Against the Letters of Petilian 2.241–3.8

Augustine answered: A little while ago, when we were discussing the oil of the sinner, I seemed to be rubbing your forehead so that you would say, if you dared, whether you yourself were not a sinner. Look, you have said it. O crime, O monster! For since you claim to be a priest, what else have you said through this prophetic testimony than that you are wholly without sin? For if you have sin, who will pray for you, on your understanding? For so you sell yourselves to the wretched peoples, citing from the prophet, “If the people sin, the priest will pray for them; but if the priest sins, who will pray for him?”, so that they may believe you without sin and entrust their sins to be cleansed by your prayers. Great men you are, lofty, heavenly, divine, no longer men but angels, who pray for the peoples and do not want the peoples to pray for you! Are you more righteous than Paul, more perfect than so great an apostle, who commended himself to the prayers of those he taught? “Persist in prayer,” he says, “watching in it with thanksgiving, praying at the same time for us too, that God may open to us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak.” See, prayer is made for an apostle, which you do not want made for a bishop. Do you see how devilish this pride is? Prayer is made for an apostle, that he may make the mystery of Christ manifest as he ought to speak. So if you had godly congregations, you should have urged them to pray for you, that you might not speak as you ought not. Are you more righteous than John the evangelist, who says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”? Are you, finally, more righteous than Daniel, whom you yourself mentioned in this very letter so as to say, “A king threw most righteous Daniel to the bites of wild beasts, as he thought”? Which the king had not thought, since with a most friendly mind, as the context of the reading proves, he said to Daniel himself, “Your God, whom you serve continually, will himself rescue you.” But we have said much about this already. Now to the point: Daniel was indeed most righteous, not by your testimony (though that would be enough for me in the case I am pleading with you) but by the testimony of the Spirit of God speaking also through Ezekiel, where he named three of most eminent righteousness, Noah, Daniel, and Job, who he said alone could be delivered from a certain most severe wrath of God that was hanging over the rest. So a most righteous man, one of the three memorable ones, prays and says, “When I was praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people before the Lord my God.” And you say you are without sin, because, forsooth, you are a priest; and if the people sin, you pray for them, but if you sin, who will pray for you? Truly, because by the impiety of such arrogance you show yourself unworthy that that Priest should intercede for you whom the prophet wanted to be understood by these words which you do not understand. For now, so that no one may ask why this was said, I will explain as far as the Lord grants. God was preparing men's minds through the prophet to long for such a priest that no one could pray for him. He was prefigured in the times of the first people and the first temple, where all things were figures of us. Therefore the high priest alone entered the holy of holies to pray for the people, who did not go into those inner holy places with the priest; as that Priest entered the secret places of heaven, that truer holy of holies, while we are still here, for whom he intercedes. Therefore the prophet said, “If the people sin, the priest will pray for them; but if the priest sins, who will pray for him?”, that is: long for such a priest as cannot sin, so that he does not need to be prayed for. And therefore prayer is made by the peoples for the apostles, but for that Priest, the Master and Lord of the apostles, no prayer is made. Hear John confessing and teaching this: “Brothers,” he says, “I write these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; he is the propitiation for our sins.” He said “we have,” he said “our sins.” Learn humility, so that you may not fall, or rather so that you may at some time rise; for you would not have said these things unless you had fallen.

Petilian said: “And so that one who is a layman may not claim to be free from fault, he is bound by this prohibition: ‘Do not share in others' sins.’”

Augustine answered: You err, as the saying goes, by the whole sky, through pride, while you refuse through humility to be in communion with the world. For this was not said to a layman, and you do not know how it was said. When the apostle was writing to Timothy, he gave this warning to that same Timothy to whom he says in another place, “Do not neglect the grace that is in you, which was given you through the laying on of the hands of the presbytery”; and many other proofs show that he was not a layman. And when he says, “Do not share in others' sins,” he wanted it understood of consent and approval; hence he at once adds how this is done: “Keep yourself pure,” he says. For neither did Paul himself share in others' sins because he tolerated in bodily unity the false brothers over whom he groans; nor did the apostles, Judas's predecessors, share in Judas's theft and crime because they shared the most holy supper with him when he was already the seller of the Lord and pointed out by the Lord.

