To the Donatists after the Collation 31–46

Now, then, notice what Scripture goes on to set after that prophecy announced to this people about the times of Christ: “On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year under King Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai, saying: Thus says the Almighty: Ask the priests about the law, saying: If a man takes sanctified flesh in the fold of his garment, and the fold of his garment touches bread or stew or wine or any food, will it be sanctified? And the priests answered and said: No. And Haggai said: If one defiled in soul touches any of these, will it be defiled? And the priests answered and said: It will be defiled. And Haggai answered and said: So is this people and this nation before me, says the Lord, and so are the works of their hands; and whoever approaches there will be defiled because of their early-morning presumptions, in the face of their labors, and you hated those who reproved in the gates.” Who is this people so unclean that whoever approaches there is defiled? Is it the one to whom it was said, “Be strong, and my Spirit is in your midst”? Far be it that it should be that one. So there were two: one unclean, and the other which is forbidden to approach the unclean, which was exhorted to be strong because the Spirit of God was in their midst. If, then, there were two, let two temples also be shown, one which this people entered and the other which that one entered; let two altars also be shown, one on which this people offered victims and the other on which that one did; let priests too be shown, some of this people and others of that, each sacrificing separately for his own people. But if anyone who tries to affirm this is mad, then these two peoples were in one people, under one high priest, entering one temple; just as under one Moses too there were some who offended God and some who pleased God, of whom the apostle says, “Not with all of them was God well pleased.” For he does not say, “With all of them God was not pleased,” as though all displeased God; but he says, “Not with all of them was God well pleased”; therefore with some, not with all. And all were under the same priests, in one and the same tabernacle; they offered sacrifices on one and the same altar; and yet they were distinguished by deeds, not places; by spirit, not temple; by conduct, not altars. So the one group did not approach the other, so as not to be defiled by them; that is, they did not consent to their bad deeds, so as not to be condemned alike. For so great a prophet as Moses did not fail to know those bad people, whose impious murmurings and dreadful bitterness he bore daily. But suppose he did not know: did Samuel also not know Saul, whom God had condemned with an eternal sentence through Samuel’s own mouth? And yet he saw him and holy David entering the one tabernacle of God, among the same sacrifices; but he certainly saw them distinctly, because he saw them as distinct, and loved the one forever and tolerated the other for a time. So too Haggai knew two peoples in one people, entering one temple, living under one high priest; and he showed the one to be unclean and forbade the other to approach the unclean; and yet he separated neither them nor himself from the same temple and the same altars. So he was forbidding a spiritual approach and consent to deeds, as the very words cry out, if there are ears which furious animosity does not close nor the noise of empty contention hinder. For the prophet says, “Everyone who approaches there will be defiled.” He marked the vice to which he forbade approach; he did not shut people off from people by bodily separation. And one approaches the vice of corruption by the vice of consent.

And so that no one would say that the people to whom it was first said, “Be strong, since my Spirit presides in your midst,” had, after a few days, changed for the worse, so as to deserve to hear, “So is this people and this nation; everyone who approaches there will be defiled” (for about ninety days are counted between the words spoken in favor of the people and these, in which avoidance of its uncleanness is commanded): so that no one, then, would think that that good people had become so very bad in this short interval of time, see what follows, notice what is said on that very day, the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, the day on which it was said, “So is this people and this nation; everyone who approaches there will be defiled.” For when he had said this and recalled their evils, by whose desert they were shown to be unclean, adding also and saying, “You hated those who reproved in the gates,” he at once added: “And now set it in your hearts from this day and before, before stone was laid on stone in the temple of the Lord, you who were, when you put twenty measures of barley into the bin, and they became ten measures; and you went into the winepress to draw fifty jars, and they became twenty. I struck you with barrenness, and with blight of wind, and with hail all the works of your hands, and you did not turn to me, says the Lord. Set your hearts, therefore, from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth of the ninth month; and from the day on which the temple of the Lord was founded, set it in your hearts, whether it will still be known on the threshing floor, or whether the vine, the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive trees have not borne fruit. From this day I will bless.” See, on that very day they were even counted worthy to be blessed. This blessing, I think, does not belong to those whose uncleanness he forbids approaching, but to those good people who are forbidden to approach. So in one people they were both mixed and separated: mixed by bodily contact, separated by withdrawal of the will. But Scripture speaks in its own manner, which rebukes the bad as though all in that people were bad, and consoles the good as though all there were such. So your bishops, even in what they are said to have written, defeated, after the conference, set down Haggai’s prophecy for our benefit, so as to remind us to prove more evidently what we say: that even in one people, in one temple, under the same priests, amid the same sacraments, among people living with unlike wills and differing in conduct, neither can one case prejudice another case nor one person another person.

