Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 4.36–4.55

You surely see that, while you try to defend others' manifest errors, you do nothing but add your own more manifest ones. See, read your words (they are quoted by me exactly as you wrote them): “When the error of Maximian,” you say, “strove to join as many bishops as possible to itself, a council was gathered by our people and a sentence was pronounced against all who had persisted in his schism, which you too testify that you have read. 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.” Saying this, do you so close your senses against yourself as not to notice that all these, who earned the council's sentence against them because they were associated with Maximian, were standing in that same schism before they corrected themselves within the time of extension? There, then, they also baptized. I beg you, why do you sprinkle an empty fog over plain things, which you again disperse with no less plainness of your own words? For I say that Praetextatus and Felicianus, ordainers of Maximian, baptized in the sacrilegious schism they committed, and that those baptized by them were received with them, the baptism not being cancelled which they had given in schism, which they had ministered as sacrilegious men, which they had consecrated with a mouth full of cursing and with lips bearing the poison of asps. For such things are said against them in that sentence which you do not deny was pronounced against them all.

Here you answer that not only these two whom I mention but also many others, cleared and innocent, restored themselves to the church within the day of the extension. By this word you help me; by this word you assert the truth with me and disperse the fog you were trying to pour over it. For when you say they restored themselves to the church, you certainly confess that they had been outside the church. Where, then, they were before they restored themselves to the church, there they baptized; so the baptism they gave was outside the church. While you try to roll yourself out of this inextricable entanglement, you are wrapped up again. For you say their baptism ought not to have been cancelled because, restored within the appointed day, they were not held by the final sentence. How then do you say that before the day of restoration they had not been separated from the church, whom you admit were restored to the church before the day of the extension? If we are men, if we have any reason at all, if we have human sense, if we are not cattle speaking to cattle, nor wood and stones to wood and stones, it stands out, appears, and shines forth, not only from my words but even from yours, that your people did not dare to cancel baptism given in Maximian's sacrilegious schism; they who do not hesitate to deny that men baptized in the churches which the apostles, by the grace of the Lord, spread by their own labor are Christians, and to exorcise and rebaptize them. You say, you write (see, hear yourself, read yourself), you, I say, say and write that a sentence was pronounced against all who had persisted in Maximian's schism, a council having been gathered by your people; you say, you write, that, this sentence having been confirmed by the consent of all, it was nevertheless decided to grant an extension of time, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be held innocent; you say, you write, that not only the two from there whom I mention, but many others, cleared and innocent, restored themselves to your church; you say, you write, that their baptism therefore ought not to have been cancelled, because, restored within the appointed day, they were not held by the final sentence.

What, what makes so bad a case prevail so much in so good a mind, you man of sense, you man of letters? These men, against whom that sentence was pronounced because, as you yourself say, they were persisting in Maximian's schism, before they were restored, as you say, where they were, there they celebrated the sacraments, there they baptized; and (to use rather the words of that plenary council) there they warmed with slow heat the harmful offspring of viperous seed; there the pregnant vows of crimes brought forth their public crime and their parricide; there they were in labor with injustice, conceived toil, and brought forth iniquity; there their names were now marked out for punishment, no longer from a confused forest of crimes; there, at the end of indulgence, while the line of clemency was being let go, the case had now found whom to punish; there the truth-telling wave had thrown their shipwrecked limbs as on rough rocks; there were the shores, after the example of the Egyptians, full of the corpses of those perishing, who did not even find burial; there the thunderbolt of the sentence had struck from the bosom of peace not only Maximian, the rival of the faith, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, nor did the just death of his crime condemn him alone, but the chain of sacrilege also dragged very many into partnership in the crime; there was the poison of asps under their lips, there their mouth full of cursing and bitterness, there their feet swift to shed blood, there ruin and misery in their ways, there they did not know the way of peace, nor was there the fear of God before their eyes; there lay the cut-off limbs which pestilent rot had so corrupted that it found more relief in amputation than in a mild remedy; there were the guilty of a notorious crime, Victorianus of Carcabia and the others, twelve with him, among whom were Praetextatus of Assuras and Felicianus of Musti, whose reception we are discussing, who had in person ordained that same Maximian, that is, by the deadly work of perdition had glued together a filthy vessel from collected dregs, where the clergy of Carthage played the pander to so great a crime as to an unlawful incest. Such ministers of the sacraments, not yet corrected, not yet given back and restored to you, baptized in Maximian's schism; after such ministers of the sacraments, corrected, given back, and restored, your people did not rebaptize.

