Letters 105.1–107.1

The love of Christ, for whom we wish to gain every man, as far as our will is concerned, does not allow us to keep silent. If you hate us because we preach Catholic peace to you, we serve the Lord who says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”; and in the psalm it is written: “With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they fought against me without cause.” For this reason certain presbyters of your party sent us word, saying: “Withdraw from our congregations, if you do not want us to kill you.” How much more justly do we say to them: “No, do not you withdraw, but come in peace to congregations that are not ours but his whose we all are; or, if you do not wish this and are not at peace, it is rather you who should withdraw from the congregations for which Christ shed his blood, which you wish to make yours precisely so that they may not be Christ's, though you try to possess them under his name.” It is as if a slave were to steal sheep from his master's flock and stamp his master's mark on whatever lambs were born of them, so that his theft could not be recognized. For so your forebears did: they separated from the church of Christ peoples who had the baptism of Christ, and whoever were added to them they baptized with the baptism of Christ. But the Lord both punishes the thieves, if they do not correct themselves, and calls the sheep back from error to the flock, and does not erase his mark in them.

You call us traditors, which neither could your forebears prove against our forebears nor can you prove against us in any way. What do you want us to do for you, when, as soon as we ask you to hear our case and yours patiently, you know only how to be proud and rage? For we would certainly show you that those were rather the traditors who condemned Caecilian and his associates on the charge of handing over the Scriptures. And you say, “Withdraw from our congregations”, whom you teach to believe you and not believe Christ. For you tell them that, because of traditors whom you do not show, the church of Christ has remained in Africa alone, in the party of Donatus; which you recite not from the law, not from a prophet, not from a psalm, not from an apostle, not from the Gospel, but from your own heart and from your forebears' slanders. But Christ says that repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem; and with this church, made manifest from Christ's mouth, you do not communicate, and dragging others into your ruin you do not wish to be set free.

But if we displease you because you are compelled to unity by the orders of the emperors, you brought this about yourselves: wherever we wished to preach the truth, so that each might hear it in safety and choose it willingly, you never allowed it, by your violence and terror. Do not grind your teeth and disturb your souls; consider patiently, if possible, what we say, and recall the deeds of your Circumcellions and of the clergy who have always been their leaders, and you will see what cause has stirred this up against you. So you complain unjustly, since you compelled all these things to be ordered. For, not to repeat things long past and many, think at least of your recent deeds. Marcus, presbyter of Casphaliana, compelled by no one, became a Catholic of his own will; for this your people persecuted him and would almost have killed him, had not the hand of God, through men who arrived, checked their violence. Restitutus of Victoriana went over to the Catholic Church with no one compelling him; for this he was snatched from his house, beaten, rolled in water, dressed in rushes, and kept in captivity for I do not know how many days; and perhaps he would not have been restored to his freedom had not Proculeianus seen a summons to court threatening him almost on this very account. Marcianus of Urga chose Catholic unity of his own will; for this, when he himself had fled, your clergy beat his subdeacon almost to death and buried him under stones, and their houses were pulled down for their crime.

What more shall we say? Just now you sent a herald to cry out at Sinitum: “Whoever communicates with Maximinus, his house will be burned.” Why? Before he himself had been converted to the Catholic Church and had not yet returned from overseas, for what other purpose had we sent a presbyter to Sinitum than that, troubling no one, he might visit our people and, staying in a house of his own, preach Catholic peace to those who wished? You threw him out of there with grave injury. What else were we doing when one of us, Possidius, bishop of Calama, was going to the Figulina estate, than that our people there, though few, might be visited and, having heard the word of God, those who wished might be converted to the unity of Christ? As he went on his way they lay in ambush for him like robbers, and since he could not fall into their ambush, with open violence on the Olivetum estate they would almost have burned him alive with the house in which he had taken refuge, had not the tenants of that estate put out the flames, set three times, because of the danger to their own safety. And yet, when Crispinus was convicted as a heretic in the proconsul's court for this deed, at the intercession of the same bishop Possidius the ten pounds of gold were not exacted from him. Ungrateful for this kindness and gentleness, he dared to appeal to the Catholic emperors. So it was he who provoked, much more importunately and vehemently, this wrath of God against you about which you murmur.

