Against the Letters of Petilian 3.63–3.72

But see for a moment what kind of thing it is that he tried to handle for himself out of what I set down from the writings of the apostle Paul. “You said,” he says, “‘The apostle Paul rebukes those who said they were the apostle Paul's, and says: Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? Therefore, if those who wanted 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 wanted 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.’” These words, and this testimony of the apostle, he cited from my letter and set himself to refute. So see whether he answered what was proposed. For he says: “This is empty, puffed up, childish, foolish, and far removed from the reason of our faith. You would rightly say this if we said, ‘We were baptized in the name of Donatus,’ or, ‘Donatus was crucified for us,’ or, ‘We were baptized in our own name.’ But since these things neither have been nor are said by us, because we follow the form of the divine Trinity, it is certain that you who charge us with such things are mad. Or if you think that we were baptized in the name of Donatus or in our own, you are utterly mistaken, and at the same time you sacrilegiously confess about yourselves that you defile wretched people in the name of Caecilian.” This is what Petilian answered to those words of mine, not noticing, or rather making noise so that no one might notice, that he answered nothing at all relevant to the matter in hand. For who does not see that this testimony of the apostle was set down by us all the more rightly precisely because you do not say that you were baptized in the name of Donatus nor that Donatus was crucified for you, and yet for the party of Donatus you separate yourselves from the communion of the Catholic Church; just as those whom Paul rebuked certainly did not say that they had been baptized in the name of Paul or that Paul was crucified for them, and yet made a schism over the name of Paul? So, just as to those for whom Christ, not Paul, was crucified, and who were baptized in the name of Christ, not of Paul, and yet said, “I am Paul's,” it is said all the more rightly, “Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”, so that they might cling to him who was crucified for them and in whose name they were baptized, and not be divided over the name of Paul; so to you too, much more, since you do not say, “We were baptized in the name of Donatus,” and yet want to be of the party of Donatus, it is fittingly said, “Was Donatus crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Donatus?” For you know that Christ was crucified for you and that you were baptized in the name of Christ, and yet, for the name and party of Donatus, you fight with such stubbornness against the unity of Christ, who was crucified for us and in whose name you were baptized.

But that Petilian aimed in his writings to make the origin, root, and head of the baptized person none other than the one by whom he is baptized, and that this was said by me not emptily or childishly or foolishly, review the beginnings of his letter which I then answered, and you will see. Or rather, attend carefully as I recall them: “For it is the conscience,” he says, “of one who gives in holiness that is looked to, to cleanse that of the receiver. For he who knowingly has received faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt.” And as if someone asked him, “How do you prove this?”, he says, “For everything consists by its origin and root, and if it does not have something as its head, it is nothing; nor does anything regenerate well unless it is regenerated by good seed. Since these things are so, brothers, what perversity can it be that one guilty of his own crimes should make another innocent, when the Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘A good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit; do they gather grapes from thorns?’ and again, ‘Every good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and every evil man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth evil things,’ and again, ‘He who is baptized by a dead man, his washing does not profit him.’” You see what all these things aim at: that the conscience of one who gives in holiness (so that no one receiving from a faithless man receives not faith but guilt) should itself be the origin, root, head, and seed of the baptized. For wishing to prove that the conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to cleanse that of the receiver, and that he who knowingly receives faith from a faithless man receives not faith but guilt, he at once added, “For everything consists by its origin and root, and if it does not have something as its head, it is nothing; nor does anything regenerate well unless it is regenerated by good seed.” And so that no one would be so slow as still not to understand that he was speaking of the one by whom each is baptized, he explains this next and says, “Since these things are so, brothers, what perversity can it be that one guilty of his own crimes should make another innocent, when the Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘A good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit; do they gather grapes from thorns?’” And so that the hearer or reader, blind with incredible dullness of heart, might not still fail to see that he is speaking of the man who baptizes, he adds another text in which he even names man: “And again,” he says, “‘Every good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and every evil man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth evil things,’ and again, ‘He who is baptized by a dead man, his washing does not profit him.’” Surely it is now plain, surely it now needs no interpreter, disputant, or demonstrator, that these men aim to make the origin, root, and head of the baptized person none other than the one by whom he is baptized. And yet, overcome by the force of truth, and as if forgetting what he had said, Petilian afterwards concedes to me that Christ is the origin and root of the regenerate and the head of the church, not any man who is the steward and minister of baptism. For when he had said that the apostles baptized in the name of Christ and laid Christ as the foundation in order to make Christians, and had proved this by testimonies and examples from the holy Scriptures, as if we denied it, he says: “Where now is that voice of yours, with which, rattling with petty and frequent little questions, you said many involved things about Christ and for Christ and in Christ, invidiously and loftily, against human rashness and pride? See: Christ is the origin of the Christian, Christ is the head, Christ is the root.” Hearing this, what should I do but give thanks to Christ himself, who compelled the man to confess it? So what he said at the beginning of his letter is false, when he wanted to persuade that the conscience of one who gives in holiness is looked to, to cleanse that of the receiver, and that when someone knowingly receives faith from a faithless man he receives not faith but guilt. For wanting to show, as it were, how much lies in the man who baptizes, he had added, as great proofs, “For everything consists by its origin and root, and if it does not have something as its head, it is nothing.” But afterwards, when he says what we too say, “See: Christ is the origin of the Christian, Christ is the head, Christ is the root,” he deletes what he had said before, that the conscience of one who gives in holiness is the origin, root, and head of the receiver. So the truth has won: that a man who desires Christ's baptism should not place his hope in a human minister, but should come securely to Christ himself as to an origin that does not change, a root that is not torn up, a head that is not cast down.

