Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.1–1.20

Gaudentius, Donatist bishop of Thamugadi, was threatening to burn himself in his church together with some desperate men who had joined him. The honorable Dulcitius, tribune and notary, to whom our most devout emperor entrusted the execution of his laws out of concern for completing unity, was dealing gently with these madmen, as was fitting, and had first sent a peaceable letter to Gaudentius. Gaudentius wrote back two letters: one shorter and, as he indicates, hurried because the carriers were in a hurry; the other longer, in which he thinks he has answered more carefully according to the Scriptures. With the Lord’s help, then, I have undertaken to refute his writings in such a way that even those of slower wit will not doubt that I have answered everything. For I will first set down his words and then add ours, but not as I did when I answered the letter of Petilian. For there, at each point, when his words are inserted, it is written “Petilian said,” and when my words are given, “Augustine answered.” For this he slandered me as if I had lied, saying that he had never disputed with me face to face; as if he did not say what he wrote because I did not hear it in his words but read it in his letter, or as if I did not answer because I did not speak in his presence, but answered his writings by writing in turn. What are we to do with people who have such a heart, or who suppose that those to whom they wish their writings to become known have such a heart? But let us satisfy even such people here: when we set down Gaudentius’s words, let us not say “Gaudentius said,” but “Words of the letter”; and when we answer, let us not say “Augustine answered,” but “Reply to this.” So let us begin to refute Gaudentius’s first and shorter letter.

Words of the letter: “To the honorable Dulcitius, tribune and notary, much to be longed for by us, if you so wish, Gaudentius, bishop.” Reply to this: We should not discuss even this, lest we dwell almost on superfluous matters, when there are necessary places that will compel us to speak at somewhat greater length.

Words of the letter: “I have received the writings of Your Religiousness through men who are plainly dear to all for their character and their way of life.” Reply to this: Nor will I discuss how you said “Your Religiousness” to a man whom you think rather irreligious. You returned the courtesy as you thought it should be returned, since he treated you more courteously in the letter he gave you than a Catholic ought to treat a heretic, thinking your mind could be healed by such conversation.

Words of the letter: “In it,” he says, “so many things were said by Your Worthiness, about which for now I am silent. But since the sharpness of your mind did not notice that in the same writing you could assert us to be neither fully innocent nor guilty …” Reply to this: How did he not assert them guilty, when he said they had been wrongly gathered? How did he not assert you guilty, when he said that under your leadership the souls of wretched people would perish by an abominable end, adding that you ought to understand what ill will could await you in this world and what punishment in that last judgment, past hope? How did he not assert you guilty, when he exhorted you as he could to follow the example of others worth imitating, give up the error of your former heresy, and betake yourself to the one true faith of God? Yet we have undertaken not to defend the tribune’s words but to refute the heretic’s. If, then, this man of ours, as a military layman, said something rather incautiously, who would not forgive him? Who would contend that the Catholic Church must be prejudged by his words? You, consider more carefully what you say, you whom the party of Donatus put forward, together with six others, as a defender of its division at our conference held at Carthage.

Words of the letter: “But if you think us criminals,” he says, “you must flee a fellowship that is to be condemned.” Reply to this: Plainly the fellowship of criminals must be fled, but that of the corrected is not to be rejected. So we avoid the former for their health in such a way that we mercifully want, wish, and press for the latter.

Words of the letter: “But if you think us innocent,” he says, “as you yourself said, we, settled in the faith of Christ, rejoice to endure persecutors.” Reply to this: I have examined the tribune’s letter to you and nowhere in it did I read that he called you innocent, but that he had heard or learned from others that you are prudent. In the holy Scriptures, however, not only the good but the bad too are commonly so called. For there even the serpent, deceiver of man, received this name. For where some have translated “the wisest of all the beasts,” the Greek manuscripts, from which that Scripture was translated into the Latin language, have rather “the most prudent.” But if those whom he said are held by you against their will for destruction must be thought to have been called innocent by the tribune, what wonder if he believed that what he knew had happened in other places was happening there too? So there is no reason for you to rejoice that you suffer persecution, when you cannot find how to assert that you are innocent. Far be it, moreover, that this should be called a persecution of people, when it is rather a persecution of vices for the setting free of people, such as even the care of physicians inflicts on the sick. And yet, even if you were innocent, you would be made guilty by this, that you desire to kill the innocent. For those who try to assert that they are innocent and yet will not spare their own lives, of what else are they convicted but of killing the innocent?

