Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.33–1.46

Who does not know how many of this kind used formerly to go to their deaths in various ways and perish, and how few, by comparison with them, burn now in their own fires? But if you think we ought to be moved because so many thousands die in this way, how much consolation do you suppose we have in this, that from such great madness of the party of Donatus, in which not only the error of a wicked division but also this fury has become law, far and incomparably more thousands are being set free? For those who perish do not equal even the number of those of that very kind who are now held under the order of discipline and, having lost both the work and the name of circumcellions, serve in tilling the fields, keep chastity, and hold unity. How much less do these lost men equal the number of both sexes, not only boys and girls, young men and maidens, but also the married and the old, countless numbers of whom are passing from the wicked dissension of the Donatists into the true and Catholic peace of Christ! For those who burn themselves are not as many people as there are places full of people being rescued from the deadly plague of that error and fury by this effort to complete unity. Can it be, I ask you, sound counsel of mercy that all these be kept, together with those, for the eternal punishments of hell, so that those few, by comparison with these, should not be burned in the fires of their own furnaces? For we must work with great efforts and prayers that all may live with Christ; but if this cannot be done because of the fury of some, we must at least labor that not all perish with the devil.

Searching most shrewdly in the holy Scriptures for anything you could bring forward for this insane view of self-chosen death, you think you have found something, because it is written in the Gospel, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”; as if each person ought to kill himself because he is too weak to endure sufferings at the hands of persecutors. You could not more quickly have said that your false martyrs are of the number of those of whom it is written, “Woe to those who have lost endurance,” and do not belong at all to those to whom the Lord says, “By your patience you will possess your souls.” And those of whom we read, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” were overcome by an unwilled sleep, not killed by a willed death. Read carefully and attend to what you are saying. Where is what the apostle says: “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make a way out, so that you may be able to endure”? Is this apostolic truth not to be believed, and must we have ourselves as enemies because we cannot endure other enemies? Far be this from Christian hearts. Plainly let Catholics believe the faithful apostle, or rather the faithful God himself, who does not let his own be tempted beyond what they can bear, but with the temptation makes also a way out so that they may be able to endure; let the Donatists not believe it; and so that they may not always disbelieve it, let them not be Donatists. For when they despair of obtaining patience from the Lord in any sufferings, and so seek the shortcut of the furnaces, where these men throw themselves, not to the beasts, as the most blessed Cyprian says, but to the flames, men whom no one has condemned, this is not counsel but fury, not wisdom but madness. Let them have their fires, those who do not say of the Lord’s help, “For from him is my patience.”

Certainly holy Job, when he was rotting from head to foot with an intolerable wound and tormented with monstrous pains, had this shortcut of yours ready to hand, by which he refused to snatch himself from such a life, full of dreadful calamities, in which he no doubt remained. The power was certainly there, but justice did not permit it. For it is in this sense that he says: “Oh that I could kill myself, or ask another to do this to me!” The just man denied that he could do what could not be done through justice. In that manner of speaking the apostle too says to the Galatians: “I bear you witness that, if it could have been done, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me.” For why could this not have been done, except because it could in no way have been done justly? So too the Lord, when through his angels he was urging just Lot, going out of Sodom, to hurry to Zoar, said: “For I cannot do anything until you go in there.” He said he could not do what he undoubtedly could by power, but could not by justice. For the most patient Job could, to say nothing else, have taken no food or drink and so ended that wretched and dreadful life; but this he could not do justly, since it is lawful for no one to kill himself, above all when, so as to be able to live, he is able to flee. Or would anyone doubt that that holy man, who said so much in his pains, could have asked someone to do this to him? For just as, suffering and rotting, he did not lack a hand to kill, neither did he lack a tongue to ask. Certainly he could have asked even his own wife to do this. Yet not even she suggested that this be done, though she desired him to die by blaspheming and God’s being angry; and so, though saying something against God by wicked counsel, she nevertheless did not dare to tell him to kill himself. The devil has more power over you, persuading you so easily of what he could not persuade a foolish woman, whom he had kept back as his servant to deceive her husband when everything else had been taken from him. So that just man said that he could not ask anyone to kill him, showing thereby that it is certainly not permitted. For what cannot be done justly, a just man cannot do, since by deciding on it he first loses his justice, so that what a just man cannot do, an unjust man can. So he said, “Oh that I could kill myself,” as though he said, “Oh that it were just; for then it could be done by a just man.” For he did not wish injustice for himself so as to be able to do what only an unjust man can; but if it could be, he would want this to be justice. Since that could not be, that this should be justice, the just man could not do what only injustice would do. And therefore it is not unjust for a just man to wish for death when life is most bitter; but if God does not grant the death he wishes, it will be just only to bear that most bitter life. So too it is not foreign to a just man to wish for life when a bitter death threatens; but when he sees he cannot obtain it, he says what the Lord said, transferring us into himself: “Yet not what I will, but what you will, Father.” But these things are to be said to those whom persecutors seek out to do evil, not to those whom people who love them seek out to share good things; to those, I say, these things are to be said who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake, not to those who inflict it on themselves for unrighteousness.