Now who does not notice from what a swollen vein it comes when, as if expounding the apostle's sentence, he says: “He who said, ‘I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth,’ what else did he say but, ‘I made a man a catechumen in Christ, Apollos baptized him, God confirmed what we did’?” Why, then, did Petilian not add what the apostle added and I especially commended, so as to expound this too for us: “So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth”? If he wants to expound it according to what he set down above, it certainly follows that neither he who makes a catechumen nor he who baptizes is anything, but God who gives the growth. For what does it matter now how “I planted, Apollos watered” was said, whether it really should be taken as if he said, “I made a catechumen, Apollos baptized,” or whether there is another truer and more fitting understanding? See, meanwhile, according to his own exposition, neither he who makes a catechumen nor he who baptizes is anything, but God who gives the growth. And there is a great difference between confirming what another does and doing it; for he who gives the growth does not confirm the tree or the vine but creates it. For by that growth it comes about that even a planted cutting puts out and fixes a root; by that growth it comes about that a seed thrown down sends out a shoot. But why argue longer about this? It is enough that, according to him, neither he who makes a catechumen nor he who baptizes is anything, but God who gives the growth. But when would Petilian say this so that we might understand him to say, “Neither is Donatus of Carthage anything, nor Januarian, nor Petilian”? When would that swelling allow it, by which a man thinks himself something when he is nothing, and deceives himself?

Finally, a little later, when he set out and aimed to handle again those words of the apostle which we had put to him, he would not set down what I had said, but other words in which human pride could somehow breathe. “For,” he says, “to go over again the sayings of the apostle which you had put to us, he said, ‘What then is Apollos, what is Paul? Ministers of him in whom you believed.’ What else does he say, for example, to all our people, but, ‘What is Donatus of Carthage, what is Januarian, what is Petilian, but ministers of him in whom you believed’?” This testimony of the apostle I did not set down; I set down the one he would not mention: “Neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” But he chose to insert those words of the apostle where he asks what Paul is or what Apollos is and answers, “Ministers of him in whom you believed.” This the stiff neck of heresy could somehow bear; but that other text, where he did not ask and answer what they were but said they were not anything, it could not bear at all. But now I want to ask whether a minister of Christ is not anything. Who would say so? How, then, is it true, “Neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth,” except that for one purpose he is something and for another he is not anything? For ministering and dispensing the word and sacrament he is something; but for cleansing and justifying he is not anything, because this is not worked in the inner man except by him through whom the whole man was created, and who, remaining God, became man; he, namely, of whom it was said, “cleansing their hearts by faith,” and, “to one who believes in him who justifies the ungodly.” This testimony Petilian chose to set down among my words, but in his own he neither handled nor touched it.

