Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian 4.72–4.83

Now how elegant you thought you were in saying, when I had said of God's testament, “Now let it be read, from wherever it is brought forth,” you thought you should answer that this already contains a confession of the crime, and that I said, “Let it be read, by whomever it is brought forth,” because I hold it established that it was burned by our people and kept and brought forth by yours. But really, if, trusting in the truth, you wished a book of the law to be brought forth by Maximian, from which to read about Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, who were swallowed alive when the earth opened, to whom the sentence of Bagai compared him, would it not be read against him all the more firmly because it is found in his own book? What I said, then, “Let the testament be read, from wherever it is brought forth,” is not a confession of crime but confidence in truth. For what is more fitting, what more splendid, than that, if possible, what is read against you should be brought forth by you? Not because I do not have it on my side, but because the conviction is easier and more certain when you have against you what, if you are corrected, becomes for you.

Since you were pleased to repeat empty things against the universality of the church, here too I answer you. Just as in Africa you are the party of Donatus, from whom it is plain that the party of Maximian made a schism, since it is not throughout Africa where you are, while you are not lacking in the regions where it is (for other schisms too have been made from you, such as the Rogatists in Mauretania Caesariensis, the Urbanists in a certain small part of Numidia, and several others; but where they were cut off, there they remained; and hence it stands out that they went out from you, not you from them, since you are also in those lands where they are, while they, wherever you are, are found only perhaps traveling); so the Catholic church, which, as Cyprian says, extends her branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness, everywhere bears the scandals of those who are cut off from her, chiefly through the fault of pride, some here, others there and elsewhere, who, displaying their own parties, say, “Behold, here is Christ, behold, there,” whom he himself warned beforehand not to be believed. For they do not show the way of which it was prophesied in the psalms, “that we may know your way on earth, your salvation among all nations,” but each the regions of his own communion: behold here, behold there. For where they fall, there they remain; and where they are separated, there they dry up. Hence she from whom they are cut off extends even into those lands where those fragments lie, each in its own region; but they individually are not wherever she spreads, although sometimes the wind of pride scatters a very few leaves from their dryness into foreign parts.

This church, then, which, to use the same man's words again and again, extends her branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness, will by growing reach even many barbarian nations outside the Roman world. This I think you too have inquired into and found out, so as to say: “I pass over the religions proper to the barbarian nations, the rites of the Persians, the stars of the Chaldeans, the superstitions of the Egyptians, the gods of the magi; so that all these may come to nothing, because by the providence of God the whole world is daily turning to the Christian name.” This you said truly; and so is fulfilled the promise which was spoken to Abraham: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” He said “all nations”; he did not say “all the people of all nations.” Hence it must be that the whole world is filled, not only by the fruitfulness of the growing church, but also by the mixed multitude of her enemies, by whom her piety can be exercised and tested, until the end of the separation by judgment. So this testament was also recalled to his son Isaac, the Lord saying: “And I will establish my oath which I swore to Abraham your father, and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and I will give you and your seed all the earth, and in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed”; so too to his grandson Jacob: “And your seed will be as the sand of the earth, and it will spread over the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east, and in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed.” Whoever reads knows that, when Scripture says “over the sea,” it usually signifies the western region. If you had been willing to agree with this testament when brought forward, you would not have remained in the south alone.

It is not, then, as you say, that the Novatians, Arians, Patripassians, Valentinians, Anthropians, Apellians, Marcionites, Ophites, and the rest, to use your words, sacrilegious names of wicked plagues rather than sects, communicate with us. And yet, wherever these are, there the Catholic church is, as in Africa where you are too; but not, wherever the Catholic church is, are either you or any one of those heresies. Hence it appears which is the tree that extends its branches over the whole earth with abundance of fruitfulness, and which are the broken branches, without the life of the root, each lying and drying up in its own place. But if they do not remain in unbelief, as the apostle says of the Israelites, they will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again; not so that they receive again the sacrament of baptism, which, drawn from the tree, they have not changed, but so that they may revive from the root of love and unity, separated from which they dry up in the sterility of animosity; just as you thought Praetextatus and Felicianus, whom Maximian had cut off with himself, should be grafted in again, and you did not reject the baptism of those cut off. You would truly confer something on them if you restored not them to your fragment, but both yourselves and them to the Catholic root.

