Against Parmenian the Donatist

Dearest brothers, one faith commends all of us Christians to almighty God, and part of that faith is to believe that the Son of God, the Lord, will come as judge of the world: he who came long ago and, according to his humanity, was born through the virgin Mary, suffered, died, was buried, and rose again; and before he ascended into heaven, from which he had come down, he left peace to all of us Christians through the apostles. So that he might not seem to have left it to the apostles alone, he therefore says, "What I say to one of you, I say to all." Then he says, "My peace I give you, my peace I leave with you." Peace, then, was given to all Christians, and it is plain that it is God's possession, since he says "my"; but when he says "I give you," he wanted it to be not only his own but also that of all who believe in him.

If that peace had remained as it was given, whole and unviolated, and had not been disturbed by the authors of schism, there would today be no dissension between us and our brothers. They would not be shedding tears before God for which there is no consolation, as the prophet Isaiah testifies; they would not incur the name and acts of false prophets; they would not build a ruinous and whitewashed wall; they would not overturn minds (not so much clever ones as simple ones); they would not, by wrongly laying a hand on every head, spread veils of overthrow; they would not curse God; they would not rebaptize the faithful; and we would not be grieving over the overthrown or slain souls of the innocent, over whom God grieved first through the prophet Ezekiel, saying: "Woe to those who make a veil over every head and over every age to overthrow souls. The souls of my people have been overthrown, and they cursed me and my people, so as to slay souls that ought not to die, while they announce vain seductions to my people." And yet these things have been done by those who are our brothers.

But lest anyone say that I call such men brothers without consideration: we cannot stray from the words of the prophet Isaiah. Although they themselves do not deny it, and it is known to all, that they hate and curse us and do not want to be called our brothers, yet we cannot depart from the fear of God, since the Holy Spirit exhorts us through the prophet Isaiah, saying: "You who fear the word of the Lord, hear the word of the Lord: those who hate you and curse you and do not want to be called your brothers, you nevertheless say to them, 'You are our brothers.'" Without doubt, then, they are brothers, though not good ones. So let no one wonder that I call them brothers, who cannot fail to be brothers. We and they have indeed one spiritual birth, but our acts differ. For Ham too, who impiously laughed at his father's nakedness, was brother of the innocent, and for his deserts incurred the yoke of servitude, so as to be a brother bound over as slave to his brothers. So this name of brotherhood is not laid aside even when sin intervenes. But of the offenses of these brothers I will speak in another place: they sit and speak against us, they set stumbling blocks against us, they run with the thief who robs God, they take their part with adulterers, that is, with heretics, they praise their own sins and plan insults against us Catholics.

All of them, indeed, in each place, make a din with abusive words; but we have found scarcely one with whom we might speak even in this way, by writing, namely our brother Parmenian, if he allows himself to be called by us even by this name. And since they will not have a common episcopal college with us, let them not be colleagues, if they do not wish; yet, as we said above, they are brothers. My brother Parmenian, then, so as not to speak windily and baldly like the rest, not only said whatever he could think but also set it down in writing. Since we are compelled by the force of truth to answer his words, there will be a conference of sorts between us in our absence. In the same way the wishes of some will be satisfied too. For many have often wished that, to bring the truth to light, a debate might be held between some defenders of the parties. And it could have happened. But since they forbid access, close the approaches, avoid meeting together and refuse conversation, let there at least be a conference between you and me, brother Parmenian, in this way: since I have not scorned or despised your treatises, which you wanted to be in the hands and mouths of many, but have heard patiently all that you said, you too may hear the replies of our humble self.

For I understand, and you do not deny, and any wise man sees clearly, that you treated these matters so lengthily for no other reason than to strike at the Catholic Church unworthily in your treatises. But, as one may understand, the mind holds one thing and the speech sounds another. In short, I see that you have not said everything against the Catholic Church; on the contrary, much for the Catholic Church, though you are not a Catholic, so that we would not even have needed to answer your treatises, except that, being badly instructed, so that you spoke not what you had seen but what you had falsely heard (although we have read in the letter of the apostle Peter, "Do not judge your brothers by opinion"), among some things that do not concern us, as we will prove, you said that we had asked for soldiers against you. Otherwise, in other parts of your treatise, some things were said by you for us and against you, such as the comparison of the flood and circumcision; some for both us and you, such as what you said in praise of baptism, except that you treated the flesh of Christ wrongly (and so it is for you too, since, though you are outside, you came out from us). For that too is for both, that you showed heretics to be strangers to the Catholic sacraments, if only you had not joined yourselves to them, who are plainly schismatics. Some things are for us alone, such as the mention of the one church; some are against you through ignorance, since you are a foreigner, such as the accusation of traitors and schismatics; and that also is against you which you said about the oil and the sacrifice of the sinner. And so nothing has been said by you against us, except that you said in ignorance that soldiers had been requested by us; and we will show by the truest proofs that this was said by you as a slander. Take away this slander and you are ours. For what is more for us, and more ours, than that you said, in comparing baptism, that the flood happened once? And in saying that the single circumcision was beneficial to the Jewish people, you spoke even more for us, as if you were ours. For this is our voice, who defend the oneness of baptism in the Trinity, not yours, who boldly, and against the laws, repeat the baptism of which those two are the image, although you yourselves do not deny that what was commanded to be done once ought not to be repeated. But while you subtly praised what is worthy of every proclamation of praise, you cunningly put your own party in its place, as if, since it is lawful once, it were lawful for you and denied to others. If it is not lawful for traitors, it ought not to have been lawful for you, whose leaders we prove to have been traitors. If it is not lawful for schismatics, equally it ought not to have been lawful for you, among whom the origin of the schism is found. If it is not lawful for sinners, we convict you too of being sinners by divine testimony. And yet, since it is lawful once, not through the chosen man but through that which is lawful once, we therefore do not correct after you, because with us and with you the sacrament is one; the whole account of this sacrament will be shown in the fifth book.

Many things, indeed, were treated by you, brother Parmenian; but I see that I should not answer each in the order in which you said them. For in the first place you set out comparisons and praises of baptism, and, except for your wrong treatment of the flesh of Christ, you spoke the rest well; it will be shown in its place that you said this rather for us. In the second place, after excluding the heretics, you said that the church is one; but you would not acknowledge where it is. In the third place you accused traitors without naming any definite persons or names. Fourth, the workers of unity were torn to pieces by you. Fifth, to pass over small points, you spoke of the oil and the sacrifice of the sinner.

But it seems to me that I should first point out the cities, persons and names of the traitors and schismatics, so that what you have said about them may recognize its true authors and its definite culprits. Next I must say what and where the one church is, which exists, since besides the one there is no other. Third, that soldiers were not requested by us, and that what is said to have been done by the workers of unity does not concern us. Fourth, who is the sinner whose sacrifice God rejects, or whose oil is to be avoided. Fifth, about baptism; sixth, about your inconsiderate presumptions and errors.

But before I say anything about the individual matters, I will briefly show that you treated the flesh of Christ wrongly. For you said that that sinful flesh, plunged in the flood of the Jordan, was cleansed from all filth. You could rightly say this if the flesh of Christ, baptized for all, sufficed, so that no one would be baptized for himself. If that were so, the whole human race would be there; everything born bodily would be there; there would be no difference between the faithful and any pagan, because there is flesh in all; and since there is no one who does not have flesh, if, as you said, the flesh of Christ was plunged in the flood of the Jordan, all flesh would obtain this benefit. For the flesh of Christ in Christ is one thing; the flesh of each person in himself is another. Why did you see fit to call the flesh of Christ sinful? If only you had said "the flesh of men in the flesh of Christ"; not even so would you have spoken plausibly, because each believer is baptized in the name of Christ, not in the flesh of Christ, which was specially his. Add that his flesh, conceived of the Holy Spirit, could not be dipped among others for the remission of sins, since it was seen to have committed no sin. You also added "plunged in the flood of the Jordan." You used this word quite inconsiderately, a word due to Pharaoh alone and his people, who by the weight of their offenses was so plunged, like lead, that he stayed there. But the flesh of Christ, when it went down into the Jordan and came up, ought not to have been called "plunged" by you; his flesh is found holier than the Jordan itself, so that by its descent it cleansed the water rather than being cleansed itself.

I cannot pass over this either, which I see you did cunningly: so as to draw in or deceive the minds of your hearers, after describing circumcision and the flood and after praising baptism, you wished somehow to raise up again heretics with their errors, already dead and buried in oblivion, whose names, not just their vices, seemed to be unknown through the African provinces. Marcion, Praxeas, Sabellius, Valentinus and the rest, down to the Cataphrygians, were overcome in their own times by Victorinus of Pettau, Zephyrinus of the City, Tertullian of Carthage and other champions of the Catholic Church. Why do you wage war with the dead, who have nothing to do with the business of our time? But because, being a schismatic, you have today no sin that you can prove against the Catholics, you chose to mention so many heretics with their errors in order to lengthen your writing.

