Letters 43.12–43.27

But these men, who say that they condemned crimes that had been investigated, though the men were absent and in no way deserting the tribunal, since they had never appeared and had always declared that faction suspect, I ask you, my brothers, how did they investigate them? You answer: 'We do not know, since the investigation itself is not set out in those records.' But I will show you how they investigated. Consider the case of Felix of Aptunga, and first read how much more vehement they were against him. So, then, they knew the case of the others just as they knew the case of this man, who was afterwards proved most innocent by a careful and fearful inquiry. How much more justly, safely, and quickly, then, ought we to consider those men innocent whose crimes they accused more lightly and condemned with more sparing censure, when that man was found innocent against whom they raged far more savagely!

Or perhaps, as someone said (and though it displeased you when it was said to you, it must not be passed over), someone said: 'A bishop ought not to have been cleared by a proconsular court.' As if he had procured this for himself, and the emperor had not ordered the inquiry to be made, to whose charge, for which he would render account to God, that matter chiefly belonged! For they had made him arbiter and judge of the case of handing over and of the schism, who had even sent petitions to him, to whom they afterwards appealed, and whose judgement they nevertheless refused to accept. So if he is to be blamed whom an earthly judge acquitted, though he had not asked this for himself, how much more are they to be blamed who wished an earthly king to be the judge of their case! But if it is no crime to appeal to the emperor, it is no crime to be heard by the emperor, and so neither by one to whom the emperor has delegated the case. That friend of yours also wished to make a charge of the fact that, in the case of bishop Felix, a certain man was hung on the rack, and even torn with the hooks. Could Felix object to the inquiry being made with such diligence or severity, when the judge was pressing the investigation of his case? For what else would refusing such an inquiry be than confessing the crime? And yet that very proconsul, amid the fearful cries of the heralds and the bloody hands of the executioners, would never have condemned an absent colleague who had refused to present himself at his tribunal, if he had another court in which he could be heard; or if he had condemned him, he would surely have paid just and due penalties even under the secular laws themselves.

If the proconsular records displease you, yield to the church records. All were read to you in order. Or perhaps Miltiades, bishop of the Roman church, with his colleagues the bishops overseas, ought not to have claimed for himself the judgement which had been settled by the seventy Africans over whom the primate of Tigisis presided? What if he did not even claim it? For the emperor, being asked, sent bishops as judges to sit with him and decide what seemed just about that whole case. We prove this both by the petitions of the Donatists and by the words of the emperor himself; for you remember that both were read to you, and you now have permission to inspect and copy them. Read and consider everything. See with what care for preserving or restoring peace and unity everything was discussed; how the character of the accusers was dealt with, and by what stains some of them were discredited; and how it became clear from the words of those present that they had nothing to say against Caecilian, but wished to transfer the whole case to the people of Majorinus's party, that is, a seditious multitude estranged from the peace of the church; so that Caecilian might be accused by that crowd, which they thought could bend the minds of the judges to their will by tumultuous shouting alone, with no attestation of documents and no examination of the truth; unless perhaps a furious multitude, drunk with the cup of error and corruption, would speak true charges against Caecilian, where seventy bishops, as was established in the case of Felix of Aptunga, condemned absent and innocent colleagues with such mad rashness. For they wished Caecilian to be accused again by the same kind of crowd as the one they had gone along with in pronouncing sentence against innocent men who had not been questioned. But plainly they had found judges whom they could persuade of that madness!

For your prudence enables you to observe there both their perversity and the seriousness of the judges: how in the end they could not persuade them that Caecilian should be accused by the people of Majorinus's party, which had no definite legal standing; how they were asked for the accusers or witnesses, or those in any way necessary to the case, who had come with them from Africa, and how it was said that these had been present and had been withdrawn by Donatus. The same Donatus promised that he would produce them. When he had promised this not once but repeatedly, he refused to come before that tribunal any more, where he had already confessed so much that by not coming thereafter he seemed only to wish not to be condemned in person, although the things that deserved condemnation had been made plain while he was present and questioned. Something else was added: a written accusation against Caecilian was handed in by certain people. How after this the inquiry was opened again, what persons handed in that document, and how nothing could be proved against Caecilian, why should I say, since you have heard everything and can read it as often as you like?

