; for which we are grievously afflicted, while we treat you, by your clergy and Circumcellions as by your teeth and heels. Do not be ungrateful for such medicine, which you have imitated; you too corrected Felicianus and Praetextatus by persecutions. And would that you corrected the whole, and that, as they returned to you, so you too would return to the Catholic mother!

Against her, brother Cresconius, you are carried away by such audacity that you try to refute even those divine testimonies I mentioned and to shout down the voices of God. For I set down in that letter you speak against what is in the holy book about the seed of Abraham, God saying to that father of ours: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” This the apostle calls a testament, saying: “Brothers, I speak in human terms: even a man's testament, once ratified, no one annuls or adds to. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say ‘and to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘and to your seed,’ which is Christ.” So abundant a fruitfulness of this seed was promised that it was said to him: “So shall your seed be, as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered.” To this multiplication and fruitfulness of the church, which spreads through the whole world, which is believed to have been so prophesied and is so displayed to the eyes of all, even unbelievers, that it shuts even the mouths of the pagans, very few of whom remain against it, you dare to prefer the party of Donatus, saying that you have some people or other outside Africa too, though, since they do not appear, you do not deny that you are accustomed to send them bishops from Africa, one or two or at most three; and you argue in vain against the most evident truth that the whole world is not in communion with us because either many barbarian nations still remain who have not yet believed in Christ, or many heresies under the name of Christ are strangers to the communion of our fellowship.

Nor do you notice, nor even ask those who know, how many of those very barbarian nations you mentioned have already been made over to the name of Christ, and how the gospel does not cease to bear fruit by growing into the rest, until, when it has been preached in all, the end comes. For so the Lord himself says: “And this gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Unless perhaps insane pride drives you into so great a precipice that you think what was foretold must begin from the party of Donatus, not from those churches which the apostles planted, with which the party of Donatus has no communion. Or will it try to rebaptize those too, in order to fill the world, while the Catholic church grows through all lands and it diminishes daily even in Africa itself? O mad perversity of men! You believe you are praised for believing in Christ, whom you do not see, and you do not believe you are condemned for denying the church, which you see; though the head is in heaven, and the body on earth.

You recognize Christ in what is written, “Be exalted above the heavens, O God,” and you do not recognize the church in what follows, “and your glory above all the earth.” You recognize Christ in what is written, “They pierced my hands and feet; they counted all my bones. They looked and stared at me; they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots,” and you do not recognize the church in what follows a little later: “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before him; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he will rule over the nations.” You recognize Christ in what is written, “O God, give your judgment to the king and your righteousness to the king's son,” and you do not recognize the church in what the same psalm testifies: “He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. Before him the Ethiopians will fall down, and his enemies will lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and the islands will offer gifts; the kings of the Arabs and of Sheba will bring presents. And all the kings of the earth will worship him; all nations will serve him.” You recognize Christ where it is said to the Jews, “I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord almighty, nor will I accept sacrifices from your hands” (since the coming of Christ certainly took away all those sacrifices of the Jews), and you do not recognize the church in what follows: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord almighty.” You recognize Christ in what the prophet says, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,” and the rest that is read there of him as in a gospel, and you do not recognize the church in what he says a little later: “Rejoice, barren one, who do not bear; break forth and cry, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband. For the Lord has said: Enlarge the place of your tent and set up your courts; do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes; spread out again and again to the right and to the left. For your seed will inherit the nations, and you will inhabit the cities that were desolate. Do not fear, for you will prevail; and do not be ashamed that you were detestable. For you will forget your shame forever, and you will not remember the disgrace of your widowhood. For I am the Lord who makes you; the Lord is his name; and he who rescued you, the God of Israel himself, will be called God of the whole earth.”

In these holy writings, certainly, Cyprian learned the church, so as to say: “So the church of the Lord, flooded with light, has stretched out her rays through the whole world; she extends her branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness.” Against so great a manifestation of the divine words, Cresconius, you raise false charges by looking at the remainder of the nations which the church has not yet occupied; how much she has occupied, from which she spreads daily to take the remainder, you do not notice. For how would you not deny the future completion of these prophecies, you who do not hesitate to deny so great a progress, to which that very completion is due, not only against the divine voices but now even against your own? For by the great force of the truth itself it was drawn from you too, so that you said, not knowing or not noticing what you were saying, that the whole world is turning daily to the Christian name. Why then does the party of Donatus not communicate with this church, which spreads by growing through the whole world? To avoid, no doubt, being polluted by sinners. And where is the fact that Cyprian would not have deserted, not this church of yours, which, remaining in Africa, slanders the world, or travels from Africa among a few in hiding, but that church which extends her branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness, even if in her communion there are, and not only are but are seen to be, sinners, saying: “For even if there seem to be tares in the church, our faith or 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”?

Here you too answer, if you are pleased to answer anything true. And how will what is written be fulfilled: “The wicked son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his going out”? Let it convict the wicked son; let it condemn and persecute the Maximianensians, and be reconciled to the condemned and persecuted: let it in this way be refuted, or in this way confounded, or in this way corrected. “How,” you say, “is the whole world full of your communion, where there are so many heresies, none of which communicates with you?” Indeed, the world is full not only of heretics but also of other wicked men, and the world is full of holy and faithful servants of God; just as the sea is full of bitter waves and is full also of sweet fish.