Words of the letter: “But in this church,” he says, “in which the name of God and of his Christ, as you yourself said, has always been invoked in truth, we either remain alive as long as it pleases God, or, as is worthy of the household of God, we end our life within the Lord’s camp; on this condition, namely, that this can happen only if force has been used. For no one is so mad as to hasten to death with no one driving him.” Reply to this: Nor is it read in the tribune’s letter that the name of God was invoked by you in truth, though he did say it was invoked. And even if he had said so, it could be understood not to your glory but to your punishment. For the apostle said even of the impious Gentiles, “who hold the truth in unrighteousness,” as you also do, who hold the truth of divine baptism in the unrighteousness of human error. Hence, when we correct your unrighteousness, we must certainly not annul the truth of that sacrament. You do confess, innocent man, though in other words, that you and yours will perish together with the church. For when you say “in the church,” what else do you want understood but “with the church,” since you are preparing to do it by fire? This is the innocence of the party of Donatus: that, adding your own deaths, you do what you are alleged to have done at Carthage too, to stir up ill will against us, to the basilicas that had been yours, as far as you could and with whom you could, without your own deaths. For who would not believe that you did that out of zeal, when you are planning to do it even by dying? But if you did not do that, this which you are preparing to do is certainly more furious. But you said, “if force has been used,” and added, “For no one is so mad as to hasten to death with no one driving him”: how much madder, then, is he who, when driven toward life, hastens to death!

Words of the letter: “As for those who are with us,” he says, “I call God to witness and all his sacraments that I have exhorted and most earnestly persuaded them that anyone who wished to leave should say so publicly without fear. For neither can we hold people against their will, we who have learned that no one is to be compelled to the faith of God.” Reply to this: But why do you not most openly declare yourself, if not a retainer of the unwilling, at least an exhorter to a good work, if what you are going to do is good? Or perhaps you yourself understand how evil it is, and threaten that you will do it more to frighten than to carry it out, being either faithless by lying or cruel by telling the truth?

Words of the letter (in another hand): “I wish you well, flourishing in the affairs of the state and withdrawing from the harassment of Christians.” Reply to this: We too can wish him well and flourishing in the affairs of the state, but not resting from the correction of heretics.

Words of the later letter: “To the honorable Dulcitius, to be longed for with all affection, Gaudentius, bishop.” Reply to this: If you long for the man with all affection, why do you refuse to hold the unity of Christ with him? Or, as if returning evil for evil, do you long to rebaptize the one you think your persecutor?

Words of the letter: “People known to each other only by reputation,” he says, “commonly desire either to exchange words face to face or at least, though unacquainted, not to shrink from each other’s presence. But Your Censorship has informed me by letter that you were glad to find me absent and saddened that I had returned.” Reply to this: Not all who are known to each other only by reputation wish to see each other, but those whom that reputation commends well. It is truly strange what has happened to you: you say he is to be longed for, by whom you complain you suffer persecution; while he who persecutes you would rather you were absent and does not wish to find the one he persecutes. But why this, unless because he wanted you rather to be understood as the persecutor of those whose salvation in Christ he believed your presence was hindering?

Words of the letter: “But since yesterday,” he says, “so as not to be silent in my letter of reply, I briefly and summarily informed you of some points because of the haste of the carriers, I must now answer Your Worthiness’s writings with the words of the sacred divine law. The Lord says: ‘You shall not kill the innocent and the just, and you shall not acquit the guilty.’ It is certain, therefore, that in the judgment of God the one who acquits the guilty and the one who kills the innocent are bound by equal crime and equal guilt. If Gabinius, whom you named, or the other faith-breakers, partners in that evil fall, were guilty before communion, according to God’s words they ought by no means to have been acquitted. But if they were received as innocent or holy, why do you kill the innocent who remain in the faith from which you receive them as holy?” Reply to this: You speak spitefully and falsely. For the man to whom you speak received no such order as that you should be killed, but that you should be corrected; and if you refuse, so that you do not hinder the correction of others, you will be sent into exile. If this ought not to be done by the just to the unjust, why did you wish, even falsely, to boast at our conference of Caecilian’s exile, to which you said he was sent by the emperor Constantine at the insistence of your forebears? And this tribune to whom you write, who has been entrusted with the laws passed for unity, so much wants you to live that he fears you will kill yourself. See, set before your eyes him and yourself! He wants you to live in the peace of Christ; you seek to kill yourself in the party of Donatus: recognize which of you is your persecutor.