You remember what was said when the number of seventy bishops was set against us as though it were a most weighty authority. And yet those most serious men preferred to restrain their judgement from endless questions binding one another in an inextricable chain, not at all concerned how many those bishops were or where they had been gathered from, whom they saw blinded by such rashness as to dare to pronounce such headlong sentences against absent colleagues who had not been questioned. And yet what a final sentence the blessed Miltiades himself pronounced! How innocent, how upright, how far-seeing and peaceable! By it he neither dared to remove from his body of colleagues those against whom nothing had been established, and, laying the chief blame on Donatus alone, whom he had found to be the author of the whole evil, he left the rest free to choose to recover their soundness, ready to send letters of communion even to those who were shown to have been ordained by Majorinus; so that, in whatever places there were two bishops whom dissension had doubled, he wished the one who had been ordained first to be confirmed, and another people to be provided for the other of them to govern. O excellent man! O son of Christian peace and father of the Christian people! Now compare that small number with that multitude of bishops, and weigh not number against number but weight against weight: here moderation, there rashness; here watchfulness, there blindness. Here gentleness did not corrupt integrity, nor did integrity fight against gentleness; there, fear was covered by fury and fury stirred up by fear. For these had met to reject false charges by investigating the true; those, to hide true crimes by condemning false ones.

Was Caecilian, then, to commit himself to be heard and judged by those men, when he had others before whom, if a case were brought against him, he could very easily show his innocence? He would not commit himself to them at all, not even if he had been a stranger suddenly ordained bishop of the church of Carthage and did not know what a certain Lucilla, then a very wealthy woman, could do to corrupt the minds of the wicked or the ignorant; whom he had offended, when he was a deacon, by rebuking her for the sake of church discipline. For this evil too had been added to bring that iniquity to completion. In that council, where absent and innocent men were condemned by confessed traitors, there were a few who wished to cover their own crimes by defaming others, so that men, distracted by false rumours, might be turned away from inquiring into the truth. So there were few who chiefly managed this business, though they had greater authority because of their partnership with Secundus himself, who had spared them out of fear. The rest are said to have been bought and stirred up against Caecilian chiefly by Lucilla's money. There are extant the records of proceedings before Zenophilus the consular, where a certain Nundinarius, a deacon, who, as far as can be understood from the records themselves, had been degraded by Silvanus, bishop of Cirta, and had tried in vain to make satisfaction to them through letters of other bishops, in his anger disclosed much and brought it before a public court. Among other things it is recorded there that, when bishops had been corrupted by Lucilla's money, altar was raised against altar in the church of Carthage, the capital of Africa. I know that we did not read these records to you, but you remember there was no time. There was also some resentment, arising from swollen pride, that they themselves had not ordained the bishop of Carthage.

When Caecilian knew from all these things that they had assembled not as true judges but as enemies and corrupt men, how could it happen that he would either wish, or the people over whom he presided would allow, that he should leave the church and go into a private house, not to be examined by the scrutiny of colleagues but to be butchered by a faction's wedge and a woman's hatred, especially when he saw that an uncorrupted and impartial examination of his case remained for him before the church overseas, which was free from private enmities and from both sides of the dissension? If his adversaries chose to do nothing there, they would cut themselves off from the most innocent communion of the whole world; but if they tried to accuse him there, then he would be present, then he would defend his innocence against their schemes, as you have learned was afterwards done, although they sought the judgement overseas far too late, when they were already guilty of schism and stained with the horrid crime of a raised altar. For they would have done it first if they relied on the truth; but they wished to come to judgement when false rumours had been confirmed by length of time, as though an old report would prejudge the case; or, what is more to be believed, having first condemned Caecilian as they pleased, they seemed to themselves secure, trusting in their numbers and not daring to raise so bad a case elsewhere, where, with no corruption at work, the truth could be found.

But after they had learned by experience that the communion of the whole world remained with Caecilian, and that letters of communion were sent to him from the churches overseas, and not to the man whom they had wickedly ordained, they were ashamed to keep silent for ever, because it could be objected to them: why did they allow the church throughout so many nations to communicate in ignorance with condemned men, and why did they cut themselves off from the communion of an innocent world, when by their silence they allowed the bishop they had ordained for the Carthaginians to be out of communion with the whole world? They chose, as is said, to plead their case against Caecilian before the churches overseas, ready for either outcome: if by any cunning of false accusation they could defeat him, they would most fully satisfy their desire; and if they could not, they would persist in the same perversity, but now as if they had something to say, namely that they had suffered bad judges, which is the cry of all bad litigants even when they have been overcome by the plainest truth; as if it could not be said to them, and most justly said: 'Suppose, then, that those bishops who judged at Rome were not good judges.' There still remained a plenary council of the whole church, where the case could be argued even with those judges themselves, so that if they were convicted of having judged badly, their sentences might be annulled. Whether they did this, let them prove; for we easily prove that it was not done, from the fact that the whole world does not communicate with them; or, if it was done, they were defeated there too, as their very separation shows.