Petilian said: “By this same sentence the apostle himself classes together the partners of a bad conscience: ‘Both those who do these things,’ he says, ‘and those who consent to those who do such things are worthy of death.’”

Augustine answered: However you have said it, I do not care; these things are true, and this is what the Catholic Church teaches: there is a great difference between those who consent, whom these things please, and those who tolerate, whom they displease. The former become chaff, as they follow the barrenness of the chaff; the latter, since they are wheat, wait for Christ the winnower to separate them.

Petilian said: “Come, then, to the church, you peoples, and flee the traitors, if you do not want to perish with them. For that you may easily recognize that they, though guilty themselves, judge very well of our faith: I baptize those they have infected, while they, God forbid, receive those baptized by me. They would certainly not do this unless they had recognized some fault in our baptism. See, then, how holy is what we give, which the sacrilegious enemy fears to destroy.”

Augustine answered: Against this error we have said much already, both in this work and elsewhere. But since you think there is so great a support for your vanity in this sentence that you thought you should end your letter with it, so that it might remain fresher, as it were, in the minds of readers, I answer briefly. We approve in heretics the baptism not of heretics but of Christ, just as in the sexually immoral, the unclean, the debauched, idolaters, sorcerers, those who hold on to enmities, the contentious, the jealous, the angry, those eager for dissensions, the envious, drunkards, carousers, and the like, we approve the baptism not of them but of Christ. For all these, among whom heretics are also placed, as the apostle says, will not possess the kingdom of God and so will belong to the left side with the devil. Nor are they to be thought to be in the body of Christ, which is the church, because they share bodily in his sacraments. For those sacraments are holy even in such men and will avail for greater judgment for those who handle and receive them unworthily; but the men themselves are not in that structure of the church which grows in the members of Christ, through joining and contact, into the growth of God. For that church is on the rock, as the Lord says, “On this rock I will build my church”; but they build on sand, as the same Lord says, “Whoever hears my words and does not do them, I will liken him to a foolish man who builds his house on sand.” But so that you may not think that the church which is on the rock is in one part of the earth and not spread to the ends of the earth, hear its voice from the psalm, groaning amid the evils of its pilgrimage. For it says: “From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, when my heart was in anguish. You have set me high on a rock; you have led me, for you have become my hope, a tower of strength before the enemy.” See how it cries from the ends of the earth; so it is not in Africa alone or among Africans alone, who send a bishop from Africa to Rome for a few Montenses, and to Spain for the house of one woman. See how it is set high on a rock; so not all who build on sand, that is, who hear Christ's words and do not do them, are to be counted in it; yet both among us and among you they have and hand on the sacrament of baptism. See how its hope is God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not Peter, not Paul, much less Donatus or Petilian; so what we fear to destroy is not yours but Christ's, which even in the sacrilegious is holy in itself. For we cannot receive those who come from you unless we destroy what is yours; for we destroy the faithlessness of the deserter, we do not destroy the mark of the commander. So consider yourself and destroy what you have said. “I,” you say, “baptize those they have infected, while they, God forbid, receive those baptized by me.” For you do not baptize the infected, but, so as to infect them with the fraud of your error, you rebaptize. But we do not receive those baptized by you; we destroy your error, from which they are yours, and accept Christ's baptism, from which they are baptized. So your putting “God forbid” in the middle was apt. For you said, “They, God forbid, receive those baptized by me.” For while you wanted it understood that they receive, God forbid, fearing that we might receive your people, I take you to have said without knowing it, “mine, God forbid.” For in truth, God forbid that they should be yours, who now pass over to the Catholic Church; and they do not pass over so as to be our baptized, but so as to be our companions, while they are Christ's baptized together with us.

I have read your letter, Petilian, when I was able to read it, in which you have shown clearly enough that you could say nothing adequate against the Catholic Church for the party of Donatus, and yet were not allowed to keep silent. What surges you suffered, with what a storm of heart you were tossed, when you had read what I answered, as briefly and clearly as I could, to the part of your letter that had then come into my hands! For you saw the truth which we hold and defend strengthened with such firmness and lit with such light that you could not find what to say against it by which it might be refuted and convicted. You noticed too that the expectation of many who had read it had turned to you, eager to know what you would say, what you would do, how you would escape, by what way you would break out of the great straits in which the word of God had surrounded you. Here you, who ought to have despised the opinion of empty men and gone on to a true and sound judgment, did what Scripture foretold of such men: you loved malice more than kindness, iniquity more than speaking equity. So if I too wanted to repay you curse for curse, what would we be but two cursers, so that of those who read us some would cast us off in disgust out of sound seriousness, and others would drink us in sweetly with malicious pleasure? When I answer anyone, in speech or in writing, even when provoked by insulting charges, as far as the Lord grants me, I curb and crush the stings of vain indignation and, considering the hearer or reader, I do not try to become superior to the man by railing, but more wholesome to him by refuting his error.

