Against the Letters of Petilian 2.102–2.137

Augustine answered: Not Judas but Christ died for us; to him the church spread through the whole world says, “I will answer a word to those who reproach me, for I have hoped in your words.” So when I hear the words of the Lord saying, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth,” and through the prophet, “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world,” no bodily mixture with the wicked disturbs me, if I know how to say, “Uphold your servant for good; let not the proud slander me.” So I care nothing for an empty slanderer, because I hold a reliable promiser. But if you complain about church property or places which you held and do not hold, the Jews too can call themselves righteous and charge us with iniquity, because Christians now possess the place where they reigned ungodly. What is unworthy, then, if, by a like will of the Lord, Catholics hold what heretics held? For to all who are like them, that is, to all the ungodly and unrighteous, that word of the Lord holds: “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation that does righteousness.” Or was it written in vain, “The righteous will eat the labours of the ungodly”? So you ought rather to wonder that you still hold anything than that you have lost something. But do not wonder at this either; for the whitewashed wall falls little by little. Yet look at the Maximianists: what places they held, and by whose action and assault they were driven out of them. And if suffering these things is righteousness and doing them is iniquity, dare to say, if you can, first, that you did them and they suffered them; next, that by the rule of this righteousness you are found inferior. For they were expelled from their ancient places through judges by Catholic emperors, while you are not expelled from the basilicas of unity even by the orders of those same emperors. Why, unless because you are of less merit not only than your other colleagues but even than these very men, whom you certainly condemned as sacrilegious by the mouth of your plenary council?

Petilian said: “For we, as it is written, put on in our baptism the betrayed Christ; you, by your contagion, put on Judas the betrayer.”

Augustine answered: I too could say, “You by your contagion put on Optatus, the betrayer, robber, oppressor, separator.” But God forbid that the desire to return abuse should provoke me into any falsehood; for you do not put on him, nor we that man. So if anyone coming to us answers that he was baptized in the name of Optatus, he will be baptized in the name of Christ; and as for all those coming from us whom you have baptized, if they had said they were baptized in the name of Judas the traitor, we do not blame what you did. But if they had been baptized in Christ's name, do you not see in what an error you think that divine sacraments vary with the variety of human vices, or are polluted by the filth of anyone's life?

Petilian said: “But if these are parties, the names of a shared party do not prejudice us. For there are two ways, one narrow by which we go, the other for the ungodly by which they will perish; and yet the sameness of the word is widely distinguished, so that the way of righteousness is not stained by sharing the name.”

Augustine answered: You were afraid of the multitude of the world compared with your multitude, and wanted to take yourself to the praise of the few walking by the narrow way. Would that you had taken yourself not to its praise but to the way itself! You would surely see that the same fewness is in the church of all nations, but that the righteous are called few in comparison with the many unrighteous, just as a few grains of a very rich harvest can be called few in comparison with the chaff, though by themselves, gathered into a heap, they fill the barn. For just as in the troubles of lost places, so also in fewness, if you think righteousness lies in these, the Maximianists themselves will outdo you.

Petilian said: “In the first psalm David separates the blessed and the ungodly, not making parties, of course, but separating holiness from all the ungodly: ‘Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners’ (let him who had strayed to perish return to the way of righteousness) ‘nor sat in the seat of pestilence’ (since he thus warns: O wretches, why do you sit?), ‘but his will is in the law of the Lord, and in the law of the Lord he will meditate day and night. And he will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, which will give its fruit in its season; and its leaf will not fall, and whatever he does will prosper. Not so the ungodly, not so; but like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth’ (it fills the eyes to blind them). ‘Therefore the ungodly will not rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the counsel of the righteous; for the Lord knows the ways of the righteous, and the path of the ungodly will perish.’”

Augustine answered: Who does not distinguish these two kinds of men in the Scriptures? But you slanderers charge the crimes of the chaff even against the grain, and though you are only chaff, you boast that you alone are the grain. But the truthful prophets say that both kinds are mixed throughout the whole world, that is, through the whole field of the Lord, before the winnowing that will take place on the day of judgment. Yet I advise you to read this first psalm in Greek: then you will not dare to charge the world with the party of Macarius as a crime, because you may perhaps understand which Macarius's party is in all the saints, who are blessed through all nations in the seed of Abraham. For where the Latin has “blessed is the man,” the Greek has makarios anēr. But that Macarius who displeases you, if he was evil, is neither in this lot nor harms this lot; if he was good, let him test his own work, so that he may have his boast in himself and not in another.