The minister, then, that is, the steward of the gospel word and sacrament, if he is good, becomes a partner of the gospel; but if he is bad, he is not for that reason not a steward of the gospel. For if he is good, he does it willingly; but if he is bad, that is, seeking his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ, he does it unwillingly, for the sake of other things he seeks. Yet see what the same apostle said: “If I do this willingly,” he says, “I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me”; as if he said, “If, being good, I proclaim good, I too attain it; but if bad, I still proclaim good.” Did he say, “If I do it unwillingly, I will not be a steward”? Peter and the other good ones proclaimed; Judas proclaimed unwillingly, yet, sent with them, he proclaimed. They have a reward; to him a stewardship was entrusted. And those who received the gospel when all of them proclaimed it could be cleansed and justified not by the planter or the waterer but by him who gives the growth. For we are not going to say that Judas did not baptize while he was still among the disciples, when what is written was being done: “He himself did not baptize, but his disciples.” Either, because he had not yet betrayed Christ, the one who had the purse and took what was put in, and who could not be an innocent keeper of money, was nevertheless a steward of grace without loss to those who received; or, if he did not baptize, you surely admit that he preached the gospel. And if you count this very small and light, see what you think of the apostle Paul himself, who said, “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.” Add to this that Apollos, who watered by baptizing, begins to be more important than Paul, who planted by preaching the gospel; whereas Paul claims for himself the office of father toward the Corinthians on this account, and does not grant this name to those who had come to them after him. For he says: “Though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel.” He says, “I begot you,” to those to whom he says in another place, “Thanks be to God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius and the household of Stephanas.” So he had begotten them not through himself but through the gospel. And even if he had sought his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ, and had done this unwillingly and without his reward, he would still be dispensing the Lord's money, which, though bad himself, he would not make bad or useless to those who received it well.

And if this is rightly said of the gospel, how much more must it be said of baptism, which belongs to the gospel in such a way that without it no one reaches the kingdom of heaven, but only if righteousness accompanies the sacrament! For he who said, “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven,” also said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” The form of the sacrament is given through baptism, the form of righteousness through the gospel; the one without the other does not lead to the kingdom of heaven. Yet even the less learned can baptize perfectly, but to preach the gospel perfectly is a much more difficult and rarer work. That is why the teacher of the Gentiles, more excellent than very many, was sent to preach the gospel, not to baptize, because the latter could be done by many, the former by few, among whom he was eminent. And yet we read that in several places he said, “my gospel,” but he never said “my baptism,” nor anyone else's through whom it was ministered. For only that baptism which John gave was called John's baptism. That man received this special gift of his stewardship, that the forerunning sacrament of washing should be called by the name of the one through whom it was dispensed; but the baptism which Christ's disciples ministered was called none of theirs, so that it might be understood to be his of whom it was said, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word.” If, then, the gospel, which is Christ's in such a way that the minister too can call it his because of the office of stewardship, can be received without danger even through a bad steward, by doing what he says and not doing what he does, how much more can anyone who comes to Christ in good faith receive, without contagion from a bad minister, the baptism of Christ, which none of the apostles ministered in such a way as to dare to call it his own!

So if Petilian, while I did not omit to show that the testimonies from Scripture he set down were not against us, partly did not touch at all those I set down, and partly, in those he chose to handle, showed nothing but that he could not get out, you do not need long exhortation or warning to see what you ought to hold and what to beware of. But perhaps he appeared so in the testimonies of the holy Scriptures, but in the documents of what was done among men about the schism itself he had some strength? Rather, in these too (though after the divine testimonies they are superfluously sought), what did he mention or what did he prove? Though he inveighed heavily against traitors and proclaimed many testimonies against them even from the holy books, he said nothing by which to show us to be traitors. But I mentioned Silvanus of Cirta, whom he himself succeeded, with some others between, who, when he was still a subdeacon, was set down in the municipal records as a traitor. Against this he dared not mutter a word. And surely you see how great a necessity compelled him to answer, namely to show his predecessor, not only his fellow member but, so to speak, his fellow holder of the chair, innocent of the crime of handing over; especially since you make your whole case rest on calling traitors those whom you either pretend or think to have succeeded traitors by the line of communion. He, then, who by the very necessity of your case would be compelled to defend by all means even someone of your party from Rusicade or Calama or any other city if I said he was shown a traitor in municipal records, was silent about his own predecessor. Why, unless because here he found no fog to spread by which to deceive at least men very slow and very sleepy of mind? For what would he say, except that these things were falsely thrown about concerning Silvanus? But we read out the records, both when it was done and when it was presented to Zenophilus the consular. How would he resist them, hemmed in on every side by the very good cause of the Catholic Church and your very bad one? This is why I recall these words from that letter of mine, to which he wanted to seem to have answered by this one which I now refute, so that you may see how invincibly it was set down, against which he could find nothing safer than silence.