For if those who consider what you have written have any heart at all, what did it profit you for the case being argued between us about Catholic communion or the party of Donatus, that you left the business, a public business as it were, and, out of a kind of private grudge, attacked the life of one man with abusive reproaches, as if that man were the case under inquiry? Did you think so badly, I will not say of Christians, but of the human race itself, that you did not believe your writings could come into the hands of some prudent men who would set our persons aside and inquire rather into the question at issue between us, and attend not to who or what kind of men we are, but to what we say for truth or against error? Their judgment you should have respected, their censure you should have guarded against, so that they would not think you had found nothing to say unless you set before yourself someone to curse in any way you could. But evidently, counting on the levity and vanity of some who like to hear the quarrels of eloquent brawlers, so that while they attend to how eloquently you rail they do not notice how truly you are refuted, you also aimed, I think, at this: that I too, busied with my own defence, might abandon the case I had taken up, and so, with men turned to the words not of disputants but of litigants, the truth which you dread to see dawn and become known might be obscured. What, then, shall I do against such a plan but rather neglect my own defence and hold to the matter, from which no accuser of mine shall shake my purpose? I will extol the house of my God, whose beauty I have loved, with the proclamation of a serving voice. As for myself, I will humble and abase myself; for I have chosen to be cast down in the house of my God rather than to dwell in the tents of heretics. So I will turn my speech from you, Petilian, for a little while, to those whom you tried to turn from me by your curses; as if I were working for men to be turned to me, and not rather to God with me.

Hear, then, all of you who have read the curses which Petilian, more angry than considerate, vomited against me. First I will address you in the apostle's words, which are certainly true, whatever I myself may be: “Let a man so regard us, as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Here it is required of stewards that one be found faithful. But to me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human day; I do not even judge myself.” As for what follows, though I dare not apply it to myself so as to say, “For I am conscious of nothing against myself,” yet I say confidently in the sight of God: of none of the things with which Petilian has charged the time of my life since I was baptized in Christ am I conscious. “Yet I am not justified by this; he who judges me is the Lord. So do not judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of hearts; and then each will have praise from God. These things, brothers, I have applied to myself, so that no one may be puffed up for one against another beyond what is written. So let no one glory in man; all things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.” I say again: let no one glory in man; I repeat it more often: let no one glory in man. If you notice anything praiseworthy in us, refer it to the praise of him from whom is every best gift and every perfect gift; for it is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change nor shadow of a moment. “For what have we that we did not receive? And if we received it, let us not glory as if we had not received it.” And in all the good things you know in us, be imitators of us, if indeed we are of Christ; but if you suspect or believe or see any evil things in us, hold fast to that word of the Lord by which you may, secure, not desert his church because of men's evils: do what we say, but what you think or know to be our evil deeds, do not do. For this is not the time for clearing myself to you, since, neglecting my own case, I have undertaken to commend to you a wholesome matter: that no one glory in man; for “cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man.” If this command of the Lord and the apostle is held and kept, then even if I fail and am crushed in my own case, as the enemy wishes me to be thought, the cause I serve will be victorious. For if you hold most firmly to what I urge and work for, that everyone who puts his hope in man is cursed, so that no one may glory in man, you will in no way desert the Lord's threshing floor because of the chaff, which either now flies off struck by the wind of pride or will be separated by the last winnowing; nor will you flee the great house because of vessels made for dishonour; nor will you go out through broken nets because of the bad fish which are to be separated on the shore; nor will you leave the good pastures of unity because of the goats which the shepherd will put apart on the left; nor will you separate yourselves by abominable division, because of the tares mixed in, from the fellowship of the wheat, whose head is that grain which died and was multiplied, and which grows together through the world until the harvest. For the field is the world, not Africa; the harvest is the end of the age, not the time of Donatus.