You see that you rise violently against the peace of Christ, and suffer not for him but for your iniquities. What madness is this, that when you live wickedly you do the deeds of robbers, and when you are justly punished you seek the glory of martyrs? If, then, you by your private boldness so violently compel men either to go into error or to remain in error, how much more ought we, through the most ordered powers which God, according to his prophecy, has subjected to Christ, to resist your fury, so that wretched souls, set free from your domination, may be rescued from the most ancient falsehood and grow accustomed to the most open truth! For of those whom you say are compelled by us against their will, many even want to be compelled, as they confess to us before and after, so that even so they may escape your oppression.

And yet which is better: to produce true orders of the emperors for unity, or false pardons for perversity, as you did, and suddenly filled all Africa with your lie? In this you showed nothing but that the party of Donatus, always relying on lies, is tossed and carried about by every wind, as it is written: “He who trusts in falsehoods feeds the winds.” For just as true as that pardon was, so true are the crimes of Caecilian and the handing over of the Scriptures by Felix of Abthugni, by whom he was ordained, and whatever else you usually say against the Catholics, so as to separate unhappy people from the peace of the church of Christ and be unhappily separated yourselves. We do not rely on any man's power, though it is surely much more honourable to rely on emperors than on Circumcellions, on laws than on riots; but we remember that it is written: “Cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man.” If you wish to know, then, on what we rely, think of him of whom the prophet foretold, saying: “All the kings of the earth shall worship him; all nations shall serve him.” And therefore we use this power of the church, which the Lord both promised and gave to it.

For if the emperors were in error, which God forbid, they would make laws for their error against the truth, by which the righteous would be both tested and crowned for not doing what they ordered, because God forbade it; as Nebuchadnezzar ordered that a golden statue be worshipped, and those who refused to do so pleased God, who forbade such things. But when emperors hold the truth, they give orders for the truth against error, and whoever despises them brings judgment on himself; for he both pays penalties among men and will have no face before God, because he would not do what the truth itself commanded him through the heart of the king. So Nebuchadnezzar himself afterwards, moved and changed by the miracle of the three youths' deliverance, issued an edict for the truth against error, that whoever blasphemed the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego should go to destruction and their houses be scattered. And do you not want Christian emperors to order something of the kind against you, when they know that Christ is exorcised by you in those you rebaptize? If the orders of kings have nothing to do with proclaiming religion and forbidding sacrileges, why do you yourselves sign yourselves at the edict of a king who ordered such things? Or do you not know that these are the words of the king: “It has pleased me to declare in my sight the signs and wonders which the Lord God Most High has done for me, how great and mighty is his kingdom, an everlasting kingdom, and his power for ages of ages”? Or, when you hear this, do you not answer “Amen”, and, having said it with a clear voice, sign yourselves at the king's edict in the holy solemnity? But now, because you can do nothing with the emperors, you wish to stir up ill will against us on that account; but if you could do anything, how much you would do, when you can do nothing and yet do not cease!

Know this: your forebears were the first to bring the case of Caecilian before the emperor Constantine. Demand this of us, let us prove it to you, and if we do not prove it, do with us whatever you can. But because Constantine did not dare to judge the case of a bishop, he delegated it to bishops to be examined and decided. This was done in the city of Rome, under the presidency of Miltiades, bishop of that church, with many of his colleagues. When they had pronounced Caecilian innocent and passed sentence on Donatus, who had made the schism at Carthage, your people came again to the emperor and murmured against the judgment of the bishops in which they had been defeated. For when can a bad litigant praise the judges by whose judgment he was defeated? Yet again the most clement emperor gave other bishops as judges at Arles, a city of Gaul; and from them your people appealed to the emperor himself, until he too heard the case and pronounced Caecilian innocent and them slanderers. Not even so, defeated so many times, did they keep quiet, but wearied the emperor himself with daily petitions about Felix of Abthugni, by whom Caecilian had been ordained, saying that he was a traditor and that therefore Caecilian could not be a bishop, because he had been ordained by a traditor; until Felix himself, by the emperor's order, after the case had been heard by the proconsul Aelianus, was proved innocent.