Why does animosity alone prevail in you? Let truth at last be attended to, at last be heard. Why are the most empty fogs of a granted extension thrown over it? It was not granted to those very men of whom it was said, “Know that they have been condemned,” of whom it was also said beforehand what kind of men they were, what they did, and why they had to be condemned now without extension: namely, that they ordained Maximian in person by laying on hands; for this is what they meant by saying that by the deadly work of perdition they had glued together a filthy vessel from collected dregs. But the extension was given to those who were not present at Maximian's ordination, though placed in his fellowship and schism, merely because, being absent, they did not lay hands on him. For thus they are distinguished by the same sentence of the council from his condemned ordainers. For when they had said of those (whose names they also wrote down), “Know that they have been condemned,” they say, “But those 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.” What could be plainer, more distinct, more open? Of the former, the guilty of a notorious crime, who by the deadly work of perdition glued together a filthy vessel from collected dregs, they say, “Know that they have been condemned”; of the latter, “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,” they say, “We have permitted to return to mother church.” And because two of those condemned were afterwards received with their rank preserved, no way is found to defend this except by saying that the extension was granted to all.

But suppose it was granted to all. Surely all who returned to you from that schism were there before they returned, baptized there, and, returning to you from there without destruction of their honor or their baptism, closed your mouths, if you have any shame. For when we ask where they were before they had restored themselves to the church, as you yourself said, and before they had been restored before the appointed day, what else does the fact itself compel you to answer than “In the schism of Maximian,” on account of which that sentence was pronounced against all? There, then, they baptized those in whom, when they came to you together from there, you did not dare to cancel the baptism of Christ, because you were compelled to recognize it. Hence by your own deed, your own work, your own judgment, it is rightly and properly concluded against you that the baptism of Christ must be recognized even if it was given outside the church; and therefore that we devoutly recognize it in your people, and you impiously cancel it in ours.

But perhaps you regret having set down such words as press this truth too hard, since you said, “It came about that they restored themselves to the church, and, restored before the appointed day, they were not held by the final sentence,” so that the answer to you would be: “How did they restore themselves to the church, how were they restored to it, if they had not been separated from it? Or if they had been separated, how did they baptize?” But what else could you say than what you had heard from those you consulted, when you were greatly moved by my letter about this case? And yet perhaps they may blame and reprove you for setting down such words incautiously. There is something that greatly protects you against them and consoles your sadness. For they themselves set down such things in the decree of the same council; hence, if, having read this little work of ours, they wish to answer us that the words of their layman do not prejudice them, we shall at once read out their own 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 when it is said to them, “These whom you permitted to return to mother church, where were they before they returned?”, they are pressed just as you were pressed a little before by the words you set down. For where will they answer they were, except in Maximian's schism? But let them contend they were wherever they like: certainly those who were permitted to return to the church were not in the church. Therefore they baptized outside the church; and, returning to the church, baptizers and baptized together, neither did the former lose the honors they had held outside, nor the latter the baptism they had received outside.

And you indeed, as far as you could in a bad case, spoke cautiously, saying, “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.” But they did not say that those to whom the extension was given needed correction; but they speak of them as though they had been altogether unpolluted and innocent in Maximian's fellowship, when they extend that extension. For what else is it that they say, “But those whom the shoots of the sacrilegious branch did not pollute we have permitted to return to mother church,” except, “Those whom fellowship with Maximian did not pollute we have permitted to return to mother church”? And lest that be too little, see what they add: “For as much as we are cleared,” they say, “of the death of the guilty, so much do we rejoice in the return of the innocent.” Why then do you say it was decided to grant an extension of time, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he would be held innocent, when you see that it was given to the unpolluted and innocent? No doubt you feared it would be said to you: “Why was an extension given to those whom Maximian had not polluted?” So you judged that they were to be corrected by that extension. They feared it would be said to them: “Why did you wish to receive the polluted in their honors?” So they said they gave the extension to the unpolluted.

Accordingly, each of you feared something different, but each is attacked by the other. For it is said to you: “How do you think those must be corrected whom your people proclaim unpolluted?” And it is said to them: “How do you assert they were unpolluted, who, even if not by laying hands on Maximian's head, were yet stained by communion with his schism?” But whose mind, whose strength, whose tongue would suffice to speak out so intolerable a grief? So that the torn party of Donatus might be mended, Maximian did not pollute even his African associates in Africa; so that the broken branches might not be permitted to return to the very root of unity, Caecilian from Africa polluted so many most remote nations!

