Against the Letters of Petilian 2.180–2.202

Augustine answered: You speak against yourself; but because you speak for the truth, if you love it, what you say turns to your good. For I ask you of whom the apostle Paul said this. Let us recall it a little, if you please. “Some,” he says, “proclaim Christ out of envy and contention, but some out of goodwill; some out of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel, but others proclaim Christ out of stubbornness, not purely, thinking to stir up trouble for me in my chains. What then? Provided that in every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice.” We see that these men proclaimed a holy, pure, and true thing, yet not purely, but out of envy and contention, without love, without purity. Certainly a little before you seemed to speak the praises of love against us from the apostle's testimony, that where love is not, whatever there is profits nothing. Look, in these men there is no love, and yet there was the preaching of Christ, in which the apostle says he rejoices; for he does not rejoice in their evil but in the good of Christ's name. For in him was the love that does not rejoice over iniquity but rejoices with the truth. Envy, further, which was in them, is a devilish evil; by it the devil both fell and cast down. These men, then, so wicked, whom the apostle so rebukes, in whom was so great a good in which the apostle rejoices, where were they, inside or outside? Choose what you like. If inside, see, Paul knew them, and yet they did not pollute him. So those of whom you say some things or other, true or invented, would not pollute you in the unity of the world. Why, then, did you separate yourselves, why did you perish by the sacrilege of accursed schism? But if they were outside, see, even in those who are outside, and who certainly cannot attain eternal life because they do not have love and do not hold unity, there is still the holiness of Christ's name; and the apostle confirms their preaching with rejoicing because of the very holiness of the name, though he detests them. Rightly, then, we do no injury to that name when those who were outside come to us; we correct them and honour it. So see how abominably, in those whose deeds you rebuke as you see fit, you exsufflate even the sacrament of Christ's name, which is holy in them. And you think, as your words indicate, that these men whom the apostle mentioned were outside the church. So, while you fear suffering persecution from Catholics, about which you stir up odium against us by speaking, you have confirmed the name of Christ in heretics, to which you do injury by rebaptizing.

Petilian said: “If, then, so great a power of faith was not opposed to some, on what principle do you persecute, to compel men to be defiled?”

Augustine answered: We do not persecute you except as truth persecutes falsehood; and if anyone has persecuted you otherwise, it does not concern us, just as whatever your people likewise do does not concern you; nor do we compel you to be defiled, but we persuade you to be healed.

Petilian said: “If it had been lawful for anyone to be compelled by law even to good things, you wretches ought to have been compelled by us to the purest faith. But far be it, far be it from our conscience to force anyone to our faith.”