Now another question arises: why did you mention those among whom there are none of the sacraments that seem to be common to us and to you? Health does not demand medicine; strength secure in itself does not seek help from outside; truth does not need arguments. It is the sick man's part to seek remedies, the idle and weak man's to procure help, the liar's to hunt for arguments. Meanwhile you said that the dowries of the church cannot exist among heretics, and you said rightly; for we know that the churches of the individual heretics are prostitutes, without lawful sacraments and without the right of honorable marriage. Christ rejects them as unnecessary, who is the bridegroom of the one church, as he himself testifies in the Song of Songs. When he praises one, he condemns the others, because besides the one, which is truly Catholic, the others are thought to exist among the heretics, but do not; according to what he shows, as we said above, in the Song of Songs, that his dove is one, the same his chosen bride, the same the garden enclosed and the fountain sealed, so that all the heretics have neither the keys, which Peter alone received, nor the ring with which, we read, the fountain was sealed, nor is any of them the one to whom that garden belongs in which God plants his little trees. What you said at length about these heretics, though it does not concern the present case, was enough and more than enough. But I wonder why you saw fit to join yourselves to them too, who are plainly schismatics, when you denied the dowries of the church both to the heretics themselves and to you schismatics. For among other things you said that schismatics are cut off from the vine like branches, and, destined for punishment like dry wood, are kept for the fires of Gehenna. But I see that you are still ignorant of the schism made at Carthage by your leaders. Look for the origin of these things and you will find that you pronounced this sentence against yourselves when you joined heretics to schismatics. For Caecilian did not go out from Maiorinus, your grandfather, but Maiorinus from Caecilian; nor did Caecilian withdraw from the chair of Peter or of Cyprian, but Maiorinus, whose chair you occupy, a chair that has no origin before Maiorinus himself. And since it is most plainly established that these things happened so, and it clearly appears that you are heirs of traitors and schismatics, I wonder greatly, brother Parmenian, that you, a schismatic, wished to join schismatics to heretics. Or if this is your view and you are pleased so, heap up what you said a little before. For you said it cannot be that, in false baptism, the defiled should wash, the unclean cleanse, the supplanter raise up, the lost set free, the guilty grant pardon, the condemned absolve. All these things could well apply to the heretics alone, because they have falsified the creed: one said there are two gods, though God is one; another wants the Father to be recognized in the person of the Son; another takes away from the Son of God the flesh through which the world was reconciled to God; and the rest of this kind, who are known to be strangers to the Catholic sacraments. So you should regret having joined even schismatics to such men; for you turned the sword of the sentence against yourself while you thought you were attacking others, and you did not notice how great the distance is between schismatics and heretics. That is why you do not know what the holy church is either; and so you have mixed everything up.

What makes the Catholic Church is a simple and true understanding, a single and most true sacrament, and the unity of minds. But schism is begotten when the bond of peace is scattered and minds are divided; it is nourished by envy and strengthened by rivalry and quarrels, so that, deserting their Catholic mother, impious sons, while they go out and separate themselves, as you have done, cut off from the root of mother church by the sickles of envy, depart in error as rebels. Nor can they do anything new or different except what they had long ago learned with their mother.

But heretics, exiles from the truth, deserters of the sound and most true creed, corrupted by impious thoughts from the bosom of the holy church, despising the fact that they had been well begotten, wished to be born of themselves, so as to deceive the ignorant and untaught. And those who had long been fed on life-giving food, through the corruption of a bad digestion, vomited deadly poisons in impious disputes to the ruin of the wretched. You see, then, brother Parmenian, that the heretics, exiled far from the house of truth, alone have various and false baptisms, with which the defiled cannot wash, the unclean cannot cleanse, the supplanter cannot raise up, the lost cannot set free, the guilty cannot grant pardon, the condemned cannot absolve. You did well to close the garden to the heretics, well to recall the keys to Peter, well to take away the power of cultivating, so that those who are plainly strangers to God's little garden and paradise should not tend his little trees; well did you remove the ring from those who are not permitted to open to the fountain. But to you schismatics, although you are not in the Catholic Church, these things cannot be denied, since you took the true and common sacraments with you from us. So, since all these things are rightly denied to the heretics, why did you see fit to deny them to yourselves too, who are plainly schismatics? For you went out. As far as it lies with us, we wished that only the heretics should be condemned; as far as it lies with you, you wished to strike even yourselves with them by one sentence.

But now, to return to the order of individual matters we proposed: first hear who the traitors were, and learn more fully who were the authors of the schism. It is plain that in Africa two evils, and the worst, were committed, one in the handing over, the other in the schism; but both evils appear to have been committed at the same time and by the same authors. You ought therefore, brother Parmenian, to learn what you are understood not to know. For about sixty years ago and more, the storm of persecution spread through all Africa, which made some martyrs, others confessors, laid some low in a deadly fall, and let those who hid go unharmed. Why should I mention the lay people, who were then supported by no rank in the church? Why the many ministers? Why the deacons, set in the third rank of the priesthood, why the presbyters in the second? The very heads and leaders of all, some bishops of that time, so as to buy with the loss of eternal life the briefest delays of this uncertain light, impiously handed over the books of the divine law. Among them were Donatus of Mascula, Victor of Rusicade, Marinus of Aquae Tibilitanae, Donatus of Calama, and Purpurius of Limata, a murderer, who, when questioned about his sister's sons, whom he was said to have killed in the prison at Milevis, confessed, saying: "I both killed and I kill, not only them but whoever acts against me." And Menalius, who, so as not to be proved by his fellow citizens to have offered incense, pretending a pain in his eyes, was afraid to come to the meeting of his colleagues.

These and others, whom we shall show a little later to have been your leaders, after the persecution met at the city of Cirta, in the house of Urbanus Carisius, because the basilicas had not yet been restored, on the third day before the Ides of May, as the writings of Nundinarius, then a deacon, testify, and the age of the parchments bears witness; we can bring them out for those who doubt. Indeed we have added the full record of these matters in the last part of these little books, to fill out the proof. These bishops, when Secundus of Tigisis questioned them, confessed that they had handed over. And when Secundus himself was rebuked by Purpurius, because he too had been a long time with the guards and had not fled but had been released, and had not been released without reason, unless because he had handed over, then all, roused, began to murmur. Fearing their spirit, Secundus took the advice of his brother's son, Secundus the younger, to keep such a case for God. Those who remained were consulted, namely Victor of Garba, Felix of Rotarium and Nabor of Centurio. They said that such a case ought to be reserved for God. And Secundus said, "Sit down, all of you." Then all said, "Thanks be to God," and they sat down. You have, then, brother Parmenian, those who were plainly traitors.

Then, not long afterward, these same men, so many and such traitors, incense-offerers and murderers, having gone to Carthage, ordained Maiorinus, whose chair you occupy, after the ordination of Caecilian, and so made a schism. And since it has been shown that your leaders were guilty of handing over, it follows that the same men were the authors of the schism. So that this may be clear and plain to all, it must be shown from what root the branches of error have stretched out to this day, and from what spring this stream of malignant liquid, creeping secretly, has flowed down to our times. It must be said whence, where and by whom this second evil plainly arose, what causes came together, what persons were at work; who were the authors of this evil, who its nurses; by whom judgments between the parties were requested from the emperor; who sat as judges; where the council was held; what sentences were pronounced. The question is one of division: in Africa, as in the other provinces, the church was one before it was divided by those who ordained Maiorinus, whose inherited chair you occupy. We must see who remained in the root with the whole world, who went outside, who occupied a second chair that had not existed before, who set up altar against altar, who made an ordination while another ordained man was still in office, who lies under the sentence of John the apostle, who said that many antichrists would go out: "For they were not ours," he says; "for if they had been ours, they would have remained with us." So whoever would not remain in unity with his brothers, following the heretics, has gone out like an antichrist.

That this was done at Carthage after the ordination of Caecilian there is no one who does not know: through Lucilla, namely, some factious woman or other, who, before the peace was shaken by the whirlwinds of persecution, while the church was still in tranquility, could not bear the rebuke of the archdeacon Caecilian. She was said to kiss the bone of some martyr or other (if indeed a martyr) before the spiritual food and drink, and since she preferred to the cup of salvation the bone of some dead man or other (even if a martyr, one not yet recognized), she was rebuked, and went away angry and put to shame. While she was angry and grieving, so as not to submit to discipline, the storm of persecution suddenly broke out and came to meet her.

At the same time a certain deacon Felix, who had been charged over some notorious letter then written about the tyrant emperor, is said to have hidden with the bishop Mensurius, fearing danger. When Mensurius publicly refused to hand him over on demand, a report was sent. A rescript came back that if Mensurius did not give up the deacon Felix, he should be sent to the palace. Summoned, he suffered no light distress; for the church had very many ornaments of gold and silver, which he could neither bury in the earth nor carry with him. These he entrusted to elders, as if faithful ones, after making an inventory, which he is said to have given to a certain old woman, so that, if he did not return, when peace was restored to the Christians, that old woman should give it to whomever she found sitting in the episcopal chair. He set out and pleaded his case; he was ordered to return, but he could not reach Carthage.

The storm of persecution was over and ended. At God's command, Maxentius sent an indulgence, and liberty was restored to the Christians. Botrus and Celestius, it is said, wishing to be ordained at Carthage, took pains that, in the absence of the Numidians, only the neighboring bishops should be asked to celebrate the ordination at Carthage. Then, by the vote of the whole people, Caecilian was elected and was ordained bishop, with Felix of Abthugni laying on the hand. Botrus and Celestius were cast down from their hope. The inventory of the gold and silver was handed over to Caecilian, now seated, as Mensurius had arranged, in the presence of witnesses. The elders mentioned above were called together, who had drunk down with the jaws of avarice the plunder entrusted to them. When they were compelled to return it, they withdrew their foot from communion; no less did the ambitious men, who had not managed to be ordained; and also Lucilla, who had long been unable to bear discipline, a powerful and factious woman, refused with all her people to be joined in communion. So, by three causes and persons coming together, it came about that malice had its effect.

The schism, then, was brought forth at that time by the anger of a woman put to shame, nourished by ambition, and strengthened by avarice. By these three persons charges were made up against Caecilian, so that his ordination might be called faulty. A message was sent to Secundus of Tigisis to come to Carthage. All the traitors mentioned above set out, and were received as guests by the avaricious, by the ambitious, by the angry, not by the Catholics, at whose request Caecilian had been ordained. Meanwhile none of the aforesaid came to the basilica where the whole crowd of the city was with Caecilian. Then Caecilian sent word: "If there is anything to be proved against me, let the accuser come out and prove it." At that time nothing could be made up against him by so many enemies; but he was defamed over the man who ordained him, who was falsely called a traitor by them. Again Caecilian sent word that if, as they thought, Felix had conferred nothing on him, they themselves should ordain Caecilian as if he were still a deacon. Then Purpurius, relying on his usual malice, as if Caecilian too were his sister's son, said: "Let him come out here, as if a hand were to be laid on him for the episcopate, and let his head be broken for penance." When these things were known, the whole church held Caecilian back, so that he should not hand himself over to robbers. At that time either the guilty man ought to have been expelled from his see or communion should have been held with the innocent. The church was crowded with people; the episcopal chair was occupied; the altar was in its place, on which peaceable bishops of former times had offered, Cyprian, Lucianus and the rest. So they went outside, and altar was set up against altar, and an ordination was unlawfully celebrated, and Maiorinus, who had been a lector in Caecilian's diaconate, a member of Lucilla's household, was ordained bishop, by her vote, by the traitors who, in the council of Numidia, as we said above, had confessed their crimes to each other and granted each other pardon. It is plain, then, that both the ordainers, who had handed over, and Maiorinus, who was ordained, went out from the church.

