Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.22–2.32

What is to be understood in this sentence of holy Scripture, which they, not understanding it and putting it forward as if for their side, thrust upon us to convict themselves, we advise is to be understood in almost all such questions: namely, that all the sacraments, while they harm those who handle them unworthily, nevertheless profit, through them, those who receive them worthily; just as with the word of God, of which it was said: ‘What they say, do; but what they do, do not do.’ For what prevents me from understanding the digging of broken cisterns that cannot hold water as turning to earthly pleasure and being unable to hold the Holy Spirit, whom every Christian of any kind knows is signified in the gospel by the name of water? Likewise ‘lying water that has no faithfulness’ can be understood not as a false baptism, but as a lying and unfaithful people, not counting the truthful and faithful, but only among those who are liars and unfaithful. For let them read the Apocalypse, that peoples are sometimes signified by the word ‘waters’, and not slander themselves sooner and more than us. For so it is said to John: ‘The waters that you saw, on which that harlot sits, are peoples and crowds and nations and tongues.’ And the text, ‘He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?’ (to put off for the present a more careful inquiry into these words), I most safely take to denote the baptisms of the pagans, because they worship men dead both to righteousness and to this life, in whose name they baptize. For although their priests too may be called dead through impiety, yet it is not understood thus because of them, but because of their dead gods, in contrast with whom it is said, ‘Our God is the living God.’ So even if among Christians there are some leaders or ministers dead through their iniquity and impiety, yet he lives of whom it was said in the gospel, ‘This is he who baptizes’; for, as the apostle says, ‘Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him.’ As for the oil of the sinner, the psalm itself shows most plainly how it is to be understood. For it says: ‘The righteous will correct me in mercy and rebuke me; but the oil of the sinner shall not anoint my head.’ From this it is clear that the oil of the sinner signifies the flatteries of the flatterer; rejecting and detesting these, he chooses to be corrected and rebuked by the righteous, because the righteous man, doing this not with the deceitful gentleness of flattery but with the truthful harshness of reproof, does it much more mercifully. Hence also that in the Apocalypse, ‘Those whom I love I rebuke and chasten’, and that in Solomon, ‘Better are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy’, and many such are found. As for the oil of sweetness, that is, the good odour through the good reputation of Christians, those destroy it who, intending to live badly and to return to the death of their iniquities, rush in in great multitudes to have their sins forgiven through baptism and then go back to them again. For I think they are compared to flies because of their great number. But they destroy the oil of sweetness for those who look not at the grace of God itself but at men’s morals, and, since, just as grains are not seen among the chaff, so those who live piously do not easily appear among the crowds of the wicked, being offended in a carnal way, they are either slowed down or altogether recoil from receiving eternal salvation. That the good odour lies in the good reputation of Christians who live rightly, the apostle teaches when he says, ‘We are the good odour of Christ in every place.’ By contrast, those to whom it is said, ‘For the name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of you’, certainly destroy the oil of sweetness. So these texts have other, sounder meanings; if they follow them, they too are freed from the difficulties of these questions. But their meaning, if it is not confirmed by us, entangles them alone; if it is confirmed by us, it entangles both of us.

What need is there now to discuss more? Unless perhaps this will move someone: that when Parmenian wanted to prove that carnal men cannot beget spiritual sons, he added a testimony from the gospel: ‘What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.’ As if we said that any man whatever begets spiritual sons by himself, and not through the gospel, in whose preaching the Holy Spirit works to beget spiritual sons in baptism, even when he flees the deceitful minister, as we learned above. And so, when the apostle was speaking to such sons, if he had said, ‘I begot you’, and had not added, ‘in Christ Jesus through the gospel’, no believer would religiously confess that he was born of him. But even the thief Judas preached the gospel without harm to those who believed; and these men assert that through the ministry of their own deceitful men, that is, hidden bad men, as they too concede, spiritual sons are begotten, though the Holy Spirit flees them. For who would tolerate such madness as to call a man who begets sons by his wife carnal, but call an adulterer spiritual? ‘Far be it from me’, he says, ‘to think that.’ How then could a hidden adulterer, when he was a leader among them, propagate spiritual sons, if carnal men cannot do it? Or perhaps at that time Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or perhaps an angel baptized by his hands? If, then, a man baptizes when the baptizer is evidently good, but God or an angel baptizes when the baptizer is a hidden bad man, and each is born spiritually such as the one by whom he is baptized, let those who desire baptism wish that the men by whom they are baptized be not evidently good but hidden bad, so that, God or an angel baptizing, they may deserve to be reborn more holily. If they think to avoid this absurdity, let them confess that through any man whatever, when anyone is baptized with the baptism of Christ, it is Christ who baptizes, of whom alone it was said: ‘This is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’