As for Gabinius, now ours, who was once yours, and very many others who, having considered the Catholic truth, have come over from you to us: let them not seem to you not to have been cleansed of your contagion because they were not rebaptized by us. For those who are not yet baptized are washed from all sins in the Catholic Church by the washing of regeneration; but in those who received this sacrament outside, not for help but for judgment (since we do not violate the royal mark even in a deserter), there happens what is written: “Love covers a multitude of sins.” See how those who ought not to be baptized can be cleansed by the very love of Catholic unity, so that what was in them outside does not begin to be in them inside, but what harmed them outside begins to profit them inside. So we do not receive them from you as holy (for they are sanctified by coming over to us, who could by no means be holy by remaining with you), nor do we kill you as innocent, whom we want to live even as guilty.

But you, who rightly recall the testimony of the divine voice and object to us that God said, “You shall not kill the innocent and the just”: if you are innocent and just, why do you kill yourself? We do not call you innocent and just, and yet we do not want you killed; you think yourself innocent and just, and do not spare the innocent and just. Certainly you yourself said: “In the judgment of God the one who acquits the guilty and the one who kills the innocent are bound by equal crime and equal guilt.” Why, then, did you acquit the guilty Felician, a Maximianist? Why do you kill the innocent, yourself? We, however, neither acquit the guilty, but want him first corrected so that he may deserve to be acquitted; nor do we judge you innocent, whether you spare yourself or kill yourself, if you remain in the party of Donatus. For however much you boast of innocence, by killing yourself, an innocent man, you cannot be innocent; unless perhaps you answer me and say: “When I kill myself, I certainly do not kill an innocent man, because by the very will by which I resolve to kill myself I am made guilty in mind before I have killed the body.” If you say this, you speak the truth, and by accusing yourself in a wonderful way you defend yourself. For when you show that in killing yourself you first become guilty by your very purpose, then without doubt, the deed done, no one will convict you of having killed an innocent man. By this reasoning it follows that, while many innocent people are killed by others, no innocent person is killed by himself. For by the very thought with which he plots to kill himself he is first stripped of innocence, so that when he kills himself he does not die innocent. This would happen to you if you had been innocent before preparing to kill yourself. But as it is, since already before, as a heretic, you were not innocent, if you kill yourself it will not be the beginning of your iniquity but its increase.

Words of the letter: “For about the holy Emeritus of Caesarea,” he says, “a false report reached us, in keeping with his merit. But if it were so, hear the apostle saying: ‘If some of them fell from faith, did their unbelief nullify the faithfulness of God? Far from it.’” Reply to this: We must say about Emeritus of Caesarea what you were afraid to say. A false report was indeed spread about him, that he had become a Catholic; but just as you heard this, so you could have learned everything that happened. Why, then, did you choose to be silent about the praises of your fellow bishop, whose name was put to you as an example? Surely, if he did anything praiseworthy at so critical a moment, you certainly should not have kept silent about it. But since you do not want us to believe you could have envied his praises, why then were you silent, unless because you were afraid of blushing over him? Emeritus came, then, to Caesarea while we were there and present. He came not caught by anyone’s cleverness, not brought by another’s power; roused by his own will, he wished to see us. We saw him; we went together to the Catholic church; a very great crowd was present. He could say nothing for his own or your defense; he would not take communion; given time, he persisted; convicted, he fell silent; he left unharmed. What could have been gentler, for our mildness? What more unconquerable, for the Catholic truth? What more healthful, if you are wise, for your correction? For since he would not have come to us of his own accord unless to say something for you against us, he would surely have said it if he had found anything to say. For whatever he had prepared to say, the reason he came, was, with the help of the Lord’s mercy, refuted by our anticipating it before it was brought forward by his evasion. And certainly, if you think he could have answered but did not wish to, read what was done with him and answer yourself. If Emeritus had passed over into Catholic peace, you would say that he had not consented to the light of truth by divine mercy, but yielded to the weight of persecution out of human weakness. Finally, if he had been captured and brought against his will, you would boast at your pleasure that he had kept silent not for lack of an answer but with a plan to escape. As it is, since he came of his own accord, it was surely not his tongue but his case that failed him in his silence; and that he would not pass over into Catholic unity, confusion made his proud soul most stubborn. But this profited the strengthening and salvation of others as much as it did his own ruin and punishment. For if they had seen Emeritus in communion with us, they would suspect a frightened man; but when they saw him both remaining in the party of Donatus and yet silent against the Catholic faith, it became more apparent to them that by his silence he was crying out for us against his own. Or was not Emeritus, standing there with voice and mouth sound and free, a fit witness for our case against you: that Emeritus, I say, both an enemy and dumb?

