Against the Letters of Petilian 1.1–1.23

You know that we have often wished to bring the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics into open view, and to refute it, not so much out of our own mouth as out of theirs. That is why we even sent letters to some of their leading men: not letters of communion, of which they long ago made themselves unworthy by dissenting from the Catholic Church, but not insulting letters either; peaceable ones, so that, once the question that tore them away from the holy communion of the whole world had been discussed with us and the truth considered, they might be willing to be corrected, and might not defend the headstrong perversity of their forebears with a more foolish obstinacy, but be restored to the Catholic root for the fruit of love. But since it is written, “With those who hated peace I was peaceable,” they rejected my letters just as they hated the very peace that the letters sought to serve. Now, however, when I was in the church of Constantina, with Absentius present and my colleague Fortunatus, its bishop, the brothers handed me a letter which they said the bishop of that same schism had given to his presbyters, as the heading of the letter also claimed. When I read it, I was so astonished that with its very first words it cut off the whole communion of his own party at the root, that I was unwilling to believe the letter belonged to the man whom report commonly proclaims to excel among them in learning and eloquence. But since some were present while I read who knew the polish and ornament of his style, they began to persuade me that the language was certainly his. Whoever's it was, I thought it must be refuted, so that whoever wrote it should not seem, to the unlearned, to have written something against the Catholic Church.

This, then, is the first thing he set down in his letter: he says that we charge them with a double baptism, we who under the name of baptism pollute our souls with a guilty washing. But what good is it to go over all his insulting words? Since proving a case is one thing and dealing with abuse by refuting it is another, let us rather attend to the way he wished to show that we do not have baptism, and that therefore he does not repeat what was already there but gives what was not there. For he says: “For it is the conscience of the giver that is looked to, to cleanse that of the receiver.” What if the conscience of the giver is hidden, and perhaps stained? How will it be able to cleanse the conscience of the receiver, if, as he says, the conscience of the giver is looked to, to cleanse that of the receiver? For if he says that whatever evil lies hidden in the giver's conscience does not concern the receiver, that ignorance will perhaps avail so far as this: that the receiver, not knowing it, cannot be stained by the conscience of the one who baptizes him. Let it be granted, then, that another's stained conscience, when it is unknown, does not stain; but can it also cleanse?

From what source, then, is the one who receives baptism to be cleansed, when the giver's conscience is polluted and the one about to receive does not know it, especially since he goes on to say: “For he who has received faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt”? Look: a faithless man stands ready to baptize, and the one to be baptized does not know of his faithlessness. What do you think he will receive, faith or guilt? If you say faith, you will grant that it can happen that someone receives faith, not guilt, from a faithless man, and the saying “he who has received faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt” will be false. For we find that someone can receive faith even from a faithless man, if he does not know the giver's faithlessness. He did not say, “he who has received faith from a man who is openly or knowingly faithless,” but, “he who has received faith,” he says, “from the faithless receives not faith but guilt”; and that is certainly false when someone is baptized by a hidden faithless man. But if he says that even when the faithless baptizer is hidden, the person receives from him not faith but guilt, then let them rebaptize those who are shown to have been baptized by men who long lay hidden among them in their crimes and were afterwards exposed, convicted, and condemned. For whomever such men baptized while they lay hidden, they could hand on to them not faith but guilt, if whoever has received faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt. So let those people be baptized by good men, that they may receive faith, not guilt.

But how will they be secure even about these, if it is the conscience of the giver that is looked to, a conscience hidden from the eyes of the one about to receive? So by their view that spiritual salvation becomes uncertain, since, against the holy Scriptures, which say, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man,” and, “Cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man,” they take the hope of those to be baptized away from the Lord God and persuade them that it must be placed in a man. The result is that salvation is not uncertain but altogether nonexistent, because “salvation belongs to the Lord,” and “vain is the salvation of man.” So whoever puts his hope in a man, even one he knows to be righteous and innocent, is cursed. That is why the apostle Paul rebukes those who said they were Paul's, and says, “Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”

Therefore, if those who wished to be Paul's were in error and would have perished had they not been corrected, what hope at last is there for those who seek to be Donatus's? For what these men are after is that the origin, root, and head of the baptized person should be none other than the one by whom he is baptized. So it comes about that, since it is very often uncertain what kind of man the baptizer is, with an uncertain origin, an uncertain root, and an uncertain head, all hope too is uncertain. And since it can happen that the giver's conscience is wicked and stained without the receiver knowing it, it follows that with a wicked origin, a wicked root, and a wicked head, the hope of the baptized person also proves vain and empty; for this man sets it down in his letter and says, “For everything consists by its origin and root, and if it does not have something as its head, it is nothing.” And since he wants the origin, root, and head of the baptized person to be understood as the man by whom he is baptized, what good does it do the wretched baptized man that he does not know how bad his baptizer is? He does not know that he has a bad head, or no head at all. Yet what hope is there for one whose head, whether he knows it or not, is very bad or none at all? Does his very ignorance become a head to him whose baptizer is either a bad head or none? Whoever thinks so is truly without a head.