Petilian said: “The same psalmist sang the praises of our baptism: ‘The Lord shepherds me, and I shall lack nothing; in a place of pasture there he has set me. By the water of refreshment he has brought me up; he has restored my soul. He has led me along paths of righteousness for his name's sake. For even if I walk in the midst of the shadow of death’ (if, he means, the persecutor kills me) ‘I will fear no evil, for you are with me, Lord. Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me’ (by this David, armoured with the oil of anointing, overcame Goliath). ‘You have prepared a table before me against those who trouble me. You have anointed my head with oil, and your cup that inebriates is excellent indeed. And your mercy will follow me all the days of my life, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days.’”

Augustine answered: This psalm speaks of those who receive baptism well and use the holy thing holily. For these words do not apply also to Simon Magus, who nevertheless received the same holy baptism; and because he would not use it holily, he did not therefore defile it or teach that it must be repeated for such men. But since you mentioned Goliath, look at that psalm about Goliath himself and see that he was overcome in a new song, for there it says, “O God, I will sing a new song to you; on a ten-stringed psaltery I will play to you”; and see whether one who is not in communion with the world belongs to this song. For elsewhere it says, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” So all the earth, in whose unity you are not, sings a new song, and these words too belong to all the earth: “The Lord shepherds me, and I shall lack nothing,” and the rest. These are not the words of the tares, although they are tolerated in one field until the harvest; they are not the words of the chaff, but of the grain, although they are nourished by the same rain and together, threshed on the same floor and together, until they are separated from each other by the last winnowing fork; and both of these certainly have one baptism in common, though they are not one. But even if your party were the church of God, you would surely admit that this psalm does not apply there to the raging bands of the Circumcellions. Or if they too are led along paths of righteousness, why do you deny that they are your companions when they are charged against you? Though often it is not the rod and staff of God that comfort the fewness of your cutting-off but their clubs, by which you think yourselves safe even against the Roman laws; and to run into them, what is it but to walk in the midst of the shadow of death? But he with whom the Lord is fears no evil. Certainly you will not dare to say that the words sung in this psalm belong to these madmen too; and yet you not only admit but proclaim that they have baptism. So none say these words but those who are refreshed by the holy water, like all God's righteous, not those who are overthrown by using it badly, like that magician baptized by Philip; and yet it is one and holy in both. None say these words but those who will belong to the right hand; yet sheep and goats feed on the same pasture under one shepherd until they are separated to receive what is due. None say these words but those who take life from the Lord's table, like Peter, not judgment, like Judas; and yet the table was one for both, but did not avail both to one end, because they themselves were not one. None say these words but those who are blessed by the holy oil also in the spirit, like David, not those consecrated in the body alone, like Saul; and yet, though both received one thing, it was not the sacrament that was unequal for them but the merit. None say these words but those who with changed mind long for the Lord's cup unto eternal life, not those who eat and drink judgment on themselves, as the apostle says; and yet for both, though they are not one, that cup is one, inebriating martyrs to seize heavenly things, not Circumcellions to deadly precipices. Remember, then, that the character of evil men does no harm to God's sacraments, so as to make them either not exist at all or be less holy, but harms the evil men themselves, so that they have them as a witness to their condemnation, not a help to their health. At least you ought to have considered the very last words of this psalm, and, because of those who apostatize after receiving baptism, understood that not all who receive holy baptism can say, “that I may dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days.” And yet, whether they persevere or fall, though they themselves are not one, baptism is one; and though they are not both holy, baptism is holy in both; because apostates too, if they return, are not baptized as though they had lost it, but are humbled because they did injury to what remained in them.

Petilian said: “And so that you may not say you are holy, I assert this first: one who has not been innocent does not have holiness.”

Augustine answered: Show us the tribunal where you sat, so that the world stood before you, and with what eyes you examined and judged, I do not say the consciences of all, but even their acts, so as to judge that it had lost its innocence. He who was caught up to the third heaven says, “But I do not even judge myself,” and you dare to pass sentence on the whole earth, through which Christ's inheritance is spread? Next, if what you said seems to you sufficiently final, “One who has not been innocent does not have holiness,” I ask: if Saul did not have the holiness of the sacrament, what did David venerate in him? But if he had innocence, why did he persecute an innocent man? For because of the sacred anointing David both honoured him while alive and avenged him when killed, and because he cut off even a small piece of his robe, his heart struck him and he trembled. See, Saul did not have innocence and yet had holiness: not of his own life, for no one can have that without innocence, but of God's sacrament, which is holy even in evil men.

