Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 3.75–4.1

“Truth,” you say, “is often among few; to err is the mark of many.” And so as not to seem to contradict in your words the great fruitfulness of that barren one to whom it was said, “Many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband,” you brought a testimony from the gospel: “For few are those who are saved.” Solve, then, the question how the Lord himself says, “How narrow and confined is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it,” and the same Lord says elsewhere, “Many will come from east and west and recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven”; how also in the Apocalypse is shown their multitude, which no one can number, from every nation and tribe and tongue, having white robes and bearing palms, who had endured tribulations for the faith of Christ; how the same are few who are many. For neither of these is true and the other false, since both are spoken by divine truth; unless that the same good and true Christians, who in themselves are many, are likewise few in comparison with the bad and false. So the many grains with which great barns are filled we call few in comparison with the chaff. So also (to speak of the very testament of God made to Abraham concerning his seed, which is Christ) the many stars, which we cannot count and with which so great a heaven shines all around, we call few in comparison with the sand of the sea. Perhaps the stars signified spiritual Christians, and the sand of the sea carnal ones, through whom and from whom heresies and schisms also arise; yet the world is full of both kinds, since the same Lord says, “The field is this world”; and you yourself, the truth forcing it from you, said, “The whole world is turning daily to the name of Christ.” Through the whole field, then, that is, through the whole world, there is wheat, through the whole there are tares, since he who cannot be deceived said of both, “Let both grow until the harvest.”

Let, then, the ungodly deserters of the wheat, which grows with such fruitfulness through the whole world, restrain themselves, and not dare to boast of the fewness of certain separated tares. But if they boast, in this very point too those same Maximianensians come forward against them, set in the divine judgment to confound them in everything and, if they are wise, to correct them; for, being far fewer, they were persecuted by those who trusted in their own numbers, who by persecuting converted some of them back to their communion, and so left the rest, most righteous, I suppose, to be very few.

“The East,” you say, “does not communicate with Africa, nor Africa with the East.” Not indeed in the heretical chaff separated from the Lord's threshing floor; but in the Catholic wheat and the chaff within, the East communicates entirely with Africa and Africa with the East. For some heretics here, others there and elsewhere, contend with the Catholic unity spread everywhere. For she is everywhere, from whom those went out who could by no means be everywhere, saying, as was foretold of them, “Behold, here is Christ, behold, there”; some in this place, others in another, showing their own little parts of their presumptions, or rather their amputations, and with ungodly pride denying the root from which they were broken off. To this church, then, which with abundant success, as it spreads through the whole world, bears from every nation, tribe, and tongue a multitude clothed in white and bearing palms, which no one can number, as is written in the Apocalypse; to this church, I say, with which it is plain that the party of Donatus does not communicate, your forefathers ought to have proved whatever true evidence they had about the traitors. If they had done this, they themselves would be in it, and those whom they accused outside it. But now, since we see that the accused remained in it, what good should we think of the accusers, whom we see outside it? And therefore, in that fourfold division of mine, where I said that when evidence about the traitors is brought from both sides, either both are true, or both false, or ours true and yours false, or ours false and yours true, when you saw that in the first three you were very easily defeated, you chose this last in vain as a way to escape. For though you notice how shamelessly it is said, yet even those true documents of yours, if there were any human documents, ought to have been proved to that church which the divine documents prove.