Meanwhile, from the spring of their own crimes, which had overflowed among them with the veins of many outrages, they thought that the one reproach of handing over should be diverted onto the man who ordained Caecilian, foreseeing that rumor could not speak of two similar things at once. To send their own crimes into silence, they tried to defame another's life; and though they could themselves be accused by the innocent, they set out to accuse the innocent, sending letters everywhere written at the dictation of envy, which we have among the other acts for later. While still at Carthage they went ahead of themselves with their letters, so as to fill everyone's ears with false rumors. Rumor spread the lie through the peoples; and while falsehoods about one man were noised abroad, the most true crimes of those just named lay hidden in silence. Often one is ashamed of a crime; but at that time there was no one before whom to be ashamed, since, apart from a few Catholics, almost all had sinned, and a wickedness committed among many was a sort of image of innocence. The crime of handing over, which plainly had been committed by Donatus of Mascula and the others named above, was too little; they joined to the handing over the huge outrage of schism as well.

You see, then, brother Parmenian, that these two crimes, so evil and so grave, handing over and schism, belong to your leaders. Recognize, even late, that while you attack others you have run into your own; and since it is plain that your predecessors committed this second outrage, you too labor to follow them in their criminal footsteps, so that what those predecessors did under the heading of schism you seem both to have done long ago and to be doing now. They broke the peace in their time; you are exterminating unity. Of your fathers and of you it can rightly be said: "If the blind leads the blind, both fall into the pit." Raging envy had blinded the eyes of your fathers; rivalry has bereaved yours. You will not be able to deny that schism is the supreme evil. And yet you have imitated, without trembling, Dathan and Abiram and Korah, your lost masters, and you were unwilling to set before your eyes that this evil was both forbidden by the words of God and, when committed, severely punished. Then the difference between offenses is attested either by pardon or by punishment. In short, among the other commandments the divine command forbade these three: "You shall not kill"; "You shall not go after other gods"; and among the heads of the commandments, "You shall not make a schism." Let us see which of these three had to be punished and which deserved to be remitted. Murder of kin is a principal offense; and yet Cain, though guilty, is not struck by God, but, should he be slain, he is avenged besides. In the city of Nineveh there were a hundred and twenty thousand sacrilegious men, who were seen to follow other gods; after the anger of God and the message of the prophet Jonah, a fast of a short time and prayer won pardon. Let us see whether those who first dared to split the people of God obtained anything of the kind. Over so many thousands of the sons of Israel, from whose necks divine providence had cast the yoke of slavery, he had set Aaron as the one holy priest. But when his ministers, coveting a priesthood not due to them, led away part of the people and invaded it unlawfully, imitating the rite of the sacred things, they set two hundred ministers and more, who would perish with them, with censers at the head of the people they had led astray. God, who is displeased by schism, could not look on this with favor. They had declared war on God, as it were, as if there were another god to accept another sacrifice. So God was angry with a great anger for the schism that had been made; and what he had not done to the sacrilegious and to the murderer, he did to the schismatics. There stood the line of ministers and the sacrilegious multitude with their forbidden sacrifices, about to perish on the spot; time for repentance was denied and withdrawn, because the fault was not such as to deserve pardon. Hunger was sent to the earth: at once it opened its jaws against the dividers of the people and swallowed with greedy gaping the despisers of God's commandments. Within the space of a moment the earth opened to swallow them, seized them, and closed. And lest they seem to gain the benefit of a quick death, since they were not worthy to live, they were not even allowed to die: suddenly shut in the prison of Tartarus, they were buried before they were dead. And you wonder that anything harsh of this kind has been done against you, who either make schism or cherish it, when you see what the masters of the first schism deserved to suffer? Or, because such vengeance has ceased now, do you therefore claim innocence for yourself and yours? God has set a pattern of examples in individual matters, so that he may have something to charge to those who imitate them. Present punishment checked the first sins as an example; the second he will reserve for the judgment. What will you say to this, who, having usurped the name of the church, both secretly nourish schism and shamelessly defend it?

But since I hear that some of your society, out of zeal for litigation, hold some documents or other, we must ask which should be trusted, which agree with reason, which accord with truth. Yours, if there are any, may perhaps seem sprinkled with lies. Our documents are proved by the conflicts of the cases, the contentions of the parties, the outcomes of the judgments, and the letters of Constantine. As for what you say of us, "What have Christians to do with kings? Or what have bishops to do with the palace?": if it is a mark of disgrace to have dealings with kings, the whole odium falls on you. For your forebears, Lucianus, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius and the rest, petitioned the emperor Constantine, who was still unaware of these matters, with this request, a copy of which is written below: "We ask you, Constantine, best emperor, since you are of a just race, whose father, alone among the other emperors, did not carry out the persecution, and Gaul is free of this crime (for in Africa there are disputes between us and the other bishops): we petition that your piety order judges to be given us from Gaul. Given by Lucianus, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius and the other bishops of the party of Donatus."

When he had read this, Constantine answered full of indignation; and in that answer he also disclosed their petition, when he says: "You ask of me a judgment in the world, though I myself await the judgment of Christ." And yet judges were given: Maternus from the city of Agrippina, Reticius from the city of Augustodunum, Marinus of Arles. These three Gauls and fifteen other Italians came to the city of Rome. They met in the house of Fausta in the Lateran, in the consulship of Constantine for the fourth time and Licinius for the third, on the sixth day before the Nones of October, a Friday, when there sat Miltiades, bishop of the city of Rome, and Reticius, Maternus and Marinus, the Gallic bishops, and Merocles of Milan, Florianus of Sinna, Zoticus of Quintianum, Stennius of Ariminum, Felix of Florence of the Tuscans, Gaudentius of Pisa, Constantius of Faventia, Proterius of Capua, Theophilus of Beneventum, Sabinus of Terracina, Secundus of Praeneste, Felix of Tres Tabernae, Maximus of Ostia, Evandrus of Ursinum, and Donatianus of Forum Claudii.

With these nineteen bishops sitting together, the case of Donatus and Caecilian was brought into the open. These sentences were passed against Donatus by each of them: that he had confessed that he had rebaptized and had laid hands on lapsed bishops, which is foreign to the church. The witnesses brought in by Donatus confessed that they had nothing to say against Caecilian. Caecilian was pronounced innocent by the sentences of all those mentioned above, and also by the sentence of Miltiades, by which the judgment was closed in these words: "Since it is established that Caecilian is not accused by those who came with Donatus, according to their own statement, and it is established that he has not been convicted by Donatus on any point, I judge that he is rightly to be kept in his ecclesiastical communion with his standing intact."

It is enough, then, that Donatus was struck by so many sentences and Caecilian cleared by so great a judgment. And yet Donatus thought he should appeal. To this appeal the emperor Constantine replied thus: "O raging boldness of madness! As is usually done in the cases of pagans, a bishop has thought he should appeal," and the rest.

At the same time the same Donatus asked to be allowed to return ... and go to Carthage. Then it was suggested to the emperor by Filuminus, his supporter, that for the good of peace Caecilian should be kept at Brescia; and it was done. Then two bishops, Eunomius and Olympius, were sent to Africa, to remove the two and ordain one. They came and were at Carthage for forty days, so as to pronounce where the Catholic Church was. The seditious party of Donatus did not allow this to be done; daily uproars were raised out of partisan zeal. The final sentence of these same bishops, Eunomius and Olympius, is read as follows: they said that the Catholic Church is the one spread through the whole world, and that the sentence of the nineteen bishops given long before could not be undone. So they communicated with the clergy of Caecilian and went back. Of these things we have a volume of acts, which anyone who wishes may read in the last parts. While this was happening, Donatus went back to Carthage first of his own accord. When he heard this, Caecilian hurried to his people. In this way the parties were renewed again. Yet it is plain that Donatus was struck by so many sentences and Caecilian pronounced innocent by as many.

But since in that case two persons in the Catholic Church had long seemed to be in difficulty, the ordained and the ordainer, after the ordained had been cleared in the City, the ordainer still remained to be cleared. Then Constantine wrote to the proconsul Aelianus that, setting aside public business, an inquiry should be made publicly into the life of Felix of Abthugni. He to whom it had been enjoined sat. Brought in were Claudius Saturianus, curator of the city, who had been in Felix's city at the time of the persecution; and the curator at the time when the case was being pressed, Callidius Gratianus; and the magistrate Alfius Caecilianus; and also Superius, a police officer, was brought, and Ingentius, a public scribe, was hung up under fear of imminent tortures. From the answers of all, nothing of the kind was found that could have stained the life of bishop Felix. There is a volume of acts which contains the names of those present at the case: Claudius Saturianus the curator, Caecilianus the magistrate, Superius the police officer, Ingentius the scribe, and Solon, a public official of that time. After their answers this part of the sentence was pronounced by the proconsul mentioned above: "It is plain that Felix, the devout bishop, is free of the burning of the divine documents, since no one has been able to prove anything against him, that he betrayed or burned the most holy Scriptures. For the questioning of all those written above has made it plain that no divine Scriptures were either found or damaged or burned. It is contained in the acts that Felix, the devout bishop, was not present at those times, nor gave his knowledge, nor ordered any such thing to be done." So, the infamy driven off and wiped away, he left that judgment with great praise. For a long time, amid uncertain opinion and the mists that envy and jealousy had breathed out, the truth seemed to lie hidden; but every writing mentioned has been revealed, both in the volumes of acts and in the letters mentioned or read.

You see, brother Parmenian, that you attacked the Catholics in vain by throwing the name of traitors at them falsely, exchanging the persons, that is, and transferring the guilt. You closed your eyes so as not to recognize your fathers as guilty; you opened them to strike at innocent and undeserving men with accusations. Everything for the occasion, nothing for the truth, so that the most blessed apostle Paul said of you too: "But some have turned aside to vain talk, wanting to be teachers of the law, not understanding what they say or the things about which they make assertions." We showed a little before that your fathers were traitors and schismatics; and you, their heir, have wished to spare neither schismatics nor traitors. Now, then, by the documents mentioned above, all the weapons that you wished to throw falsely at others, beaten back by the shield of truth, are turned by a rebounding blow on your fathers. Everything, then, that could be said by you against traitors and schismatics is yours, for it is not ours: we remain in the root and are with all in the whole world.