Petilian said: “For if you, faithless men, know the law (I would say this without injury to the law itself), the devil knows it too. For in the case of righteous Job he answered the Lord God about the law as if he were righteous, as it is written: ‘The Lord said to the devil: Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a man without malice, a true worshipper of God, keeping himself from all evil, persevering in simplicity? But you asked to destroy all he has without cause. And the devil answered and said to the Lord: Skin for skin, and all that a man has he will give for his life.’ See, he who strives against the law speaks lawfully. And again he dared to tempt the Lord Christ with his words, as it is written: ‘The devil took Jesus to the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him: Throw yourself down; for it is written that he has commanded his angels concerning you, that they may bear you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said: Again it is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ You know the law, I say, as the devil does, who is defeated in his attempts and put to shame in his acts.”

Augustine answered: I could indeed ask you in what law the words are written that the devil spoke when he accused the holy man Job before God, if it were my purpose to show that you yourself do not know the law which you say the devil knows; but since that is not the question between us, I pass it over. You have tried to show the devil skilled in the law, as if we said that all who know the words of the law are righteous. So I do not see how what you chose to recall about the devil helps you, unless perhaps it was to bring to our minds how you imitate the devil himself. For as he brought out the words of the law against the giver of the law, so you too, with the words of the law, accuse men you do not know, so as to resist God's promises that are written in that very law. Next, I would like you to tell me: when those confessors of yours throw themselves down, to whom do they render martyrdom: to Christ, who rejected the devil when he suggested such things, or rather to the devil himself, who suggested such things for Christ to do? There are two especially cheap and common deaths of those who kill themselves: the noose and the precipice. You certainly said in the first parts of this letter, “The traitor perished by a noose; he left the noose for such men.” This does not concern us at all; for we do not venerate under the name of martyrs those who have tied their own necks. But how much more plausibly do we say against you: the devil, the traitor's master, wanted to persuade Christ to the precipice and was rejected! What, then, are those to be called whom he persuaded to it and was heard? What but enemies of Christ, friends of the devil, disciples of the seducer, fellow disciples of the traitor? For both learned voluntary deaths from one master: he the noose, they the precipice.

Petilian said: “But to destroy your claims one by one: if you call yourselves priests, the Lord God has said through the prophet: ‘The vengeance of the Lord is upon false priests.’”

Augustine answered: Seek rather what true thing you may say, not how to curse; and what you may teach, not what you may charge.

Petilian said: “If you wretches claim the chair for yourselves, as we said above, you certainly have the one which the prophet David, the psalmist, called the chair of pestilence. For it has justly been left to us, because the saints cannot sit in it.”

Augustine answered: Do you not see that these too are not any proofs but empty abuse? This is what I said a little before: you speak the words of the law, but you do not consider against whom you speak them, just as the devil spoke the words of the law but did not recognize to whom he spoke them. He wanted to cast down our Head, who was to ascend on high; you want to reduce the body of the same Head, which is spread through the whole earth, to a tiny part. You yourself certainly said a little before that we know the law and speak lawfully but are put to shame in our acts. You say these things without proving anything; but even if you proved them about some, you would not thereby prejudge the rest. Yet if all through the whole world were such as you most emptily accuse them of being, what has the chair of the Roman church done to you, in which Peter sat and in which Anastasius sits today, or the chair of the church of Jerusalem, in which James sat and in which John sits today, to which we are joined in Catholic unity and from which you have separated yourselves with abominable fury? Why do you call the apostolic chair a chair of pestilence? If it is because of men whom you think speak the law and do not do it, did the Lord Jesus Christ, because of the Pharisees, of whom he said, “For they say and do not do,” do any injury to the chair in which they sat? Did he not commend that chair of Moses and rebuke them while keeping the honour of the chair? For he says: “They sit on the chair of Moses. Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.” If you considered this, you would not, because of men whom you defame, blaspheme the apostolic chair with which you are not in communion. But what is this but not knowing what to say, and yet being unable to do anything but curse?

Petilian said: “If you judge that you offer sacrifices, God himself speaks thus of you most wicked men: ‘The criminal,’ he says, ‘who sacrifices a calf to me is as if he killed a dog, and he who offers fine flour is as if he poured out swine's blood’ (know that this is your sacrifice, you who have already poured out human blood); and again: ‘Their sacrifices are like the bread of mourning; everyone who eats of it will be defiled.’”