Accordingly, that elder Razis too, whom these men, lacking examples for their crime, boast that they have found in the books of the Maccabees as one to imitate, ought to have done what we read in the same writings those seven brothers did, with their mother exhorting them: that, when seized and not turned away from the law of his Lord, he should accept everything laid on him, endure it in pain, and have patience in his humiliation. Therefore, unable to bear humiliation at the hands of enemies, he gave an example plainly not of wisdom but of folly, to be imitated not by the martyrs of Christ but by the circumcellions of Donatus. Yet if we consider more carefully, you appear strangers even to him. For he, when he was already being seized by enemies, had no free way of flight. Therefore he struck himself with a sword, and when he could not kill himself, he threw himself down from the wall; then, when he could no longer live, still breathing and moving his body by force, he reached, though bloodless, a steep rock by running, where, drawing out his entrails with both hands, he tore them, scattered them, and fell, so surrounded by the crowd that he could not escape even if he could live. You, then, who neither hear the Lord saying, “Flee,” nor imitate Razis, who wished to flee and could not, surely have neither the Lord as your precept nor Razis as your example. What of the fact that by your own reasoning this Razis is without doubt to be blamed? For you said that because of the Gospel saying in which the Lord says, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,” you fled to the shortcut of the furnaces, because, of course, you are too weak to bear the hands of enemies if you were seized by them. So of the man who wounded himself gravely with a sword, who, wounded, made for the wall, who threw himself headlong from it, who could afterward run to the rock, stand on the rock, draw out his entrails, tear them, and scatter them: can it be said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”? Not only did his spirit appear so willing, but his flesh so firm, that it is hardly credible that he wished and was able to do what he did. So this man ought to displease you, since he confounds the reason you give from weakness with his firmness. Further, if, able to flee but unwilling, he had heaped wood in his house and, when the enemies rushed in to seize him, had set fire to it and burned himself with his house, he would have given you an example, but would have gained great torment for himself. As it is, since he could not flee, he is perhaps somewhat less guilty of his own blood, in that he inflicted on himself the death which the enemy was about to inflict on him once seized.

But, you say, Razis was praised by the authority of the holy Scriptures. How was he praised? Because he was a lover of his city: this could be meant in a carnal sense too, namely of that earthly Jerusalem which is in slavery with her children, not of the Jerusalem above, our free mother. He was praised because he kept continence in Judaism: but the apostle says that such things were loss and dung to him compared with Christian righteousness. He was praised because he was called father of the Jews: this rather is why impatience of humiliation crept up on him as a man, so that he preferred to die rather than be subject to enemies. It was said that he chose to die nobly: better had he chosen to die humbly, for so he would have died profitably. Those are the words in which the history of the nations usually praises the brave men of this age, not the martyrs of Christ. It was said that he threw himself manfully from the wall into the crowds: nor do we say he did it womanishly. Although you, who have profited much from this example, have taught even your women to do this; but we admit that they too do it not womanishly but manfully, yet not healthfully, because not faithfully. Lastly, as for his being said to have called on the ruler of life and spirit to give these back to him again, that is, life and spirit: even then he asked for nothing by which the good are distinguished from the bad. For God will give these back also to those who have done evil, not in the resurrection of eternal life but in the resurrection of eternal judgment. So this Razis was praised as a lover of his city, as one very well spoken of, that is, of good reputation, because he was called father of the Jews and because he kept continence in Judaism. But this death of his, more wonderful than prudent, Scripture narrated as it happened; it did not praise it as something to be done. And it is for us, as the apostle admonishes, to test all things, hold what is good, and abstain from every kind of evil.