Since it has been shown who the traitors were, and the origin of the schism has been so displayed that it seems almost seen with the eyes, and we have also shown how heresy differs from schism, the next thing is to show (as we promised to say in the second place) which is the one church that Christ calls his dove and bride. The church, then, is one, whose holiness is gathered from the sacraments, not weighed from the pride of persons; this one, then, Christ calls his dove and beloved bride. It cannot be among all the heretics and schismatics; it remains that it is in one place. You, brother Parmenian, said that it is with you alone, unless perhaps, because you strive to claim a special holiness for yourselves out of pride, the church is to be where you wish and not where you do not wish. So, that it may be with you in a small part of Africa, in a corner of a little region, will it not be with us in another part of Africa? Will it not be in the Spains, in Gaul, in Italy, where you are not? If you want it to be with you only, will it not be in the three Pannonias, in Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Achaia, Macedonia and all Greece, where you are not? That it may be with you, will it not be in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cilicia, the three Syrias, the two Armenias, all Egypt and Mesopotamia, where you are not? And through so many innumerable islands and other provinces, which can scarcely be counted, where you are not, will it not be? Where then will be the proper meaning of the name catholic, since it is called catholic because it is according to reason and spread everywhere? For if at your will you squeeze the church into a narrow space, if you take away all the nations, where will be what the Son of God earned? Where what the Father gladly granted him in the second psalm, saying, "I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession"? Why do you break such a promise, so that the breadth of kingdoms is sent by you, as it were, into a prison? Why do you strive to obstruct so great a kindness? Why do you fight against the merits of the Savior? Allow the Son to possess what was granted; allow the Father to fulfil what was promised. Why do you set limits? Why fix boundaries? Since the whole earth was promised to the Savior by God the Father, there is nothing in any part of the earth that seems excepted from his possession. The whole earth with its nations has been given; the whole world is one possession of Christ. God proves this, who says, "I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession." And in the seventy-first psalm it is written thus of the Savior himself: "He will rule from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the earth." The Father, when he gives, excepts nothing; you, to grant an ounce, try to take away the whole pound. And still you strive to persuade men that the church is with you alone, taking away from Christ what he earned and denying what God bestowed. O your ungrateful and foolish presumption! Christ invites you with the rest into the fellowship of the heavenly kingdom and urges you to be coheirs, and you labor to cheat him of the inheritance granted him by the Father, while you grant him a part of Africa and deny him the whole world given him by the Father. Why do you want the Holy Spirit to seem a liar, who in the forty-ninth psalm tells the goodwill of almighty God when he says, "The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting"? The earth, then, was called so that flesh might come to be, and, as we read, it came to be, and it owes praises to its Creator. In short, it is reminded by the Holy Spirit, who exhorts and says in the hundred and twelfth psalm, "The name of the Lord is to be praised from the rising of the sun to its setting," and again in the ninety-fifth psalm, "Sing to the Lord a new song." If he said this verse alone, you could say that the Holy Spirit exhorted you alone. But to show that it was said not to you alone but to the church that is everywhere, he went on, saying, "Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples." "Proclaim," he says, "among the nations"; he did not say "in a small part of Africa, where you are." "Proclaim," he says, "among all peoples." He who said all peoples excepted no one; and you congratulate yourselves on being separated from all the peoples to whom this was commanded, and you want to be alone the whole, who are not in the whole at all. "The name of the Lord," he says, "is to be praised" both by the whole earth and "from the rising of the sun to its setting." Can pagans outside the law either sing to God or praise the name of the Lord, and not the church alone, which is within the law? If you say it is with you only, you cheat the ears of God. If you alone praise, the whole world from the rising of the sun to its setting will be silent. You have closed the mouths of all the Christian nations; you have imposed silence on all the peoples who long to praise God at every moment. So, if God awaits the praises due to him, and the Holy Spirit exhorts that they sound, and the whole world is ready to render what it owes to God, then, lest God be cheated, either praise with all, you too, or, since you would not be with all, fall silent alone.

Since, then, we have proved that the Catholic Church is the one spread through the whole world, its ornaments must now be mentioned, and we must see where the five dowries are, which you said were six. Among them the chair is first; unless a bishop sits in it, the second dowry, which is the angel, cannot be joined. We must see who first sat in the chair, and where. If you do not know, learn; if you know, blush. Ignorance cannot be ascribed to you; it remains, then, that you know. To err knowingly is a sin; for the ignorant are sometimes pardoned. So you cannot deny that you know that in the city of Rome the episcopal chair was first conferred on Peter, in which Peter, the head of all the apostles, sat (whence he was also called Cephas), so that in this one chair unity might be kept by all, lest the other apostles each defend a chair of his own, so that whoever set up another chair against the single chair would already be a schismatic and a sinner.

So in the single chair, which is the first of the dowries, Peter sat first. Linus succeeded him; Clement succeeded Linus; Anacletus Clement; Evaristus Anacletus; Sixtus Evaristus; Telesphorus Sixtus; Hyginus Telesphorus; Anicetus Hyginus; Pius Anicetus; Soter Pius; Victor Soter; Zephyrinus Victor; Callistus Zephyrinus; Urban Callistus; Pontianus Urban; Anterus Pontianus; Fabian Anterus; Cornelius Fabian; Lucius Cornelius; Stephen Lucius; Sixtus Stephen; Dionysius Sixtus; Felix Dionysius; Marcellinus Felix; Eusebius Marcellinus; Miltiades Eusebius; Silvester Miltiades; Mark Silvester; Julius Mark; Liberius Julius; Damasus Liberius; Siricius Damasus, who today is our colleague, with whom the whole world agrees with us in one fellowship of communion by the exchange of letters of communion. You who wish to claim the holy church for yourselves, show the origin of your chair.

But you say that you too have some part in the city of Rome. It is a branch of your error, grown out from a lie, not from the root of truth. In short, if Macrobius were asked where he sits there, could he say, "In the chair of Peter"? I do not know that he has even seen it with his eyes, and he does not approach Peter's shrine, acting like a schismatic against the apostle, who says, "sharing in the shrines of the saints." Behold, the shrines of the two apostles are there. Tell us whether he has been able to enter them or has offered there, where the shrines of the saints plainly are. So it remains that your colleague Macrobius must confess that he sits where Encolpius once sat; and if Encolpius himself could be asked, he would say that he sits where Boniface of Balla sat before; then, if he too could be asked, he would say, where Victor of Garba sat, sent long ago by your people from Africa to a few wanderers. What is this, that your party could not have a bishop at Rome who was a citizen there? What is this, that it is known that all who succeeded one another in that city were Africans and foreigners? Is not the guile apparent, is not the faction apparent, which is the mother of schism? Meanwhile, so that Victor of Garba might be the first sent from here (I do not say a stone into a spring, because he could not disturb the purity of the Catholic multitude, but because some Africans had liked living in the City and seemed to have gone out from you), they themselves asked that someone be sent from here to gather them. So Victor was sent. There he was a son without a father, a recruit without a commander, a disciple without a master, a follower without a leader, a tenant without a house, a guest without lodging, a shepherd without a flock, a bishop without a people. For the few could not be called a flock or a people, who among more than forty basilicas had no place to gather. So they fenced off with hurdles a cave outside the city, where they could hold their little assembly at that time; whence they were called Montenses. So, since Claudianus appears to have succeeded Lucianus, Lucianus Macrobius, Macrobius Encolpius, Encolpius Boniface, Boniface Victor: if Victor were asked where he sat, he could neither show that anyone had been there before him nor show any chair except that of pestilence. For pestilence sends men killed by diseases to the lower world, which is known to have its gates; against which gates we read that Peter, our chief, received the saving keys, to whom it was said by Christ, "To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the gates of the lower world will not overcome them."

How is it, then, that you strive to usurp for yourselves the keys of the kingdom of heaven, you who fight against the chair of Peter with your presumptions and bold sacrilege, rejecting the blessedness for which he deserved to be praised "who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly and did not stand in the way of sinners and did not sit in the chair of pestilence"? Your forebears walked in the counsel of ungodliness, so that the church was divided. They entered also on the way of sinners, when they tried to divide Christ, whose very clothing the Jews would not tear, while the apostle cries out and says, "Is Christ divided?" And would that, having entered on the evil way, they had recognized their sin and turned back on themselves, that is, had corrected what they had erred in and called back the peace they had driven away. This would have been to turn back from the way; for on a way one walks, one does not stand. But since your parents would not turn back, they plainly stood in the way of sinners; those whose steps fury had driven on, sluggish discord held fast and bound. And so that they could not go back to better things, they put on themselves the shackles of schism, so as to stand stubbornly in error and be unable to return to the peace they had deserted. Nor did they hear the Holy Spirit saying in the thirty-third psalm, "Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it"; but they stood in the way of their sins. They sat also in the chair of pestilence, which, as we said above, sends those it leads astray to death. But while you too cherish the error of your parents and zealously defend it, you have chosen to be heirs of the crime, though you could, even late, be sons of peace. Since it is written in the prophet Ezekiel, "Raise your voice over the son of the sinner, lest he follow the footsteps of his father; for the soul of the father is mine and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it alone will be punished," if you were displeased that your parents sinned, they alone would give account for what they committed. In this way you too could be blessed and receive praise from the mouth of the prophet, who says in the first psalm, "Blessed is the man who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly and did not stand in the way of sinners and did not sit in the chair of pestilence; but his will was in the law of the Lord." What is it to have one's will in the law, but both to learn the divine precepts devoutly and to fulfil them with fear? In that law it is written, "Peace on earth to men of good will"; and in another place, in the prophet Isaiah, "I will lay the foundations of peace in Zion"; and in another place, "Let us see what the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people"; and in another place, "The Son of God came, and his place was made in peace"; and in another place, "Let the mountains receive peace for the people, and the hills righteousness"; and in the gospel, "My peace I give you, my peace I leave with you"; and Paul says, "He who sows peace will also reap peace"; and in all his letters, "Peace be multiplied to you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"; and in the thirty-third psalm, "Seek peace and you will obtain it." Peace, driven away, had departed from your fathers; you ought to seek it, as God commanded, but you would neither seek it of your own accord nor gladly accept it when offered. For who in so many provinces has heard of the places where you were born? And if anyone has heard, who would not wonder at your error, who would not condemn your crime? Since, then, it is plain and clearer than light itself that we are with so many innumerable peoples and so many provinces are with us, you now see that you, placed in a part of one region and separated from the church by your errors, claim in vain for yourselves alone this name of church with its dowries, which are with us rather than with you. They are plainly so connected with one another and undivided that it is understood that one cannot be separated from another. For they are counted by name, but by their one meaning they are joined in a body, like the fingers on a hand, which we see marked off singly by intervals. Hence whoever holds one must hold all, since each cannot be separated from its fellows. Add that we possess properly not one alone but all of them.

