Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 4.2–4.16

From this source alone, then, shall I proceed; from this I shall answer, as far as the Lord helps me, every part of your letter, without any difficulty, indeed with great ease. And first, as to that point in which, contradicting yourself, you chose eloquently to find fault with eloquence, as if it were the enemy of truth and rather the patron of falsehood, so as in that way to show the unskilled that I, as eloquent, am to be guarded against and fled: if my eloquence were really as great as you attribute to me, though accusingly, would you not be compelled, when the decree of the council of Bagai is read out, by which, as is written there, “the thunderbolt of our sentence has struck from the bosom of peace Maximian, the rival of the faith, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram,” to praise eloquence? Further, if that subject were set before me, when could I say: “Although the channel of a poisoned womb long covered the harmful offspring of viperous seed, and the moist curds of the crime conceived warmed themselves with slow heat into the limbs of asps, yet the poison conceived could not be hidden by a vanishing shelter. For even if late, the pregnant vows of crimes brought forth their public crime and their parricide”? When would I constrain myself to seek out these words, when roll them forth in expressing them? When would I stir the mind of reader or hearer to hatred of the guilty with such force, with such sound? Were these things said less truly against those against whom they were said? Is the credibility of so great a council diminished or its authority shaken by this eloquence? Surely, that which seemed more eloquent was chosen above all because all wished it to be theirs, so that through this one the silent mouths of three hundred and ten might resound. See, the eloquence you found fault with, which you warned should be detested and avoided as seditious and, under a Greek name too, maliciously artful, so charmed so many of your bishops that in their plenary council no one wished to put forward his own sentence, but all made their own the one which could be spoken more eloquently and ornately by one man. Let us, then, be allowed without odium to dispute against men's errors not altogether without polish, if so many and such great bishops of yours were allowed to condemn men themselves so eloquently and ornately.

As for your blaming, under the faulty name of contentiousness and animosity, our eagerness to contend for the truth, because we have often wished to confer with your people so that, error being removed, brotherly love might rejoice in the bond of peace: would it not, I ask, be better that the cause of truth and unity should be dealt with among bishops in peaceable words and in more peaceful places than that it should be litigated in the forum by bishops through advocates? This was done by the party of Primian, your bishop of Carthage, against Maximian and against those who were condemned with him in the council of Bagai, before the legate of Carthage and before four or more proconsuls. Certainly in a conference for disputation care must be taken that it does not break out into a lawsuit, and it can be, and usually is, guarded against by the modest and gentle; but when the controversy is fought out in the forum with advocates struggling on both sides, then without doubt it is a lawsuit. Nor do I blame this in your people, if they were driven to it not by love of litigation but by the necessity of taking measures; but I admonish you, a man endowed with good intelligence, to notice, perceive, and understand that those who did not decline but undertook and carried on the din of the forum and the quarrels of the courts, in order to convict the accused and expel those whom they had already condemned in council, could much more easily have conferred peaceably with us, if they had not preferred to cover a bad case with an excuse rather than end it by disputation.

As for your asking me in the meantime, before you come to my discourse in which I refuted Petilian, by whom it is fitting for you to be baptized, whether rather by one whom I too affirm to have baptism, or by one whom yours contends does not have it: this question too has been removed from the empty chatter of the unskilled by the case of Maximian, as far as you are concerned (for among the Maximianensians themselves it still remains). For your people, having condemned Maximian for the sacrilege of schism (Maximian, whom Primian had condemned when he was his deacon, and through whom Primian had been condemned by very many colleagues conspiring against him), at once condemned with him by the same sentence the twelve ordainers of that same Maximian. Of these, two, Praetextatus of Assuras and Felicianus of Musti, after they had accused them in the proconsular court, had shown by the same sentence, alleged through advocates, that they were condemned with the council of Bagai, and, though the proconsul ordered it, had been quite unable to expel them from the places they held, they afterwards received in such a way that they communicated with them in their honors intact, and, the peoples being brought into peace together, rebaptized none of those whom they had baptized in the schism.