And this Scripture which is called that of the Maccabees the Jews do not hold as they do the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, to which the Lord bears witness as to his witnesses, saying, “All that is written about me in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms had to be fulfilled”; but it has been received by the church not without profit, if it is read or heard soberly, above all because of those Maccabees who, as true martyrs, suffered such unworthy and dreadful things from persecutors for the law of God; so that from this too the Christian people might notice that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us, for whom Christ suffered, if those men endured such things so very patiently for the law which God gave through his servant, men for whom he had not yet given up his Son. And even this Razis has something to profit readers: not only that the mind may be exercised by judging rightly what it reads, but also that the human mind, or rather the Christian mind, may notice how much is to be borne from enemies through the ardor of love, when this man bore so much from himself through fear of humiliation. But the ardor of love comes down from the height of divine grace, while the fear of humiliation arises from love of human praise; and therefore the one strives by patience, the other sins by impatience. So we ought not, whatever we read in the Scriptures that men praised even by God’s testimony did, to approve it by consenting, but to discern it by considering, applying a judgment not of our own authority but of the divine and holy Scriptures; which do not permit us either to imitate or to praise all the deeds even of those men to whom a good and splendid testimony is borne there, if some were not rightly done by them, or no longer suit this time. But what need is there in this question to discuss anything about things which were right then and are not now, since what is at issue, that someone should inflict death on himself, especially one who is granted, or rather compelled, to live, is among those deeds which never can be right and never could have been, as we have shown well enough?

Accordingly, however the life of this Razis is taken by you as praised, his death does not have wisdom to praise it, because it does not have the patience worthy of God’s servants; rather that voice of wisdom which is not of praise but of detestation fits him: “Woe to those who have lost endurance.” For if you believe that all the deeds of those who are praised are to be imitated, is this Razis better than David? Why, then, does no good man propose to himself his deed in desiring another man’s wife and killing her husband as something to imitate, but rather as something to beware of and avoid? Is Razis better than Solomon? Do you like it, then, that we should propose as an example to imitate his wantonness toward women, by whose seductions he was led even to building temples to idols? Is Razis better than the apostle Peter, who, when he said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” was called so blessed by the Lord that he was counted worthy to receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and yet he is not believed to be imitated in what he heard when at once, in the same moment, he was rebuked: “Get behind me, Satan; for you do not mind the things of God, but those of men”? And to pass over these things which the holy Scripture of the church has blamed in the plainest words, and to speak of those which are only narrated and written down there, and about which no verdict of praise or blame is given in either direction, but which are left to us to judge: is Razis better than Noah? Yet who, being sober, would praise that man for lying drunk? Is Razis better than the patriarch Judah? Yet who would approve him, whom would it please, whom would it not most rightly offend in that sexual immorality, since he went in, not indeed to his daughter-in-law, for he did not know it, but to one whom he thought a prostitute? Is Razis better than Samson? Dare, then, to say, if you can, that the great divine secret of strength he had in his hair should have been betrayed to a coaxing woman. For as for his killing himself together with his enemies when he brought down the house on himself and them, he wished to share with them the death which he was soon to suffer from them, since he could not escape. And this he did not do of his own accord; it is to be attributed to the Spirit of God, who used him to do, when he was present to him, what he could not do when the same Spirit was absent. Just as Abraham’s deed, when he was willing to sacrifice his son, which at God’s command was obedience, what would it have been without God’s command but madness?

Taught by these sacred writings, the blessed Cyprian said in his confession that discipline forbids anyone to offer himself. See how much evil you do when you wish to kill yourselves, you who would be undisciplined even if you wished to offer yourselves to others desiring to do this to you. The one you call Savior commands flight; the persecutor permits flight: what, then, are you following, so as to perish in your own fires, except your own fury? And yet you say: “Is not this a persecution, which has driven so many thousands of innocent people to death?” Show how you are innocent, who divide Christ and kill yourselves. Show how you are driven to death, to whom flight is both commanded by God and allowed by men. Show how you snatch your souls from contamination by the shortcut of the furnaces, when rather you make them most contaminated by the sacrilege of the furnaces as by a sacrifice to the devil. Ask Christ: he commands you to flee. Ask the tribune: he permits you to flee. If you could ask Razis himself, he would answer us: “I could not flee.” So you have neither Christ as Savior, nor the tribune as persecutor, nor Razis as authority.