Of the dowries named above, then, the chair, as we said, is the first, which we have proved to be ours through Peter, and it draws the angel to itself, unless perhaps, claiming him for yourselves, you keep him shut up in a coffer. Send him out, if you can; let him shut out the seven angels who are with our colleagues in Asia, to whose churches John the apostle writes, churches with which you are proved to have no fellowship of communion. Where do you get an angel who could move the fountain among you, or be counted among the other dowries of the church? Whatever is outside the seven churches is foreign. Or if you have any one from there, through that one you are in communion with the other angels too, and through the angels with the churches mentioned above, and through those churches with us. If that is so, you have lost the dispute.

Behold, then, all the dowries cannot be with you; for you will not be able to claim for yourselves alone, or shut in, the Spirit of God, who is understood and not seen. For so it is written in the gospel: "For the Spirit is God, and blows where he wills, and you hear his voice and do not know where he comes from or where he goes." Allow God to go from where he wills and to have freedom to come where he wills, who can be heard and cannot be seen. And yet, out of zeal for accusing, you were glad to blaspheme, so as to say, "For what spirit can there be in that church except one who bears sons of Gehenna?" You vomited an insult from your breast and thought a testimony from the gospel should be added, where we read, "Woe to you, hypocrites, who go round seas and lands to make one proselyte, and when you have found him, you make him a son of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves." If this insult had to be made (which is not lawful, even though made without cause), would that someone else of your number had made it! But I wonder greatly that you said it: that you should say falsely against another a thing for which, if you consider your own ordination, you could well blush. For you recalled that it is read in the gospel, "Woe to you, hypocrites, who go round seas and lands to make one proselyte," that is, to change someone's sect. I do not know of what sect you were; yet I judge that this was said by you inopportunely, so that perhaps you now regret this saying. Have we traveled through any lands? Have we gone round any seas? Have we come to foreign ports? Have we brought any Spaniard or Gaul, or have we ordained a foreigner for people who did not know him?

For the fountain too is plainly one of the dowries, from which heretics can neither drink themselves nor give others to drink, because they alone, not having the seal intact, that is, the Catholic creed, cannot open to the true fountain. ... For since it is written in the Song of Songs, "Your navel is like a turned bowl," you tried to assert that the navel is the altar. If the navel is a member of the body, what is a member cannot be among the dowries; if it is an ornament, it is not part of the body.

It remains, then, that the dowries appear to be five; and since they are the dowries of the Catholic Church, which is in the many provinces mentioned above, they cannot be lacking to us here in Africa either. Understand, even late, that you are impious sons, broken branches from the tree, shoots cut off from the vine, a stream cut off from the spring. For a stream, which is small and is not born of itself, cannot be the source, nor can a tree be cut off from a branch, since the tree rejoices, grounded in its roots, and the branch, if cut out, dries up. Do you see now, brother Parmenian, do you feel now, do you understand now that you have fought against yourself with your own arguments, since it has been proved that we are in the holy Catholic Church, with whom is the creed of the Trinity, and that through the chair of Peter, which is ours, and through it the other dowries too are with us? Also the priesthood, which you seemed to annul in us as an excuse for your error and envy, since you rebaptize after us and do not do so after your own colleagues detected in sin. For you said that if the priest is in sin, the dowries alone can work. Therefore we have taught what heresy is, what schism is, and what the holy church is, and that the person of this holy church has been established, and that this is the Catholic Church, which is spread through the whole world, of which we too are members among others, whose dowries are with her everywhere. Then in the first book we proved that the odium of handing over does not concern us and that this crime has been condemned by us too.

Now I would not have you answer me why you chose to speak only of the dowries of the church and kept silent about its holy members and inward parts, which are without doubt in the sacraments and in the names of the Trinity. With these the faith and profession of believers concur, which is made before the record of the angels, where heavenly and spiritual seeds are mingled, so that from a holy seed a new nature of the reborn may be begotten, so that, while the Trinity agrees with faith, he who had been born to the world may be reborn spiritually to God. Thus God becomes the father of men; thus the holy church becomes their mother. I understand that you did not name all these things so that in them the meaning of baptism should not be recognized, in which the worker, who is a man, claims nothing for himself, as you do. And so you chose to confine yourself to the dowries alone, which, as if grasped in your hand or shut in a chest, you denied to the Catholics and tried in vain to claim for yourselves alone. When the matter is regeneration, when the matter is the renewal of man, you named no faith of believers, no profession; wishing to speak of the dowries alone, you passed over in silence all those things without which that spiritual birth cannot be restored. And since dowries belong to the bride, not the bride to the dowries, you arranged the dowries as if they seemed to beget, not the inward parts, which are understood to lie in the sacraments rather than in the ornaments.

Nor do I pass over this, that with your mouth and our meaning you said that the church is a paradise (which is without doubt true), in which garden God plants little trees. And yet you have denied God his riches, whose garden you force into narrow straits, while you undeservedly claim everything for yourselves alone. Surely the plantings of God are various seeds according to various precepts. The righteous, the continent, the merciful and virgins are spiritual seeds; of these things God plants little trees in paradise. Grant God that his garden be spread far and wide. Why do you deny him the Christian peoples of the East and the North, and of all the provinces of the West, and of innumerable islands, against whom you alone, few, are rebels, and with whom you have no fellowship of communion?

Here too your lie can justly be condemned, with which your sacrifices are seasoned every day. For who would doubt that you cannot omit that prescribed form in the mystery of the sacraments? You say that you offer to God for the church, which is one. This itself is part of the lie, that you call one what you have made two; and you say that you offer to God for the one church, which is spread through the whole world. What if God says to each of you, "Why do you offer for the whole, you who are not in the whole?" If we displease you, what has the city of Antioch done to you, what the province of Arabia, from which we prove that people coming to you have been rebaptized?

In one thing alone, brother Parmenian, we cannot be ungrateful to you: that, although you are a stranger to it, you chose to praise our church, that is, the Catholic Church, which is held in the whole world, in counting its dowries (in the number of which you erred considerably), and in saying that it is the garden enclosed, the fountain sealed, and the only bride. We say this of our own; you spoke of what is another's. Whatever you could say in praise of the church, we say the same before you. The traitors we too condemn with you, namely those whom, if you remember, we pointed out in the first book. And since we have communion with the whole world, and all the provinces are with us, you have long chosen to compare two churches as if Africa alone had Christian peoples, in which by your fault two parties appear to have been made; and forgetting Christ, who says that his bride is one, you said in Africa not that there are two parties but two churches. Certainly it is one, which deserved to be pointed out by the voice of Christ, who says, "My dove is one; my bride is one."

And you, forgetting this word, spoke in these words to stir up odium against the Catholics: "Nor can that be called a church which feeds on bloody bites and grows fat on the blood and flesh of the saints." The church has its definite members: bishops, presbyters, deacons, ministers, and the multitude of the faithful. Say to which kind of men in our church what you chose to charge can be ascribed. Name some minister in particular, point out some deacon by his name, show that this was done by some presbyter, prove that bishops committed it, show that any of ours laid a trap for anyone. Which of us has persecuted anyone? Whom can you say or prove to have been persecuted by us? Because unity displeases you, if you think this a crime, accuse us of having communicated with the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, the Galatians, the seven churches that are in Asia. If it seems wicked to you, or if you think it a guilt to have communicated with the shrines of the apostles and all the saints, we not only do not deny that we have done this, but even glory in it.

But to show that your party, as you said, has fed on bloody bites and grown fat on the blood and flesh of Christians, your raging fury must now be recalled from its beginning, your impiety retold, your folly displayed. In this we must first show your shameful joy and criminal delight, since it is plain that you were allowed to return to the liberty of your old error. Go over the times, examine the course of events, consider the unlike wishes and the different persons. Let the Christian emperor Constantine come back to memory: what service did he show to God, what wishes did he have? That, schisms removed and all dissension dead, holy mother church might see her sons rejoicing in one under the whole heaven. By one communion he had restored wives to husbands, children to parents, brothers to brothers. God testifies that he rejoices in such things, when he says: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity." For when one peace joined the African peoples and the Eastern ones and the others across the sea, and unity itself, with all the members brought together, made the body of the church cohere, the devil grieved at this, who is always tormented by the peace of brothers. At that time, under a Christian emperor, deserted among his idols, he lay hidden, as if shut up in the temples. At this same time their own deserts had banished your leaders and chiefs; there were no schisms in the church, nor were pagans permitted to practice their sacrileges. The peace pleasing to God dwelt among all the Christian peoples; the devil mourned in the temples, you in foreign regions.

Then, as is known to all, another emperor followed, who, forming sinister wishes along with you, from a servant of God became a minister of the enemy and declared himself an apostate by his edicts. You petitioned him with entreaties to be allowed to return; and if you deny having sent those entreaties, we have read them. Nor did the one you petitioned make any difficulty: he ordered those to go, as he wished, whom he had understood would come with fury to disturb the peace. Blush, if you have any shame: liberty was given back to you by the same voice by which the temples of the idols were ordered to be opened.

At almost the same moments your fury returns to Africa as the devil is let out of his prisons. And you do not blush, who at one time share common joys with the enemy! You came raging, you came angry, tearing the members of the church, subtle in seductions, monstrous in slaughters, provoking the sons of peace to wars. You drove many from their sees, when, coming with a hired band, you invaded the basilicas. Many of your number, in very many places that it would take long to name, carried out bloody slaughters, and so atrocious that a report on such deeds was sent by the judges of that time. But the judgment of God intervened and met it, so that the profane and sacrilegious emperor who had long ago ordered you to return died, he who at your instigation had already sent a persecution, or was planning to send one.

