Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 4.17–4.35

In vain, then, with abusive mouth, did you wish to accuse our conscience as publicly exposed and condemned for the crime of offering incense, of handing over, of persecution, so as to prove from this that we cannot give baptism; since you both spread falsehoods and, however that may be, certainly the conscience of the Maximianensians, condemned for the crime of sacrilege, could give baptism, which you were afraid to cancel; and that it can be given even by persecutors is taught through you yourselves, who, having most fiercely persecuted those same Maximianensians, not only baptize but contend that you alone ought to baptize.

You say it is written in the law, “I do not want the oil of a sinner to anoint my head.” This is neither so written nor to be understood as you think. But is not the oil of a sinner the oil of the sacrilegious Praetextatus and Felicianus? You say likewise that it is written, “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?” You neither attend to this carefully nor understand what it is from the very context of the reading. Yet notice what that most eloquent sentence of Bagai proclaims: “The union of peace and concord,” it says, “is indeed desired, as it is written, ‘Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.’ But by the truth-telling wave the shipwrecked limbs of some have been thrown on rough rocks; like the example of the Egyptians perishing, the shores are full of corpses, whose punishment is greater in death itself, because, after their life has been wrung out by the avenging waters, they do not even find burial.” How, then, could these men, not only dead but, what is graver, unburied, baptize? How did washing profit those who were baptized by these dead men, whom you received in the same washing and did not wash again, if it is to be understood as you think? For as to your thinking that in my letter, which you seem to yourself to answer, I excepted only the worshiper of an idol as guilty of the gravest sin, and your pressing vehemently to prove that no sinner is excepted in what you say is written, “I do not want the oil of a sinner to anoint my head”: look at Felicianus and Praetextatus, whether they were not sinners when they were said by so great a council to be dragged with Maximian by the chain of sacrilege. Dare to assert, dare to contend, dare at least to say that they were sinners indeed, but hidden, whom I read there as guilty of a notorious crime. And yet, even if they had sinned lightly, even if they had been hidden, you try in this suggestion to extort from the testimony you set down about the oil of the sinner that no sinner is excepted. Where will you be, if it is so? Where will you flee? In what hiding places will you be able to conceal yourselves with your sacrilegious men, with your men guilty of a notorious crime, with your unburied corpses?

You say that, when we are challenged on what license we claim the right of baptism, we do not discuss the merit of our actions or the innocence of our life, but say it is permitted to anyone; and that, as though guilty of crimes already judged, while we wish to show that the power of baptizing is present even in sinners, we openly confess that we have sinned. As though we ought to speak against God on account of our merits, so as to make baptism as righteous as we are righteous; when no man ought to presume on his own righteousness, and we prove from this most of all that baptism is Christ's, not men's, because it does not vary with the variety of human merits. On this I would argue more fully, were I not rather using the shortcut given by you. For by receiving and not destroying the baptism which the Maximianensians gave, asps, vipers, parricides, Egyptian corpses, and whatever else was declaimed against them with grandiloquent mouth in the council of Bagai, so that our case might become very easy, you yourselves have judged sufficiently that baptism does not depend on the merits of those by whom it is ministered, nor of those to whom it is ministered, but on its own holiness and truth, because of him by whom it was instituted; to ruin for those who use it badly, to salvation for those who use it well.

I wonder, though, how they could persuade even you to mention Cyprian in your disputation, by whose writings, even the ones you say are his, on destroying baptism given among heretics or schismatics, your whole case is overturned. But this we ought to argue against the Maximianensians or others who do not receive baptism given either among you or among us; you, however, have already ended this case with wonderful ease; you have already received, with Praetextatus and Felicianus, in their congregations, the baptism given in Maximian's sacrilegious schism; you have already acted, without any hesitation, against the writings you say are Cyprian's and against all others who held this view. For as to your saying that the Easterners were separated from your people's communion because afterwards, agreeing with us, they chose to cancel the judgment they had held about baptism: if this was done by some few Easterners (and it matters whether this can be shown), they certainly corrected their judgment. And you too, by receiving the baptism given in Maximian's schism, cancelled your ancient opinion; yet you are with yourselves, and you will not be with the Easterners.