You surely recognize these gospel likenesses as given for no other purpose than that no one should glory in man and that no one, puffed up for one against another, should be divided off, saying, “I am of Paul,” when surely Paul was not crucified for you nor were you baptized in the name of Paul, much less in the name of Caecilian or of any of us; so that you may learn, as long as the chaff is threshed with the grain, as long as bad fish swim with good within the Lord's nets, before the time of winnowing, rather to tolerate the mixture of the bad for the sake of the good than to violate the love of the good because of the bad. For this mixture is not eternal but temporal, not spiritual but bodily. In it the angels will not err when they gather the wicked from the midst of the righteous and cast them into the furnace of burning fire. For the Lord knows those who are his, and if one cannot for the time withdraw bodily from the unrighteous, still let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness itself. For it is permitted meanwhile to be separated and to depart from the wicked in life, conduct, heart, and will, and this separation must always be kept. But bodily separation must be awaited, confidently, patiently, bravely, until the end of the age; for which waiting it was said, “Wait for the Lord, act manfully; let your heart be strengthened, and wait for the Lord.” For the greatest palm of tolerance is, among false brothers brought in secretly, seeking their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ, not to disturb by any turbulent and rash dissension the love of those who seek not their own but the things of Jesus Christ, nor proudly, by abominable strife, to break the unity of the Lord's dragnet, which gathers fish of every kind, while it is being drawn to the shore, that is, to the end of the age, when each thinks himself something while he is nothing, and so deceives himself, and wants his own judgment, or that of his people, to suffice for separating Christian peoples; men who say they know quite openly certain wicked men unworthy of communion in the sacraments of the Christian religion, and yet cannot persuade the whole church, which is spread through all nations as was foretold, of whatever they say they know about them. And while they flee the communion of these men, as of men they know, they desert the unity of that church; whereas they ought rather, if there were in them the love that bears all things, so as not to divide themselves from the good, whom in all nations they could not teach about others' evils, to tolerate themselves in one nation what they knew. Hence, even without examining the case, in which they are convicted by the weightiest documents of having slandered the innocent, it is more probably believed that they invented false charges of handing over the books, since they did not hesitate to commit the far more wicked crime of abominable division; because, even if all they threw about concerning the handing over were true, they ought in no way to have left the fellowship of the Christians whom divine Scripture commends to the ends of the earth on account of what they knew and the others did not know.

I would not say this so that church discipline might be neglected, so that anyone might be allowed to do what he likes without any correction and a kind of medicinal punishment, terrible gentleness, and severity of love. For where then will be the apostle's word: “Correct the unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, support the weak, be patient toward all; see that no one repays evil for evil to anyone”? Since he added, “See that no one repays evil for evil to anyone,” he showed clearly enough that correcting the unruly is not repaying evil for evil, though the penalty of correction is repaid for the fault of unruliness. So the penalty of correction is not an evil, since the fault is the evil; for the steel is not that of an enemy wounding but of a physician cutting. These things are done in the church, and that spirit of inner gentleness burns with zeal for God, lest the chaste virgin betrothed to one husband, Christ, be corrupted in some of her members from the chastity that is in Christ, as Eve was seduced by the serpent's cunning. Yet far be it from the servants of the householder to forget their Lord's command and so blaze with the fire of holy indignation against the multitude of tares that, wanting to gather them before the time, they root up the wheat along with them. Of this sin these men would be held guilty even if they showed that they had brought true charges against the traitors whom they accused; since they separated themselves with ungodly presumption not only from the unrighteous, whose fellowship they claimed to shun, but also from the good faithful established in all nations, to whom they could not prove what they said they knew; and they drew with them into the same ruin many among whom they had some authority and who could less well understand that the unity of the church spread through the whole world is by no means to be deserted for others' sins. So, even if they themselves knew they were bringing true charges against some, in that way the weak brother perished in their knowledge, for whom Christ died, while, offended by others' evils, he killed in himself the good of peace which he had with good brothers, some of whom had not heard such things, some of whom had feared to believe rashly things not examined and not proved, and some of whom had left them, whatever they were, with peaceable humility to the ecclesiastical judges overseas, to whom the whole case was taken.