Augustine answered: No one indeed is to be compelled to the faith against his will; but faithlessness is usually chastised by the severity, or rather the mercy, of God through the scourges of tribulation. Because the best conduct is chosen by free will, is the worst conduct therefore not punished by the integrity of the law? Yet discipline that avenges bad living is out of order unless the teaching of good living, which comes first, is despised. So if any laws have been enacted against you, you are not compelled by them to do good, but prohibited from doing evil. For no one can do good unless he chooses it, unless he loves it, which lies in free will; but the fear of punishment, even if it does not yet have the delight of a good conscience, at least restrains evil desire within the bounds of thought. But who enacted laws against you, by which your audacity may be checked? Are they not those of whom the apostle says that they do not bear the sword in vain? “For they are God's ministers, avengers for wrath on the one who does evil.” The whole question, then, is whether you are not doing evil, you whom the world charges with the sacrilege of so great a schism; neglecting the discussion of this question, you talk of superfluous things, and though you live like robbers, you boast that you die like martyrs. And because you fear either the laws themselves or public odium, or are unequal to resisting, I will not say so many men, but so many Catholic nations, you even glory in your gentleness, that you compel no one to your party. In this way a kite too, frightened and unable to seize chicks, might call itself a dove. For where have you been able and not done it? From this you have shown how much more you would do if you could. When Julian, envying the peace of Christ, gave you back the basilicas of unity, who could recount the slaughters you committed, when even the demons exulted with you as their temples were opened? What Rogatus the Moor suffered from you in the war of Firmus, let Mauretania Caesariensis itself be asked. In the time of Gildo, since one colleague of yours was his most intimate friend, let the Maximianists see what they felt. For as for Felicianus himself, who is now with you, if one could challenge him to an oath, he would not dare to move his lips on whether Optatus did not compel him, against his will, to return to your communion, especially if the people of Musti, in whose presence those things were then done, were watching his face. But let those, as I said, see what they suffered from the very men with whom they had done such things to Rogatus. The Catholic Church itself, though strengthened by the rule of Catholic emperors, was attacked savagely and as an enemy by Optatus with armed bands on land and sea. That is what first compelled the law of ten pounds of gold to be invoked against you before the vicar Seranus, which none of you has yet paid; and you accuse us of cruelty! What could be gentler than that such great crimes of yours should be punished by the restraint of fines? But who could recount all the things you commit in your own places by your own domination, wherever anyone can, without any friendship of judges or other authorities? Which of us has not either learned of something of the kind in his congregations from his predecessors or experienced it himself? At Hippo, where I am, are there not people who remember that your Faustinus, in the time of his reign, ordered, since the Catholics there were few, that no one should bake bread for them, so that the baker of one of our deacons, a tenant of the deacon's own landlord, threw out his bread unbaked and refused him, though he had been condemned by no law of exile, fellowship not only in the Roman city but in his own home town, and not only in his home town but in his own house? And what of recently, which I still mourn? Did not your Crispinus of Calama, when he had bought a property, and that on a perpetual lease, not hesitate, on an estate of the Catholic emperors, by whose laws you are not even permitted to be in the cities, to drown by rebaptism, with one onslaught of terror, nearly eighty souls murmuring with pitiable groans? By what but such deeds did you compel even the laws you complain of to be passed, far below the desert of your crime, but still of some kind? Or should we not be driven from the countryside everywhere by the violent attacks of your Circumcellions, who serve under your leadership in raging bands, unless we held you as hostages in the cities, you who, out of shame if not fear, would not want to bear the public view and the reproach of respectable people? So do not say, “Far be it, far be it from our conscience to force anyone to our faith”; for you do it where you can; and where you do not, you cannot, out of fear of the laws or of odium, or because of the number of those who resist.

Petilian said: “For the Lord Christ says, ‘No one comes to me unless the Father draws him.’ Why do you not allow each person to follow his free choice, since the Lord God himself gave men free choice, while showing the way of righteousness so that no one might perish through ignorance? For he says, ‘I have set before you good and evil, I have set before you fire and water; choose what you will.’ By this choice, wretches, you have chosen for yourselves not water but rather fire. ‘But still,’ he says, ‘choose the good, that you may live.’ You who refuse to choose the good have condemned yourself to not wanting to live.”

Augustine answered: If I put to you the question how God the Father draws men to the Son whom he has left to free choice, you will perhaps find it hard to solve. For how does he draw, if he leaves each to choose what he wills? And yet both are true, but few can penetrate this with understanding. So just as it can be that the Father draws to the Son those whom he has left to free choice, so it can be that the warnings given by the coercion of laws do not take away free choice. For whatever hard and troublesome thing a man suffers, he is warned to consider why he suffers; so that if he perceives that he suffers for righteousness, he may choose that very good, to endure such things for righteousness; but if he sees that it is iniquity for which he suffers, considering that he labours and is tormented quite fruitlessly, he may change his will for the better and be rid at once both of the barren trouble and of the iniquity itself, which would certainly harm him far more seriously and ruinously. And you too, when kings enact something against you, believe that you are being warned to consider why you suffer these things. If for righteousness, then they are truly your persecutors, and you are blessed, who, having suffered persecution for righteousness, will possess the kingdom of heaven; but if for the iniquity of your schism, what are they but your correctors, and you, like others guilty of various crimes who pay the penalties of the laws, surely unhappy both in this age and in the age to come? So no one takes free choice away from you; but consider carefully what you should rather choose: whether to live corrected in peace, or, persevering in malice, to endure real punishments under the name of a false martyrdom. Yet I address you as though you suffered undeserved things for righteousness; as though you suffered anything worthy of your iniquity, when you do so many undeserved things and reign with such impunity, so raging that you terrify more with your “Praise to God” than with a war trumpet, so slanderous that you impute even the voluntary precipices of your people to our persecutions.