The decree of the council of Bagai exists, alleged before the proconsul, with the advocate Nummasius pleading, when he was acting to have the church of Membresa handed over to Primian's communion, Salvius, who had long held it, where he had obtained the episcopate in the party of Donatus, being expelled. He was sought to be expelled for this reason: that Nummasius read that he had been condemned in the council of Bagai among the twelve ordainers of Maximian, whom the same Nummasius, mistaking the number, calls eleven. This petition of Nummasius was afterwards read by Titianus, acting expressly and by name before the same proconsul against Praetextatus and Felicianus. The words of this advocate are these: “But wickedness,” he says, “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.” Then a little later, so that the same advocate may show what was ordered, he reads the petition of Nummasius which I mentioned above, in which, when the proconsul had said to Nummasius, “Read the bishops' judgment,” that judgment of Bagai was read, in which Maximian is condemned in these words: “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; and that the earth has not yet opened and swallowed him, it has reserved him by the heavenly powers for a greater punishment. For if he had been snatched away, he would have gained his punishment by the shortcut of death; now he gathers the interest of a heavier debt, being dead among the living.” Then the sentence of Bagai is pronounced against those twelve ordainers of his thus: “Not only him,” they say, “does the just death of his crime condemn; the chain of sacrilege also drags very many into partnership in the crime, of whom it is written, ‘The poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; affliction and calamity are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.’ We would not indeed wish to cut them off as from the joints of our own body; but since the pestilent rot of a festering wound finds more relief in amputation than in a mild remedy, a more salutary course has been found, lest the pestilent poison creep through all the limbs: that the wound that has arisen should be cut away with brief pain. Know, then, 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.” After the condemnation of these men, among whom are read Praetextatus of Assuras and Felicianus of Musti, with whom, as I said before, they came to agreement after obtaining proconsular orders against them, to the others placed in the same schism of Maximian, even the condemners of Primian, merely because they had not been present at Maximian's ordination, they gave in the same council of Bagai an extension fixed to a definite day, which is contained in these words: “But those,” they say, “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. For as much as we are cleared of the death of the guilty, so much do we rejoice in the return of the innocent. And lest 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.”

Since, then, you yourselves do not deny that some of all these returned to your communion, and since, in so recent a memory, with the men concerned still living, there is a most widespread and clear knowledge of it; since both those to whom an extension was given (for, as the words of the same council sufficiently show, they invite them to return to mother church and rejoice over their return as of innocent men) and those whom they condemned with Maximian without any extension baptized outside your church during all that time, whether up to the day of the extension, when they were in communion with Maximian and placed in his schism, or even after the day of the extension had passed, when the advocate Titianus was demanding by name that Praetextatus and Felicianus be expelled from the basilicas, with whom Primian afterwards came to agreement with their honor intact: how do you now dare to say that the one baptism cannot be given except in the one church, when you recognized and received the baptism given by these men in a sacrilegious schism, without any controversy, and did not dare to cancel it? Nor can you say that you conferred nothing on those whom you received in the same baptism. If, then, I ask what you conferred, you will surely answer: “So that they should not perish by the very sacrilege of schism, so that they should not have the baptism of Christ for judgment and not for reward, for ruin and not for salvation, like the military mark in deserters, we conferred peace, we conferred unity, we conferred the fellowship of the church, so that they might merit to receive the Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured out in our hearts, without whom no one reaches the kingdom of heaven, even if he is imbued with all the lawful sacraments.” You would answer this truly, if you held the true church. Yet for your admonition it suffices that you understand that you will receive in the true church what you believed was received in your communion by those whom they baptized in Maximian's sacrilegious schism and who returned to you from there with them; and so that you too, though you have received the baptism of Christ, must be punished if you do not hold the unity of the Catholic church, just as you would doubtless not doubt that those baptized in Maximian's schism must be punished if they were not joined to your communion, though you judged that their baptism should not be cancelled when they came to you from there. You see, then, that this too, which moved you about the sacrament of baptism, has now been resolved in the case of the Maximianensians.

Now let us see those things by which you believed you refuted my letter. And first, as to your asking why I call your people Donatists, adding that Donatus was not the author and founder of a church that had not existed before, but one of the bishops of the ancient church derived from Christ: you do not notice that Maximian says this of himself too, from whose name nevertheless you name his whole communion. Nor do you distinguish the schism he made from yourselves or other sects by any name, except that you call them either Maximianists or Maximianensians or anything else derived from Maximian's name, or certainly, more simply and without fear of the grammarians' rods, the party of Maximian. Will you say to this anything except that Maximian made a schism from your communion, but Donatus did not make this from the Catholic communion? But Maximian does not say this; he affirms rather that Primian and all of you made a schism from the party of Donatus, in which he himself remained, and reads the decrees of councils: first, the one held at Carthage by forty-three, in which Primian was condemned in advance; the other, which a hundred or more of your then bishops drew up at Cabarsussa, in which he was condemned completely and fully. What will you answer him when he brings forward such documents, except that the council of Bagai has greater authority, in which three hundred and ten condemned the same Maximian and his associates, when Primian was not pleading his case before them as one to be cleared, but sitting with them as a most innocent judge, pronouncing sentence against Maximian and the twelve associates in whose presence he was ordained, and, an extension being granted, calling back as innocent to his own peace so many others by whom he himself had been condemned?