For that text from the gospel, ‘As the Father sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they will be forgiven, and if you retain anyone’s, they will be retained’, would be against us, forcing us to confess that this is done by men and not through men, if, after he said ‘So I send you’, he had at once added, ‘If you forgive anyone’s sins, they will be forgiven, and if you retain anyone’s, they will be retained.’ But since there is put in between, ‘When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit’, and then it is added that through them either the forgiveness or the retaining of sins takes place, it is shown clearly enough that they themselves do not do it, but the Holy Spirit through them, as he says in another place: ‘For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit who is in you.’ But the Holy Spirit is present in a leader or minister of the church in such a way that, if he is not deceitful, the Spirit works through him both his reward for eternal salvation and the regeneration or upbuilding of those who are consecrated or evangelized through him; but if he is deceitful, since it is most truly written, ‘For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful’, the Spirit is indeed absent from his salvation and withdraws from his thoughts that are without understanding, yet does not desert his ministry, through which he works the salvation of others. Because of this the apostle says: ‘For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me’, that is, ‘it profits those to whom I dispense this, not me who am deceitful’. For he who does it unwillingly, for the sake of carnal advantages and joys, and would abandon it if he could have them otherwise, is certainly deceitful himself; and so he does not say, ‘If I do it unwillingly, I do no good to those for whom I do it’, but he only estranges himself from the reward of salvation, not those to whom even a bad servant distributes the Lord’s rations. But because the apostle was not such, but rather such as to do it willingly, that is, to pay out a free grace with the piety of a chaste heart, the Holy Spirit worked through him also his reward, which, as he himself says, the Lord, the righteous judge, will render to him on that day. But those who proclaimed the gospel not chastely, who proclaimed nothing other than the truth, that is, Christ, yet not with the truth of their heart but as an occasion for their own advantage, he allows to proclaim, and rejoices, not over them, of course, but over those who were being saved through them, holding to the precept of him who said: ‘What they say, do; but what they do, do not do. For they say and do not do.’ For so the apostle speaks to the Philippians: ‘Some indeed’, he says, ‘preach Christ through envy and strife, but some also through good will; some out of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel; but some proclaim Christ out of contentiousness, not chastely, thinking to stir up affliction for my chains. What then? So long as in every way, whether by occasion or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice.’ Would he have allowed them to preach Christ, though they did not preach the truth of the gospel in the truthful chastity of their heart, would he have rejoiced at the preaching of such men, unless he knew that it was ruinous for them to proclaim a chaste thing unchastely, but healthful for those who, hearing good and true things through them, advanced to salvation? For where not Christ, who is the truth, but falsehood and lies are preached, he most plainly forbids it, saying to the Galatians, ‘If anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what you received, let him be anathema’, and likewise to Timothy: ‘As I urged you’, he says, ‘to remain at Ephesus when I was going to Macedonia, so that you might charge certain persons not to teach otherwise.’ But those envious, contentious, stubborn, unchaste men, seeking an occasion to satisfy their bad will, since the Holy Spirit fled their deceit in such a way that he did not desert their ministry through which Christ was preached by them, he not only allows to do it, but even rejoices that they do it.

We bring forward these proofs from the holy Scriptures so that it may appear that nothing can easily be graver than the sacrilege of schism, because there is no just necessity for cutting off unity, since the good tolerate the bad, who will in no way harm them spiritually, precisely so as not to be spiritually separated from the good, when consideration for keeping peace restrains or postpones the severity of discipline; yet security puts discipline into force when it appears that something can be punished by church judgment for salutary correction without the wound of schism. For rather we say, ‘The name of the Lord belongs to those who fear him’, even though they are mixed with crowds of those who do not fear him; and what the apostle says, ‘The Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.’ For if, for the good of peace, lest the wheat be rooted up with the weeds before the time when they are gathered, someone is forced by necessity to be among the unjust, let him nonetheless depart from iniquity, and he calls on the name of the Lord securely. For at one and the same time he both departs from the unjust and goes out from them and is separated, meanwhile, in heart, so that at the end he may deserve to be separated from such men in body as well.