So we ask, since he said, “He who has received faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt,” and at once joined to it, “For everything consists by its origin and root, and if it does not have something as its head, it is nothing”: we ask, I say, when that faithless baptizer is hidden, if the one he baptizes then receives faith and not guilt, if his baptizer is not then his origin, root, and head, who is it from whom he receives faith? Where is the origin from which he springs, where the root from which he grows, where the head from which he begins? Or perhaps, when the one baptized does not know that the baptizer is faithless, is it then Christ who gives faith, then Christ who is the origin, root, and head? O human rashness and pride! Why do you not rather allow that Christ always gives faith, making a Christian by giving it? Why do you not allow that Christ is always the origin of the Christian, that the Christian fixes his root in Christ, that Christ is the Christian's head? For even when spiritual grace is imparted to believers through a holy and faithful minister, it is not the minister himself who justifies, but that one alone of whom it is said that he “justifies the ungodly.” Nor was the apostle Paul the head and origin of those he had planted, or Apollos the root of those he had watered, rather than he who had given them the growth; for Paul himself says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth; so neither the one who plants is anything, nor the one who waters, but God who gives the growth.” Nor was Paul their root, but rather he who said, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” And how could he be their head, when he says that we who are many are one body in Christ, and in many places proclaims most plainly that Christ himself is the head of the whole body?

Therefore, whether someone receives the sacrament of baptism from a faithful or a faithless minister, let all his hope be in Christ, so that he may not be cursed as one who puts his hope in man. Otherwise, if each is reborn in spiritual grace such as the one by whom he is baptized, and if, when the man who baptizes is plainly good, he himself gives faith and is himself the origin, root, and head of the one being born, but when the faithless baptizer is hidden, each then receives faith from Christ, then draws his origin from Christ, then is rooted in Christ, then glories in Christ as head, then all who are baptized ought to strive to have faithless baptizers and not to know it. For however good the baptizers they have, Christ is beyond comparison better, and he will be the baptized person's head only if the baptizer is secretly faithless.

But if it is utter madness to believe this (for Christ always justifies the ungodly by making a Christian out of the ungodly; faith is always received from Christ; Christ is always the origin of the regenerate and the head of the church), what weight do those words have, whose inner sense empty readers do not attend to, but only how they sound? But one who takes in not only the sounds with his ear but also the meaning with his mind, when he hears, “It is the conscience of the giver that is looked to, to cleanse that of the receiver,” will answer: “A human conscience is often unknown to me, but I am sure of Christ's mercy.” When he hears, “He who has received faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt,” he will answer: “Christ is not faithless, from whom I receive faith, not guilt.” When he hears, “For everything consists by its origin and root, and if it does not have something as its head, it is nothing,” he will answer: “My origin is Christ, my root is Christ, my head is Christ.” When he hears, “Nor does anything regenerate well unless it is regenerated by good seed,” he will answer: “The seed by which I am regenerated is the word of God, which I am admonished to hear obediently even if the one through whom I hear it does not himself do what he tells me; for the Lord says, making me secure: ‘Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.’” When he hears, “What perversity can it be that one guilty of his own crimes should make another innocent?” he will answer: “No one makes me innocent but he who died for our sins and rose for our justification. For I do not believe in the minister through whom I am baptized, but in him who justifies the ungodly, so that my faith is reckoned to me as righteousness.”

When he hears, “A good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit; do they gather grapes from thorns?” and, “Every good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and the evil man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth evil things,” he will answer: “This, then, is good fruit: that I be a good tree, that is, a good man, so that I may yield good fruit, that is, good works. But this will be given me not by the one who plants or the one who waters, but by God who gives the growth.” For if the good tree is the good baptizer, so that his good fruit is the one he has baptized, then whoever has been baptized by a bad man, even one not manifestly bad, cannot be good, since he sprang from a bad tree (a good tree is one thing, a tree hidden but still bad is another). Or if, when the bad tree is hidden, whoever has been baptized by it is born not of it but of Christ, then those baptized by hidden bad men are justified in a holier way than those baptized by manifestly good men.