Now what shall I answer to your thinking I spoke for you when I said that baptism does not profit those who depart from unity, yet that it is in them is proved by the fact that it is not given again to them when they return? For you affirmed that you too say this: that the baptism our forefathers had received there did not profit them when they did not return to the church. If you said this, nothing else would be in question between us except which is the church where baptism profits. But you do not say that baptism is in us and does not profit; you say that it does not exist at all, because we received it from those who lost it by departing. Hence you could not answer, nor will you be able to answer, what I set down: that baptism is proved to be in those who depart because it is not given again to them when they return. For if Felicianus had lost baptism by withdrawing from you, why was he not baptized anew on returning, so that what he had lost might be restored to him? Finally, Maximian himself, if he returns to you, is not baptized; which he certainly ought to be if he had lost baptism. For your words are that those held by the sentence of condemnation in his schism lost at once both baptism and the church. As, then, the church is restored to them when they return, let baptism be restored; let those returning be baptized, I say, if they lost baptism by departing. Since you do not do this, you too confess that baptism is in those who withdraw from the church, and does not profit. They give, then, as they have; that is, so that in those too who receive it from them outside the church baptism is present, and yet does not profit. Hence, just as to the former, when they return, what they did not lose is not restored, so to the latter what they had received is not to be given; but action must be taken with them, so that through the church what could be present outside the church but not profit may profit both. And so I said nothing for your error, and you did not answer what I said.

You add also something about the enclosed garden and the sealed fountain, not understanding at all of what it was said. “If the garden is enclosed,” you say, “and the fountain sealed, how can one who is placed outside, separated from the garden, that is, the church, and from its fountain, that is, baptism, give what he does not have?” Ask Felicianus whether he had been in the enclosed garden when the door of the extension was being opened to him for a return, as it were, to that same enclosed garden. Or did he perhaps steal the fountain from there, so as to baptize his laity in Maximian's schism? If so, where were your people washing their own at that time? Or did they put them off likewise with that extension, until those thieves came back to the garden with the fountain? Were these men not false prophets then, when by lying about Primian's crimes they led the deceived over to their own sacrilege; ravening wolves, when they dragged those seduced from Primian's flock into the little pieces of their cutting off? You deny what I said about the tyrannical dominations of your people on other men's estates and their drunken revels: deny as much as you can; I am not afraid that on that account you will be reluctant to come to agreement with us. I said nothing of the kind against you such as the Maximianensians condemned by you deserved to hear. You deny the fury of the Circumcellions and the sacrilegious and profane cults of the corpses of those who have thrown themselves down of their own accord; yet you do not deny that, when the shores were full of corpses like those of the Egyptians perishing, whose punishment is greater in death itself, in that they did not even find burial, you cleaved to these unburied corpses. For there lay Praetextatus and Felicianus; or, if they came back to life among you, what do you do about the baptism which they, dead at that time, handed on?

You say I did not keep the peace and gentleness I had promised at the beginning of my letter, because I called Petilian Satan. I compared not Petilian nor any man in the party of Donatus, but the very error of the party of Donatus to Satan, from whose snares I desire men whom I love to be freed. Read more carefully, and you will find it. And yet, even if I said something rather harsh, read what you yourselves said, not against the error of the Maximianensians, but against the men themselves. Let Petilian, then, imitate Felicianus, and not be angry with me who desire peace.

I am certainly not angry with you myself for thinking you should obliquely charge me with the Manichees because of the error of my youth. From that I do not so much grieve over my past unhappiness as rejoice in the everlasting glory of my deliverer. And yet, if you please, I admonish you to seek out and read what, how much, and in what way I have written against the most pestilent heresy of the Manichees. There you will see with what faith I defended the Christian truth against them and with what clarity I destroyed their deceits; and do not be incredulous toward me, when you believe that Felicianus has faithfully cleaved to Primian, who in a condemning sentence for Maximian said such crimes against him, but perhaps wrote something against that same Maximian once he was dissociated from him; Maximian, upon whom he had not fallen, as I fell among the Manichees, a young lay catechumen, but an old man, a bishop, had made an old man, a bishop, the adversary of the one to whom he is now joined. Hence, since I read that the letter of our primate, which he wrote in anger about me (since you mentioned it with the same urbane obliqueness), when he was pressed in a council of bishops to prove what he had alleged, was condemned by the sentence of that very man correcting himself and asking pardon for this matter, you seek whether you can read where Felicianus, corrected, condemned what he said against Primian, not as an accuser but as a judge condemning; or at least where Primian himself annulled what he said against Felicianus in condemning him. If you find it, even so the case will not be equal, since our primate had brought an accusation, which, seeing it false, he condemned with a request for pardon, not spurning the humility of amendment for the dignity of the primacy, but rather wisely recalling what is written: “The greater you are, the more humble yourself in all things, and you will find favor before God”; whereas these men had not accused each other before others, but had sat as judges against each other. So they condemned each other, and, condemned, they came to agreement. We do not grudge the condemned their peace in the party of Donatus, if they do not reject the peace of Christ in the world.

