To the Donatists after the Collation

Contents

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1–16 · 17–30 · 31–46 · 47–58

1. 1Augustine asks the Donatist laity why their bishops, who had refused to meet “the offspring of betrayers,” came to the conference of 411, and answers their claim that the judge was bribed.
2. 2Scripture foretold a church spreading from Jerusalem to all nations, yet the Donatists refuse communion with the very churches to which the apostles wrote.
3. 3The Donatists conceded that “one case does not prejudice another” to protect Primian, yet deny the same to Caecilian and the worldwide church.
4. 4Augustine imagines the churches addressed by Peter, John, and Paul asking the Donatists why Caecilian’s case should cut them off when Primian’s does not cut off the Donatists.
5. 5The African Catholic Church asks why the long-dead Caecilian should stain it when the living Felician, a condemned Maximianist, does not stain the Donatists.
6. 6The Catholics argued from the parables of the weeds, chaff, goats, and fish that the bad mixed in the church do not harm the good, while discipline continues in love.
7. 7The good separate from the bad in heart, not body; the Donatist bishops’ refusal to sit with the Catholics while entering with them misreads Ps 26.
8. 8Sharing the sacraments with the bad does not make the good share their guilt; only consent to evil does, as Peter and Judas received from the same hand.
9. 9Whether the bad leave the church or remain within it, God sees that each bears his own guilt; consent makes one cause with the wicked, mere sharing of sacraments does not.
10. 10Texts promising a pure church describe the age to come, and texts about sons bearing parents’ sins apply only to imitators; the Donatists set Scripture against itself.
11. 11The Donatists themselves admitted hidden bad fish within the church’s nets, so Isaiah’s promise of a church without the unclean refers to the age to come.
12. 12The Donatists’ own admission proves that the church is mixed now and will be pure only after the resurrection.
13. 13The threshing floor shows that even manifest sinners are mixed in the church; Jeremiah’s “What has chaff to do with wheat?” concerns dreams and prophecy.
14. 14If hidden sinners are the bad fish, the chaff on the open threshing floor must be manifest sinners, and neither harms the good.
15. 15The Donatists were made to sign their own statements, so they cannot deny their words and instead accuse the judge of bribery.
16. 16The Donatists complain that the sentence was given at night; Augustine answers from Scripture and notes that they fled the light by day.
17. 17The Donatist charge against Miltiades rests on shared names (Strato, Cassian), though Scripture itself has two Johns, Simons, Jameses, Judases, and Herods.
18. 18The Donatists’ own acts of martyrs show that Christians assembled, ordained, and baptized during persecution, so the council of Cirta was possible.
19. 19The dispute over dated and undated councils was an empty delay; copies vary in recording dates, as the Donatists’ own documents show.
20. 20By boasting that Donatus of Carthage had Caecilian condemned by the emperor, the Donatists make their hero the persecutor and refute their own claim to be the church that suffers persecution.
21. 21Augustine argues that suffering persecution does not prove a church true; he defends mild legal coercion of Donatists without bloodshed and asks judges to soften harsh penalties.
22. 22Persecution endured counts only if it is for righteousness; Augustine lists Donatist violence against Catholics and says Donatists who die do so by suicide or in violent attacks.
23. 23Either persecution can be just or just punishment is not persecution; the Donatists who first appealed to the emperor cannot now demand freedom of choice.
24. 24Augustine urges the Donatists to wake and join the worldwide church, which Caecilian’s case cannot touch.
25. 25The Donatists’ later gloss on their admission, that guilt passes down a “rope” of ordinations, is turned against them by their own reception of the Maximianist Felician.
26. 26The prophets lived among the wicked without pollution, separating by conduct, as vessels for honor in a great house; Haggai shows that consent, not contact, pollutes.
27. 27God himself separates the wicked visibly at his judgment; the guest without a wedding garment stands for the many bad who share the Lord’s table now with the few good.
28. 28Discipline continues through degradation and excommunication, but where it cannot be applied without breaking peace the church tolerates the bad, as Cyprian did.
29. 29The prophet’s fast in Bethel was a special command; Elijah, the seven thousand, and Samuel with Saul show that the righteous were not defiled by living among the wicked.