In this conflict of yours, what do you want us, as neutral, to judge, since we are held neither by Maximian's communion nor by yours? What, I say, do you want us to judge, except that against the two councils by which Primian was condemned, the one later council of Bagai, by which Maximian was condemned, ought to prevail for him, thinking it firmer precisely because, being later, it could judge the earlier ones? See, in this we favor you; we have another case with the Maximianensians, if we should dare to give an opinion. We favor you, I say. A third judgment was held at Bagai for Primian against Maximian and his colleagues, by which, as the later one, the earlier could rightly be annulled; although we neither read nor hear of any word of appeal by Primian from the two earlier judgments to the third, except that he was first condemned in advance in his absence, and then condemned in the second. But that most eloquent sentence of Bagai was also pronounced against Maximian and his associates in their absence. And those forty-three at Carthage testified that they conducted themselves more modestly, cautiously, and carefully in this: that they sent envoys to the same Primian not once but a second and third time, so that, if he would not come to them himself, he would allow them to come to him. When he refused both, as they write, and treated those who were sent with insulting repulse, they felt that the necessity had fallen on them to provide now for the church; and so, not yet daring to rush to a final judgment, but taking counsel by a kind of preliminary judgment, so that room would be left him, if he trusted his case, to answer and clear himself at a following, larger council; and when he would not come to it, they thought he must now necessarily be condemned without any suspension of sentence. But in the decree of the council of Bagai we not only do not read that any envoys were ill treated by Maximian, but we do not even read that any were sent to him to come; we see, however, that the raising of altar against altar, and the ordaining of a bishop against that bishop who sat in the see where he had been ordained in such a way that he was not deserted by the gathering of his people nor was his communion broken off by the many other bishops, aroused such great indignation, once the sacrilegious schism had been committed, that the condemnation neither of Maximian himself nor of his ordainers could be put off any longer.

Since this is so, such things do not move you for Caecilian, against whom, while he remained and presided over his people, Majorinus was ordained, altar being raised against altar; against whom not two judgments are brought forward by you, as against Primian by the Maximianensians, but one, hastened with the haste of dreadful rashness; who did not, like Primian, refuse that his colleagues should come to him, but rather invited them to come, which they themselves could not keep silent in the decree of their council which they drew up against him; for whom not one later judgment, as for Primian, but four are read out; whose adversaries were refuted not in their absence, like Primian's, but present, before the judges whom they agreed to as judges, and even before the emperor Constantine himself, before whom they first accused Caecilian, before whom they afterwards complained of the episcopal judges, by whom he wished the case to be heard, as not judging rightly, to whom again they appealed from the second episcopal judgment, so that they were overcome when he himself heard the parties after one and another episcopal judgment; and a fourth refutation of them was not lacking either. For when they had been found to be slanderers in Caecilian's own crimes, and had brought against him the question of the handing over by Felix of Abthugni, his ordainer, Felix too was cleared by proconsular judgment, the same Constantine ordering his case to be examined, whom they wearied with constant petitions. These evils the Maximianensians did not commit against Primian; nor were they defeated so many times, nor defeated in person, nor defeated before judges whom they themselves chose; and yet, as is plain, they made a schism from your communion; and you will not notice that your people did this from the Catholic communion; by what shamelessness of most empty animosity, I do not know at all. For if you want everything you say about Caecilian and Felix his ordainer to be true because about seventy bishops judged this matter, why do you not want what is said about Primian to be true, when first forty-three and afterwards a hundred bishops judged there, and confirmed the earlier preliminary judgment by the later judgment? But if you judge those crimes of Primian false because the council of Bagai is read out later for him against his enemies, why will you not admit that the crimes charged against Caecilian are most false, for whom so many later judgments are read? If Caecilian, against whom those seventy had once judged, ought not to have found room to clear himself before other judges, neither ought Primian, whom so many more than seventy had condemned in a second hearing confirming the first. But if a third judgment, because it was made for him, supports most sufficiently one twice condemned, why do you contend, with I know not what iron brow, that a second, third, fourth, and fifth judgment does not suffice for the acquittal of one once condemned? But if perhaps number moves you, so that you think the council of Bagai prevails against the hundred by whom Primian was condemned because there were three hundred and ten in it, why will you not agree with the world in so much greater a number of bishops?