Again, when he hears, “He who is baptized by a dead man, his washing does not profit him,” he will answer: “Christ lives; he dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him; of whom it was said, ‘He it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’” Those are baptized by the dead who are baptized in the temples of idols. For even they do not think they receive the sanctification they suppose from their priests, but from their gods; and since these were men and are dead in such a way as to be neither upon the earth nor in the rest of heaven, those people are truly baptized by the dead, even if these words of holy Scripture can also be truly examined and profitably discussed and understood in some other way. For if in this place I take the dead man to be a sinful baptizer, the same absurdity will follow, that whoever has been baptized even by a hidden ungodly man has been washed in vain, as though baptized by a dead man. For it does not say, “he who is baptized by a manifestly dead man,” but says without qualification, “by a dead man.” But if they consider someone dead when they know him to be a sinner, but alive even if, though wicked, he lies hidden very cunningly in their communion, then first, in accursed pride, they claim more for themselves than they grant to God: when a sinner is known to them he is called dead, but when he is known to God he is reckoned alive. Next, if the sinner known to men is to be called dead, what will they answer about Optatus, whom they long knew to be a criminal and were afraid to condemn? Why are those whom he baptized not said to have been baptized by a dead man? Or was he alive because God was his companion? They themselves are accustomed to boast of and praise this as a witty and elegant saying of some leading colleague of theirs, not understanding that, like the proudest Goliath at his end, they are cutting off their own head with their own sword.

Finally, if they want to call dead neither the hidden criminal nor the manifest one who has not yet been condemned by them, but only one who is both manifest and condemned, so that whoever is baptized by him is baptized by a dead man and his washing profits him nothing, what will they say about those whom, “with the truthful mouth of their plenary council,” as they put it, they condemned along with Maximian and the others who ordained him? I mean Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, of whom I speak for the moment, who are named among the twelve who ordained Maximian and set up an altar against the altar at which Primian stands. These, surely, they count among the dead. Witness that famous sentence of their council, which, when it was read out among them for decision, they once acclaimed with mouths wide open, but now, if we happen to read it to them, they fall silent; whereas they ought rather not to have rejoiced at first over its eloquence, so as not to lament later over its disgrace. For there they speak of the Maximianists, excluded from the fellowship of their communion, thus: that by the truthful wave the shipwrecked limbs of some have been cast upon the rough rocks, and, quite after the example of the perishing Egyptians, the shores are full of corpses, for whom in death itself the greater punishment is that, after their life has been wrung out by the avenging waters, they do not even find burial. So these men mock their own schismatics, calling them both dead and unburied. But surely they ought to have wished them buried, so that Optatus the Gildonian, advancing with a military column over the multitude of unburied corpses lying on the shore, like a raging wave leaping beyond its bounds, should not afterwards suck Felicianus and Praetextatus back inside.

I ask them whether, by coming over into their sea, these men came back to life, or still remain dead there. For if they are corpses all the same, then the washing can in no way profit those who are baptized by these dead men. But if they came back to life, how does the washing profit those whom they baptized before, while they lay lifeless outside, if “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?” is to be understood as they think? For those whom Praetextatus and Felicianus baptized while still in communion with Maximian, they now hold inside, not rebaptized, mixed into their communion together with those same baptizers of theirs, Felicianus and Praetextatus. On the occasion of this deed, if they were not nursing the primacy of their obstinacy but considering so certain a ruin of their spiritual salvation, they surely ought to wake up and, with soundness of mind recovered, breathe again in Catholic peace, if only, laying aside the swelling of pride and overcoming the fury of stubbornness, they would consider with what monstrous sacrilege the baptism of the churches overseas, which we know from the holy books were founded first of all, is cursed, while the baptism of the Maximianists, whom they condemned with their own mouth, is accepted.

But our brothers themselves, the sons of the churches I have mentioned, neither knew then nor know now what was done in Africa so many years ago; so the crimes charged against the Africans by the other side, even if they were true, could not defile them, since they were ignorant of them. But these men, openly separated and divided, though they are said even to have been present at Primian's ordination, condemned Primian, ordained another bishop against Primian, baptized outside Primian, rebaptized after Primian, and returned to Primian with their own people, baptized by them outside and rebaptized by no one inside. If so great a union with the Maximianists does not stain the Donatists, how could the mere report about the Africans stain foreigners? If lips that condemned one another meet without crime in the kiss of peace, why is anyone from churches across the sea, very remote even in their own judgment, condemned by them, so that he is not kissed as a faithful Catholic but exsufflated like an ungodly pagan? If they made peace by receiving the Maximianists for the sake of their own unity, look, we do not blame them, except that they cut their own throats by their own judgment: while for the unity of their cutting-off they gather together again what had been cut off from them, they scorn to sew that very cutting-off back on to the true unity.