Then Constantine was the first to pass a most severe law against the party of Donatus. His sons imitated him and gave similar orders. Julian, succeeding them, a deserter and enemy of Christ, at the petition of your Rogatianus and Pontius, granted freedom to the party of Donatus for its ruin; in short, he gave back basilicas to the heretics at the same time as temples to the demons, thinking that in this way the Christian name could perish from the earth, if he begrudged the unity of the church from which he had fallen and allowed sacrilegious dissensions to be free. This was his justice to be proclaimed, which Rogatianus and Pontius praised in their petition, saying to an apostate that with him justice alone had a place. Jovian succeeded him, who, since he died soon, ordered nothing about such matters. Then Valentinian: read what he ordered against you. Then Gratian and Theodosius: read, when you like, what they decreed about you. Why then are you surprised at the sons of Theodosius, as if they ought to have followed anything else in this case than the judgment of Constantine, so firmly upheld by so many Christian emperors?

But to Constantine, as we have said, and as we show you whenever you wish, if indeed you do not know it, your forebears of their own accord brought the case of Caecilian. Constantine is dead, but the judgment of Constantine lives against you: to him your people sent the case, before him they found fault with the episcopal judges, to him they appealed from the episcopal judges, him they petitioned most wearisomely about Felix of Abthugni, from him they returned so often convicted and confounded, and yet they did not depart from the ruin of their fury and animosity, but left it as an inheritance to you their descendants; so that you so shamelessly stir up ill will about the orders of Christian emperors, when, if you were allowed, you would not indeed petition the Christian Constantine against us, since he favoured the truth, but would raise up the apostate Julian from the dead; as if, should anything of the kind happen, it would be a great evil to anyone but you. For what worse death of the soul is there than freedom for error?

But now let us remove all these things from the midst; let us love peace, which every learned and unlearned person understands is to be preferred to discord; let us love and hold unity. The emperors command this, which Christ also commands; for when they command good, it is none other than Christ who commands through them. And he entreats us through the apostle that we all say the same thing and that there be no schisms among us, nor that we say, “I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, I of Christ”, but that all together we be none but Christ's; for neither is Christ divided, nor was Paul crucified for us, how much less Donatus! Nor were we baptized in the name of Paul, how much less in that of Donatus! This the emperors too say, because they are Catholic Christians, not slaves of idols like your Julian, nor heretics, as some were who persecuted the Catholic Church, when true Christians endured not most just penalties for heretical error, as you do, but most glorious sufferings for Catholic truth.

Notice with what most manifest truth God himself has spoken, through the heart of the king, which is in the hand of God, in this very law which you say was issued against you, but which, if you understand, was issued for you; notice what the emperor's words contain: “For if, in those who were first initiated, the religion of baptism is judged weak because those from whom it is received are thought sinners, the sacrament handed down will have to be renewed as often as the minister of the baptism conferred is found unworthy, and our faith will depend not on the choice of our will nor on the grace of the divine gift but on the merits of priests and the character of clerics.” Let your bishops hold a thousand councils; let them answer this one sentence, and we will agree with you on whatever you wish. For see how perverse and ungodly it is to say what you usually say: that if the man is good, he himself sanctifies the one he baptizes; but if he is bad and the one baptized does not know it, then God sanctifies. If this is true, men ought then to wish to be baptized by unknown bad men rather than by known good men, so that they may be sanctified by God rather than by man. But far be such madness from us. Why then do we not speak the truth and think rightly: that the grace is always God's and the sacrament God's, but only the ministry is man's; and if he is good, he clings to God and works with God, but if he is bad, God works through him the visible form of the sacrament, while he himself gives the invisible grace? Let us all think this, and let there be no schisms among us.