He also says, like a most kindly teacher: “You who refuse to choose the good have condemned yourself to not wanting to live.” So, then, if we believed your accusations, we would live well; because we believe God's promises, we condemn ourselves to not wanting to live! You remember well, I think, what the apostles said to the Jews when they were forbidden to preach Christ; so we too say this, that you may answer us whether God must be obeyed rather than men. “Traitors, incense-offerers, persecutors” are words of men against men. “Christ has remained only in the love of Donatus” are words of men who exalt the glory of a man under the name of Christ, so that the glory of Christ himself may be diminished. For it is written, “In a broad nation is the glory of a king, but in the diminishing of a people is the ruin of a prince.” These, then, are words of men. But those in the gospel, “that the Christ had to suffer and rise on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins be preached in his name through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,” are words of Christ commending the glory he received from the Father in the breadth of his kingdom. Having heard both, we choose rather this communion of the church and put Christ's words before men's words. I ask: who says that we have chosen evil, but one who says that Christ taught evil?

Petilian said: “Did God, then, order slaughter to be inflicted even on schismatics? If he had commanded it at all, you ought to have been killed by some Scythians or barbarians, but not by Christians.”

Augustine answered: Let your Circumcellions be quiet, and I do not want you to frighten us with barbarians. But whether we are the schismatics or you, let neither I nor you be asked, but Christ, that he may point out his church. So read the gospel, and he answers you: “In Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the whole earth.” Whoever, then, is not found in the church, let him no longer be questioned, but either be corrected and converted, or, being rebuked, not complain.

Petilian said: “For the Lord God never rejoiced in human blood, since he willed that Cain, the killer of his brother, should remain alive, with his life as his executioner.”

Augustine answered: If God would not have death inflicted on the killer of his brother but left him life as his executioner, see whether this may be the reason why, since the king's heart is in God's hand, and so he himself has enacted many laws to admonish and correct you, yet no royal law has ordered you to be killed: perhaps so that whoever of you persist in the stubborn breeze of sacrilegious fury may be tormented with the punishment of Cain the fratricide, life as executioner. For we read that many were killed mercifully by Moses the servant of God. For in his praying the Lord for their abominable sacrilege in such a way as to say, “Lord, if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book,” his ineffable love and mercy are plain enough. Did he, then, suddenly become cruel when, coming down from the mountain, he ordered so many thousands to be killed? So consider whether it is not by God's greater anger that, through so many laws enacted against you, you have been ordered killed by no emperor. Or do you think you are not to be compared with that fratricide? Hear the Lord saying through the prophet: “From the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name and a pure offering; great is my name among the nations, says the Lord Almighty.” You show by your slanders that you envy this brother's sacrifice, on which God looks with favour; and whenever you hear that the name of the Lord is praised from the rising of the sun to its setting, which is the living sacrifice of which it was said, “Offer to God a sacrifice of praise,” your face falls like that murderer's. But since you cannot kill the whole world, you are held guilty by the hatred itself, as John says: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” And would that an innocent brother would run into the weapons of your Circumcellions to be slaughtered rather than into your tongue to be rebaptized!

Petilian said: “We warn you, then, if you will listen willingly; and if you do not receive it willingly, we warn you all the same: the Lord Christ established for Christians a pattern not of killing but of dying. For if he loved those who resist in that way, he would not have been willing to be killed for us.”

Augustine answered: Would that your martyrs followed his pattern! They would not throw themselves down, which he did not do when the devil suggested it. But when you persecute our forebears, even the dead, with false witness, where did you receive this pattern? When you try to stain us with the crimes of unknown men, while you do not want the most notorious evil deeds of your own to harm you, where did you receive this pattern? But we are too proud if we are angry on our own account, when we see you bearing false witness against the Lord himself, since he both promised and displayed his church through all nations, and you contradict it. This pattern you did not receive even from the Jewish persecutors themselves; for they persecuted the flesh of one walking on earth, you the gospel of one sitting in heaven. That gospel bore the flames of raging kings more mildly than it suffers your tongues; for when they burned it, unity remained; when you speak, it could not remain. Those who wanted the Lord's words burned and abolished did not believe they could be despised once read. They would not have exercised their flames on the gospel if you had promised them your tongues against the gospel. In that persecution the gospel of Christ was sought by some in rage, betrayed by others in fear, burned by others who tore it out, hidden by others in love, attacked by none in contradiction. Now that the persecution by the Gentiles is over, you have kept for yourselves the more criminal parts of persecution: those who persecuted Christ's name did not believe in Christ; those who are honoured because of Christ's name contradict Christ.