But what they did afterwards is shown most fully by the emperor's letter. For they dared to accuse the church judges, bishops of such authority, by whose judgement both Caecilian's innocence and their own wickedness had been declared, not before other colleagues but before the emperor, of having judged badly. He granted another trial at Arles, by other bishops, not because it was now necessary but yielding to their perversity and wishing by every means to restrain such impudence. For the Christian emperor did not dare to take up their noisy and deceitful complaints in such a way as to judge himself concerning the judgement of the bishops who had sat at Rome; but he gave other bishops, as I said. From them, however, they preferred to appeal once more to the emperor himself; and you have heard how he detests them for it. And would that at least by his judgement they had put an end to their insane animosities; and that, just as he yielded to them so far as to judge that case after the bishops, intending afterwards to ask pardon of the holy prelates, provided only that they would have nothing further to say if they did not obey the sentence of the one to whom they themselves had appealed, so they too would at last yield to the truth! For he ordered the parties to meet him at Rome to plead the case. When Caecilian, for some reason I do not know, did not appear there, the emperor, appealed to by them, ordered them to follow him to Milan. Then some of them began to slip away, perhaps indignant that Constantine had not imitated them by condemning Caecilian at once and quickly in his absence. When the far-seeing emperor learned this, he had the rest brought to Milan under guard of his officers. When Caecilian too had come there, he produced him also, as he wrote; and having heard the case, with what diligence, caution, and foresight his letter shows, he judged Caecilian wholly innocent and them wholly wicked.

And still they baptize outside the church and, if they can, rebaptize the church; they offer sacrifice in dissension and schism and greet with the name of peace peoples whom they banish from the peace of salvation. The unity of Christ is torn apart, the inheritance of Christ is blasphemed, the baptism of Christ is exorcized with breath; and they do not want these things in themselves to be corrected by temporal scourges through the ordained human authorities, so that they may not be destined to eternal punishment for such great sacrileges. We charge them with the fury of schism, the madness of rebaptism, the wicked separation from the inheritance of Christ, which is spread through all nations. From books not only ours but theirs we read out the churches whose names they read today and with which today they are not in communion. When these are read in their conventicles, they say to their readers, 'Peace be with you,' and yet have no peace with the very peoples to whom those letters were written. And they charge us with crimes of the dead, either false or, even if true, someone else's, not understanding that in the things we charge against them they are all held guilty, whereas in the things they charge against us it is the chaff or tares of the Lord's harvest that are blamed, and the crime does not touch the wheat. Nor do they consider that those who are pleased with the wicked in unity themselves share with the wicked; but those who are displeased with them and cannot correct them, and do not dare to root up the tares before harvest-time lest they root up the wheat with them, share not in their deeds but in the altar of Christ, so that they are not only not stained by them but even deserve to be praised and commended by the divine words; because, lest the name of Christ be blasphemed through horrible schisms, they tolerate for the good of unity what they hate for the good of justice.

If they have ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. For so we read in the Apocalypse of John: 'To the angel of the church of Ephesus,' he says, 'write: These things says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands: I know your works, your labour and your patience, and that you cannot bear evil men, and have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have patience and have borne them for my name's sake, and have not grown weary.' If he wished this to be understood of an angel of the higher heavens and not of the overseers of the church, he would not go on to say: 'But I have this against you, that you have abandoned your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I am coming to you and will move your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.' This cannot be said to the higher angels, who keep a perpetual love; those who failed and fell from it are the devil and his angels. So he speaks of the first love because he bore the false apostles for the name of Christ, and he commands him to recover it and do his former works. And the crimes of wicked men are charged against us, not ours but others', and some of them unknown. Even if we saw them to be true and present, and tolerated them for the sake of unity, sparing the tares for the sake of the wheat, anyone who heard the holy Scriptures with a heart not deaf would say that we deserved not only no blame but no small praise.

Aaron tolerates the multitude demanding, making, and worshipping an idol; Moses tolerates so many thousands murmuring against God and so often offending his holy name; David tolerates Saul his persecutor, who by his wicked conduct was abandoning heavenly things and seeking the powers below by magic arts; he avenges him when he is slain, and even calls him the Lord's anointed because of the sacrament of the venerable anointing. Samuel tolerates the wicked sons of Eli and his own perverse sons; and because the people would not tolerate them, they were accused by divine truth and rebuked by divine severity. He tolerates, finally, that proud people itself, a despiser of God. Isaiah tolerates those against whom he hurls so many true charges; Jeremiah tolerates those from whom he suffers so much; Zechariah tolerates the Pharisees and scribes, such as Scripture testifies them to have been at that time. I know I have passed over many; let those who wish, let those who can, read the heavenly words, and they will find that all the holy servants and friends of God always had people in their own nation whom they tolerated, sharing with them the sacraments of that time, yet they were not only not defiled but even endured them praiseworthily, striving, as the apostle says, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Let them consider also the time after the Lord's coming, when we would find far more examples of this toleration throughout the world, if all could have been written and given authority; but consider these very ones that we have. The Lord himself tolerates Judas, a devil, a thief, and his betrayer; he allows him to receive among the innocent disciples what the faithful know as our ransom. The apostles tolerate false apostles; and among those who seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ, Paul, seeking not his own but the things of Jesus Christ, lives with most glorious toleration. Finally, as I mentioned a little earlier, an overseer of a church is praised by the divine voice under the name of an angel because, though he hated the wicked, yet when he had tested and found them out, he tolerated them for the name of the Lord.