And as for what is written, ‘Praise is not beautiful in the mouth of a sinner’, in the mouth of the faithful it is certainly beautiful. But each has his own mouth just as each has his own load, and no one is wounded by another’s mouth without the consent of his own heart. But when the preaching of God comes from a sinner’s mouth, one must ask what kind of sinner Scripture meant in this place. For the tax collector too, who was justified rather than that Pharisee, was certainly a sinner. For if his sins were not real, his confession of sins was false; but if that confession was true, on account of which he even deserved to be justified, his sins were without doubt real. I would say this most truly also of the prayer of holy Daniel, who certainly said truthfully: ‘When I was praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people.’ In the mouth of what sinner, then, is praise not beautiful, if not above all of the liar and the deceitful, whom the holy Spirit of discipline will flee? Yet when such a man speaks the truth, it is not beautiful in his mouth, because it is not attributed to him, since he has no share in it; just as prophecy was not beautiful in the mouth of Caiaphas, chief of the priests, who did not know what he said, but, being high priest, prophesied. Yet God’s praise is beautiful in itself in the ears of those who hear and in the heart of those who believe.

Indeed, Parmenian even dares, by misusing a sentence of the apostle, to taunt, as it were, those whom he denies to have baptism and whom he therefore says cannot give it. ‘For what have you’, he says, ‘that you did not receive?’ To pass over from what source and why the apostle says this, which the context of his letter makes plain: if he wants this to be understood of baptism, and if the man who does not have it cannot give it, and the man who has not received it does not have it, so that ‘For what have you that you did not receive?’ may in some way support him, I ask whether a man who received it among them does not have it. If they say, ‘He has it’, I ask whether he loses it if he leaves them. If they say, ‘He loses it’, then he must be baptized again if he returns, so that what he lost may be restored to him. But if this is not done, and no one says that it should be done, then he had not lost it. Further, if he received it and was not deprived of it, he certainly has what he received, and so it cannot be said to him, in their sense, ‘For what have you that you did not receive?’ Turn your mind now to the very origin of the schism. Whatever they think of Caecilian, whom we believe innocent, he had without doubt been baptized in unity; for this division had not yet taken place. Let us suppose, as they want, that he himself left unity; he certainly did not lose what he had received. For if he returned, he would not be baptized again in order to receive what he had lost. Further, if he had not been deprived of what he had received, he certainly had it. So not even to him could it be said, in their perverse sense, ‘For what have you that you did not receive?’ Much less can this be said to one who received from the Lord through Caecilian. For why could a man who is not joined to you not receive what he did not have through one who did not lose it when he withdrew from you? How much more shamelessly, then, is it said to the world, ‘For what have you that you did not receive?’, the world from which the connection of the sacrament itself came into Africa, and which could not lose, through the crime of any traitor, the promise of God, who said with the plainest pledge to Abraham, ‘In your seed all nations shall be blessed’, even if these men had been, not impious slanderers of their brothers, but true examiners of crimes.

For what some of them, overcome by the truth, have begun to say, ‘He who withdraws from the church does not indeed lose baptism, but he does lose the right to give it’, appears in many ways to be said vainly and emptily. First, because no reason is shown why one who cannot lose baptism itself can lose the right to give it. For each is a sacrament, and each is given to a man by a certain consecration, the one when he is baptized, the other when he is ordained; and so in the Catholic Church neither may be repeated. For if at any time leaders coming from that party have been received, for the good of peace, after the error of schism has been corrected, even if it seemed necessary that they should exercise the same offices they exercised before, they have not been ordained again; but just as baptism, so ordination remained whole in them, because the fault had been in the cutting off, which was corrected by the peace of unity, not in the sacraments, which are the same wherever they are. And when it is judged expedient for the church that their leaders, coming into Catholic fellowship, should not exercise their offices there, the sacraments of ordination themselves are still not taken from them, but remain upon them. And so hands are not laid on them among the people, lest injury be done not to the man but to the sacrament itself. And if this is ever done in ignorance, and the deed is not stubbornly defended but piously corrected once known, pardon is easily obtained. For our God is not a God of dissension but of peace; and it is not the sacraments of the church that are enemies in those who have withdrawn from the church, but those who have withdrawn. Just as they have in baptism what can be given through them, so in ordination they have the right to give it; both, indeed, to their own ruin, so long as they do not have the love of unity. But it is one thing not to have, another to have ruinously, another to have healthfully. What is not had must be given when there is need to give it; but what is had ruinously must, by correction, with the ruin driven away, be brought to be had healthfully.