Petilian said: “Here you have the fullest proof that a Christian may not engage in the destruction of others. The beginning of this discipline was established for Peter, as it is written: ‘Peter struck the ear of the servant of the chief of the Jews and cut it off. And Jesus said to him: Peter, put your sword back in its sheath; for whoever uses the sword will die by the sword.’”

Augustine answered: Why, then, do you not restrain the weapons of the Circumcellions with such a word? Or do you think you would be speaking outside the gospel if you said, “Whoever uses a club will die by the club”? Forgive us, then, since our forebears could not prevent even those who, you complain, threw Marculus down. For it is not written in the gospel, “Whoever throws someone down will die by a fall.” And would that, as those things are either false or past, so these men's clubs would cease! Though perhaps you are angry that we strip your legions of their armour, if not by laws, at least by words, since we say they rage with clubs alone. That was indeed their old warfare; but now they have made great progress. For amid drunken feasts and with the free licence of accompanying, roaming, joking, drinking, and spending nights with women who have no husbands, they have learned not only to turn clubs but also to brandish iron and whirl slings. But why should I not say to them (God knows with what intention I say it and with what they receive it): “Madmen, Peter's sword, though still drawn by a fleshly impulse of mind, was nevertheless drawn for the body of Christ against the body of a persecutor; but your weapons are divided against Christ, whose body, of which he is the head, that is, his church, is through all nations. He himself said this and ascended into heaven, where the fury of the Jews could not follow him; and your fury attacks his members in the body which he commended as he ascended.” For these members, whoever in the Catholic Church are still of little faith and of the mind Peter had then, when he drew the sword for Christ's name, rage against you and resist you. But there is a great difference between your persecution and theirs. You are like the servant of the Jewish high priest, because, serving your leaders, you arm yourselves against the Catholic Church, that is, against Christ's body; but they are such as Peter was then, who fight even bodily for Christ's body, that is, for the church. But if they are told to be quiet, as Peter was told then, how much more must we tell you to lay aside heretical fury and belong to those members for which they fight so! But, wounded by such men, you even hate us, and, as if you had lost your right ears, you do not hear Christ sitting at the Father's right hand. But to whom shall I speak, or when shall I speak to them, when I cannot find an hour for those who belch wine even in the morning, whether already drunk or still drunk? Indeed, not only they threaten, but on their behalf their bishops too, ready to deny that what they have done concerns them. May the Lord give us the song of ascents in which we may say, “With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they fought against me without cause.” For this is said by the body of Christ, which throughout the whole earth is attacked by heretics, some here, some there, and by all of them, each in his own place.

Petilian said: “So, I say, he established that death is to be undergone for the faith rather than inflicted on anyone for the sake of communion. For Christianity advances by deaths. For no one would live most faithful if death were feared by the faithful. For the Lord Christ says: ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’”

Augustine answered: I would like to know who on your side first threw himself down. That grain was very fertile indeed, from which so great a harvest of thrown-down corpses sprang up. Surely, since you remember the Lord's words, that he said he was the grain that would die and bear much fruit, why do you envy that very fruit, which has come forth so abundantly through the whole world, and charge it with the crimes of the tares or the chaff, either what you have heard or what you have invented?

Petilian said: “But you scatter thorns and tares, not seeds, with which it is fitting that you be burned up at the last judgment. We are not cursing; but every thorny conscience is held so by God's sentence.”

Augustine answered: At least the mention of tares should have brought the wheat to your mind as well, since both were ordered to grow through the field until the harvest. But you fix the eye of malice sharply on the tares and contend, against Christ's sentence, that they alone have grown throughout the world, except in Africa.

Petilian said: “Where is what the Lord Christ says: ‘If you receive a slap, offer the other cheek also’? Where is the fact that he suffered spitting in his face, he who opened the eyes of the blind with his most holy spittle? Where is what the apostle Paul says: ‘If anyone strikes you on the face’? Where is what he says again: ‘in beatings beyond measure, in deaths often, in prisons more abundantly’? He recalls what he suffered, not what he did. It should have been enough for Christianity that these things were done by the Jews; why do you wretches commit them?”

Augustine answered: Do you really, when slapped, offer the other cheek? Your raging bands, roaming everywhere through all Africa with terrible shamelessness, have not earned you that reputation. Would that men could make an agreement with you, that at least, according to the old law, you would demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and not raise clubs in return for words heard!