From the day of the council of Bagai, that is, the eighth day before the Kalends of May, to the day of that granted extension, that is, the eighth day before the Kalends of January, eight months are counted. In so long an interval of time, were those to whom the extension was given stained by fellowship with the condemned Maximian or not? If they were stained, how is it said, “But those whom the shoots of the sacrilegious branch did not pollute we have permitted to return to mother church”? If they were not stained, how could the contagion of others' sins, unknown (I will not say false), stain us and all the Christian nations everywhere? “But,” you say, “the extension was given for this purpose: that if it passed and they did not return, then they would be stained and incur the penalty of condemnation.” It was not, then, the sin of that fellowship that stained them, but the setting of a day. If, then, no day had been set, they would certainly have remained unstained. What evil has the world deserved of you? Why do you declare it stained by others' sins, for which you set no day of extension, since your power is so great that men are associated with sinners when they will and are defiled when you will? They were innocent and unpolluted, those in Maximian's party to whom the extension was given, within whose day, if they came back to you, they would have the foundations of honor and faith intact; but if that day passed without their returning, then they would be polluted, then criminal, then lost, incurring the punishment of condemnation, then humbled by penance and degraded. O wonderful reasoning of men who proclaim not merely, as the old proverb goes, “What we will is holy,” but also “when we will and as long as we will”! Let it happen to one of you to pray with us on a ship: at once he is called polluted, at once a traitor. Yet the condemners of Primian share altars with Maximian, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, and for eight months they remain innocent and unpolluted! Accordingly, if any of them restored themselves to your communion on the ninth day before the Kalends of January, you rejoiced over the return of the innocent, namely those whom the shoots of the sacrilegious branch did not pollute. What did so many days of eight months, from the eighth day before the Kalends of May to the eighth day before the Kalends of January, deserve of you, that you so sanctified them that through them whoever cleaved to the communion of the sacrilegious and condemned Maximian was not polluted nor made guilty? And what has so holy a day as the birthday of our Lord himself done to offend you, that by its coming and passing alone it should pollute the innocent; and that in those who baptized in that schism the baptism of Christ should remain holy through all those days and become unclean through the birthday of Christ?

What would human rashness not dare, when it is hurled headlong into the opinion of an abominable error, which it is ashamed to abandon out of vanity and not ashamed to defend against the truth? But why more on this, where anyone, however obstinate, who has hardened himself against all the voices of reason, must admit about those of whom it is said that they “restored themselves to the church and were restored before the appointed day” (words you yourself set down), and finally about those of whom it is said, “We have permitted to return to mother church,” “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, we open the door of acknowledgment until that day, 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 the way to all pardonable approaches has been taken away from him,” and “a fixed penance for those returning after the appointed day” (words which the three hundred and ten drove home so often in their sentence): any adversary, I say, must admit that those of whom these things are said, before they restored themselves to you, before they were restored to you, before they returned to you, before, returning, they entered the door of the extension, were not with you, but baptized outside your communion in that schism by which they had separated themselves from you; and that, restored and given back to you from where they had been estranged from you, returning and coming back to you from where they were outside you, they both kept their honors undiminished and brought in with them those they had baptized, not to be rebaptized.

Why do you still offer most obstinate patronage to a most wicked case? Yield at last, not to me, but to the truth by which you are convicted. See how truly I said what you tried in vain to shake: “how much must be tolerated for the sake of peace,” and (to use again and again the same words I used in that letter) “for the sake of the peace of Christ return to the church which did not condemn things unknown, if for the sake of the peace of Donatus you were pleased to recall things condemned.” For if, of those twelve whom they condemned with Maximian without extension, they afterwards received Felicianus and Praetextatus, how is it false that they recalled things condemned? But if the extension was given even to those of whom they said, “Know that they have been condemned,” even if none of them had later come back, yet they were pleased to recall things condemned, since after the sentence in which it was said, “Know that they have been condemned,” an extension was given, by which they might come back with their condemnation voided. These words would suffice even if what you say were true: that, being greatly moved by this case of the Maximianensians, you learned it from your bishops. But what will you do, since it is also false? Look for, or, if you have it, examine the date of the proconsular records on which the petition was made by Titianus against Felicianus and Praetextatus, that they should be expelled from their places, and see how long after the day of that extension this was done. For the day of the council of Bagai is, in the consulship of the Augusti Arcadius for the third time and Honorius for the second, the eighth day before the Kalends of May; the day of the extension from then until the eighth day before the Kalends of January; but this petition of Titianus was made after that consulship, on the sixth day before the Nones of March.