Even if a layman, compelled by the need of someone dying, has given what he learned how to give when he himself received it, I do not know whether anyone could piously say that it must be repeated. For if it is done with no necessity compelling, it is a usurpation of another’s office; but if necessity presses, it is either no fault or a pardonable one. But even if it is usurped with no necessity and given by anyone to anyone, what has been given cannot be said not to have been given, although it can rightly be said to have been given unlawfully. The unlawful usurpation, then, is corrected by a disposition that remembers and repents. But if he does not correct it, what has been given will remain for the punishment of the usurper, whether of him who gave it unlawfully or of him who received it unlawfully; yet it will not be held as not given. Nor in any way will the royal stamp that has been usurped by private persons be violated by a loyal soldier. For if some persons, secretly and irregularly, not in the public mints, mark gold or silver or bronze by striking it, when this has been detected, will not the royal stamp, once recognized, be gathered into the royal treasuries, while they are punished or freed by pardon? Or if someone, either a deserter or one who never served at all, marks some private person with the military brand, will not the man so marked, when detected, be punished as a deserter, and the more heavily the more he can prove that he never served at all, while the most audacious marker is punished with him if he betrays him? But if perhaps the man, not serving, takes fright at that military mark on his body and flees to the emperor’s clemency, and, having poured out his prayer and obtained pardon, now begins to serve, is that mark repeated when the man is freed and corrected, and not rather recognized and approved? Or do the Christian sacraments perhaps cling less than this bodily mark, when we see that not even apostates lack baptism, to whom, when they return through repentance, it is not given back, and so it is judged that it could not be lost? Or should an illustration not have been drawn from military service, when the apostle draws one even from athletic contests and openly cries out: ‘No one serving as a soldier to God entangles himself in worldly affairs, so as to please him who enlisted him’?

This, indeed, is another question: whether baptism can be given even by those who were never Christians; and nothing should be rashly affirmed on this without the authority of a council as great as so great a matter requires. But about those who have been separated from the unity of the Catholic Church there is no longer any question that they both have it and can give it, and that they have it to their ruin and hand it on to ruin outside the bond of peace. For this has already been discussed, considered, examined, and confirmed in the very unity of the whole world. But if we do wrong, let them explain how the sacrament of the baptized cannot be lost while the sacrament of the ordained can be lost, since they say: ‘One who withdraws from the church does not indeed lose baptism, but he does lose the right to give it.’ For if each is a sacrament, which no one doubts, why is the one not lost and the other lost? Injury must be done to neither sacrament. If holy things flee the bad, let both flee; if holy things remain inviolably in the bad, let both remain. If they say, ‘Baptism is rightly given only in the true church’, the answer to them is: ‘Baptism is rightly had only in the true church.’ Why can it not be given where it is not rightly given, when it can be had where it is not rightly had? Is it because not to have is one thing, and not to have rightly another? So also not to give is one thing, and not to give rightly another. Just as he who departs from unity does not have it rightly, but still has it, and so it is not given back to him when he returns, so also he who departs from unity does not give it rightly, but still gives it, and so what one received from him is not repeated when he comes to unity. But they contend that what is not rightly given has not been given. What if someone else contended that what is not rightly had cannot be had: would we not both cry out against him and say that he who has left unity has it indeed, but does not have it rightly? If, then, they want him to hear what we both cry out together, let them hear us crying out that he who departs from unity gives it indeed, but does not give it rightly. Therefore, just as what he had even outside is not given back to one who returns, so what he had received even outside is not to be repeated for one who comes. From this it is understood as a consequence that the perversity of men is to be corrected, but the holiness of the sacraments is not to be violated in any perverse man; for it is agreed that in perverse and wicked men, whether those inside or those outside, it remains unpolluted and inviolable. And when the bad are said to pollute them, they are said to do so as far as lies in them, while the sacraments themselves remain unpolluted. But in the good they remain for reward, in the bad they remain for judgment. For of the Spirit too, who can in no way be extinguished, it is nevertheless said: ‘Do not extinguish the Spirit’, that is, as far as lies in you, do not act as though you were trying to extinguish the Spirit or as though you counted the Spirit extinguished. And the name of God can in no way be polluted, and yet it is said: ‘The son and the father went in to one girl, so as to pollute the name of the Lord their God.’