But you thought you were consoling your people well, by apostolic authority no doubt. Not on account of Emeritus, who could do no more for you than, finding nothing to say for you, still not leave you; but on account of others who, having abandoned your error, are changed for the better and joined to the Catholic fellowship, you recalled that the apostle said: “If some of them fell from faith, did their unbelief nullify the faithfulness of God? Far from it.” It remains, indeed, that those who believed God are to be called fallen from faith, and those who believe men are to be said to hold the faith! The Lord said, “In your seed all nations will be blessed”: see whom those believe who pass over from you to us. Men said that the nations overseas perished through the sin of Caecilian: see whom those believe who persist in your fellowship. And you say that those have fallen from faith who followed the faithfulness of God, and that those have the faith of God who remain in the words of men. Where then is what the apostle at once added to this sentence you cited: “But God is true, and every man a liar,” if those have fallen from faith who believe what God, the true Lord, said, and those persist in faith who believe what lying man said?

Words of the letter: “You urge me to flight,” he says, “as if from the law; but only a doer of the law ought to be heard, since the apostle Paul says: ‘Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.’ For hear the Lord too saying that the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, but the hireling, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and flees, and the wolf seizes them and scatters them.” Reply to this: See how the party of Donatus understands the Gospel! So the apostle was not a shepherd but a hireling, when he was let down in a basket through the wall and escaped the hands of the man who wanted to seize him; and you are a shepherd, who want to destroy with you, who seek to kill with you, those whom you call the Lord’s sheep, so that they perish by error in mind and destroy the body by fury; and you do not hear the Shepherd and Prince of shepherds saying, “The thief comes only to kill and destroy”? Is this why you came, you who had gone away; is this why you returned, you who had fled? This is the work of a thief and robber, not of a shepherd and guardian. Yet see, without our forcing you, that you have refused to let all your colleagues who fled be understood as hirelings rather than shepherds. But if there were sheep of the Lord with you, they would either come with you, so that they might have you as a shepherd once corrected, or, leaving you, they would flee to the shepherd. But the hireling whom the Lord means, on seeing the wolf, flees not in body but in mind, when out of fear he deserts justice; as your Secundus of Tigisi fled when, so as not to lose his primacy or his episcopate, he feared Purpurius of Liniata, who had confessed to murder and was all the more terrible. In body, however, even those good shepherds the apostles fled in persecution, and yet they did not therefore abandon the sheep of Christ in care and mind. If, then, you too were a shepherd, first you would not be on the wolf’s side; then you would have obediently heard, even through the mouth of any sinner, the command of your Lord, who ordered his servants to flee in persecutions, and would not argue against your Lord and say: “Only a doer of the law ought to be heard, since the apostle Paul says: ‘Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.’”

Why do you turn plain words to another sense? He denied that hearers of the law who are not doers are just before God; he did not forbid that people be heard when they speak the truth, lest he should speak, as you do, against his Lord, who said of certain people: “Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.” You see how Christ commanded that the law be heard even through men who were hearers and preachers of the law but not doers, and that others be doers of it; and you say, “Only a doer of the law ought to be heard,” and, wishing to refute your supposed persecutor, you speak against your Creator. The Lord does say to the sinner, “Why do you recount my statutes and take my covenant in your mouth?”; but this is because it does him no good who says and does not do what he says; but it does good to him who hears good even through a bad man and does what he hears. Praise is not beautiful in the mouth of a sinner, but it is beautiful in the life and conduct of the doer, even if he has heard it from the mouth of a sinner. So, however much you think the tribune a sinner and not a doer of the law, obediently hear, not him, but, even through him, the one who says: “If they persecute you in one city, flee to another.” Why do you stand still? Hear and flee; Christ commands this, not the tribune. Unless perhaps you answer and say: “Christ does say, ‘If they persecute you in this city, flee to another’; but why should I leave this city, when neither is this man my persecutor nor am I a hearer of Christ?” And so, if you stay, you are a raging wolf; and if you flee, you are a frightened wolf. And since the bridegroom says, “If you do not know yourself, O beautiful among women, go out in the footsteps of the flocks and pasture your kids by the tents of the shepherds,” even if you boast that you are a shepherd, yet, because you have gone out from the Lord’s fold, you pasture your own kids, not the sheep of Christ.