If for the unity of the party of Donatus no one rebaptizes those baptized in an abominable schism, and those guilty of so great a crime that in their council they compared them with those ancient authors of schism whom the earth swallowed alive are either not punished when separated or, when condemned, are restored in full, why, for the unity of Christ, which is spread through the whole world, of whom it was foretold that “he shall rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth,” and what was foretold is seen and proved to be fulfilled, why, I say, for this unity is the true and complete law of that inheritance not acknowledged, which resounds from the books we share: “I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession”? (For the unity of Donatus they are not compelled to recall what they had scattered; they are admonished to hear what the Scriptures cry out.) Why do they not understand that this was done to them by God's mercy: that since they accused the Catholic Church with false charges, by whose contagion, as it were, they did not wish their excessive holiness to be defiled, they were compelled, through the reign of Optatus the Gildonian, to receive back and associate with themselves real and very great crimes condemned by the truthful mouth, as they say, of their plenary council? Let them at last perceive how they are filled with the real crimes of their own, who invent false ones against their brothers. And even if they had spoken the truth, they ought at last to perceive how much must be borne for the sake of peace, and to return for the peace of Christ to the church that did not condemn things unknown, if for the peace of Donatus they were pleased to recall things condemned.

So, brothers, let this one thing that was done among them concerning the Maximianists suffice us for admonishing and correcting them. We do not ransack old archives, we do not air ancient bookcases, we do not send our proof off to distant lands; we set aside all the documents of our forebears, we postpone the testimonies that cry out through the whole world.

Look at the cities of Musti and Assuras! There still remain in this life and in this province those who separated and those from whom they separated, those who set up an altar and those against whom they set it up, those who condemned and those who were condemned, those who received and those who were received, those who were baptized outside and were not rebaptized inside. If these things stain for the sake of unity, let the stained hold their tongue; if they do not stain for the sake of unity, let the corrected drop the quarrel.

Now let the man who wrote the words of his letter laugh at them himself. Having used ignorantly and falsely the testimony he cites as written, “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?”, he tries to show us how far a traitor, though living, is to be held dead, and he adds: “That man is dead who did not deserve to be born by true baptism; that man is likewise dead who, though begotten by a lawful baptism, has mixed himself with a traitor.” If, then, the Maximianists are not dead, why do they say in their plenary council that the shores are full of the corpses of these perishing men? But if they are dead, from where does the baptism they gave get its life? Next, if Maximian is not dead, why is there rebaptism after him? But if he is dead, why did Felicianus of Musti, who ordained him, not die with him, while a man overseas could die along with some African colleague or other who was a traitor? Or if Felicianus too is dead, how is it that those whom he baptized outside while dead now live with him inside among you, not rebaptized?

Then he added: “Both lack the life of baptism, both the one who never had it at all and the one who had it and lost it.” So the one whom the Maximianist Felicianus or Praetextatus baptized outside never had it, and they themselves had lost what they had. When, then, these men were received with their people, who gave those they had baptized what they did not have, and who gave back to the baptizers themselves what they had lost? But if they took the form of baptism away with them, but lost the power of baptism itself through the evil schism, why do you exsufflate that very form, which is always and everywhere holy, in Catholics whom you have not heard, and embrace it in Maximianists whom you have punished?

But whatever he thought he was saying in accusation about Judas the traitor, what does it have to do with us? They do not prove us traitors; and even if the handing over of the books were proved against some who died in our communion before our time, it would not stain us in any way, since we disapprove of it and it displeases us. For if they themselves are not stained by crimes which they condemned and then received, how much less can we be stained by crimes we have heard of and disapprove! So however much he inveighs against traitors, let him count them accused by me in as many words. But I do make this distinction: he accuses before me a man long dead, whom no inquiry of mine has judged; I show him sticking close beside one whom he condemned, or at any rate one separated by sacrilegious schism, and received without any loss of his rank.