Augustine answered: We say that the sacrifice becomes to each person such as he is who comes to offer it and such as he is who comes to receive it, and that those eat of the sacrifices of such men who come to them being such as those men are. So if an evil man offers to God and a good man receives from it, it is to each such as each has been; because it is also written, “To the pure all things are pure.” By this truthful and Catholic judgment you too were not polluted by Optatus's sacrifice, if his deeds displeased you. For surely his bread was the bread of mourning, under whose iniquities all Africa mourned; but the evil of schism, common to all of you, makes the bread of mourning common to all of you. For according to the sentence of your council, Felicianus of Musti poured out human blood; for you said when you condemned them, “Their feet are swift to shed blood.” See, then, what kind of sacrifice is offered by one whom you have as priest after condemning him as sacrilegious; and if you think this does you no harm, I ask you, what harm will the emptiness of your slanders do the world?

Petilian said: “If you make a prayer to the Lord or pour out supplication, it profits you nothing at all. For your bloody conscience empties your feeble prayers, because the Lord God hears a pure conscience rather than prayers, as the Lord Christ says: ‘Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.’ God's will is certainly good. For this reason we ask thus in the holy prayer, ‘Your will be done in heaven and on earth,’ so that, since his will is good, he may grant us what is good. So you do not do God's will, because you commit evils daily.”

Augustine answered: If we too said all these things against you, would not anyone who heard us, if he is sane himself, judge us mad litigants rather than Christian disputants? So we do not return curse for curse. “For the Lord's servant must not quarrel but be gentle toward all, teachable, correcting with modesty those who think otherwise.” So if we charge you with those who commit evils daily among you, we quarrel foolishly, accusing some because of others; but if we admonish you that, as you do not want those things charged against you, so you should not charge us with others' deeds, we correct you with modesty, in case you may at some time come to your senses.

Petilian said: “If perhaps you cast out demons, which I doubt, even that will not profit you, because the demons do not yield to your faith or merits but are driven out in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Augustine answered: Thanks be to God that you have at last confessed that the name of Christ, when invoked, can avail for the salvation of others even if it is invoked by sinners. From this, then, understand that when Christ's name is invoked, others' sins do not harm the salvation of others. But how we invoke the name of Christ, we do not need your judgment but the judgment of him who is invoked by us; for he alone can know with what heart he is invoked. From his words, however, we are sure that he is invoked to salvation by all the nations that are blessed in the seed of Abraham.

Petilian said: “Even if you do works of power and wonders, because of your wickedness the Lord does not know you even so, as the Lord himself says: ‘Many will say to me on that day: Lord, Lord, in your name we prophesied, and in your name we cast out demons, and in your name we did many mighty works. Then I will tell them: I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of iniquity.’”

Augustine answered: We recognize the Lord's words. Hence the apostle also says, “If I have faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” So this is what must be asked: who has love? You will find that none have it but those who love unity. As for casting out demons and the power of miracles, since many do not do such things and yet belong to the kingdom of God, while many do them and do not belong, neither ours nor yours ought to boast if any can do them; for the Lord did not want even the apostles, who truly could do these things to salvation and profit, to rejoice in such things, when he said to them, “Do not rejoice in this, that the demons are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” So the words you cited from the gospel I too could say to you, if I saw you working signs of power, and you to me, if you saw me doing such things. So let us not say to each other what can also be said from the other side; and, setting aside evasions, since we are asking where the church of Christ is, let us hear him who redeemed it with his blood saying, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth.” Whoever is not in communion with this church, which is spread through the whole earth, you see with whom he is not in communion, if you hear whose words these are. And what is more insane than to share in the Lord's sacraments and not to share in the Lord's words? These are surely the ones who will say, “In your name we ate and drank,” and will hear, “I do not know you”: who eat and drink his body and blood in the sacrament and do not recognize his members spread through the whole world in the gospel, and therefore are not counted among them in the judgment.

Petilian said: “Even if, as you think, you follow the Lord's law purely, let us argue lawfully from that most holy law. The apostle Paul says, ‘The law is good, if one uses it lawfully.’ What, then, does the law say? ‘You shall not kill.’ This Cain the fratricide did once; you have killed your brothers many times.”

Augustine answered: We do not want to be like you. For there is no lack of things that could be said, just as you say these things; and things that are known, whereas you do not know these; and things that can be shown, whereas you do not show these.