Again, as for what they now cite in their writings from the apostle’s letter, where he says, “Do not be yoked with unbelievers; for what participation has light with darkness?” and the rest, which we recalled above and showed how they are rightly understood: what else are they doing but reminding us to whom the apostle wrote this? For in that very people of the Corinthians we demonstrate what we say, lest perhaps they think that it was only the custom of the prophets, and belonged to the practice not of the New Testament but of the Old, to rebuke the blameworthy as if all in that people were rebuked, and to address the praiseworthy as if all there were praised. See, the apostle speaks thus to the Corinthians too: “Paul, called an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, theirs and ours: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always for you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were made rich in him, in every word and in all knowledge, as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you lack nothing in any grace.” Who, hearing this, would believe that there were any reprobates in the church of the Corinthians, since these words sound as though this praise were addressed to all? And yet a little later he says: “But I beseech you, brothers, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you.” Again, as though rebuking and reproaching all for this dreadful vice, he says: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” I suppose, however, that those in that people who said, “I am of Christ,” were not yoked with those who said, “I am of Paul,” “and I of Apollos,” “and I of Cephas”; and yet all approached one altar, and those who did not share the same vices shared the same sacraments. For to these Corinthians too it was said, “Whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself.” For what else was the apostle thinking of but these empty talkers, so that it was not enough for him to say “eats and drinks judgment” unless he added “to himself,” lest this should apply also to those who were indeed eating together with them, but not eating judgment?

Among those same Corinthians there were also people who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, which is the distinctive faith of Christians, so that the apostle says to them: “But if Christ is preached as having risen from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” He did not say “in this land” or “in this world,” but “among you.” For he could not have argued from the resurrection of Christ except to people who were already Christians, to whom he says of that very resurrection of Christ, “So we preach, and so you believed.” Now let us attend to those words with which, at the beginning of the letter, he praises the church of the Corinthians, saying: “I thank my God always for you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were made rich in him, in every word and in all knowledge, as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you lack nothing in any grace.” See, they were so enriched in Christ in every word and in all knowledge, they so lacked nothing in any grace, that among them were people who did not yet believe in the resurrection of the dead. I suppose, however, that those who lacked nothing in any grace were not yoked with those who did not believe that the dead would rise. See how the faithful are not yoked with unbelievers, though they are mixed in the same people and steeped in the same sacraments under the same priests.

Finally the apostle himself, so that those whose faith already held the resurrection of the dead should not consent to this unbelief, did not command them a bodily separation; for they were many, not like that one man who had his father’s wife, whom he judges worthy of a freer rebuke and of excommunication. That one man is to be treated one way, a faulty multitude quite another, to be cured and healed, lest perhaps, if congregation were separated from congregation, the wheat too be rooted up through the crime of schism. So the apostle does not separate bodily those who already believed in the resurrection of the dead from those in the same people who did not believe it; and yet he does not cease to separate them spiritually, saying: “Do not be led astray; bad company corrupts good morals.” He fears not their meeting but their consent, lest they give credence to bad conversations, which corrupt good morals; so he admonishes them to be separated by morals, not by altars. Lastly, before the apostle wrote this to them, there were in the same church those who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, in which there were also those who lacked nothing in any grace; and the former did not defile the latter by their unbelief, because the latter did not consent to them in the same unbelief. See how one does not approach there, lest whoever approaches be defiled; see how there is no participation of light with darkness; see how, though both kinds of fish swim within the same nets, neither does one case prejudice another case nor one person another person.

Since this is so, what stupidity is so crude, what iron sleep of the heart is so deep that it would not be shaken off and at last be able to see that the case of Caecilian cannot prejudice the Catholic world, with which the party of Donatus is not in communion, if the case of Maximian does not prejudice the party of Donatus, or rather the case of Felician and Primian, now joined together, a little while ago condemned by each other? It is surely enough, to speak according to their view, that bad fish hiding under the waves do not pollute the fishermen who do not know them, although the question is not about the fishermen, by whom perhaps the Lord meant angels to be understood in that likeness. For it is rather to be noticed that within the nets themselves the good fish cannot be stained by the bad. For they too see one another as they swim together, though while in the water they are not seen by the fishermen. But, as I said, it is enough for our case that the bad do not pollute when their bad deeds are unknown.