For when he had set down as if against us the testimony from the gospel where the Lord says, “They will come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves; by their fruits you will know them,” I answered and said, “So let us consider the fruits.” Then at once I added and joined: “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. What if the holy and true church of Christ were to convict and overcome you even if we had no documents, or false ones, about the handing over of the books, and you had some true ones? What would remain for you then, except to love peace if you are willing, or, if you are not, at least to be silent? For whatever you might produce now, I could say very easily and very truly that you ought at that time to have proved it to the full and Catholic unity of the church, already spread and established through so many nations, so that you would remain inside and those you convicted would be driven out. If you tried to do this, you were beyond doubt unable to prove it, and, defeated or angry, you separated yourselves with monstrous sacrilege from the innocent, who could not condemn things uncertain. But if you did not even try, then with a most accursed and ungodly blindness you cut yourselves off from the wheat of Christ, which grows through the whole field, that is, the whole world, until the end, because you were offended by a few tares in Africa.” To these things, which I have recalled from that former letter of mine, Petilian answered nothing at all. And surely you see that the whole case between us is contained in these few words. For what would he try to say, where whatever he chose he would be defeated?

For when documents about traitors are brought forward both by us against yours and by you against ours (if indeed any are brought forward by you, which to this day we do not know at all; for Petilian would not have omitted to insert them in his letter, he who took such care to cite and insert against me parts of proceedings relevant to the case), yet, as I had begun to say, if such things are brought forward both by us and by you, then certainly either both are true, or both false, or ours true and yours false, or ours false and yours true. Nothing more can be found to say.

But in all four of these cases the truth is for the Catholic communion: because, if both are true, you ought by no means to have deserted the communion of the world because of men such as you too had; if both are false, the most atrocious crime of division was to be avoided for no crimes of handing over at all; if ours are true and yours false, you have long had nothing to say; if yours are true and ours false, we could be deceived, together with the world, about men's iniquity, not about the truth of the faith. For the seed of Abraham spread in every nation ought not to have attended to what you said you knew, but to what you proved to the judges. How do we know what those whom your forebears accused did, even if true things were charged against them, so that, either to the judges of the case or at least to the church spread everywhere, which ought to attend only to the judges' sentences, those things might be thought not true but false? God does not thereby acquit whatever crime of men that men, being men, cannot know; yet I do not think anyone is rightly judged guilty who believed a man not convicted to be innocent. How, then, is the world guilty, if it could not know even the perhaps true crime of Africans, and could not know it either because no one reported it to it, or because, in what was reported, it believed the judges giving judgment rather than the defeated grumbling? In this, then, Petilian is to be praised, that, seeing this was altogether unconquerable, he passed it over in silence; but plainly not to be praised, that the other things, likewise unconquerable, which he nevertheless thought could be obscured, he tried to cover with fogs of words, and that, having failed in the case, he made me the case, saying nothing even about me except what was either wholly false, or not blameworthy, or no longer concerned me. But meanwhile you, whom I have set as judges between him and me, do you have the sense to distinguish between true and false, between puffed up and solid, between turbid and calm, between swollen and sound, between divine predictions and human presumptions, between proofs and accusations, between documents and inventions, between pleading a case and turning away from it? If you have the sense, well and good; but if you do not, we will not regret having taken care of you, because, even if your heart is not turned to peace, our peace nevertheless returns to us.