As for your saying that your people, when they killed themselves, did not fear in vain, since whoever fell into our hands or those of our people did not escape: I ask what he did not escape. If death, why do you inflict it on yourselves with your own hands, if you fear it from ours? But it is plain that you do not mean death. For how much we desire you to live you yourselves know; that is why you frighten us with your death. Accordingly, if you mean that none of you who fell into our hands escaped our communion, would that you spoke the truth! For very happily would they not escape the communion offered by Catholics, so as to escape the damnation prepared for heretics. But that what you say is false you could have considered even from your own Emeritus, who, when he came to us, was more easily convicted by the truth than compelled to take communion. There are others too, lesser in fame but equal in folly. For whoever was of like vanity, so as to become stubborn against the most manifest truth with most perverse shame, blushing to be thought inconstant, left us without Catholic communion. But you said, “Whoever has fallen into their hands has not escaped,” because you thought that the very few who persistently resist the plainest truth and leave go unnoticed. But by your own lights you have done Emeritus a very grave wrong, who has lost with you the praise of his hardness; as if he wished in vain to be among the few not consenting to the truth, because he did not deserve to be counted among those who go unnoticed. Which of us would not believe you envy your colleague? Or if you do not envy him, imitate him. Come to us as he did; hear what we say as he did; answer, if you can, what he could not; but if you will neither answer nor take communion, leave as he did. See, he left our hands unharmed; why do you say, “Whoever has fallen into their hands has not escaped”? See, he did not believe that places to hide would be lacking to him; why do you plan to burn? Do you not yet see that it is rather you who do not belong to God and who act against God, not only by the common plague by which you resist the unity of Christ, but especially you, who hasten to add even deaths to this great crime of yours?

Words of the letter: “But since,” he says, “the office of an executor did not befit your prudence, please attend briefly. Solid truth, I think, is one thing, the image of truth another. For truth stands firm by its own strength; an idol or likeness is what human presumption has made like the true, to the injury of the true; yet falsehood can never prejudge truth. I call worshipers of images those who do not hold the truth; I consider a pagan under another name one who makes for himself what he worships. Hence it is public and open that by threats, terror, and frequent persecutions they are known to have made for themselves faithless men to venerate, Gabinius and those like him, carried off from the freedom of nature, to whose worship the unwilling are compelled.” Reply to this: You add still words of blasphemy to your fury, and dare to say that the Catholic Church is a human fabrication, to which God says: “For I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name.” And so that we may know that this is the Catholic Church spread throughout the whole world, he goes on and adds: “And he who delivers you, the God of Israel himself, will be called the God of the whole earth.” This most evident work of God you call a human fabrication, and you do not look back to see that you would in no way be separated from this church, which God promised he would make throughout the whole earth, unless you followed a man. We follow him who said to Abraham, “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” We follow him who said to his church itself what I recalled just now: “I am the Lord who makes you, the Lord is his name; and he who delivers you, the God of Israel himself, will be called the God of the whole earth.” Therefore, holding the church which spreads and grows through all nations and through the whole earth, we certainly do not follow a human fabrication but a divine promise and deed. What do you follow, that, divided from the communion of this divine promise and divine work, you wish to be of the party of Donatus? Did a man tell you, or God, that through the sin of Caecilian the promises of God perished from the world and remained in the party of Donatus? If God, read it to us from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the apostolic and Gospel writings. Read, if you can, what at our conference you could not at all. But if men said these things, of whom it is said, “They have strengthened for themselves an evil word,” see the human fabrication, see what you worship, see whom you serve, see that for which you rebel, rage, and burn.

But Gabinius and the others, who recognized, chose, and held this church, desiring to have with the faithful not a human fabrication but the divine promise, foretold and fulfilled, would no longer suffer human troubles for a human fabrication. For whoever, for the truth and unity of Christ, has lost not only his property but even this life of his, provided others take it away and kill him, truly has faith, truly has hope, truly has love, truly has God; but whoever loses even the fringe of his garment for the party of Donatus has no heart. What wonder, then, if wise men, seeing losses and exiles set before them against the most stubborn age of a hardened custom, considered whether they ought to suffer these things for the party of Donatus against the Catholic Church, that is, for a human fabrication against a divine work, and saw that they certainly ought not, and recognized that what you call persecution was an occasion of correction for them, and did what is written: “Give a wise man an occasion, and he will be wiser.” So you see how emptily you told the man who, by the command of his most devout emperor, seeks your correction that the office of executor did not befit his prudence. For what better befits a religious soldier than that, in the very case in which he weighs the deception in which you wish to be, he himself should become salvation for many who are to be corrected?