As for your charging Caecilian with that inexpiable sin against the Holy Spirit, of which the Lord says, “It will not be forgiven either here or in the age to come,” we too could teach Felicianus of Musti, whom you have today as a bishop with Primian, one of the ordainers of Maximian and condemners of Primian himself, by whom even those baptized in sacrilegious schism you did not rebaptize, that we charged a sin which is against the Holy Spirit, to whom you charged the sacrilege of schism, as was declaimed in the sentence of the council of Bagai. For just as you think that those whom you accuse of handing over the divine Scriptures to persecutors to be burned sinned against the Holy Spirit with that unforgivable guilt, because men of God, moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke those same Scriptures, so we too could charge this same thing not only, and rather, on your traitors, whom the records convict, but also we could show that we charged it on Felicianus, as I said, in the crime of sacrilegious schism; because the unity of love and peace is kept in the Holy Spirit, as the apostle says, “bearing with one another in love, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” which he certainly violates who commits schism. But we do not charge this guilt of an unforgivable and eternal sin, which is committed against the Holy Spirit, either on you, whom we do not despair can be healed if corrected while you live, or on your people who handed over the holy books to be burned with fire, except so far as they had an impenitent heart to the end of this life, separated from unity. Nor do you show that you charged this on Felicianus and Praetextatus, with whom you afterwards communicated, who are read to have been condemned by the truthful mouth of your plenary council as dragged by the chain of sacrilege into partnership in the crime with Maximian, and are proved to have been received after the day of the extension, granted not to them, already condemned, but to others as innocent.

As for your not liking the derivation of the name, so that they are called Donatists from Donatus, and your judging that it should rather be formed by the rule of Latin speech, I do not spurn your admonition; but look for grammarians as judges, before whom you may contend with the Maximianensians about this art and defeat them. For I no longer wish to call even them Maximianists, lest I offend your so learned ears; they certainly, as far as I judge, will not yield to you as easily as I do, so as to call Claudianensians, or anything else, those whom they called Claudianists, when they set down among the other crimes for which they both condemned in advance and condemned Primian that he received them into communion. And at the same time recognize that this rule of formation did not please me alone, as you charge, but that perhaps I alone yielded to you with such readiness in a matter which does not concern the case.

As for your thinking I should be more vehemently refuted because, having said “the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics,” calling heresy what you would rather have thought schism, we nevertheless receive them into communion without their being expiated from sacrilege: you who accuse us so gravely in this case, answer how your people expiated the sacrilege of Felicianus and Praetextatus, with whom they afterwards communicated, joining and restoring them to themselves as bishops as they had been before, and rebaptizing none of those whom they had baptized in the sacrilege of schism. Or perhaps they were not stained with sacrilege, as some of you foolishly say, saying that they sinned not against God but against a man? But sacrilege is a sin all the graver because it cannot be committed except against God; hence you thought I should be pressed in your disputation for no other reason, about our receiving thus those who pass over from you to us, than because I called your error sacrilegious. Read, then, the council of Bagai. Surely these are the first words there: “When by the will of almighty God and of his Christ our Savior, coming from all the provinces of Africa, we were holding a council in the holy 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.” Do you hear, notice, attend? “To cut off sacrilegious schisms,” they say. Was it, then, not against a man but against God, by wicked perversity, that Maximian alone in that schism was held by the crime of sacrilege when this sentence was pronounced? Read a little later what they say about his associates, among whom the names of these men, with whom we are dealing, are written: “Not only him,” they say, “does the just death of his crime condemn; the chain of sacrilege also drags very many into partnership in the crime.”