Words of the letter: “Then,” he says, “what places will there be to receive priests, troubled on every side in this storm of persecution, to be kept in tranquillity as in a harbor, when the Lord has said: ‘When they begin to persecute you in this city, flee to another’? The apostles fled safely then, because the emperor had ordered no one to be proscribed for harboring them. But now those who harbor Christians, terrified by proscriptions, fearing dangers, not only do not receive them, but are even afraid to see those whom they venerate in secret.” Reply to this: I plainly praise this, that you recognize yourselves; but I grieve that you do not correct yourselves. For what could be plainer than this confession of yours, by which you declare well enough that you do not belong to the company of those to whom the Lord says, “If they persecute you in one city, flee to another”? This is surely what I said a little before you could answer me most truly, if you said: “Neither is this man my persecutor nor am I a hearer of Christ.” See, you say this most openly. For how are you a hearer of Christ, when he promises his hearers, that is, his followers, that until the end of the age, whenever they suffer persecution, there will not be lacking cities to flee to, saying: “But when they persecute you in this city, flee to another; for truly I tell you, you will not finish the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes”? But you, in this persecution which you complain you suffer, say that places are already lacking to you where you can flee and rest from this storm as in a harbor, speaking against the promise of Christ, who says that there will not be lacking cities to which his own may flee when they suffer persecution, until he comes, that is, until the consummation of the age. Since, then, he promised his own what you do not find, surely he lies, if you are his; but since he does not lie, you are not his. And therefore neither is the tribune to whom you write your persecutor; but he is the persecutor of your persecutor, that is, of your error, by which you are driven to do such things that you are of the kind of whom it is written that they suffered persecution from their own deeds. Accordingly, if you understand what those who love you persecute in you, you will without doubt flee the very bad deeds of yours from which you suffer persecution, and you will join those who, to set you free, persecute your persecutors; for they persecute nothing but your errors.

Words of the letter: “Almighty God,” he says, “having fashioned man through the maker of all things, the Lord Christ, as like God, left him to free choice. For it is written: ‘God made man and left him in the hand of his own counsel.’ Why now is what God bestowed being snatched from me by human command? Notice, most eminent man, what great sacrileges are committed against God, that human presumption takes away what he granted, and vainly boasts that it does this for God. It is a great insult to God if he is defended by men. What does he think of God who wishes to defend him by violence, except that he cannot avenge his own insults?” Reply to this: According to these most false and empty reasonings of yours, let the reins be slackened and let go, let all the sins of human license be left unpunished; with no barriers of laws set against them let the boldness to harm and the lust to wanton run riot; let no king restrain his kingdom, no general his soldier, no judge the provincial, no master his slave, no husband his wife, no father his son from the freedom and pleasure of sinning by any threats or punishments. Take away what sound doctrine wisely says through the apostle for the health of the world; and, to confirm the sons of perdition in a choice as much worse as it is freer, delete what the vessel of election says: “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power except from God; and those that exist are ordained by God. Therefore whoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist acquire judgment for themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good work but to evil. Do you want not to fear the power? Do good, and you will have praise from it; for it is God’s minister, an avenger in wrath on the one who does evil.” Delete these things, if you can; or, if you cannot delete them, despise them, as you do. Have the worst choice about all these things, so as not to lose free choice; or at least, since as men you blush before men, cry out, if you dare: “Let murders be punished, let adulteries be punished, let all other deeds of crime or lust, however great, be punished; sacrileges alone we want left unpunished by the laws of rulers.” Or do you say anything else when you say, “It is a great insult to God if he is defended by men. What does he think of God who wishes to defend him by violence, except that he cannot avenge his own insults?” Saying this, what else are you saying but: “Let no human power contradict or obstruct our free choice when we insult God”? O grief! Ancient times were cheated of such a teacher, since you were not yet born when holy Moses bore his own insults most gently, but avenged God’s most severely. But now you, more learned in heretical presumption, cry out most spitefully: “God made man and left him in the hand of his own counsel. Why now is what God bestowed being snatched from me by human command?”, demanding, of course, that, to insult God, who made man with free choice, free choice be left you by man. But those too who, by the decree of King Nebuchadnezzar, under the penalty of their own death and the destruction of their houses, were terribly forbidden to blaspheme the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and were to be sharply punished if they disregarded it, could have said what you yourself said: “It is a great insult to God if he is defended by men. What does he think of God who wishes to defend him by violence, except that he cannot avenge his own insults?” These words of yours they too could certainly have said, and perhaps did say, if not with the same freedom, then with no unlike emptiness.