Tell me, I beg you (but do not pour clouds over the unskilled, so that, since you cannot convict the accused traitors, you want again and again to accuse the arts of dialectic), tell me, then, I ask you: was this case of yours, with your true documents, brought to the judgment of the churches overseas founded by apostolic labor, or was it not? If it was brought, did you win in that judgment or were you defeated? If you say you won, why did you not communicate with those churches in whose judgment you won? But if, as your very communion, estranged from them, sufficiently shows, you were defeated, why do you quarrel with us over a case lost, whether bad or good, having this as your greatest crime: that you drench the Christian world with the crime of traitors whom you could by no means convict in the judgment of the churches overseas, even bringing forward true documents, because in that case, in which it could not be present, it chose to believe the judges, not the defeated accusers? You are not, then, guilty because you lost a good case, to speak on your terms, in the judgment overseas, but because you do not hesitate to charge the crime of the accused and (to grant us too much) of the judges to so many innocent Christian peoples spread far and wide through so many nations; by cleaving to whose communion as to the Lord's wheat you ought to have tolerated, as chaff, until the time of winnowing, according to the gospel writings and with Cyprian also admonishing, both those men, traitors as you say, and those judges, bad as you think, so as not to perish by deserting the threshing floor. But if that case of yours, with its true documents, which you chose for yourself, was not brought to the judgment of the churches overseas, how could so many bishops established among their peoples be rightly condemned by them in a case unknown and not brought to them at all? Or how ought African Christians (I do not say those who had thought them innocent, but even those, if any, who knew them to be traitors), because of the tares which they saw to be in the church, to separate themselves from the so manifest innocence of the wheat growing so far and wide and ignorant of these men, so as to be condemned for the crime of violating unity itself, on account of another's crime, by which, tolerated for unity, they would not have been stained?

What good does it do your case, then, to have chosen from those four propositions that your documents are true and those we bring against your people are reckoned false? See, here too you are defeated, since by what you think are your true documents the traitors could not be convicted where they ought to have been; whether those same documents were hidden by your people, or the traitors themselves hid from the judges by some cunning, or were hidden by the corrupt judges themselves. Look at the seed of Abraham, which in God's testament grows through all nations as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea; and dare to say, dare to believe, dare, if there is any fear of God in you, to think whether so abundant a harvest through the field of the world could perish because of some African tares, hidden for whatever reasons.

You exaggerate the persecutions which you say you suffer, though you, rebelling in so sacrilegious and manifest an obstinacy against the peace of the holy church, are spared with wonderful gentleness; and you say in the first parts of your letter that, when Caecilian's crime became manifest to the emperor Constantine, he too condemned him by his sentence to live in exile at Brescia. Who would doubt that you are either deceived or deceiving in this, since you also mentioned that Felix of Abthugni was convicted of handing over in the proconsul's court by some Ingentius or other? See, I insert the sentence of the proconsul Aelianus, by which Felix was cleared and acquitted. If you wish to read the whole proceedings, get them from the proconsul's archive. “Aelianus, proconsul, said: From the declaration of Caecilianus, who says that the records are false and that very much was added to the letter, it is plain with what intention Ingentius did these things; and therefore he will be taken into prison, for he is needed for stricter questioning. But it is plain that Felix, the devout bishop, is free of the burning of the divine documents, since no one could prove anything against him, that he handed over or burned the religious Scriptures. For the questioning of all those written above has made plain that no divine Scriptures were found, or spoiled, or burned. This is contained in the records: that Felix, the devout bishop, was not present at those times, neither gave his consent, nor ordered anything of the kind to be done.”

I insert also the rescript of the emperor Constantine to Probianus, testifying to the same thing and showing how troublesome your forefathers were before him as accusers of the innocent: “The Emperors Caesars Flavius Constantine and Maximinus and Valerius Licinianus Licinius to Probianus, proconsul of Africa. Aelianus, your predecessor, rightly, when Verus, of most perfect rank, the vicar of the prefects, was then held by ill health throughout our Africa, performing his functions, believed that among other things this business or odium which seems to have been stirred up against Caecilianus the bishop and the Catholic church should also be called to his own examination and order. For when he had caused Superius the centurion, Caecilianus the magistrate of Abthugni, Saturninus the former curator, Calibius the younger, curator of the same city, and Solon, public slave of the above city, to be present, he gave a proper hearing; so that, since it had been objected against Caecilianus that he seemed to have been raised to the episcopate by Felix, against whom the betrayal and burning of the divine Scriptures seemed to be charged, it was established that Felix was innocent of it. Finally, when Maximus contended that Ingentius, a decurion of the city of Zigga, had forged a letter of Caecilianus the former duumvir, we saw from the records attached that the same Ingentius had been put on the rack, and was not tortured only because he asserted that he was a decurion of the city of Zigga. Hence we wish you to send the same Ingentius under fitting escort to my court, that of Constantine Augustus, so that, in the hearing and presence of those who are now pleading and do not cease to petition day after day, it may appear and be made known that they have wished in vain to stir up odium against Caecilianus the bishop and to rise violently against him. For so it will come about that, such contentions being set aside, as is right, the people may serve their own religion without any dissension and with due veneration.”