Nor can these men extricate themselves in any way when it is put to them why the holiness of the sacrament can be both had and given by a man whom God has already condemned as wicked within, and begins to be impossible for him to give only when he has been condemned by men, though not even then can he lose it. Finally, why did Felicianus, whom the three hundred and ten condemned with Maximian, and who was long outside in a sacrilegious schism, as they themselves declared in their council, lose not only not baptism itself but not even the right to give it? For he was received in his rank, just as he had gone out, with all those whom he baptized while placed outside, none of them rebaptized; because if they judged that any of those he had baptized outside must be rebaptized, they would judge that he had lost the right to give it while he was outside, and the consequence would be that they should also ordain him again, if they baptized those again. But when they are called back to the peace of Christ, they are slanderers; when they consult for the peace of Donatus, they are dissemblers. What is this but what their own Tyconius says of them: ‘What we want is holy’?

Why, then, does Parmenian exult with empty boasting and say: ‘The judgment of the divine law will never allow that a dead man can give life to anyone, a wounded man heal, a blind man enlighten, a naked man clothe, a polluted man cleanse’? For the Lord raises the dead, the Lord heals the wounded, the Lord enlightens the blind, the Lord clothes the naked, the Lord cleanses the polluted. Why does he claim for himself what is not man’s? Are those among them who do not sin so alive that they are said to be able even to give life, when they cannot give growth? ‘I planted’, he says, ‘Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.’ How does he give life to the dead who cannot give growth to the living? ‘For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.’ Are they so healthy among them that they can even heal the unhealthy? What else do these men do than set themselves up to be blessed in place of the Lord? But in no way are those seduced by them who, hoping not in man but in God, sing: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits, who is merciful to all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases.’ If he himself heals all diseases, he leaves none that Parmenian may say he heals. Are there such great lights among them that they can even enlighten? This John the Evangelist does not grant even to John the Baptist, than whom no greater has arisen among those born of women; of him he says: ‘He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.’ If that light enlightens every man, it leaves none that Parmenian may say he enlightens; because, although holy men are called lights in a certain way, yet enlightened lights are one thing, the enlightening light another, which is that light alone of which the same John the Baptist says: ‘We have all received from his fullness.’ And who clothes the naked but he who says, ‘Bring out the best robe for him’, and ‘This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality’? And is any man said to clothe someone with a divine garment, for whom it is a great thing if he himself deserves to be clothed? Next, let him dare to say that he cleanses the polluted, if he first dares to say that he is not polluted. We have indeed been cleansed through the grace of God. But not even then shall we cleanse anyone, when our cleansing has been made perfect; how much less now, when ‘the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul’! ‘For who will boast that he has a chaste heart, or boast that he is clean from sin?’ For in spiritual things to cleanse and to heal mean the same. But as we have been saved in hope, so we have been cleansed in hope, with a view to perfect salvation and perfect cleanness. How then can we heal and cleanse now, when we will not be able to even then, when we are in every way clean and saved? ‘But God’, he says, ‘does these things through a man.’ He does indeed; but he did them also through Judas, whom he sent with the others to preach the gospel; he did them also through the Pharisees, in those who themselves did the good things they heard through them, though the Pharisees did not do what they said. Finally, why do their own unjust and wicked men, whether they are hidden or tolerated for the party of Donatus, give life, heal, enlighten, cleanse? Or are they not themselves dead, wounded, blind, polluted? Or is the reason that among them the blind leading the blind do not fall together into the pit that people follow, by hearing and obeying, not those men but the God whom they preach? Just so. But they preach God when they gather with Christ; when they scatter what they do not gather with him, preaching Donatus, not God, the blind, following the blind, fall together into the pit. But on the question of baptism we will treat more fully, with the Lord’s help, when we have answered all the testimonies of the holy Scriptures which Parmenian thought should be thrown at us; who truly gives his neighbours drink with the overthrow of iniquity, who has poured out for them so bad an error that he not only speaks himself, not for peace but for division and splitting, but also persuades people that the divine books speak so.