“You most wicked traitor,” he says, “have come forth as a persecutor and executioner of us who keep the law.” If the Maximianists kept the law when they separated from you, then you too may be a keeper of the law, since you are separated from the church that is spread through the whole world. But if you are speaking of persecutions, I answer quickly: if you suffered anything unjustly, it does not concern those who, though others wickedly do such things, nevertheless tolerate them commendably for the sake of the peace of unity. So you have nothing to charge against the Lord's grain, which bears with its chaff until the final winnowing; you would never have left it if you had not, as lighter chaff, flown off in the wind of temptation even before the winnower came. But not to depart from this one example, which the Lord has thrown back in their faces to shut their mouths and, if they are wise, to correct them, or, if they remain in their perversity, to confound them: if those who suffer persecution are more righteous than those who inflict it, then the same Maximianists are more righteous, whose basilica was razed to the ground, who were severely harassed by the military retinue of Optatus, and against whom, as is well known, the Primianists obtained orders from the proconsul to exclude them all from the basilicas. So if, while the emperors detested their communion, they dared so much to persecute the Maximianists, what would they do if communion with the kings allowed them to accomplish anything? But if they did these things to correct the wicked, why are they surprised if Catholic emperors decree, with greater power, that those should be pressed and corrected who try to rebaptize the whole Christian world, when they have no reason for dissent? For they themselves bear witness that the wicked must be tolerated for the sake of peace, even if they were bringing true charges, since they received those whom they had condemned, with their ranks and with the baptism given outside. Let them consider at last what the enemies of Christian unity, spread through the whole world, deserve to suffer from the Christian powers of the world. So now, if correction is slow, let shame at least be present, so that when these same men begin to read what they write, laughter may not overcome them, as they do not recognize in themselves what they want to be seen in others, nor recognize in themselves what they charge against others.

What, then, does he mean by setting down in his letter the Lord's words to the Jews: “Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you will kill and crucify and scourge”? For if they want themselves to be understood as the wise men, scribes, and prophets, and us as persecutors of the wise men and prophets, why do they refuse to speak with us, since they are sent to us? Indeed, the man who wrote the letter we are now answering would perhaps not do it if we pressed him to acknowledge it as his by signing it with his own hand; so much do they fear that we may hold any words of theirs. For when we wanted somehow to get the later part of that same letter, since those who gave it to us had not been able to copy the whole, no one we asked was willing to give it, once they learned that we were answering the part we had obtained. So when they read how the Lord says to the prophet, “Cry aloud, do not spare, and write their sins with my pen,” these true prophets who are sent to us fear and guard against nothing so much as our hearing their cry; which, surely, they would not fear if they were telling the truth about us. Not without reason, as it is written in the psalm, “the mouth of those who speak wicked things is stopped.” For if they do not accept our baptism because we are a brood of vipers, as he set down in his letter, why did they accept that of the Maximianists, of whom their council speaks thus: that the hollow of a poisoned womb long covered the harmful offspring of a viper's seed, and the moist clots of the conceived crime slowly warmed into the limbs of asps? Was it not also said of them in the same council, as follows, that “the poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known”? And yet they now hold inside both these men, with their rank intact, and those they baptized outside.

So all this about the brood of vipers, the poison of asps under their lips, and the other things said against those who have not known the way of peace, if they wanted to speak truly, applies rather to themselves; for they received the baptism of those against whom they said these things in the council's sentence, for the sake of the peace of Donatus, and they repudiate the baptism of the church of Christ spread through the whole world, from which that very peace came to Africa, to the sacrilegious injury of the peace of Christ. Who, then, are rather the false prophets who come in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves? Those who either do not know of the wicked in the Catholic Church and are in communion with them innocently, or who tolerate for the peace of unity those whom they cannot separate from the Lord's threshing floor before the winnower comes? Or those who do in schism what they blame in the Catholic Church, and who, while pretending to flee in unity things that are to be tolerated and uncertain besides, accept in their own cutting-off things manifest and condemned by themselves?

Finally, it has been said, and he himself also cited it: “By their fruits you will know them.” So let us consider the fruits. You charge us with the handing over of the books; we charge you with that very thing, with much more probability. Not to run through many cases: in this same city of Constantina your forebears, at the very beginning of their schism, ordained Silvanus bishop. While he was still a subdeacon, he was set down in the municipal records as a most manifest traitor. If you also bring forward some documents against our forebears, fairness demands that we believe both to be true or both to be false. If both are true, you are beyond doubt guilty of schism, since you pretended to flee in the communion of the whole world crimes which you had in the little fragment of your own cutting-off. But if both are false, you are beyond doubt guilty of schism, since on account of false charges of handing over the books you are stained with the monstrous crime of separation. And if we bring forward some documents and you none, or we true ones and you false ones, there is no need to discuss how thoroughly your mouths are shut.