I insert also the words of Constantine from his letter to Eumalius the vicar, where he testifies that he heard the parties and found Caecilianus innocent. For when he had related in what he said above how the parties were brought to his judgment after the bishops' judgments, he says: “In which I saw clearly that Caecilianus was a man endowed with all innocence, keeping the due duties of his religion and serving it as was fitting; and it plainly appeared that no crime could be found in him, such as had been put together against him in his absence by the pretense of his adversaries.”

Why did you not insert the sentence of Constantine by which you say he was condemned and placed in exile at Brescia, most eloquent man? How much more fitting it would have been to insert this than something or other about the council of Serdica, which is shown to have nothing at all to do with you or with the case between us and you! For why Caecilian was at Brescia, which you most slanderously call exile, when he preferred his presence to be lacking to the church rather than peace, what need is there for me to say? Meanwhile you read out no sentence of an emperor condemning him, and yet you think that Caecilian condemned by the emperor should rashly, I do not say be heard or said, but even written. Yet according to your words, see, I see Caecilian in exile, the emperor condemning him: answer at least at whose accusation, and now ask me what you likewise set down, empty as it is, after many empty things in your letter: “Who agrees less with the Testament set forth: he who suffers persecution or he who carries it out?” These are certainly your words. Look, then, at Caecilian, who suffered persecution and, as you yourself said, was placed in exile; look also at your people, who, as the emperor himself testifies in his own words, did not cease to petition against Caecilian day after day; and answer me when I ask you in those same words of yours: who agrees less with the Testament set forth, he who suffers persecution or he who carries it out? But if you read everything carefully, you will find that Caecilian suffered persecution from your people even before the emperor; but you will not find him condemned by the emperor; indeed you will find him acquitted.

Further, if (as you chose for yourself as a great point, that the documents you bring about the crimes of handing over are true, and those we bring false) even in this the truth of God overcomes you, which, as it foretold, so presents the church bearing fruit and growing in the whole world; since documents of others' crimes, though true, do not prejudice her in any way. For to the nearer bishops overseas, through whom the report of such things either passes into more distant parts or does not pass, either they were not demonstrated as they ought to have been, or they were not believed by those to whom they could be demonstrated, or, if believed and kept hidden, they in no way reached others; nor can anyone, even one man, much less so great a number of Christians placed in so many nations, be guilty of sharing another's crime, if he either learned no true documents of it, or someone with feigned innocence deceived him with false documents. If, then, as I had begun to say, in this which you chose as a great point, that the testimonies you bring about the traitors are true and those brought against you false, you can do nothing against the Catholic church spread over the whole world and against the providence of God, by which, to use your words, the whole world is daily turning to the Christian name, how much more do you fail in your accusations, when this very handing over, whose name they affect to shudder at, we charge against you much more probably (as I said in that letter and say now), since those who made this schism, separated from the body of Christ, handed themselves over to the devil; and since we hear you only naming the names and crimes of traitors, while we show both the church proceedings in which they confessed about themselves, and the municipal proceedings in which they are read to have done it!