Words of the letter: “To teach the people of Israel,” he says, “almighty God gave the proclamation to prophets; he did not command kings. The Savior of souls, the Lord Christ, sent fishermen, not soldiers, to instill the faith.” Reply to this: Listen, then, to the holy prophets and the holy fishermen, and you will not suffer the most religious kings as troublesome. For I have already shown above that it belonged to the king’s care that the Ninevites should appease God, whose wrath the prophet had announced. As long, then, as you do not hold the church which the prophets foretold and the fishermen apostles planted, so long kings who hold it most rightly judge that it belongs to their care that you not rebel against it with impunity. For God had kings too among the prophets; holy David, as you cannot fail to know, was a king. Listen, then, to the king prophesying, and you will fear no religious king’s anger. Listen, I say, to the prophet-king saying of Christ: “He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth”; and you will not fear a Christian king angry with you for blaspheming this church which, as was prophesied by a king, is displayed to the ends of the earth; since King Nebuchadnezzar too, though he was not a prophet, restrained with religious severity those who blasphemed the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Words of the letter: “God,” he says, “who alone can judge the living and the dead, never awaited the help of worldly soldiery.” Reply to this: God does not await the help of worldly soldiery when he rather grants a benefit to kings, inspiring them to take care that their Lord’s command is done in their kingdom. For those to whom it is said, “And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth; serve the Lord in fear,” perceive that their power must serve the Lord in such a way that by that power those are punished who will not serve his will. And as for your stirring ill will about soldiers: if indeed this care, as we have already shown, is demonstrated in the holy Scriptures to belong to kings, through whom are they to do this against the rebellious circumcellions and their mad partners or leaders, except through the soldiers under them?

Words of the letter: “But they do not know this,” he says, “these squatters on others’ property, who neither hear God saying, ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s property,’ nor the Holy Spirit saying through Solomon: ‘Then the just will stand with great boldness against those who afflicted them and took away their labors. Seeing it, they will be troubled with dreadful fear, and will be amazed at the suddenness of unexpected salvation, saying among themselves, repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit: These are those whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach. We fools thought their life madness and their end without honor. How are they counted among the sons of God, and their lot among the saints? So we strayed from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness did not shine on us. We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and walked through hard deserts, but the way of the Lord we did not know. What did pride profit us, or what did the boasting of riches bring us? All things have passed like a shadow.’ This faith, then, exhorts us to die gladly for God in this persecution.” Reply to this: Recognize your crime and do not claim for yourselves another’s name. Scripture said: “Then the just will stand with great boldness against those who afflicted them and took away their labors.” It did not say, “All who have suffered evils will stand,” but, “The just will stand”; just as the Lord too, when he said, “Blessed are those who suffer persecution,” would, had he not added “for righteousness’ sake,” have meant not only those who are crowned for their patience in the Lord but also those who are punished by just laws. Therefore, if you think these words written of the just apply to you, first show whether you are just. For you have great things to winnow among your righteous deeds: the division of Christ, the annulling of the sacraments of Christ, the desertion of the peace of Christ, war against the members of Christ, accusations against the spouse of Christ, denial of the promises of Christ. These are your righteous deeds, for which, no doubt, you will stand with great boldness against those who afflicted you and took away your labors. And now, when you begin to boast among your righteous deeds that you kill yourselves, what just man will be your equal? For then above all you will appear as ones to be avenged; but see on whom: on those, certainly, who killed you. So, to be avenged, you will be punished, and so you will stand against yourselves. Above all you will stand, you who shut yourselves in furnaces and crowd yourselves into cruel straits, so that whoever would help cannot get in and whoever would escape cannot get out. Far, far be it that they should stand with great boldness, when they will stand with so bad a conscience. Unless perhaps you think that God can spare you then for your crimes because you do not spare yourselves now. Hence even some of your nuns, being pregnant, threw themselves from rocks, and, their wombs bursting, betrayed by the crime of murder the crimes of sexual immorality too, thinking that if they punished themselves in this way God would no longer punish them in any way. Just as you too think that what could be committed by you in the sacrilege of schism and heresy, or in plundering, mutilating, blinding, killing, and finally even rebaptizing Catholics, and whatever other abominations, can be expiated in this way, by killing yourselves. But you are wrong; Judas too thought this. Or do you want to add this proof too, so that we may know more surely that it was your forebears rather who were the betrayers, because you imitate the death of the betrayer?