Petilian said: “But what have you to do with the kings of the world, whom Christianity has never found anything but envious? To show this briefly: a king persecuted the Maccabean brothers; a king too, though he himself was sacrilegious, unknowingly consigned three boys to the religious flames; a king sought the life of the Saviour as a child; a king threw most righteous Daniel to the bites of wild beasts, as he thought; and the Lord Christ himself was killed by a king's most wicked judge. Hence the apostle cries: ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect, a wisdom not of this age nor of the rulers of this world, which is being brought to nothing; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, which was hidden, which God established before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for if they had known it, they would surely not have crucified the Lord of majesty.’ But let this be said of the ancient pagan kings. You, however, do not allow the emperors of this age to be Christians, though they desire to be Christians; with the paint and fog of your lie you lead them, who believe with good intention, right into your iniquity, so that with their weapons, prepared against the enemies of the state, they attack Christians and think, by your persuasion, that they are doing God a service if they kill us whom you hate; as the Lord Christ says: ‘The time will come,’ he says, ‘when whoever kills you will think he is doing God a service.’ So it makes no difference to us, with you teaching evil, whether the kings of the world desire to be pagans, which God forbid, or Christians, since you do not cease arming them against Christ's household. Do you not know, or rather have you not read, that the persuader's crime is greater than that of the one who kills a man? Jezebel had roused her husband the king to the death of a righteous or poor man; yet husband and wife both perished with equal punishment. For you push kings on no otherwise than as subtle feminine persuasion has often pushed kings into guilt. For Herod's wife, through her daughter, obtained and won that John's head be brought on a dish to the table. The Jews so compelled Pontius Pilate that he fastened the Lord Christ to the cross, whose avenging blood they wished to remain always upon themselves and their children. So you too, sinning, overwhelm yourselves with our blood. For even if the judge strikes, is it not rather your slanders that have struck us? For the prophet David says in the person of the Lord Christ: ‘Why have the nations raged, and the peoples devised vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. Let us break their bonds and cast their yoke from us. He who dwells in heaven will laugh at them, and the Lord will mock them. Then he will speak to them in his anger and trouble them in his fury. But I have been set as king by him on Zion, his holy mountain, proclaiming his decree. The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession. You will rule them with a rod of iron and break them like a potter's vessel.’ And he warned these same kings with these commands, so that they might not desire, as it were in ignorance or unknowing, to persecute Christians, lest they perish. Would that we could teach them these commands, since they do not know them; or at least that you would show them to them without doubt, if you wanted them to live; or at least, as a third choice, that your malice had allowed them to read them for themselves! The first Davidic psalm would entirely persuade them to remain Christians and reign. You have badly deceived them while they trust themselves to you; for you invent evil things for them and hide good things. Let them read this at last, even late, which they ought to have read long ago. For what does it say? ‘And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth. Serve the Lord in fear and rejoice in him with trembling. Lay hold of discipline, lest the Lord be angry and you perish from the just way, when his anger is quickly kindled against you. Blessed are all who trust in him.’ You press the emperors, I say, with your persuasions, as the Jews pressed Pilate, whom we mentioned, though he cried out, washing his hands publicly, ‘I am free of the blood of this righteous man.’ Yet how can he be clean of the crime who did it? But to say nothing of old things, notice in your own examples how many emperors and judges of yours perished in persecuting us. To leave aside Nero, who first persecuted the Christians, Domitian too, much like Nero, Trajan, Geta, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian; Maximian also perished. When they ordered incense, and the Lord's books were burned, first Marcellinus, who was bishop of the Romans, and also Mensurius of Carthage and Caecilian, remained as embers or ashes from those very sacrilegious flames. For the guilt of the incense entangled you who agreed with Mensurius. Macarius perished, Ursatius perished, and all your counts likewise perished by God's vengeance. For Ursatius, laid low in a battle with barbarians, was torn apart by the cruel claws of birds and the greedy teeth of dogs. Is not he too a murderer at your urging, who, like King Ahab, whom we said was struck at a woman's instigation, killed a righteous poor man? So you too do not cease to slaughter the righteous and poor (poor, I mean, in worldly wealth; for God's grace in us is not poor). For even if you do not do it with your hand, you slaughter a man with your tongue as executioner. For it is written, ‘Death and life are in the hands of the tongue.’ So all who have been killed, you, the persuader, have killed; for the executioner's hand does not grow hot except by your tongue, and that hard heat of the breast is kindled for another's blood by your words, the blood that avenges the words of those who poured it out.”