Sermon to the People of the Church of Caesarea

Contents

Translation in progress.

1. 1Preaching at Caesarea with the Donatist bishop Emeritus present, Augustine plays on Emeritus’s words “I cannot not want what you want, but I can want what I want,” and assures the people that their bishop Deuterius will share his see for unity.
2. 2Converts are received not as heretics but as changed men; their baptism and ordination bear God’s mark, not Donatus’s, like the emperor’s brand on a deserter, and so are not repeated.
3. 3The Donatists have baptism and faith, but without love these profit nothing (1 Cor 13:2); love moves the church to seek them.
4. 4Augustine seeks Emeritus as a lost brother bearing the Lord’s mark, so that his baptism, the “inscription of peace,” may profit him once discord is expelled.
5. 5Augustine recognizes Emeritus’s baptism but asks him to prove love by unity; like the handmaids’ sons whom Rachel and Leah owned, those born outside belong to the one mother if they are not proud like Ishmael.
6. 6Outside the Catholic Church one may have sacraments and faith but not salvation; even death for refusing to sacrifice to idols would not win a schismatic the martyr’s crown.
7. 7The Donatists admitted their forebears persecuted Caecilian; so either the just may persecute the unjust, or the Donatist founders were wicked; only persecution for righteousness is blessed.
8. 8Augustine defends a “persecution” of those who blaspheme the church, citing the psalms, and recalls how the Donatist bishop Petilian forcibly baptized and ordained a Catholic catechumen.
9. 9Augustine takes up the people’s cry “here or nowhere” for Emeritus, wishing him in unity here or elsewhere, and asks for prayer if he does not take communion today.