There were in Caecilian’s time, perhaps, blessed peacemakers who, even if he was not innocent, tolerated him knowingly for the sake of Catholic unity, and, seeing him bound in communion of the shared sacraments with so many unknown nations through which that unity is spread, and that to them he could not be shown to be such as they themselves knew him to be, defended themselves against these slanders with the words of the blessed and peaceable Cyprian, and cried out confidently, saying: “We do not desert unity because of Caecilian, because, even if there seem to be weeds in the church, our faith or our love ought not to be hindered, so that, because we see that there are weeds in the church, we ourselves should withdraw from the church.” To the peaceable patience of such men would belong that most splendid praise with which the angel of the church at Ephesus is praised, who, as no one who understands rightly doubts, bears the person of that church, to whom the Spirit says in the Apocalypse: “I know your works and toil and patience, and that you cannot bear the bad, and you tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and found them liars; and you have patience and have borne them for my name’s sake, and have not grown weary.” So let those be praised who were in this life in Caecilian’s time, who, for the name of the Lord, which like ointment poured out was already fragrant through countless nations in the whole world, did not grow weary, bearing most patiently even one whom they knew to be bad, if he was bad, who by their judgment could not be shown to others to be so and torn away and separated from them. Our case is different; we ought not to claim for ourselves the praise of this patience. For we cannot say that we tolerated for the sake of peace what could not come to our knowledge at all. For us Caecilian’s case was under the waves. Our voice is the same as that of the other Christian nations, against whom these men found nothing at all to say. Yet we rightly believe that Caecilian’s unknown case was good, since we read that he was once condemned by the faction of his enemies, but three times acquitted on their own accusation. Or let these men believe the hundred or so bishops of the party of Donatus about the crimes of Primian, and then compel us to believe seventy of their forebears about the crimes of Caecilian. And as for their saying that Caecilian confirmed by his silence the crimes charged against him in that council, since he was absent: then Primian too confirmed the crimes charged against him by a hundred bishops, which he is not shown even afterward to have washed away.

But evidently neither does one case prejudice another nor one person another, so that the party of Donatus may not be diminished; but it does prejudice, so that the inheritance of Christ may be divided. Or does Caecilian’s case not prejudice the Catholic unity which we hold and in whose fellowship we rejoice, since Caecilian was bishop of Carthage, and yet the case of Novellus of Tizica and Faustinus of Thuburbo prejudices it, men whom they did not even think worth accusing afterward as they did Caecilian and Felix, whose names, or rather the very names of the cities where they were, are not known to the whole of Africa, nor perhaps even to the whole proconsular province? See: such little fish, even if they were bad, hiding so deep, they want their case to prejudice the case of so great a catch, whose full nets are spread through the whole world; fish who could scarcely be known to the fish swimming next to them. And why should we not believe that these too were innocent, when, as I said, they did not even earn accusation from them afterward, and he could be cleared whom their forebears, in the hostile conspiracy of that council, called the source of all evils?

But whatever these men were, what has it to do with us? For they do not truly refuse to grant us that the case and person of these men, whoever they were, does not prejudice the case and person of the Catholic Church, if neither does one case prejudice another nor one person another; and yet, to lead you astray still, they charge us with having given gold to the judge so that he would pronounce sentence for us against them. Tell us, if you can, how much we must have given your bishops, who were chosen as defenders, to make them say or bring forward so much against themselves and for us, to make them plead our case in this way and destroy their own. At what price must we have bought it, that after Primian’s words, in which he had said, “It is unworthy that the sons of the martyrs and the offspring of betrayers should come together in one place,” they nevertheless came and came together with us in one place, which they had said was unworthy? At what price must we have bought it, that, in the manner of courtroom advocates, they tried to raise pleas against us about times and days, and about persons too, and so showed all people, even those who could not understand our arguments, plainly enough what a bad case they had, which they so feared to bring forward and argue before the judge whose kindness and justice toward them they had praised with such acclaim and whose displeasure against them they had not yet felt at all? At what price must we have bought it, that they themselves then demanded that the case be argued with them not by forensic formulas but rather by divine testimonies, and promised that they would likewise answer from the holy Scriptures; and when the mandate of the Catholic council which we had offered had been read, and it had been made clear in it, even by their own admission, that we had wished to argue the case of the Catholic Church by testimonies of the holy Scriptures, they went back again, as if forgetting what they had said they wanted, to the same forensic pleas with tangled and hateful disputes?