So you, holy offspring of the one Catholic mother, subject to the Lord, guard with all the vigilance you can against the example of such a crime and error. However much someone shines with the light of learning and reputation and boasts himself a precious stone, whoever wants to draw you after himself, remember that that strong woman, one and lovable to her one husband, whom holy Scripture describes at the end of Proverbs, is more precious than precious stones. Let no one say, “I will follow that man, because he made me a Christian,” or, “I will follow that man, because he baptized me.” “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth”; and “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” No one, even if he preaches the name of Christ and bears and ministers the sacrament of Christ, is to be followed against the unity of Christ. “Let each test his own work, and then he will have glory in himself alone and not in another; for each will carry his own load,” the load, namely, of rendering account, because each of us will render account for himself. “So let us no longer judge one another.” But as regards the loads of mutual love, “bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ. For whoever thinks himself something when he is nothing deceives himself.” So let us bear with one another in love, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, outside which whoever gathers does not gather with Christ; and whoever does not gather with Christ scatters.

Therefore, whether concerning Christ or his church or any other matter that pertains to your faith and life, I will not say that we are in no way to be compared with him who said, “even if we,” but, as he went on to add, altogether: “if an angel from heaven proclaims to you anything other than what you have received in the legitimate and gospel Scriptures, let him be anathema.” Pressing these things with you and with all whom we desire to gain for Christ, and among other things preaching the holy church, which we read promised in God's writings and see rendered, as it was promised, in all nations, we have earned, instead of thanks, the flames of hatred from those whom we desire to draw to its peaceful bosom; as if we had bound them in that part for which they can find nothing to say, or had instructed the prophets and apostles so long beforehand to put in their books no testimonies by which the party of Donatus might be shown to be the church of Christ. And we, dearest friends, when we hear false charges from those whom we offend by preaching the words of truth and refuting the empty talk of error, have, as you know, the most abundant consolation. For if, in the things of which they accuse me, the testimony of my conscience does not stand against me in the sight of God, upon which no mortal eye is fixed, not only ought I not to be saddened, but I ought even to rejoice and exult, because my reward is great in heaven. For one must look not at how bitter what I hear is, but at how false it is, and how true he is for whose name I hear it, to whom it is said, “Your name is ointment poured out.” And rightly is he fragrant in all nations, whose fragrance these men who curse us try to shut up in one small part of Africa. Why, then, should we take it ill that we are defamed by those who so detract from Christ's glory, to whose party and contention what was foretold so long before is hostile, concerning his ascension into heaven and the pouring out of his name like ointment: “Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and your glory above all the earth”?

Bringing forward these and such divine testimonies against human empty talk, we bear bitter reproaches from the enemies of Christ's glory. Let them say what they like, so long as he exhorts us, saying: “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed will you be when they persecute you and curse you and say every evil against you falsely for my sake.” What he said above, “for righteousness' sake,” he repeated when he said afterward, “for my sake,” because he has become for us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “whoever glories, let him glory in the Lord.” Since he says, “Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven,” if I hold with a good conscience what was said, “for righteousness' sake” and “for my sake,” whoever willingly detracts from my reputation unwillingly adds to my reward. For he not only taught me by his word but also confirmed it by his example. Follow the faith of the holy Scriptures: you will find that Christ rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father. Follow the accusations of his enemies: you will think he was stolen from the tomb by his disciples. What else, then, should we hope for, defending his house against his enemies as far as he grants? If they called the householder Beelzebub, how much more his household! If, then, we endure, we shall also reign with him. But if the anger of the accuser not only strikes the ear but the truth of the charge also bites the conscience, what does it profit me if the whole world exalts me with continual praises? So neither does the praiser's proclamation heal a bad conscience, nor does the railer's reproach wound a good one. Nor even so is your hope, which is in the Lord, deceived, even if perhaps we are secretly such as the enemy wants us to be thought, because you have not placed it in us, nor have you ever heard this from us. So you are secure, whatever we may be, you who have learned to say, “Hoping in the Lord, I shall not be moved,” and, “In God I will hope; I will not fear what man can do to me”; and to those who try to lure you to the earthly heights of proud men you know how to answer: “In the Lord I trust; how do you say to my soul, Flee to the mountain like a sparrow?”