But you, a clever examiner and weigher of words, teach us what the comparative degree means, and exult as a victor because I could not say, “We charge you with handing over more probably,” unless I admitted that you charge us with it probably. “For if you,” you say, “more probably, then we probably”; and you teach this: that “probably” and “more probably” are like “truly” and “more truly,” and that this degree increases what is placed before, it does not disprove what was said before. You add other words, by which we may understand this more clearly, and say: “So it is with ‘well’ and ‘better,’ ‘badly’ and ‘worse,’ ‘horribly’ and ‘more horribly,’” showing that so it is with “probably” and “more probably.” From this you think it is gathered that, if I charge what is false more probably, it remains that I confirm that you charged what is true probably. Do I say here that, in a church question or disputation, you try to teach us the technicalities of grammar, what the comparative degree means, that it increases what is placed before, it does not disprove what was said before? For I see how ineptly I would charge you with what you would not see, when you thought anticategoria should be charged against me as from the art of rhetoric, a kind of question, where it is said, “Not I did it, but you did it,” which I showed to be found even in prophetic authority.

Yet consider more carefully, lest perhaps you find in the authors of Latin speech, whom the technicalities of the grammarians serve, that this degree does not always increase what is placed before, but sometimes is set over against its contrary. An example of this usage occurs to me for the moment from the letter of the apostle which he wrote to the Hebrews. For when he was speaking of the blessing of the land, which, having received the rain, yields fruit, he then added: “But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to a curse, whose end is burning.” And so as not to seem to wish this for those to whom he was speaking, he says: “But we are confident of better things concerning you, dearest brothers, things that belong to salvation.” You surely notice how he said “better” here, not because what he had said above, bearing thorns and thistles and deserving burning, was good, but rather because it was bad, so that, avoiding it, they would choose and wish for better things, that is, good things opposed to such great evils. But perhaps you think the apostle should be heard as he says of himself, as a man unskilled in speech though not in knowledge, and that therefore one should follow in him the authority not of words but of things and thoughts, contending that “good” ought to have been put where he put “better.” What if I too, now accustomed to these writings and forgetting those I learned as a boy, spoke thus: “You charge handing over; this very charge we bring against you much more probably,” as if saying “probably,” putting the comparative for the positive, not because you charge it probably but rather improbably, as he said “better,” not because those things were good, but rather because they were bad? Why do you so rashly conclude from this that I confirmed you charge it probably because I said we charge it more probably?

And yet you would not blame me for an error in the word even according to the grammarians, if you had been willing at least either to read the authors of those words attentively or to recall them from memory. For the boys' books have it, though it was not said by an unskilled boy: “May the gods grant better things to the pious, and that madness to their foes; they tore their mangled limbs with naked teeth.” How, then, “better things to the pious,” as though those things were good for these men, and not rather great evils, who tore their mangled limbs with naked teeth? You surely now see that, as this poet could wish better things for the pious, although the things in comparison with which he was wishing them were not good, so I too could say, “We charge you with handing over more probably,” although you were not charging it against us probably. But I pass over the fact that even “probable,” when said, is not consequently true, since those things are called so which can happen and usually do, and are therefore “proved,” that is, approved and believed, even if they did not happen; while what is true, when it is shown, is necessarily probable, and certainly more probable than that. Recall the book where you learned these words: you will surely find that I do not deceive you. Hence, even if I granted that your people charged ours with handing over probably, I would not therefore contend that they charged what was true; and I would rightly say that we charge it more probably, since we are accustomed to hear from you only the naming of traitors, but none shown by any proceedings, church or public, to have confessed; while from us are brought forward both the public proceedings where your people handed over, and the church proceedings where, having confessed, they were left to God as judge.