At what price must we have bought it, that, disturbed by the number of our signatures shown in the same mandate, they demanded the presence of our whole council, of which only eighteen of us were present according to the commissioner’s edict, and raised the question of falsehood, that others could have been substituted to sign for others? For it came about in this way that their number too was reviewed, and they were caught in the very falsehood which they had wanted to cast on us in suspicion: so that not only were some read in their mandate as having signed for absent men who had not even come to Carthage, but also a certain man was called who did not answer; and when they had said he had died on the journey, and they were asked how a man who had already died on the journey could have signed at Carthage, after great straits of confusion and an inconsistent and shifting answer they asserted that he had not died coming, but had died on the journey returning home after he had signed. Then, asked under divine testimony whether it was established that he had been at Carthage, they said in still greater confusion, “What if someone else put himself forward in his place?”, and so confirmed by their own words that the falsehood they had charged against us had appeared in their own mandate and been clearly convicted.

At what price must we have bought it, that, when they wished to boast of their numbers, they betrayed their lies in this too? For when a somewhat larger number of ours had been present, and we had said that another hundred or so Catholic bishops had not come to Carthage, hindered partly by old age, partly by ill health, partly by various necessities, on hearing this they said that many more of theirs had not come; just as even now, boasting that they are more than four hundred throughout Africa, they have forgotten what they put in their notice, that they had all come to Carthage, to such an extent that, apart only from those whom bodily sickness held either in their own sees or on the journey, neither great age nor the toil of a long journey could hinder even the most aged. And in their mandate there were read, as the staff answered after the count, two hundred seventy-nine signatures, including also those in which falsehood was detected and those who had signed for absent men, because these were held back by sickness and could not come to Carthage. How then is it true that they are more than four hundred, when they said that only those had not come to Carthage whom ill health hindered, while for some of these others signed, not to say that this was done for all the sick? Or had a plague perhaps so attacked them as suddenly to lay low a third of them? And they had been summoned by their primate by a circular letter, to hasten to gather at Carthage, setting everything aside, in such terms that whoever refused to come would know he had betrayed what was best in their case. This, evidently, was what was best in their case: that their huge number should appear; as if the greater the multitude of blind searchers, the more it helps to find something more easily.

At what price must we have bought it, that, when the hearing had been adjourned to the day after next with the consent of both of us, they asked the day before by a notice that our mandate be issued to them by the staff, so that they could appear prepared, alleging that the staff could not manage to write out the minutes in so short a time? For so it came about that on the following day of the hearing, though they asked for and received a just postponement, they who, having considered the case, which was wholly contained in our mandate, were suffering great straits, were nonetheless convicted of going against their own agreements. For what is more just than for men disturbed by such firmness of the truth to ask for a postponement? Would that it had profited them, so that, having considered our mandate, which they could by no means answer, they had preferred to correct their perversity rather than increase it for the worse! So they rightly asked for a postponement; but they ought not, the day before, to have said in their notice that our mandate should be issued to them so that they might come prepared on the appointed day because the stenographers could not produce the written minutes, and then on the very day of the session to wish to complain again about those same stenographers because they had not produced them. What drove them to this but violent confusion, when they saw that our case had been so argued in the writing of the mandate that they could find no answer? For at what price must that have been bought, that they asked for that very postponement and received six days, so that no one could say they had been hindered by shortness of time from being able to answer our mandate?