Accordingly, it appears that almost the third month was passing when the proconsul was asked to drive Felicianus and Praetextatus from their seats as colleagues of Maximian, whom he had associated with himself in his madness. For when the advocate mentioned had said in the same petition what seemed sufficient about Maximian, he says: “Those also whom the error of another's presumption had drawn away, having first offered a harbor of repentance, if they wished to return within the time to the path of religion they had abandoned, it restrained with an equally vigorous admonition. But wickedness delights in its own institutions and does not desert itself once it has fallen headlong. For the same Maximian nourishes the audacity he began and associates others with himself in his madness; among whom also a certain Felicianus, who at first followed the right way, is darkened by the contamination of this depravity, and, placed in the city of Musti, thought that walls consecrated to almighty God, the venerable church, should be held as if by a kind of siege. Praetextatus too imitates him in the parts of Assuras.” Do you hear the most illustrious and most manifest words of the advocate, by which he says that these men with whom we are dealing, because they despised the harbor of repentance offered, while wickedness delights in its own institutions once it has fallen headlong, must be expelled from church places? Here, even if the date of the records could be hidden, it would be clear enough to anyone, however dull, that the proconsular power would not have been approached thus against them unless either they had been condemned in that council without any extension granted, as appears more likely, or, if it was given to all, they had refused to be restored to you within the day of the extension. But since the date of the records too strikes the eyes and ears of anyone, however obstinate, so plainly that those men were not in your communion even after the day of extension had passed and cleaved to Maximian, so that for this reason the authority of so terrible a judicial order was obtained against them, what is said to this? Why is there still contention against so plain a truth with wonderful blindness of shamelessness? Why do those who, for the unity of the party of Donatus, would keep concord even with condemned sacrilegious men, still rebel with such madness against the unity of Christ? Why is the baptism of Christ, recognized with due veneration even in a sacrilegious schism, still rejected with impious presumption and violated by sacrilegious repetition in so many Catholic nations?

I do not wish to ask how long after the day of this petition, in which Felicianus and Praetextatus are so gravely accused in the words of the advocate Titianus, they were received into your communion. It is enough that the same petition, so long after the end of the appointed extension, proves that those whom you afterwards received were in Maximian's schism, separated from your communion; whose honors you diminished in no respect; the baptism given by whom, though in sacrilegious schism, you were afraid to cancel, as indeed was to be feared. Would anyone's tongue, however obstinate, be moved against us in this case if it felt that it was moving in a man's mouth and under a man's brow? I clearly erred, I confess, in what I set down in that letter about that sentence of the council of Bagai, since I said, “When it was read out among them to be decreed, they acclaimed it with wide-open mouth; but now, when it is read out by us, they fall silent.” What you said is true: see, they do not fall silent. For shame, in things so manifest, or even shamelessness itself, can fall silent; madness cannot. Nor should you take this as said of you, who believed your bishops when they lied, nor of all of them (for you could not consult all of them when moved about this), but of those who, knowing how much was done, and when, against Praetextatus and Felicianus before the judges, dared to tell you what you inserted in your letter: that Felicianus and Praetextatus, restored to your communion before the day of the appointed extension, were not held bound by the final sentence. Or if they too perhaps did not know these things, now at least, when you read them, let shame be silent, let even whatever shamelessness there is in a man be silent; let only madness be left, which cries out against so evident a truth. And that perhaps will be curable, if it is restrained by the sane.

Now see how you said of me, “A false witness will not go unpunished,” when you thought I had lied in this case of the Maximianensians. I do not repay you with this; for perhaps you said what you believed with incautious friendship, not what you invented with a deceitful heart. We are men; by what watchfulness can we bring it about that we do not slip in anything, either in thinking or in speaking? But we ought not to grow deaf to the medicine of correction.

Now notice how much ease of answering this case of the Maximianensians gives me in the other parts of your letter too. Whatever you thought should be said about traitors as if they were ours (although it is shown that your people rather did this, as I showed more than enough in that work of three books), yet see and answer, if you can, whether this crime, whoever's it was, could pollute Christians in the unity of so many nations, whether far distant or long after, if the crime of the sacrilegious branch of Maximian could not stain either his African associates, of whom your three hundred and ten bishops said, when giving them the extension, “whom the shoots of the sacrilegious branch did not pollute,” or you yourselves, who received with such concord not only these, whom you called innocent, but also those already condemned in that sacrilege.

You say that the crimes of the traitors were known to the Easterners, when to you, an African, the Maximianensian schism committed in the capital of Africa was unknown before, reading my letter and greatly moved, you consulted your bishops, and when you had consulted them you could not hear the truth from them at all. If you defend them so as not to say they lied, you grant they were ignorant; and yet you do not allow us, nor so many and such great peoples of East and West, at least not to know the case of Caecilian, while these men do not know that of Praetextatus and Felicianus, whom three hundred and ten, that is, all or nearly all the bishops of the party of Donatus, Africans condemned as Africans in Africa, and Africans received as Africans in Africa.