A slaughter of Catholics was carried out in the places mentioned above. Remember, place by place, what your raids were. Were not Felix of Zaba and Januarius of Flumen Piscium and others of your number, who ran with all speed to the fortress of Lemellef? There, when they saw the basilica closed against their importunity, they ordered their companions, in their presence, to climb the roof, strip the roofing and throw down the tiles. Their orders were carried out without delay; and when the Catholic deacons were defending the altar, many were bloodied by the tiles, and two were killed, Primus son of Januarius and Donatus son of Ninus, while your fellow bishops named above pressed it on and were present, so that without doubt it was said of you, "Their feet are swift to shed blood." Of this Primosus, the Catholic bishop of that place, complained in your council at the city of Theveste, and you heard his complaints with feigned inattention. Behold, what you said was done by you: "That is not a church which feeds on bloody bites"; and soldiers sent are one thing, bishops ordained another. What you say against us to stir up odium was done by others, not by us; what you say ought not to have been done, you did. You also recalled that the most blessed apostle Paul said that the church ought to be without wrinkle and without stain. At the command and in the presence of your bishops, Catholic deacons were killed upon the altar; likewise also at Carpi. Do these not seem to you inexpiable stains? In the cities of Mauretania, when you entered, the people were shaken, and those who were to be born died in their mothers' wombs. Does that not seem to you a wrinkle that cannot be stretched or smoothed out by any satisfaction? What of this kind has been committed by us? We await God as avenger. And you stir up odium against Macarius, who, if he did anything harshly for unity, could seem slight, while you have done such evil, bitter, bloody and hostile things for dissension. Why should I recall Tipasa, a city of Mauretania Caesariensis, to which, from Numidia, Urbanus of Forma and Felix of Idicra, two little torches lit by envy, ran, disturbing the minds of those who lived quietly in peace? With the favor and fury of some officials helping, and the governor Athenius present with the standards, the Catholic congregation was driven out, bloodied, and expelled from its seats: men were mangled, matrons dragged off, infants killed, unborn children aborted. Behold, your church, with bishops as leaders, has fed on bloody bites. After this you added this too: "However much the greed of vultures consumes, the number of doves is still greater." Where is what is commonly said, that a liar needs a good memory? You forgot that a little before you said that the church is called Christ's one dove in the Song of Songs. If the church with you is one, the dove is one; if the dove is one, what is it you meant to say, "the number of doves is greater"?

And a monstrous crime was committed, which seems slight to you: your bishops mentioned above violated everything most holy. They ordered the Eucharist to be poured out to dogs, not without a sign of divine judgment; for those same dogs, inflamed with madness, tore their own masters with avenging teeth, as if they were robbers guilty against the holy body, as if they were strangers and enemies. They also threw a flask of chrism out of a window to break it, and though the throw aided the fall, an angelic hand was not lacking, which brought the flask down with spiritual support: thrown, it could not feel the fall; with God protecting it, it settled unharmed among the stones. And these things could have been avoided if you had kept in memory the commands of Christ, who says, "Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and crush you." What of this kind could have been done by the workers of unity, from which you labor to stir up vain odium against us Catholics? Returning from there, Urbanus of Forma and Felix of Idicra found mothers among the women they had made from consecrated virgins. Behold, brother Parmenian, what kind of bishops you conceal; and though you ought to blush for your own, you accuse innocent Catholics. Meanwhile Felix, mentioned above, among his crimes and abominable deeds, did not in the least hesitate wickedly to defile a girl he had seized, on whom he himself had put the veil, by whom a little before he had been called father. And as if he became holier from sin, he hurried quickly to Tysedis. So he dared to strip Donatus, a bishop of seventy years, an innocent man, of the episcopal name, office and honor. A schismatic came to a Catholic bishop, a guilty man to an innocent, a sacrilegious man to a priest of God, an incestuous man to a chaste one, one no longer a bishop to a bishop; but, secure in your decision and conspiracy, armed with your laws and decrees, he laid hands that sins had weighed down a little before on the head of the innocent, and dared to pass sentence with that tongue which no longer seemed fit even for doing penance. Behold, brother Parmenian, what kind of men you defend; behold for what kind of men you said long ago that the dowries work.

You yourselves too, who want to seem holy and innocent to men, tell us: where does this holiness come from, which you so freely usurp for yourselves? The apostle John does not dare to profess it, who says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." He who said this wisely reserved himself for the grace of God. For it is the Christian man's part to will what is good and to run in what he has rightly willed; but it is not given to man to perfect it, so that, after the stretches that man must fill, something remains for God, where he may help the one who falls short; because he alone is perfection, and the Son of God, Christ, alone is perfect. All the rest of us are half-perfect, because it is ours to will, ours to run, God's to perfect. Hence the most blessed apostle Paul says, "Not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of the one who belongs to the grace of God." For perfect holiness has not been given by Christ our Savior, but promised; in short, he says, "You shall be holy, because I am holy." He alone, then, is perfect and holy. In short, he did not say "You are holy," but "You shall be holy." How is it, then, that out of pride you claim perfect holiness for yourselves? Unless it is so that it may appear that you deceive yourselves and the truth is not in you. You would not be in John's school. For when you seduce some, you promise that you will give the remission of sins; and when you wish to forgive sins, you profess your own innocence, and you give remission of sins as if you yourselves had no sin. That is not confidence but deception, not truth but a lie. For within moments of each other, while you lay on hands and forgive offenses, soon, turned to the altar, you cannot leave out the Lord's Prayer, and you certainly say, "Our Father, who are in heaven, forgive us our debts and sins." What are you called, when you confess your own sins? Are you holy, while you forgive those of others? In this way you both deceive yourselves, and the truth is not in you. But, as it appears, your nurse, pride, dictates this to you, to which Christ testifies in the gospel; for though he did not say your names, he showed your ways by a parable. For so it is written: "Jesus spoke this parable on account of those who think themselves holy and despise the rest." The matter itself plainly shows that this was said of you, since you extol yourselves as holy and despise us manifestly and openly. "Two," he says, "went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector." The Pharisee, swollen, proud, puffed up, such as we see you to be, with body not humbled, neck not bowed, but face raised and chest swelling, says, "I thank you, God, that I have committed no sin." That is to say to God, "I have nothing in me for you to forgive." O insane fury, O pride to be punished and condemned! God is ready to forgive, and the guilty man hastens to refuse pardon. The tax collector, humble, knowing himself to be a man, prayed thus, saying, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner." So he deserved to be justified; so pride in the Pharisee, your master, went down condemned from the temple. Sins with humility have been found better than innocence with pride. Then, though you do not lack the grave sins of handing over and schism, you also congratulate yourselves on being proud.

Now, since we have proved your shameful joys and your fury has been shown in so many places, it remains to say something of your profound impiety; for who could set out everything that you either do or have done? It is plain that you arranged everything with a certain malice, so that in one kind of work you accomplished other kinds, so that, when a presbyter or bishop is cast down, the people too are captured. When could a crowd of men stand firm that saw its ruler struck down by you? Just as, when the shepherd is killed by any chance, wolves rage. You exorcized the faithful and washed walls without cause, so as by this kind of wickedness to undermine the minds of the simplest men. By such counsels of yours the souls of some were slain, and, the light of cunning blinded under a cloud of simplicity, to lay the wretched low you sent ahead arrows from the quiver of your breast with seductions, so that the Holy Spirit foretold of you through the prophet David in the tenth psalm: "For behold, sinners have bent the bow, they have prepared arrows in their quiver, to shoot in the dark of the moon at the upright in heart." What less was done by your counsels? The innocent were shot, the faithful disarmed, priests stripped of the honor of their name. O unheard-of impiety, to keep alive among the torments of penance the one you have slain! In comparison with your work the savagery of robbers seems lighter. You commit a living murder; the robber gives the slain the shortcut of death. Those whom you could deceive were taken in through the poverty of their understanding. For those had been perfect, by the work of God, namely, who had been ordained in his name. And you fight like enemies against the work of God, destroying the divine work with the crowbars of malice! It appears, then, that it was said of you in the tenth psalm, "For what you perfected, they destroyed." Your impiety made you proud, but justice, looking down from heaven, accuses you; and the error of men praises you as you do wicked things, so that the Holy Spirit said of you in the ninth psalm, "For the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who has done wicked things will be blessed." What is more wicked than to exorcize the Holy Spirit, break altars, throw the Eucharist to animals? And so that your people may send you into error, praising you they call you blessed and speak well of you and swear by you, and they are known now to hold your persons as God.

God is usually named by men in an oath to prove good faith. But when they swear by you, among your people God and Christ are now passed over in silence. If divine religion has moved from heaven to you, because they swear by you, let none of you or yours fall sick; do not die; command the clouds; send rain, if you can, so that they may swear more fully by you and God be passed over in silence. For in earlier ages too, so that temples might be built and idols made, what more could the devil achieve than what he achieves through your people? Nothing else than that God should be passed over in silence, while men in their error spoke of the devil alone.

... sacrilege mixed with impiety, while you gladly hear men swearing by you and do not admit into your ears the voice of God, who says thus in the hundred and fourth psalm: "Do not touch my anointed ones, and do not lay your hand on my prophets." That both kings and priests are anointed the books of Kingdoms show, and David says thus in the hundred and thirty-second psalm: "Like the ointment on the head, which runs down onto the beard of Aaron." And yet you have tried to despise the precepts with the same strength with which those who fear God try to fulfil the commandments. Show where you were commanded to shave the heads of priests, when, on the contrary, so many examples are set forth that it ought not to be done. Saul, before he sinned, deserved to be anointed; after his anointing he gave no slight offense. When God saw this, wishing to set forth examples that the oil was not to be touched, he professed his repentance. For so we read that the Lord said: "I repent that I anointed Saul as king." And surely God could have taken away the oil he had given. But since he wished to teach that the oil ought not to be touched even in a sinner, he who had given it repented. If, then, God, to teach you, could not take away what he gave, through what he would not take away, who are you to take away what you did not give? And you, who ought to prepare your ears for hearing, prepared a razor for offending. And though you could be sons of God, you chose to be sons of men, and to sink your bite into others' honors you turned your teeth into arrows and weapons, you sharpened your tongues into swords, you fulfilled what is written of you in the fifty-sixth psalm: "Sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword."