And on the third day of our conference itself, at what price must it have been bought, that by the most empty and needless interpositions of delay they showed that they were in every way unwilling to reach the case, and proclaimed by their very fear what a bad case they had? Their fear even broke out into testimony in the plainest words, when they said, “We are being drawn into the case little by little,” and in another place, “Does Your Excellency see that we are being led little by little into the inner parts of the case?” O force of truth, stronger than any rack, than any hooks, to wring out a confession! So many bishops gather from all Africa; they enter Carthage with such pomp of a showy procession that they turn the eyes and attention of so great a city upon themselves. Those who are to speak for all are chosen by all; a place worthy of so great a matter is provided in the middle of the city; both sides assemble, the judge is present, the tablets are open, the hearts of all wait in suspense for the outcome of so great a conference. Then, by most select and most eloquent men, with all the strength with which something ought to have been done, they do everything so that nothing may be done. They seek to discuss persons in courtroom fashion, a question on which litigants are accustomed to wear away even years. In that very session they confessed that the Catholics had written their mandate with divine testimonies rather than forensic formulas, and promised that they would likewise answer from the Scriptures. And since God, by a wonderful help, willed that, while they were seeking the person of the plaintiff so as not to reach the case, that very inquiry into the plaintiff should suddenly put the case into the open, the distinguished men who seemed to have been chosen to plead cry out, testifying that they had rather been chosen not to plead, and complain spitefully to the judge that they are being led little by little into the inner parts of the case; as though, everything else set aside, anything ought to have been dealt with but that which, so long after, or late, they did not want dealt with, since they never wanted it dealt with at all where they feared defeat. Who could have shaken out of their closed breast so plain a voice of this fear, I do not say if we had enriched them with the most lavish gifts, but if we had tortured them with the cruellest punishments?

For when they were inquiring into the person of the plaintiffs with courtroom threshing, and, wishing to show that we were the plaintiffs, so that they would be permitted to discuss our persons by law and find delays of many years, they read our petition once given to the proconsul, in which we asked that they be summoned so that the conference between us, which we have now obtained from the emperor, might be held then; and when they tried to show by that petition that we were, so to speak, the plaintiffs, we answered that we had always wanted a conference to be held not in order to bring charges against them, but in order to clear ourselves of the charges they are accustomed to bring; for this is why they are heretics and separated from the unity of the church, because they bring charges they cannot prove. Then, since the commissioner seemed to follow the order of time, preferring our petition produced by them to the minutes we had produced, in which they too had asked for a conference before the prefects, because that petition preceded those prefectural minutes in time, we very easily and very justly obtained from the commissioner, taking this opportunity, that if he preferred what was established as earlier in time, he should rather order to be read the record in which they themselves accused Caecilian before the emperor Constantine through the proconsul Anullinus, whose crimes they charge against our communion, crimes which we wanted to clear at that conference. Accordingly, after it began to be read, since there they were being beaten most plainly on every point, they began to cry out, “We are being drawn into the case little by little,” and again, “Your Excellency sees that we are being led little by little into the inner parts of the case.” O great but not surprising confusion! For when would a demon so fear an exorcist as they feared that those documents would be read, in which it appeared that Caecilian had been both accused by their predecessors before the emperor and acquitted by so many judgments, not only episcopal but also imperial?

When, or at what price, could we have bought it, that, thrown into confusion by that very fear, they dared to go back even to the plea of the time limit, in which they had said that the case had already lapsed and could no longer be heard at all, the four months having run out? What is this? What more fitting informer on their mind can be found than this fear, so expressed, so open, that, though fear usually takes away freedom, they feared so freely that they did not cover with silence their own verdict on their bad case, but betrayed it in the plainest words? O violent trepidation to extort a confession! So strong did fear leap from their mouth that by its onrush shame fled from their brow. As long as the documents showing that Caecilian was accused and cleared were not being read, the plaintiffs were inquired into for the sake of pleading the case, persons were discussed; and though snares of delay were evasively woven so that the case itself would not be reached, still these too seemed to be demanded, as it were by right, for the sake of pleading the case. After Caecilian’s excellent case was brought forward to be read, the plea of prescription, hooted off and refuted, is called back; it is cried that the day for pleading the case has already passed.

What are you still waiting for, to learn what the commissioner pronounced for us, when you see what your bishops’ fear pronounced against themselves? The commissioner himself had certainly given them the power to appoint whomever they wished as judge alongside him; they refused this, since, if they had chosen anyone, they could not lie to you that he too had been corrupted by us. But they did what they refused: they did appoint another judge with him, not some outsider, but one most intimate with them. See, their fear itself was the other judge. Certainly it received nothing from us and judged freely for us; it did not favor the persons to whom it clung within. It came out of their secret chamber, and before the case was argued it judged first, because it knew the case first in their own hearts. Finally, the one came forward to learn the case; the other came forward already knowing it. The one judged by standing, listening, speaking; the other merely by coming forward into the open. I think they did better to say that the case should no longer be pleaded; for how much more quickly the fear of the litigants finished it than the labor of the commissioner! He was asking what was read from their papers; it revealed what was going on in their hearts.