In short, let them question themselves. Do they not tolerate the murders and burnings of the Circumcellions, the venerators of the corpses of those who have thrown themselves down of their own accord, and, under the incredible evils of the one man Optatus, the groaning of all Africa for so many years? I refrain from speaking of the tyrannical powers and public robberies in the separate regions, cities, and estates throughout Africa. You can say these things better to yourselves, either in the ear or openly, as you please. For wherever you turn your eyes you will meet what I say, or rather what I leave unsaid. Nor do we accuse those whom you love there on this account; for we are not displeased with them because they tolerate the wicked, but because they are intolerably wicked through schism, through altar against altar, through separation from the inheritance of Christ spread through the whole world, as it was promised so long before. We lament and mourn violated peace, torn unity, repeated baptisms, sacraments exorcized with breath, which are holy even in wicked men. If they think little of these things, let them look at the examples which show how much God thought of them. Those who made an idol were slain by the ordinary death of the sword; but of those who chose to make a schism, the leaders were swallowed by the opening of the earth and the crowd that agreed with them was consumed by fire. By the difference of punishments the difference of deserts is recognized.

The holy books are handed over in persecution; the traitors confess and are left to God; innocent men are not questioned and are condemned by rash men; the one who among the absent condemned was accused far more fiercely than the rest is proved upright by sure judgements; there is a judgement of bishops; appeal is made to the emperor; the emperor is chosen as judge; the emperor, when he judges, is despised. What was done then, you have read; what is being done now, you see. If you have any doubt about those things, look now at these. Let us certainly not deal in old papers, public archives, or court or church records. Our greater book is the whole world; in it I read fulfilled what I read promised in the book of God: 'The Lord,' it says, '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.' Let whoever does not communicate with this inheritance know that he is disinherited, whatever books he holds; whoever attacks this inheritance shows clearly enough that he is a stranger to the family of God. Surely the question turns on the handing over of the divine books, in which this inheritance is promised. Let him, then, be believed to have handed the testament over to the flames who goes to law against the will of the testator. What has the church of the Corinthians done to you, O party of Donatus, what has it done to you? And what I say of it I wish to be understood of all such churches, set so far away. What have they done to you, which could not know at all either what you had done or whom you had defamed? Or did the world lose the light of Christ because Caecilian offended Lucilla in Africa?

Let them at last feel what they have done; deservedly, after a certain interval of years, their own deed has rolled back before their eyes. Inquire through what woman Maximian, who is said to be a relative of Donatus, cut himself off from the communion of Primian, and how, having gathered a faction of bishops, he condemned Primian in his absence and a bishop was ordained against him; just as Majorinus, through Lucilla, having gathered a faction of bishops, condemned Caecilian in his absence and a bishop was ordained against him. Or perhaps you want it to be valid that Primian was cleared against the faction of Maximian by the other African bishops of his communion, and do not want it to be valid that Caecilian was cleared against the faction of Majorinus by the bishops of unity overseas? I ask you, my brothers, what great thing do I ask? What difficult thing do I want you to understand? There is indeed a great difference, and an incomparable distance, in authority or number between the African church and the other parts of the world; and even if unity were here, it is far smaller, far smaller altogether, compared with all the other Christian nations, than the party of Maximian compared with the party of Primian. Yet I ask, and think it just, that the council of Secundus of Tigisis, which Lucilla got together against the absent Caecilian and against the apostolic sees and the whole world in communion with Caecilian, should have as much force as the council of the Maximianists, which likewise some woman or other got together against the absent Primian and the rest of the multitude throughout Africa in communion with Primian. What is seen more plainly? What is asked more fairly?

You see all these things, you know them, and you groan; and yet God too sees that nothing compels you to remain in so pestilent and sacrilegious a separation, if, to gain the spiritual kingdom, you overcome carnal affection, and, to avoid eternal punishment, you do not fear to offend friendships with men, which will be of no profit at the judgement of God. Go, then, and consult; find out what they can answer to these arguments of ours. If they produce documents, we produce documents; if they say ours are false, let them not be indignant if we say this of theirs. No one blots out from heaven the decree of God; no one blots out from the earth the church of God. He promised the whole world; she has filled the whole world, and she has both bad and good, but on earth she loses none but the bad, and into heaven she admits none but the good. This discourse, which he himself knows with how great love both of peace and of you we have drawn from the gift of God, will be a correction for you if you will, and a witness if you will not.