But no doubt you think you have found where to spread out your eloquence when, at what I set down in my letter, “Whether one receives the sacrament of baptism from a faithful or a faithless steward, let all his hope be in Christ,” you exclaim and say: “O splendid command of a priest! O praiseworthy precepts of righteousness from a good father! ‘Make no distinction,’ he says, ‘between the faithful and the faithless; let the godly and the ungodly seem the same to you.’ It profits nothing to live with good morals, because whatever is permitted to the righteous, the unrighteous too can fulfill. What 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?” These are certainly your words, by which you blame my opinion, though I neither agreed to this at all nor wrote it; for there is a very great difference between the faithful and the faithless, not as to the sacrament, if both have it, but as to merit, because one has it for salvation, the other for punishment; nor can the unrighteous fulfill whatever is permitted to the righteous, because, though the unrighteous can baptize, the unrighteous cannot enter the kingdom of heaven; nor does the one who ministers baptism purify or wash or cleanse or make anyone innocent, but the grace of God who gives and the good conscience of the one who receives. But you, look whether there was no difference between Primian and Felicianus, when Primian sat among the three hundred and ten, by whom it was said of the other that the poison of asps was under his lips, that he had feet swift to shed blood, that affliction and misery were in his ways, that he did not know the way of peace, and that there was no fear of God before his eyes; whether he was not then stained, unclean, and dirty, who glued together a filthy vessel from collected dregs; not faithless, having the poison of asps under his lips; not criminal, guilty of a notorious crime. And yet he too now sits as your bishop with Primian, and has with you now those he baptized then, never washed again afterwards.

And still you fight against the truth and do not grant that Christ always gives faith, that Christ is the origin of the Christian, that the Christian fixes his root in Christ, that Christ is the head of the Christian. To these words of mine, set down in that letter against Petilian, you add your words and say: “This we too urge, this we want; but we ask through whom this is better done”; and you do not notice that Petilian, to whom I then replied and whose letter you try to defend and affirm against my reply, does not urge this. For he said plainly: “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient. For he who receives faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt.” Tell me, what place has he left for Christ in washing the conscience of the baptized, or from whom does the baptized receive faith, when he says that the conscience of the giver is looked to, to wash that of the recipient, and that one who receives faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt? You indeed seem to yield to so great a weight of truth, and say that you urge and want this: that Christ give faith and that Christ wash the Christian for entering upon new life; but you ask through whom that is better done which ought not to be done without a minister. Petilian, however, did not say, “The conscience of the minister is looked to, through which Christ washes that of the recipient, or through which Christ gives faith”; but he wanted the recipient's conscience to be washed by the very conscience of the giver. Nor did he say, “Whoever receives faith through the faithless receives not faith but guilt,” so that he might seem to receive it from Christ, though through another; but he said absolutely “from the faithless.” And to this, as if proving it, he added: “For everything consists in its origin and root, and if something does not have a head, it is nothing”; making the minister himself, whose conscience he said was looked to, not as that through which Christ washes, but as that which washes the recipient's, the very origin, root, and head of the baptized.

Accordingly, in this place I answer not Petilian, whose words you did not defend, but you, who said for your own opinion something else, not what he said. For you, as you write, want and urge this: not, as he said, that the conscience of one giving in holiness washes the recipient or gives the recipient faith, nor that it is itself the origin, root, and head of the believer; but that through it Christ washes, through it Christ gives faith, through it Christ is the origin of the Christian, through it the Christian fixes his root in Christ, through it Christ is the head of the Christian. For this is why you ask through whom that which you grant is done by Christ is better done; where you too, as far as I see, do not deny that this can be done even through a bad minister, but say it can be done better through a good one. For what else is it that you say, “This we too urge, this we want; but we ask through whom it is better done”? And so Christ washes even through the stained conscience of one who does not give in holiness, but better through the clean conscience of one who gives in holiness; Christ gives faith even through a bad minister, but better through a good one; Christ becomes the origin of the Christian even through a faithless steward, but better through a faithful one; the Christian fixes his root in Christ even through a reprobate farmer, but better through an upright one; Christ can be the head of the Christian even through Felicianus, but better, you think, through Primian.

So there is little or perhaps no disagreement between us on this matter. For I too say that the divine sacraments are better dispensed through a good minister than through a bad one; but this is better for the sake of the minister himself, that his life and morals may agree with the things he ministers; not for the sake of the one who, even if he comes upon a bad minister dispensing the truth, receives security from his Lord, who warns and says: “Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.” I add also that it is better for this: that the one to whom it is ministered may more easily imitate the uprightness and holiness of a good minister by loving it. But the things ministered are not truer and holier because they are ministered through a better man. For they are true and holy in themselves because of the true and holy God whose they are; and so it may happen that one coming to the fellowship of God's people finds one by whom he is readily baptized and chooses another whom he may profitably imitate. For he is certain that the sacrament of Christ is holy even if ministered through a less holy or an unholy man, but that he himself will be punished by the holiness of that same sacrament if he received it unworthily, if he used it badly, if he did not live in a way fitting and suited to it.