But I do not pass over your so manifest help, by which, even unknowingly, you favor us greatly in teaching the rules of the comparative degree, that it increases what is placed before and does not disprove what was said before. For according to this rule of yours, according to certain words of yours in your letter, we have won our case without any difficulty. For you said in the first parts of your letter, as though accusing our obstinacy, that so many proofs from the law could not persuade us of what is better and truer. Here I conclude, according to your technicalities, that we already hold what is true and good, if we cannot be persuaded of what is truer and better. Since, then, we do not cancel your baptism, which, to speak on your terms, is truer and better, why do you cancel our true and good baptism? Likewise, when you had said, “This we too want, that Christ be the origin, root, and head of the Christian,” you at once added, “But we ask through whom this is better done.” In saying this you certainly granted that it is done well even through a bad minister, but better through a good one. Since, then, we do not cancel the baptism which you say is given through your minister as through a good one, why do you cancel the baptism which you contend is given through our minister as through a bad one? For you said, “We ask through whom it is better done,” and your rule is that this degree increases what is placed before. Hence, if it is done better through yours, as you think, then it is done well through ours too; and therefore, when you rebaptize one baptized by us, you cancel by sacrilegious presumption what by this rule of yours you grant was done well.

I fear I would press your modesty too hard if I showed how lightly and scurrilously you thought you should mock, as a witty and clever man, certain words of mine which I used figuratively: “brow” for shame, “mouth” for speech, “trident” as a weapon for a threefold speech, “three-headed beast” for an error raging with three slanders against the innocence of so many peoples. Keep childish things rather for children. For it does not move me that you say the weapon of Neptune does not befit a bishop because of the trident, since it is also a fisherman's tool and therefore apostolic, for the Lord made his apostles fishers of men. For Scripture says that our God has both wings and arrows, and yet we do not worship Cupid.

You even blame me for not keeping the gentleness promised at the beginning, because, moved by the mention of the Manichees, I said: “Just as, as the Lord said, Satan cannot cast out Satan, so the error of the Donatists cannot overthrow the error of the Manichees”; as if I had compared Petilian to Satan and not the error from whose snares I desire him to be freed. It is well that the apostle fortified us against such slanders in that very passage where he admonishes us to be gentle, patient, and modest when we correct someone who disagrees. For when he had said, “The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, teachable, patient, correcting with modesty those who think otherwise,” he at once added, “in case God may give them repentance to know the truth and they may come to their senses from the snares of the devil, having been taken captive by him according to his will.” See the apostolic gentleness! Those with whom he commanded that one deal calmly, patiently, and modestly, he says are taken captive by the devil; and yet he did not lose the gentleness he commended, because he would not keep silent the truth he taught.

But see for yourself whose part you play, who, by accusing my words as abusive and savage, try to stir up to quarreling those whom you will not have come together to dispute; for I do not wish to say that you too delight in quarreling. More sparingly, indeed, and more modestly, but as if from the side, you charge me with things that do not concern me at all. For what I judge of the most pestilent vanity of the Manichees, to be anathematized by all Christians: if I were only accustomed to say it, and did not also testify to it in many and varied written books, not even so would there be any room for your slander against me. For the Catholic church would not wonder that I am falsely accused by you, by whom the whole Christian world, with so many churches, even those first ones propagated by apostolic labor, is accused with false charges. But since anyone who wishes can read my many writings against the Manichees, who once deceived me as a young man, no one is so foolish as to believe your words about me rather than his own eyes and senses.

“But,” you say, “not a few of our people hold the letter of your primate, in which he wrote something or other about you when he did not wish you to be ordained.” I would not care at all about that letter, even if there were not read for us a plain statement of the one by whom it is said to have been written, condemning that slander and falsehood; how much less does the Catholic church care about it, whose case we plead against you, which, trusting in so many divine testimonies, has no human testimonies about any man, true or false, that take away from her the truth in which she rejoices! Stop such things: I am one man. The case of the church is being pleaded between us, not mine; of the church, I say, which has learned from her Redeemer to put her hope in no man. And yet even about myself, even if you knew my way of life, you would not rightly be believed as my enemies. For the judgment of men there is a great supply of witnesses who know me; for the sight of God only conscience; and though I bear it fearless against your accusations, yet I do not dare to justify myself under the eyes of the Almighty, and I await from him the overflowing abundance of mercy rather than the strict examination of judgment, thinking of what is written: “When the righteous king sits on the throne, who will boast that he has a pure heart, or who will boast that he is clean from sin?”