What is it, most eloquent man? What have you to say to me? Read what follows; see among the very many whom the chain of that sacrilege drags into partnership in the crime Praetextatus and Felicianus bound. I see sacrilegious bishops: what will you do if you do not prove them expiated? Surely you are pressed to yield to the truth, by which we say that your people are expiated when they come to us by the very bond of brotherly peace, and that love covers their sins, as it is written: “Love covers a multitude of sins.” What about those whom they baptized when separated from your communion and bound to Maximian in the fellowship of that sacrilegious chain, whom you received with them in the same baptism into peace and concord? Will you answer anything except that you rightly approved in them the same sacraments which we too approve in you? For you will be more consistent if you answer this and do not struggle against the words of your letter, in which, trying to show that not heresy but rather schism was committed between us and you, you said that for us and yours there is one religion, the same sacraments, nothing different in Christian observance. Nor could you have accused the repetition of baptism more gravely than by these words, when those seduced from us are rebaptized by your people, in whom you both feel and say and write that the same sacraments are. By what impudence of crime, then, is what was kept in those whom Praetextatus and Felicianus baptized in sacrilegious schism not kept in those whom the Christian world baptizes in holy unity? So you have already settled by your own judgment the case we have with you, when you received into the concord of the altar, without any degradation, without repetition of baptism, those who were struck with condemnation by you, who most urgently warned the peoples not to come over to you, who judged that people must be baptized even after you, together with those whom they baptized while placed outside your communion in the sacrilege of schism; and you believed them expiated from that crime of sacrilege by nothing else than the holy fire of love. Which would truly happen, if you held that same love in true unity.

But let us see also, about the words of Petilian's letter, which you wished to defend against me, how you extricate yourself in this case of the Maximianensians, the only one I have now decided to treat against your writing. He certainly set down these words of his: “The conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient.” To which I said: “What if the conscience of the giver is hidden and perhaps stained? How will it be able to wash the conscience of the recipient?” This unavoidable question, since it is not solved at all in Petilian's words, you undertook to solve in your own, and you spoke not against me but against him whom you wished to defend. For he says, “The conscience of the giver is looked to, to wash that of the recipient”; but you, admitting that a hidden conscience cannot be seen, said it is looked to in such a way that not it itself is seen, but what is known of it in public report. From this it is gathered that it is no longer true that the giver's conscience washes the recipient's conscience; but according to you his reputation washes, which certainly deceives the observer when it speaks good of the worst man, chaste of an adulterer, religious of a sacrilegious man. For it washes then, when it lies. For if report speaks the truth about a hidden criminal, then it does not wash, but stains the one who received baptism from him. And therefore see what kind of thing this report is which you wished to employ as patron of so bad a case: lying, it washes; truthful, it pollutes; so that, by your wonderful disputation, its water is not deceitful precisely when it itself is deceitful.

But why is there need to speak longer about this, when Felicianus sits today among your bishops, and whoever he baptized when he was separated from them and cleaving to Maximian in the chain of sacrilege, no one rebaptized after him? I ask Petilian what kind of conscience he then had, and I read the decree of the council of Bagai, where it is written: “Not only him does the just death of his crime condemn; the chain of sacrilege also drags very many into partnership in the crime, of whom it is written, ‘The poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.’” For among these very many Felicianus too is counted, whose water, with such lips and such a mouth, you did not reject, did not cancel, did not destroy; and because it was consecrated with the words of the gospel, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, through whatever tongue and conscience, you recognized and received it not as deceitful but as truthful. And I ask you, about this Felicianus, whose conscience was so bad when he baptized in the chain of sacrilege, what was then in public report; and I read the council again, where it is written: “Know, then, that the guilty of a notorious crime, Victorianus of Carcabia,” and among the others, whom I am tired of repeating, “Praetextatus of Assuras and Felicianus of Musti, who by the deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel from collected dregs,” and a little later: “have been condemned by the truthful mouth of the plenary council.”

What do you answer to these things? If one separated from your communion does not baptize, I read that men dragged with Maximian into partnership in the crime baptized. If one who sins against God does not baptize, I read that men bound by the chain of sacrilege baptized. If the conscience of one giving in holiness is looked to, to wash that of the recipient, I read that men poisonous with the bites of asps baptized. If, for the giver's conscience to be able to wash, his public reputation is looked to, I read that men guilty of a notorious crime baptized. Felicianus still remains in the body, and with him are all who were baptized by him in the sacrilege of schism, received into your communion and rebaptized by no one. Against Petilian, one stained with a sacrilegious conscience baptized; against you, one guilty of a notorious crime baptized. By what reasoning, I ask, do you defend yourselves, unless, convicted by your own deeds, you at last say what we too say: that neither the conscience nor the reputation of the giver washes the conscience of the recipient, but the faith of the recipient himself, and the grace not of the giver, a man, but of God; and that, if the inquiry of a good conscience is lacking in the recipient, and faith itself has wavered either wholly or in some part, men's morals are to be corrected, not the sacraments destroyed, which you confess are not other or similar but altogether the same; just as you judged that the life and will of those whom Felicianus and Praetextatus baptized in sacrilegious schism should be corrected, so that they should not remain in that sacrilege of schism, not that the baptism should be violated, though ministered to the most unworthy through the most unworthy.