For I ask you: if perhaps one whom Primian baptized in your communion lives very badly, while one whom Felicianus baptized in Maximian's schism lives very well, to which of them do you think the kingdom of God is open: to the one whom, according to you, a good man baptized as a bad one, or to the one whom, according to the council of Bagai, a sacrilegious man baptized as a devout one? But perhaps you say, and say truly: “One placed in schism cannot be devout.” I agree. Yet one baptized by Primian, whom you believe devout, can be sacrilegious, or hidden, in your communion. Further, if the one whom Felicianus baptized in the chain of sacrilege were corrected, leaving the sacrilege of schism, by the church's communion, do you dare to say that the baptism in him would become better, although you do not dare to deny that the man himself could have become better? For you judged this by the very deed, since you received all those whom Felicianus and Praetextatus baptized in the sacrilege of schism, condemned and detested by you, when they returned to you with them, without any destruction or repetition of baptism. But if, in saying, “But we ask through whom it is better done,” you put the comparative degree for the positive, saying, “We ask through whom it is better done,” as if you said, “We ask through whom it is done well,” wishing it to be understood that through a bad minister it is done badly, I do not press you on the word, but rather remind you that you ought to have said, “We ask through whom it is done,” rather than, “We ask through whom it is done well,” as if it could happen that Christ gives faith not well, that Christ is not well the origin and head of the Christian, that the root is not well fixed in Christ. For either it is not done, or, if it is done, it is without doubt done well.

Yet we treat these things so that the unity of the wheat itself may not be deserted on account of bad dispensers of sacraments that are not theirs but the Lord's, who must be mixed with it until the time of the winnowing of the Lord's threshing floor. But to make a schism from the unity of Christ, or to be in schism, is certainly evil, and a great evil; nor can it happen at all that Christ gives the schismatic, not faith, but sacrilegious error; or that the schismatic has fixed his root in Christ, or that Christ is the origin or head of the schismatic. And yet, if he gives the baptism of Christ, it will have been given; if he receives it, it will have been received; not for eternal life but for eternal punishment, if he persists in that sacrilege; not by turning into evil the good he has, but by having the good to his own evil as long as he is evil.

Perhaps you ask me to prove this. What else shall I tell you than what I have undertaken in this work? Read the decree of Bagai; look at Felicianus and Praetextatus. Schismatics gave it, schismatics received it; both were received and gathered by you, neither were the former degraded nor the latter rebaptized. Surely you no longer ask whether it is better done through a just minister or an unjust one, since the baptism which Primian, just according to you, gave is not better than that which the unjust Felicianus gave. Surely you are now compelled to understand how the apostle said, “Neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth”; and you recall that you said in vain: “Just as for planting and watering only a diligent and faithful farmer is sought, so too in the sacrament of baptism only a most righteous workman is approved.” See, Felicianus was neither diligent nor faithful nor most righteous, but rather neglectful of his salvation, faithless, and most unrighteous, when, associated with Maximian and, as your three hundred and ten proclaim through one most eloquent mouth, placed in the chain of sacrilege, he ministered the baptism which you did not dare to cancel.

Surely you see that the testimony you set down from the prophet does not apply to this case: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, and they will feed you, feeding with discipline.” For Felicianus, being sacrilegious, was not after God's heart, nor was he feeding his sheep with discipline in sacrilegious schism; and yet he baptized them, and in receiving them you recognized that what he gave was not his but God's. Surely you perceive how I mentioned from holy Scripture that it is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man, and that you answered emptily, as far as this case is concerned, that you seek all the more that the one through whom this sacrament is celebrated be just and faithful because you have hope and trust in God, not in man, and because faith and righteousness, which you always look for in his ministers, are God's. See, in Felicianus, when he was guilty of a notorious crime, there was neither righteousness nor faith; and yet there was baptism; and for those to whom it was given by him, when they were gathered by you, you say righteousness was added; you do not say baptism was lacking.

Accordingly, as to what you next ask me, “If baptism given by anyone and in any way ought not to be cancelled, why did the apostles baptize after John?”, you yourself now solve the question: if, as you say, the apostles baptized after John, why did your people not baptize after Felicianus those whom he had baptized in sacrilegious schism? And from this at least learn that whatever is read or discussed about John's baptism is entirely foreign to this case. And I do not know what came into your head, to say that the Jews to whom Peter said, “Let each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” had already been baptized by Moses, they who were born so many generations after that servant of God brought their ancestors across the Red Sea. Or if they had baptism from Moses because they were descended from those whom the apostle says were baptized into Moses, dare to say that all who are born of faithful Christians already have Christian baptism. You see, I think, with how much emptiness that is said. But however that may be, even if the apostles had baptized after Moses, the servant of God, I would press you to give a reason why your people did not baptize after Felicianus, the sacrilegious Maximianensian.