So you sharpened your tongues into swords, which you moved to the deaths not of bodies but of honors; you slew not members but names. What good is it that the men live, when their honors have been killed by you? They are well in their limbs, but they carry the funerals of a dignity snatched away. For you stretched out your hand and spread deadly veils over every head, so that, since there are, as I said above, four kinds of heads in the church, bishops, presbyters, deacons and the faithful, you would not spare even one: you overturned the souls of men. God grieves over these acts of yours in the prophet Ezekiel, when he says, "Woe to those who make a veil" (that is, who lay on a hand) "over every head and over every age to overturn souls." You found boys: you wounded them with penance, so that none of them could be ordained; recognize that you have overturned souls. You found faithful of long standing: you made them penitents; recognize that you have overturned souls. You found deacons, presbyters, bishops: you made them lay people; recognize that you have overturned souls.

He on whom you have now tried to lay hands had long been your colleague and companion: you ran together. Suppose he sinned, though it is plain there was no sin; he was lying down, as you think. If you have read the apostle, see to whom you stand and to whom he lies; if you are a servant, recognize your master, and understand that he who a little before was running with you was not lying down for you. Why do you rush into another's power, why do you rashly mount God's tribunal? And though you are guilty yourself, you dare to pass sentence on another, and you have read: "He who stands, stands to his own master, and he who lies, lies to his own master; but his master is able to raise him up. Who are you to judge another's servant?" That you ought not to have touched the oil conferred by God on a priest, you should have learned from David the servant of God, who was so anointed by Samuel that what had long before been given to Saul was by no means taken away. In short, when, whether at God's command or by chance arranging it, one cave shut them in, Saul, who had sinned, came into the power of the servant David. He seemed not to see, because, coming from a greater light, as usually happens, in the darkness of the enclosed air he could not see the other beside him. Countless armies followed the old king, but the king himself had come into another's power. David had the chance of victory in his hands: he could slay his unwary and careless adversary without labor, and without blood and the clash of many could cut the war short by a quick killing; both his servants and the occasion urged it, the opportunity exhorted him to victory. His sword had already begun to be drawn, his armed hand had already begun to go to the enemy's throat; but a memory full of the divine commands stood in the way. He contradicts his servants and the occasions that urged him, as if he were saying this too: "Victory, you provoke me without cause; occasion, you invite me in vain to triumphs." He wished to conquer the enemy, but it comes first to keep the Lord's divine precepts. "I will not," he says, "put my hands on the Lord's anointed." He held back his hand with the sword; and while he feared the oil, he preserved his enemy, and to complete his observance, he avenged him when he was slain. You neither fear God nor recognize your brothers; on the whetstone of envy you have sharpened the razors of the tongue, and trampling on the divine precepts you rushed at the heads of the wretched, so that, their leaders slain, you might drag blind and unskilled peoples into captivity. You hunger for the honors of innocent priests; whence so great a hunger has grown in your fury that you have made your throats open graves. For each grave one funeral is enough, and it is closed; for your throat the funerals of honors have not sufficed at all, and they are still open, while you seek some to devour, so that it was rightly said of you, "Their throat is an open grave." For you also presume on cursing, though it is written, "Bless and do not curse." Whoever does anything against your will, you threaten with terrors, hold out curses; and since some men can deserve more evil than good, whatever the judgment of God or the desert of sin has done you claim as the work of your bitter curses, rightly, because it was said of you, "Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." You boast that some men have been able to die when you cursed them. Certainly it is not lawful to kill. Or do you think yourselves innocent because you have not used iron? Let the poisoner too judge himself innocent, if murder is in iron alone. Let him not think himself guilty who has killed another by withholding food; let him judge himself innocent who has suffocated a man who longed to live by denying him the power to breathe. There are many kinds of killing, but one name of death. When by your curses you confidently declare a man dead, what difference does it make whether you strike with a sword or smite with the tongue? You are without doubt a murderer if one who was living has died through you. Whoever of you is such professes in vain to be a Christian or a priest of God, if he does not care to imitate the gentleness of God, since it is written, "God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living." I believe you cannot forget what you did in some places, when you wished to kill those who preached the law of God, that is, prophets, against the command of God, who says, "And do not lay your hand on my prophets." Deuterius, Parthenius, Donatus and Getulicus, bishops of God, you slew with the sword of the tongue, shedding the blood not of the body but of honor. The men lived afterward, but the priests of God were killed by you in God's honors. It is known to many and proved that in the time of persecution some bishops, through cowardice, fell from the confession of God's name and offered incense; and yet none of those who escaped either laid a hand on the lapsed or ordered them to kneel. And you do today after unity what no one did after the offering of incense, though it is written, "Do not touch my anointed ones, and do not lay your hand on my prophets." God defends his oil, because, if the sin is the man's, the anointing is still the Godhead's. "Do not touch," he says, "my anointed ones": for this reason, lest, while the sin of the man is struck, the oil too, which is God's, be smitten. By his judgment God preserved what is his, and yet you have rushed everywhere on what is another's, corrupting the happiness of all. For what greater unhappiness is there than that priests of God should live and not be what they had been?

Matrons, boys and virgins alike, compelled by you though no sin intervened, with their innocence and chastity intact, learned under your teaching to do penance. Is that a lesser unhappiness? You crushed the sexes, harassed the ages; truly it was said of you in the thirteenth psalm: "Crushing and unhappiness are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes." You imposed penance on whole congregations; for it was not undertaken by anyone, but exacted by you, and not for equal spaces of time, but you did everything by persons: at your command one did penance for a whole year, another a month, another scarcely a whole day. If to consent to unity, as you hold, is a sin, if the fault is similar, why is the penance not equal for the same guilt? There is no doubt that the people of believers is called Israel, and the individual congregations daughters of Israel, that is, those who have seen God with the mind and believed in God. And yet you forced these congregations to bend and bow their necks and, with a row of heads joined together, to make a mass of penitents. God grieves over these congregations through the prophet Ezekiel, saying, "Woe to the daughters of Israel, who sew pillows" (that is, members of the neck) "to put under the elbow and under the hand": certainly under your elbows and under your hands, when you spread the veils of penance over the heads of men and women. Thus your impiety and fury have been shown and your pride displayed; your folly too had to be revealed, but this I will show in the sixth book.

In the second little book we have said enough, I think, about the church, which is the bride of Christ, about its dowries, and about the Savior's inheritance. It follows to show first the errors of the schismatics; next, what was the cause that unity was brought about; third, who caused armed soldiers to be sent. Many things were indeed done harshly by the workers of unity; but why do you charge them to Leontius, Macarius or Taurinus? Charge them to your forebears, who, as is written in the prophet, ate sour grapes themselves so that your teeth should be set on edge: first to those who divided God's people and made unnecessary basilicas; next to Donatus of Carthage, who provoked the attempt to bring about unity in recent times; third to Donatus of Bagai, who had gathered a mad multitude, from whose violence Macarius, to avoid suffering it, asked for the help of armed soldiers to protect himself and what he was carrying. Then came the armed men with quivers; every city was filled with people shouting. When unity was announced, you all fled. No one was told, "Deny God"; no one was told, "Burn the testament"; no one was told, "Either offer incense or tear down the basilicas"; for these are the things that usually produce martyrdoms. Unity was proclaimed; there had been only exhortations that God and his Christ should be prayed to alike by a people coming together into one. At first there was no terror: no one had seen a rod, no one a prison; there had been, as we said above, only exhortations. You were all afraid, you fled, you trembled, so that it was surely said of you what is written in the fifty-second psalm: "There they trembled with fear, where there was no fear." So all the bishops fled with their clergy; some died; those who were stronger were captured and banished far away.