30. 30Haggai shows the restored people stirred by God and commended (“my Spirit is in your midst”), so they cannot be the people whose touch defiles.
31. 31Haggai 2:11–14 describes two peoples in one temple; the good were forbidden to approach the unclean by consent, not by separate altars, as with Moses and Samuel.
32. 32On the same day that Haggai called the people unclean, God promised to bless them, so the good and bad were mixed in one people and distinguished by will.
33. 33Paul praises the Corinthians as if all were holy and rebukes them as if all were divided, yet all shared one altar; “to himself” shows that unworthy eaters harm only themselves.
34. 34The church at Corinth, praised as lacking no grace, contained deniers of the resurrection, yet the faithful were not yoked with them.
35. 35Paul did not order bodily separation from the many Corinthians who denied the resurrection, as he did with the incestuous man, but warned against consenting to them.
36. 36Even by the Donatists’ own reading of the nets, unknown sinners do not pollute; and the good fish, though they see the bad, are not stained by them.
37. 37Even if Caecilian had been guilty, his contemporaries could rightly have tolerated him for unity, like the church at Ephesus; for later Catholics his case is simply unknown.
38. 38Augustine mocks the Donatist charge that obscure bishops like Novellus and Faustinus could defile the worldwide church.
39. 39Augustine asks what bribe could have made the Donatist bishops undermine their own case so thoroughly at the conference.
40. 40The Donatists’ demand to see every Catholic signatory exposed forged signatures in their own list, including one for a man who had died.
41. 41The Donatists’ claim of more than four hundred bishops contradicts their own notice that all but the sick had come, when only 279 signatures were listed.
42. 42The Donatists obtained the Catholic mandate in advance and a six-day postponement, so they cannot plead lack of time; their contradictions were their own.
43. 43The Donatist delegates’ own complaint that they were being “drawn into the case” revealed their fear of it more clearly than any bribe or torture could have.
44. 44When the record of the first Donatist accusation of Caecilian was read, the Donatists cried that they were being drawn into the case, fearing it as a demon fears an exorcist.
45. 45Once Caecilian’s acquittal began to be read, the Donatists revived their discredited plea that the deadline had passed, betraying their fear.
46. 46The Donatists refused a co-judge, but their own fear served as a second judge and pronounced against them before the commissioner did.
47. 47The Catholics offered to argue the church question from Scripture alone, but charges against men like Caecilian could only be tried by documents, which the Donatists feared.
48. 48By saying the overseas church should wait to join the winner, the Donatists admitted it was innocent; since it joined Caecilian, he won, and the African Catholics in its communion are innocent too.
49. 49Given time and a copy, the Donatists still answered the Catholic mandate only in part, in a letter the Catholics answered at once.
50. 50The Donatists ignored both the Scripture proofs of a worldwide church and Cyprian, who differed on baptism yet stayed in unity with those who disagreed.
51. 51The Donatist letter was silent on the Maximianists, whose baptism they accepted, and on Caecilian’s case.
52. 52The Donatists’ concession that one case does not prejudice another, wrung from them by the Maximianist parallel, granted the whole Catholic argument.
53. 53By boasting that their forebears had Caecilian condemned by the emperor, the Donatists confessed that they had persecuted him, destroying their claim to be the church that only suffers persecution.
54. 54The Donatists’ appeal to Optatus and to their forebears’ petitions and Constantine’s letter to Verinus proved, against them, that Caecilian was never condemned.
55. 55The Donatists themselves read Constantine’s letter declaring Felix innocent, so that like Balaam they blessed whom they meant to curse.
56. 56The consular dates show the order: Miltiades acquits Caecilian (313), Aelianus clears Felix (314), Constantine clears Caecilian (316), the Donatists are released from exile (321).
57. 57Augustine dismisses the charge of bribery: the Donatist spokesmen themselves helped the Catholic case so much that, if anyone was bought, it would seem to be they.
58. 58Augustine closes by calling the Donatists brothers, answers their last complaints about the night sentence and the closed hall, and urges them to unity now that the truth has appeared.