Now as to what I set down, “If those erred who wished to be of Paul, what hope, pray, is there for those who wish to be of Donatus?”, I think you did not refute it in the earlier parts of your letter, as you yourself also consider from what we have said sufficiently above. So you do not, as you think and exult as if certain, rightly conclude that all those things said by Petilian or anyone else were rightly said. For in the very order in which you ran through them briefly, as if recalling and remembering them, I rather conclude, in this case of the Maximianensians, that they were not rightly said. For neither was there the conscience of one giving in holiness in Felicianus, when, cleaving to Maximian, he was dragged by the chain of sacrilege; and those he baptized were baptized by one guilty of a notorious crime and therefore by a manifestly faithless man; nor was a sacrilegious man their origin, root, and head for salvation; nor was one condemned in the fellowship of sacrilegious schism and still placed in that same sacrilege a good tree; nor was he a good man bringing forth good things from the good treasure of his heart, when it was said of him and his other associates: “whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” And yet, when your people came to agreement with him, they at last recognized, frightened by the force of truth, that the baptism which such a man had given was not his but Christ's.

Come now, let us see in its place how you extricate yourself in your letter from the case of the Maximianensians. For all who read these writings are without doubt waiting to see either what you said on this point where you said it, or what I answered. And so I do not wish to discuss what you answered to my charges about Optatus the Gildonian; I do not wish to linger longer on the case of a man about whose condemnation by your people I am not dealing. I certainly give up this charge, and perhaps this will be so among posterity, when his memory has been blotted out. But now, as long as there are men who knew his life and morals, they will rather complain that I said too little of him than that I said anything false. For they do not read my writings as you do, who ask me what that man, whom I called, as it were, a raging wave, swallowed up, when you have Praetextatus and Felicianus there. For my words there are these: “These men indeed so insult their schismatics as to call them both dead and unburied. But surely they ought to have wished that they be buried, lest, from the multitude of unburied corpses lying on the shore, Optatus the Gildonian, advancing with a military column like a raging wave leaping beyond, should afterwards suck back inward Felicianus and Praetextatus.” Since you read these words of mine there, why did you not set them all down when you tried to answer them? Why do you blame me, as it were, for not saying what that raging wave swallowed up, when you see written there, “should afterwards suck back inward Felicianus and Praetextatus”?

For what else do your people usually answer, as if in great defense of themselves, when such a reception of the condemned Praetextatus and Felicianus is charged against them, except: “Optatus wanted this, Optatus did this”? This the cities of Musti and Assuras themselves testify, which say that, fearing the Gildonian soldiery because of Optatus's threats, they compelled their bishops to return to Primian's communion. But you, since you saw that it could not be shamelessly denied that this was done by him, denied that it was written by me, thinking perhaps that my writings rather than that fact could be unknown. But suppose your bishops were permitted, by some Donatian or Numidian privilege, not to know about their colleague what all Africa was proclaiming, while they will not allow crimes charged by Africans against Africans, never proved, so often acquitted, to be unknown to the eastern and western ends of the earth; suppose the baptism given by Optatus is valid among you, whom you would not condemn in such a way that yet you did not dare to acquit; and suppose baptism given in the churches founded by apostolic labor is not valid, those of the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians, and the others written of in the holy writings which you too read, where, I do not say that false charge, but perhaps not even the true name of Caecilian has been heard; suppose Optatus had the conscience of one giving in holiness in that life which you, as your writings show, even if you were ashamed to condemn it because of us, were afraid to acquit because of God; and in that public reputation in which it seemed to you a hidden conscience could be looked to; and suppose the conscience of so many and such great Christian nations is accused because it did not know the very remote lawsuits of the Africans: could they likewise be ignorant even of the crimes of these men, Felicianus and Praetextatus, whom three hundred and ten condemned in a plenary council?