You see now, I think, how vainly you said that you seem to yourself to have answered everything contained in my letter. For if you answered because you did not wish to keep silent, you answered, though not to everything. But if you answered in order to void what I said, I see that you answered many things, but I see that you refuted nothing. And when everything I have said is considered, I think you will very easily understand that your people refuse to confer with us not to avoid contention, which does not exist when truth is sought and one does not litigate for vain glory, but from lack of confidence in a bad case. For, to bring forward this one case of the Maximianensians, you perhaps now at least recognize that nothing can be said against it. Hence I did not wish to commend it arrogantly, as you believe or slander, as if it were invincible eloquence, but rather so that those who read might see that the case is such that, to assert it, or rather to show it, no patronage of eloquence need be sought.

See, I no longer call your error a three-headed beast, since you are a most delightful corrector of words, but I say a threefold slander; nor do I say that we ought to resist it from this case of the Maximianensians as with a trident weapon, but I say with a threefold defense; nor do I say, “Strike their brow” or “Close their mouths,” but I say, “Restrain their shamelessness and check their speech.” Because the words have been changed and from figurative made literal, has the case of the Maximianensians therefore changed, by the shortcut of which you are so overcome that nothing remains for you, if you are ever wise, except to end your stubborn animosity and be at peace?

If the question is of communion, not in others' sins but in divine sacraments, communion was held with the condemned, and it was said of others, sacrilegious men who were in communion with the condemned Maximian, that the shoots of the sacrilegious branch did not pollute them. If the question is of persecution, you persecuted the condemned and corrected the obstinate by persecutions. If the question is of baptism, you received baptism given in a sacrilegious schism. Why then are divine testimonies, not understood, still brought forward in vain, so that the truth may not be known and error fled? It is written, “If anyone thinks himself contentious, we have no such custom.” But Restitutus, who fought with Salvius of Membresa with the din and controversy of the forum over little cells and small fields, to expel him from his places, was not held contentious by you; how much less ought one to be thought contentious who disputes faithfully with those who think otherwise, not to usurp or take away an inheritance, but to share a heavenly one! “It is written,” you say, “‘Do not say anything into the ears of a fool, lest he mock your sensible words.’” Do not say anything into our ears as a secret, if you do not think us prudent, just as Christ did not speak into the ears of the Pharisees, though he brought forward in their hearing what refuted them. Show us openly, so that, if we are not corrected, we may be convicted, how the Christian world would defile you if you came to unity, when the condemned Felicianus does not defile you. It is written, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him.” Does not this follow there: “But answer him against his folly, lest he seem wise to himself”? Do this too; do not by your answer agree with what you think is our folly, but answer with that by which it can be refuted. Answer, I say, how you received without any destruction the baptism which the Maximianensians ministered in sacrilegious schism, and destroy the baptism given in the churches which Christ spread through the apostles.

Accordingly, since at the end of your letter you thought you should run briefly through everything you had said more fully above, to refresh the reader's memory, receive in the same order how you ought to deceive neither yourself nor others. For it is not arrogance either to seek or to assert the truth; and what you think could never be settled has been settled not only for the prudent and God-fearing, but you too settled the whole matter, which you thought endless, by receiving the Maximianensians. And we call you not to contention but to conference, you who struck the Maximianensians even with lawsuits in the forum; and who, in those baptized in Maximian's schism, although they ought by no means to have been baptized there, nevertheless recognized the baptism of Christ, and declared, by accepting the baptism which sacrilegious men had given outside, that the church's fountain, to which none but the good comes, must be understood otherwise. And you are compelled to confess that our forefathers, or the holy church which we hold, could not be polluted by others' crimes of offering incense and handing over, even if they had ever been proved by you; you who said that the associates of Maximian, to whom you gave an extension to return, were not polluted by the shoots of the same Maximian's sacrilegious branch; hence we, born so long after, can much less belong to that same origin of traitors and incense-offerers, if then it could not stain the fellowship of our forefathers who were living at the same time. And though you are accustomed to charge us with the most savage persecutions, contrary to the truth, yet you corrected the Maximianensians in some part by persecutions; and you received them after the end of that extension, although it had not been given to those already condemned; and the baptism which those to whom you opened the door of return by an extension had given outside your communion, you recognized and approved, and did not cancel even after that same extension. Therefore, since you see that nothing could be said by you that this one case of the Maximianensians does not refute and confute, forgive me if I have perhaps offended you by some word uttered rather harshly. And if you, an African in Africa, inquired so late, admonished by my letter, into so great a case of the Maximianensians that arose in the capital of Africa, and could not find it when inquired into, because your people told you falsehoods, as you now see: fear God; do not drench so many Christian nations, stretched so widely through the world in Christian unity, with the unknown crimes of unknown Africans; and for the sake of the peace of Christ return to the church which did not condemn the unknown, if for the sake of the peace of Donatus you were pleased to recall the condemned.