You insert the opening of the council of Serdica, from which you try to prove that the Eastern bishops, having learned of the crime of the traitors, communicated with the party of Donatus, by this one great proof, no doubt: that the name of Donatus is found among the bishops to whom they write. Yet nothing is read there about their having learned of African traitors. And that council, so that it may not escape you, is of the Arians, whom you yourself have now named among other heretics; nor is it usually read with the names of cities added, since this is not church custom either when bishops write a letter to bishops. Hence I do not know who this Donatus is; I wonder whether he was not made “of Carthage” in your copies; although they, separated by such distant lands from Africa, could have asked, at the very time they wished to write, who was bishop of Carthage, and found it was Donatus. For I pass over saying that perhaps the Eastern heretics had tried in some way to ally themselves with the African heretics. But you, a prudent man, wishing to solve the question, when it could be said to you, “If these things are so, that the Easterners wrote to your Donatus, how were the Easterners afterwards separated from the communion of your people?”, answered and said, “Because in receiving your people again they could not keep firm in a condemned case; and it is written, ‘He who is joined to a prostitute is one body.’” Here you have now fiercely accused your own people, if in this case of the Maximianensians they could not keep firm, condemning the sacrilegious execrably and receiving the condemned honorably. For that you do not prove at all about the Easterners; this you hear and read and see and judge about your own people.

You order me to leave the church of the traitors, whom neither you before us nor your forefathers before our forefathers could convict and prove; and if you had now proved them, I would condemn their deed and crime, but would not on their account desert the Catholic fellowship of so many nations to whom they are unknown. But see with what consistency you do not want the memory of those dead men to be made in our communion whose deeds we do not know, whose good reputation among their own we have even learned through the succession of posterity, while in your communion men live, without any degradation, whose evils you perceived, whose sacrileges you condemned.

You dare to say to me, prudent man: “He who handed over created you”; not knowing that our creator, insofar as we are Christians, is he who is our creator insofar as we are men; though you have not convicted of handing over even him whom you think my creator. But I do not repay you this injury: I do not call Felicianus your creator, nor that of your sons, grandsons, or great-grandsons, if they are in the party of Donatus. Only, since you permit, I admonish you: let not your Creator find you a deserter, running after the name of a man with impious vanity. Then you seem to yourself to add plausibly: “The stream is drawn from the source, and the members follow the head. When the head is sound, the whole body is sound; and if there is any disease or fault in it, it weakens all the members. Whatever grows in a stock looks back to its origin. One cannot be innocent who does not follow the sect of an innocent man, especially since it is written, ‘Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers.’” In all these words of yours I pass over the fact that what you compared from the human body is not alike; for it can happen that the foot aches while the head is sound, and the head while the foot is sound. I pass over also that what you said a little before slipped from your mind: “This we too want, this we urge, that Christ be the head of the Christian,” you who now want some traitor or other to be the head of unknown Christian nations, where you will not recognize the baptism of Christ given and received, as though the baptized were created only by that traitor. I pass over also how much the testimony from Scripture which you yourself set down helps me, that it was said to the Jews, “Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers”; since whoever then wished to keep this command, like the holy prophets and the seven thousand men who did not bow the knee before Baal, did not divide themselves from their people and from the common sacraments. This I say, this, whether you will or not, I drive home by repeating, however troublesome I may seem to you: do not make Caecilian, so often acquitted, the head of us who came after, since I, for my part, will not make either Primian, condemned by Felicianus, or Felicianus, condemned by Primian, the head of your posterity.

Now as to the odium of persecution which you boast that you suffer from the earthly powers for the party of Donatus: although I have answered you sufficiently and abundantly in that work of three books, I shall not now keep silent either what can be briefly answered from this case of the Maximianensians, if you commend yourselves on that account to unskilled and imprudent peoples. For so Maximian himself, so his associates, who could not be made to yield even by the persecutions of your people so as to return to their communion, commend themselves to the vain and unskilled. But those who reflect soberly understand that, in those who suffer some trouble, not the penalties but the causes must be considered; they understand that those men, for the crime of sacrilegious schism, in which they were rightly and justly condemned by you, rightly and justly suffered even the disturbances of secular courts. For I do not mention what you set down in your letter: that not Optatus but the people overturned, not Maximian's basilica but his cave. And yet even there, though it is uncertain that your people did it, it is certain that he suffered persecution and yet was not righteous but ungodly. Hence you are now compelled to confess that one must look not at what anyone suffers but at why he suffers.