And still you charge the Catholic unity with I know not what deeds of our people, which either are false or are not sins, or, even if true and sins, cannot stain the fellowship of the good. For the good do not share in others' sins, to the doing of which they certainly do not consent, even though with those who do them, until they are separated from the Lord's threshing floor like chaff by the last winnowing fan, they share not their sins but God's sacraments; and within the same net, like good fish with bad until the separation which will be on the shore, that is, at the end of the age as at the end of the sea, they are parted from them not by bodily segregation but by difference of life and morals. So the eleven apostles did not share in the thefts of Judas, and yet they visibly cleaved with him to the same Lord, heard the same teacher, received the same gospel to be believed, took the same sacraments, mixed with him in bodily assembly, separated by spiritual unlikeness. So the apostle Paul did not share in the contumacy and envy, that is, the devilish faults, of those who did not proclaim Christ sincerely, and yet he preached the same Christ with them, partook of the sacraments of the same Christ, and said of them, “Whether in pretense or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed” (for the martyr Cyprian, most loving of unity, both understood and wrote that these were not separated by any schism or heresy, but mixed with the brothers in bodily assembly). So the same Cyprian did not share in the avarice, plunder, and usury of his colleagues, of whom he said that, while brothers were hungry in the church, they wished to have money in abundance, to seize estates by treacherous frauds, to increase their gain by multiplying usury, an evil he even compared to idolatry; yet he did not flee their bodily assembly, but stood at the same altars and took the same most holy food and drink. For they ate and drank judgment not to others but to themselves; while he shared with such men not their sins but the mysteries of Christ, most closely joined in assemblies, most widely separated in morals. For this purpose those comparisons and examples were set forth in the Scriptures: that we might learn to be wheat and not desert the Lord's threshing floor because of the mixture of chaff; to be good fish and not go out by breaking the nets because of the mixture of bad ones; to be vessels of mercy made for honor and cleansed, and not flee from the great house because of the vessels of perdition and dishonor. For in the temporal gathering and mixture of both, the wicked are praiseworthily tolerated for no other reason than that the good may not be damnably deserted. Since you too do this, by the same necessity, among your so many and so manifest evil men, you can easily notice, if you wish, that it is only by sacrilegious animosity that you separate yourselves from Christians of so many and such great nations.

And so, not only Optatus, so notorious in that Gildonian fellowship, but if any obscure person among you has done some evil with your knowledge, since you could not separate him from your communion, because either you are not believed when you accuse him or you do not dare to accuse him lest you be unable to prove it, either you must desert the party of Donatus, or you will be such as he whose sin you know, though you live differently. This is said to you most rightly, not according to the true opinion, but according to yours. For who does not know that you are a stranger to his evil if you do not share in his sin by consent? But from this you are compelled to recognize with what great impiety you charge the Christian world with crimes of Africans, either false or certainly unknown, when you do not wish to be charged with what you know of another, because you cannot persuade of it those from whose fellowship you do not wish to depart. Thus, so as not to desert those you think good, you are compelled to bear those you know to be bad; and therefore the truth convicts as wicked all who, because of others' crimes, whether true or false, yet unknown to the rest and not about to harm themselves, broke the unity of so many nations and deserted the good. So that you could not in any way excuse this so great a wickedness of the party of Donatus, the case of the Maximianensians was provided for you, in which, as in a mirror, you may see your depravity and, if you are willing, correct it; but if you are not willing (I do not wish to say anything more severe, since I know you have a heart). For what will you say against these things?

It is well that you yourself write that, when you had read all I inserted in my letter about the Maximianensians condemned and received back, you were greatly moved. I believe it: I see plainly a case that ought greatly to move. Let us see, then, by what reason given this disturbance of yours was calmed. You say that at once you inquired more carefully of your bishops, and that, 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. Then, believing that I still did not know what had been done, and admonishing me to learn what the truth was, you related plainly, not what the truth is, but what your people substitute for the truth for the incautious and careless. For you say that, when the error of Maximian strove to join as many bishops as possible to itself, a council was gathered by your people and a sentence pronounced against all who had persisted in his schism, which you mention that I too have read; that, when this sentence was confirmed by the consent of all, it was nevertheless decided by the council's decree to grant an extension of time, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be held innocent; that so it came about that not only those two whom I mention but also many others were restored to the church cleared and innocent; whose baptism you think ought not to have been cancelled for this reason, that, restored within the appointed day, they were not held by the final sentence, nor, when they baptized, had they been separated from the church, not yet cut off, that is, by the fixed limit of the time that had passed. Here, in that very falsehood of your account (since I have set down not only your thoughts but your very words), I wonder at your intelligence, I wonder at your mind fighting against your intelligence. Never anywhere has it appeared so clearly how much the prejudice of human presumption can do, either to keep one from seeing the most manifest truth or to make one affirm the most shameless falsehood. Do you really not perceive that you have set down things so plainly contradictory that it is scarcely credible one man could say both? You say, of course, that a sentence was pronounced against all who had persisted in Maximian's schism, and that it was decided to grant an extension of time, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be held innocent. How then do you yourself likewise say that they did not baptize outside the church before they had corrected themselves from that schism? So, when they were with Maximian, they were not outside the church? Do you notice what you are saying? Do you find a way out, where to flee, where to hide yourself?