But what does it matter to the question in dispute between us what kind of man I am, since on the Lord's threshing floor I am straw if bad, grain if good? Yet you, if you were grain, would not, as Cyprian himself also admonishes, flee the chaff mixed with you before the time of winnowing. Accordingly, if we find among us a known bad man, you rightly charge us with him; for there your whole defense rests, that you separated yourselves so as not to perish by the contagion of others' sins. Hence you boast that you have made a new kind of threshing floor, either one that has only wheat, or one in which only wheat appears, which needs not a winnower but a searcher. For your Parmenian too, comparing your splendid purity with our impurity as its contrary, dared to insert the saying of the prophet Jeremiah where he says, “What has chaff to do with wheat?”; which he said, as the reading itself shows, against those who made their dreams equal to the divine oracles. Yet your arrogance and dreadful pride is declared in Parmenian's letter, where, against the divine Scriptures and against the admonitions of Cyprian, he proclaimed you, before the last winnowing which the world awaits, as wheat purged of chaff.

What more fitting, then, against this most deceitful pride could have been provided for you than the case of the Maximianensians? Whatever you are accustomed to say against us as traitors, you said heavier things against the Maximianensians, whom you received back condemned, when they were condemned. You stir up odium against us about the emperors as persecutors: you carried out persecution against the Maximianensians before judges whom the emperors themselves sent. You contend that the church's baptism cannot be given outside the church: you did not cancel the baptism which the Maximianensians gave in the crime of schism, in those to whom they gave it when you received them. If these things ought to have been done for the peace of unity, you find nothing for which to accuse us; but if they ought not, do not accuse us unless you condemn yourselves. I do not want you to stretch yourself over many things; for I too could briefly recall what has been said against you. But think from this alone: set the case of the Maximianensians before your eyes. If you can answer us about this, attack the rest; but if you cannot, you had better be quiet than kick against the goad.

Although I have already answered your letter, Cresconius, carefully and sufficiently in three books, and not small ones, in which you thought you should defend Petilian's writings against my replies, by which they were refuted, yet I have undertaken in this shorter work too to deal with you on the single case of the Maximianensians, and from this one case to show how vainly and emptily you said everything you set down in that letter. For the benefit of God is not to be despised, which he deigned to grant both as a shortcut for our stewardship and, if you are wise, as a help to your correction. Without your knowledge and without our doing it, he so ruled the minds of your bishops that, while they accused the Christian world of being stained by others' sins through the communion of sacraments (sins that were even false and unproven), in the case of Maximian they were compelled to confess that those to whom, as innocent, they gave an extension of time to return (though not Maximian's ordainers, yet condemners of Primian placed in his party) were not stained by the sins of those whom they condemned, although placed in one communion of sacraments with them; and that those who would not recognize the baptism of Christ even when given in those churches which the labor of the apostles spread and founded, contending that baptism cannot be given outside the one church, and blaming us because we did not cancel baptism given by those whom we denied to be in the true church, received those baptized in Maximian's sacrilegious schism and did not dare to cancel baptism in them; and that those who accuse us, as of a crime of persecution, concerning the laws of the Christian emperors by which their perversity is ordered to be corrected, approached judges sent by those very emperors, accused Maximian and his associates gravely before them, alleged the council in which they condemned them in the proconsular records, and obtained most effective orders by which those men were driven from their seats. Having done all these things themselves, they still try to pour clouds over the unskilled, though most evidently overcome not only by the holy Scriptures and by many certain documents of earlier events, when they separated themselves from unity, but also by their own most recent deeds and examples.