Petilian said: “It is said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ Each of you, even if chaste in the flesh, is an adulterer in the spirit, because he adulterates holiness.”

Augustine answered: These things can truly be said against some, both ours and yours; and if they displease both of us, they are neither ours nor yours. But what you say against some, and do not prove even against them, you want to be taken as if you had proved it, not against some who fall away from the seed of Abraham, but against all the nations that are blessed in the seed of Abraham.

Petilian said: “It is said, ‘You shall not bear false witness.’ When you falsely tell the kings of the world that we hold what is yours, are you not fabricating falsehoods?”

Augustine answered: If what you hold is not ours, neither was what you took back from the Maximianists yours. But if it was yours because they made a sacrilegious schism by not being in communion with the party of Donatus, consider what places you hold and whose inheritance you are not in communion with, and think what you can answer not to the kings of the world but to Christ the King. Of him it was said: “He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” From what river, surely, but where he was baptized and where the dove descended on him, a great sign of love and unity? But you are not in communion with this unity, and you still hold places of unity, and you stir up odium against us about the kings of the world, while you yourselves, through the orders of proconsuls, expelled your schismatics from the places of the party of Donatus. These are not words flying through the void: the men are alive, the cities bear witness, proconsular and municipal records are read out. Let the slanderous voice that charges the whole earth with the kings of the world at last be silent, the voice through whose proconsuls one cut-off party could not spare another. So when we say that you hold what is ours, we are not shown to bear false witness unless you show that we are not in the church of Christ; which you indeed never stop saying but will never be able to show. Indeed, when you say this, you charge with the crime of false witness not us now but Christ himself. For we are in the church which was foretold by his testimony and where he gave testimony through his witnesses, saying, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth.” But we show you to be false witnesses not only because you resist this truth, but also in that very trial in which you contended with Maximian's schism. For if you were acting according to Christ's law, how much more fittingly do Christian emperors establish something according to it, if pagan proconsuls can judge according to it! But if you thought the laws of the earthly empire were also to be taken up as help, we do not blame you. Paul did this when he testified against those who were wronging him that he was a Roman citizen. But I ask by what earthly laws it was enacted that the Maximianists should be driven from their places. You will find none at all. But evidently you wished to expel them by the laws enacted against heretics, and among them against yourselves, and you prevailed against the weak as being stronger; so they, because they could do nothing, call themselves innocent, like the wolf under the lion. Yet you would certainly not use laws enacted against yourselves against others except through false witness. For if those laws are truthful, you too yield the places you hold; but if they are false, why did you exclude others by them? What of the fact that they are both truthful and you could not expel others by them except deceitfully? For for the judges to apply them, they had to want to expel heretics, and so they ought to have expelled you first; but you said you were Catholics, so that the laws through which you were crushing others might spare you. What you seem to yourselves to be among yourselves is your affair; yet by those laws you are not Catholics. Why, then, did you either deceive those laws, being truthful, by false witness, or use them, being false, to crush others?

Petilian said: “It is said, ‘You shall not covet your neighbour's property.’ You plunder what is ours, to hold it as yours.”

Augustine answered: Whatever unity possessed is ours and no one else's, since we stand in unity not according to men's slanders but according to the words of Christ, in whom all nations of the whole earth are blessed; and we do not separate ourselves from the fellowship of the wheat because of the wicked, whom we cannot separate from the Lord's grain before the winnowing of the judgment. And if you, once cut off, began to possess anything, then, since the Lord has taken it from you and given it to us, we are not therefore coveting what belongs to others; for by the command of him to whom all things belong it has become ours, and justly ours. For you used these things for cutting off, we for unity. Otherwise those too could charge the first people of God with coveting others' property who were driven out before them by divine power because they used that land badly; and the Jews themselves, from whom the kingdom was taken according to the Lord's words and given to a nation that does righteousness, can charge coveting of others' property, because the church of Christ possesses where the persecutors of Christ reigned. And after all, when it is said to you yourselves, “You covet others' property, because you threw the Maximianists out of the basilicas,” you find nothing to answer.

Petilian said: “By what law, then, do you show yourselves Christians, when you do things contrary to the law?”

Augustine answered: You want to quarrel, not to argue.

Petilian said: “The Lord Christ says: ‘Whoever does and so teaches will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’ And thus he condemns you wretches: ‘Whoever relaxes one of these commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.’”