Be of one mind with us, brothers; we love you; we wish for you what we wish for ourselves. If you hate us more bitterly because we do not allow you to go astray and perish, say this to God, whom we fear when he threatens bad shepherds and says: “What had strayed you did not bring back, and what was lost you did not seek.” This God himself does to you through us, whether by entreating, or threatening, or rebuking, or by losses, or by hardships, or through his hidden warnings or visitations, or through the laws of temporal powers. Understand what is being done with you: God does not wish you to perish in sacrilegious discord, estranged from your Catholic mother. You have never been able to prove anything against us. When your bishops were approached by us, did they wish to confer peaceably with us, as though fleeing from speaking with sinners? Who can bear such pride? As if the apostle Paul did not confer with sinners, and with very sacrilegious ones (read the Acts of the Apostles and see); as if the Lord himself did not hold discussion about the law with the Jews, by whom he was crucified, and answer them fittingly. Finally, the devil is the first of all sinners, who can never be converted to righteousness, and yet not even the Lord himself disdained to answer him from the law; so that you may understand that these men will not confer with us because they know their case is lost.

We do not know what men who delight in slanderous dissensions throw at each other. In the Scriptures we have learned Christ; in the Scriptures we have learned the church. We have these Scriptures in common; why do we not hold both Christ and the church in common in them? Where we have recognized him of whom the apostle said, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed; he does not say ‘and to seeds’, as of many, but as of one, ‘and to your seed’, which is Christ”, there we have recognized the church, of which God says to Abraham: “In your seed shall all nations be blessed.” Where we have recognized Christ prophesying of himself in the psalm, “The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you”, there we have recognized the church in what follows: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken”, there we have recognized the church too in what follows: “And has called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “And he, like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, has rejoiced like a giant to run his course”, there we have recognized the church in what is said a little before: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world; in the sun he has set his tabernacle”; this is the church set in the sun, that is, in open display, known to all to the ends of the earth. Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “They pierced my hands and feet, they numbered all my bones; they looked and stared at me; they divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing”, there we have recognized the church too in what is said a little later in the same psalm: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him, for the kingdom is the Lord's and he shall rule over the nations.” Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “Be exalted above the heavens, O God”, there we have recognized the church too in what follows: “And your glory above all the earth.” Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “O God, give your judgment to the king, and your righteousness to the king's son”, there we have recognized the church too in what is said of him in the same psalm: “He shall rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth; before him the Ethiopians shall fall down and his enemies lick the dust; the kings of Tarshish and the islands shall offer gifts, the kings of the Arabs and Saba shall bring presents, and all the kings of the earth shall worship him, all nations shall serve him.”

Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, that a stone cut from the mountain without hands broke all the kingdoms of the earth, certainly those that relied on the worship of demons, there we have recognized the church too in what is said, that the stone itself grew and became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “The Lord will prevail against them and will destroy all the gods of the nations of the earth”, there we have recognized the church too in what follows there: “And they shall worship before him, each from his own place, all the islands of the nations.” Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “God will come from the south, and the Holy One from the shady mountain; his power will cover the heavens”, there we have recognized the church in what follows: “And the earth is full of his praise.” For Jerusalem lies toward the south, as is read in the book of Joshua son of Nun, whence the name of Christ was spread abroad; and there is the shady mountain, the Mount of Olives, from which he ascended into heaven, so that his power might cover the heavens and the church be filled with his praise throughout all the earth. Where we have recognized Christ in what is written, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he did not open his mouth”, and the rest that is said there of his passion, there we have recognized the church too in what is said there: “Rejoice, you barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labour, for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband; for the Lord has said: Enlarge the place of your tent and fix your curtains; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes; spread out again and again to the right and to the left. For your seed shall inherit the nations, and you shall inhabit the cities that were desolate. There is nothing for you to fear, for you shall prevail; nor be ashamed that you were detestable; for you shall forget your shame for ever; you shall not remember the disgrace of your widowhood. For I am the Lord who made you, the Lord is his name; and he who rescues you, the God of Israel himself, shall be called God of the whole earth.”

We do not know what you say about traditors, whom you have never been able to convict or show. I do not say that it is rather your people who are shown to have been detected and to have confessed such a crime. What have we to do with other people's burdens, except to correct those we can, by rebuke or by any discipline, in a spirit of gentleness and with the diligence of love; and as for those we cannot correct, even if necessity compels, for the salvation of the rest, that they share the sacraments of God with us, yet not to share in their sins, which happens only by consenting and favouring? For so we tolerate them in this world, in which the Catholic Church is spread through all nations, which the Lord calls his field, like weeds among the wheat; or on this threshing floor of unity like chaff mixed with the grain; or within the nets of the word and the sacrament like bad fish enclosed with good, until the time of the harvest, or the winnowing, or the shore; lest because of them we also uproot the wheat, or cleanse bare grains separated from the threshing floor before the time, not to be sent into the barn but thrown out to be gathered by the birds; or, the nets broken by schisms, while we guard against bad fish as it were, we go out into the sea of ruinous freedom. For this reason the Lord strengthened the forbearance of his servants by these and other similitudes, lest, while the good think they are blamed for mixing with the bad, by human and rash dissensions they either destroy the little ones or the little ones perish. The heavenly Master gave warning to beware of this so far as to make the people secure even about bad leaders, lest because of them the chair of saving doctrine be deserted, in which even the bad are compelled to say good things. For what they say is not theirs but God's, who placed the teaching of truth in the chair of unity. So he who is truthful and the Truth itself says of leaders who do their own evil and say God's good: “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not do.” He certainly would not say, “What they do, do not do”, unless the evil they do were manifest.

Let us not, then, perish in evil dissension because of the bad; though we could show, if you wished, that your forebears were not abhorrers of the bad but accusers of the innocent. But whoever and whatever they were, let them carry their own burdens. Here are the Scriptures we share; here is where we know Christ; here is where we know the church. If you hold Christ himself, why do you not hold the church itself? If you believe in Christ himself, whom you read of and do not see, because of the truth of the Scriptures, why do you deny the church, which you both read of and see? By saying these things to you and urging you to this good of peace, unity and love, we have become your enemies, and you send word that you will kill us, who tell you the truth and, as far as we can, do not allow you to perish in error. May God avenge us on you by killing that very error of yours in you, so that you may rejoice with us in the truth. Amen.

I have heard that you intend to rebaptize a certain subdeacon of ours. Do not do it; so may you live to God, so may you please God, so may you not have the sacraments of Christ in vain, so may you not be separated for ever from the body of Christ. Do not, I beg you, brother; I beg you more for your own sake. At least pay a little attention to what I say. Felicianus of Musti condemned Primianus of Carthage and was in turn condemned by him. For a long time Felicianus was in the sacrilegious schism of Maximianus and baptized many there through his churches; now your bishop is with Primianus, and yet you baptize no one after him. By what licence, then, do you still think one must be rebaptized after us? Solve this question for me and rebaptize me; but if you cannot solve it, spare another's soul, spare your own. Or, if you charge that I have said something false about Felicianus, demand that I prove it; certainly, if I do not prove it, then do what you think. I add even this: if I do not prove it, let me not be a bishop of my communion; but if I prove it, do not be an enemy of your own salvation. I pray, my lord brother, that you may be at peace with us.

At the instruction of your Holiness we went to bishop Macrobius. When we delivered your Blessedness's letter to him, at first he refused to have it read to him. Then, at length moved by our urging, he consented to have it read to him; and when it had been read, he said: “I can only receive those who come to me and give them the faith they ask for.” But when we asked him what he would say about the case of Primianus, he said that, having been recently ordained, he could not be a judge of his father, but would abide in what he had received from his predecessors. We thought it necessary to inform your Holiness of this by this letter. May the Lord keep your Blessedness for us, my lord father.