And yet none of all these things was done with our wish, none with our counsel, none with our knowledge, none with our work; but all were done in the grief of God weeping bitterly, and in vengeance for the water which, against his prohibition, you stirred up a second time, bringing over to yourselves the water of the old pool. But I do not know whether you brought it with that fish which is understood as Christ, which is read in the reading of the patriarchs as caught in the river Tigris, whose gall and liver Tobias took for the protection of the woman Sarah and for the enlightening of Tobit, who could not see. By the inward parts of the same fish the demon Asmodeus was put to flight from the girl Sarah, who is understood as the church, and blindness was driven out from Tobit. This is the fish which in baptism is placed in the waters of the font by invocation, so that what had been water is also called a pool (piscina) from the fish (piscis). The name of this fish, according to the Greek word, contains in one name, letter by letter, a throng of holy names, ΙΧΘΥΣ, which in Latin is: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. This pool, which in the whole Catholic Church throughout the world overflows with saving waves for the life of the human race, you have brought over to your will, and you have undone the single baptism, from which baptism walls have been made for men for their protection; and you have made as it were other walls, making no good building. You could not build without tearing down. And what kind of building can there be that is built from a ruin? God grieves and weeps over this through the prophet Isaiah, when he says that the daughter of his race has been crushed. It is the race of God to have no race, who is from himself and remains for ever. Like this is the water, too, which we do not read was made. In the wrong done to this water God points to his tears, which you have caused, which he testifies can be dried by no consolation, when he speaks to you through the prophet Isaiah, saying: "Let me go; I will weep bitterly; no one will be able to console me in the crushing of the daughter of my race." In this place our innocence is defended, while God shows you his anger with grief, and reveals the cause and shows the reason. In short, he does not say these things were done in Zion, but in one of its valleys; not on that Mount Zion which in Syria Palestine a small stream separates from the walls of Jerusalem (on whose summit is a not large plain, where there had been seven synagogues, where the Jewish people coming together could learn the law given through Moses), where no lawsuit was heard, no trial held by anyone, nor any sentence passed by any judge there, because it was a place of teaching, not of controversy after teaching. If anything had to be done, it was done within the walls of Jerusalem. Hence it is written in the prophet Isaiah: "Out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." So it is not in that Mount Zion that Isaiah sees the valley, but on the holy mountain, which is the church, which through the whole Roman world has raised its head under the whole heaven, on which mountain the Son of God rejoices that he has been set as king by God the Father, saying in the first psalm, "For he has set me as king over Zion, his holy mountain," that is, over the church, of which he is king and bridegroom and head; not on that mountain where there are no gates for God to love, but on the mountain of the church, which is so called spiritually. Into the gates of this church enter the innocent, the righteous, the merciful, the continent and virgins; these gates the Holy Spirit mentions through David in the eighty-sixth psalm, when he says, "Its foundations are on the holy mountains; the Lord loves the gates of Zion": not of that bodily mountain, where there are now no gates, and since the victories of the emperor Vespasian scarcely traces of the ancient ruins remain. The spiritual Zion, then, is the church, in which Christ has been set as king by God the Father, which is in the whole world, in which there is the one Catholic Church. For that Zion is the church the most holy prophet David testifies in another place too, saying: "Praise your God, O Zion, who has strengthened the bars of your gates, he has blessed your sons within you." By the valleys of the mountain we understand the individual provinces of the whole world; and since Isaiah sees, not on the whole mountain but in one valley, that is, Africa alone, in which alone, though the temples of God that existed were enough, your leaders wanted to make others, in which alone the walls were thrown down, and the water of the holy pool was diverted, and novelty was instituted by you against antiquity, and human water was set up against divine: God both questions and rebukes all this in the valley of Mount Zion, saying: "Why has this happened to you? Because you have gone up into superfluous temples. Every city is filled with people shouting. Your wounded are not wounded by the sword, and your dead are not dead in war. They are in error from the least to the greatest; all your princes wander on the mountains; they have been turned to flight, and those who were captured are heavily bound, and your stronger ones have fled far away. Let me go; I will weep bitterly; no one will be able to console me in the crushing of the daughter of my race. And the Elamites will go up with quivers" (in the Latin language the Elamites are called the troops of the camp); and he continued, saying: "Your inner rooms will be brought out to the public, and the secrets of the house of Israel will be laid bare." This was done in Africa; and why it was all done God showed, when he charges it to you, saying: "Because you turned the water of the old pool to your city, and threw down the walls of Jerusalem to make another fortification, and set the water between two fortifications, and would not look to the old pool, nor to him who created it from the beginning."

Now you see, brother Parmenian, that everything flows back to you, from whose leaders the cause of all these things was sown; then to Donatus of Carthage, by whose poison the business of unity appears to have been set in motion. In this I will show that its workers did nothing at our wish, nor out of their own malice, but because of causes and persons provoking and driving them, which Donatus of Carthage set up out of his own levity, while he strove to seem great. For who does not know this except you, since you are a foreigner and false things could have been told you? Or who can deny a thing to which all Carthage is the principal witness: that the emperor Constans did not at first send Paul and Macarius to bring about unity, but with alms, by which poverty, relieved through the individual churches, might breathe again, be clothed, fed and rejoice? When they came to Donatus, your father, and showed why they had come, he, inflamed with his usual fury, burst out in these words: "What has the emperor to do with the church?" And from the spring of his levity he poured out many curses, no less than once against Gregory, to whom he did not hesitate to write thus: "Gregory, stain on the senate and disgrace of prefects," and other such things; to which Donatus the prefect replied with episcopal patience. Copies of these letters are sung everywhere in the mouths of many. Already then he was planning, against the precepts of the apostle Paul, to insult the powers and kings, for whom, if he listened to the apostle, he ought to pray daily. For so the blessed apostle Paul teaches: "Pray for kings and powers, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life with them." For the state is not in the church, but the church is in the state, that is, in the Roman empire, which Christ calls Lebanon in the Song of Songs, when he says, "Come, my bride who has been found, come from Lebanon," that is, from the Roman empire, where there are holy priesthoods and chastity and virginity, which are not among the barbarian nations, and, if they were, could not be safe. Rightly Paul teaches that we must pray for kings and powers, even if the emperor were one who lived as a pagan; how much more since he is a Christian, how much more since he fears God, how much more since he is devout, how much more since he is merciful, as the matter itself proves! For he had sent ornaments for the houses of God, he had sent alms for the poor, nothing to Donatus. Why, then, did he rage? Why was he angry, why did he reject what had been sent? And when those who had been sent said that they were going through the individual provinces and would give to those willing to receive, he said that he had sent letters ahead everywhere so that what had been brought should not be distributed to the poor anywhere. O what care for the wretched, what provision for the poor, what help for sinners! God cries out, saying, "I am he who made the poor and the rich"; not because he could not give to the poor too, but because, if he gave to both, the sinner could not find how to help himself. In short, it is written thus: "As water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving extinguishes sin." Certainly both are now with God, both he who wished to give and he who prevented it from being given. What if God now says to Donatus: "Bishop, what do you hold Constans to have been? If innocent, why would you not receive from an innocent man? If a sinner, why did you not allow him to give, for whose sake I made the poor?" Under this questioning, what will he be? Why did he labor, out of levity and fury, to obstruct so many poor? He had believed that he held the princedom of Carthage; and since above the emperor there is no one but God alone, who made the emperor, while Donatus exalted himself above the emperor he had, as it were, already gone beyond the bounds of men, so that he thought himself almost God, not man, not revering him who after God was feared by men. In short, through Ezekiel the Holy Spirit rebukes the prince of Tyre, that is, the prince of Carthage, when he speaks through the prophet in these words: "Son of man, speak against the prince of Tyre: Thus says the Lord God: Because your heart has been exalted and you have said, I am God." That Tyre is Carthage Isaiah first proves, in whom we read "the vision concerning Tyre," and it follows, "Wail, ships of Carthage." Then secular literature too declares that Tyre is Carthage; and if there is another city called by this name, nothing is seen to have been done in it of what is plainly committed at Carthage. "Speak," says God, "against the prince of Tyre"; he does not say one must speak against some secular king, nor to many, but to one, that is, to Donatus the bishop. For it was not right for the prophet Ezekiel, whom I just named, to compare to a prince any but a bishop, who, as we said, claimed for himself the princedom of Carthage, who exalted his heart and seemed to himself superior to men and would have wished to have all, even his colleagues, under him; from whose offerings he never deigned to receive, in which matter faith is the witness, and God and his Christ, and the complaints of many, to whom he did this injury in that very fellowship, that he would do something or other alone in secret and afterward mingle perfunctorily with the rest. In this way his heart was exalted, so that he seemed to himself no longer a man but a god. In short, in the mouth of the people he was seldom called bishop, but was called Donatus of Carthage. And rightly he deserved to be called and rebuked as prince of Tyre, that is, of Carthage, because he was first of the bishops, as if he were more than the rest; and while he wished to have nothing human, he exalted his heart, not as the heart of a man but as the heart of a god, while he desired to be something more than other men. To him God continues, saying: "You have said, I am God": because, though he did not use this word, he either did or allowed what would fulfil the effect of this word. He raised his heart so that he thought no man could be compared to him, and from the swelling of his mind he seemed to himself higher; because whatever is above men is already as it were a god. Then, though bishops ought to serve God, he exacted so much from his bishops that all revered him with no less fear than God; that is how he seemed to himself to be God. And though men usually swear by God alone, he allowed men to swear by him as if by God. If any man had erred in this, he ought to have forbidden it; since he did not forbid it, he seemed to himself to be God. Then, though before his pride all who believed in Christ were called Christians, he dared to divide the people with God, so that those who followed him were no longer called Christians but Donatists; and whenever some came to him from some African province, he did not ask what human custom always requires, to inquire something about the rains, about peace, about the year's harvest; but to everyone who came these were his words: "What is being done among you about my party?" As if he had now truly divided the people with God, so as to speak fearlessly of his party. For from his time down to today, whenever any action about church affairs has been held in the public courts, each one questioned has spoken thus for the record, saying that he was of the party of Donatus; of Christ they were silent. And what shall I say of the clergy, when the petitions are read, which we mentioned in the first book, sent long ago to Constantine and subscribed, which contained the names of the bishops thus: "Given by Capito and Nasutius, Dignus and the other bishops of the party of Donatus"? And they were certainly petitioning against the bishops who, since they were not in the party of Donatus, dwelt in the Catholic Church of Christ. And since the bishop was not among his fellow bishops and would not be a man among men, it is plain that he exalted his heart and seemed to himself to be God. For your ordainers too, brother Parmenian, whose names you know well (and you are not ignorant of where they were, and who petitioned whom, and what sort of request they made, so that they might return and you might return with them), as we too have learned, when they cited before the African judges the same petitions they had given, in which it is written, "Given by the bishops of the party of Donatus": what will they answer at that imminent divine judgment, who in this world confessed in another way that they were not of the church of Christ, who gladly professed that they were of the party of Donatus, when it is written in the gospel, Christ saying, "Whoever confesses me before men, I will confess him before my Father"? These confessed Donatus, not Christ. And lest this proof be small, which plainly concerns his own person, there is added also that testimony with which the rebuke mentioned above closes, that God said he would not die in his own land; and that this was so is known to all. He dwelt in the house of God and was in the heart of the sea; everywhere we read the sea as the world; since he was not only in the love of some Christians, but because of his knowledge of secular literature he was also in the heart of the sea, that is, in the love of the world, and from his knowledge he seemed wise to himself. But God emptied this wisdom of his, when he says, "Are you wiser than Daniel?" How rightly and well was his wisdom humbled, by which he thought himself wiser than Daniel in refusing the king's gifts, when he would not receive what was plainly sent by a Christian emperor! And he seemed to himself either a new Daniel or one preferred to Daniel in wisdom, because Daniel too, when he was once pressed by King Belshazzar to receive gifts, that is, a ring, a necklace and the rest, is read to have said, "Let your gifts be with you, O king." And he answered wisely, and did not insult the king, and did not condemn what was offered but put it off; not as Donatus did, who both said all the insults he could against Constans and rejected what Constans had sent to the poor. But holy Daniel was found wise in not receiving the gifts offered on that day. For what was asked of him was still in heaven, and it would be the part of a foolish man to receive as it were the wage for a thing he did not yet have in his power; therefore he would not receive for the time the gifts offered on that day. In short, when God showed him what he should tell the king named above, he reported it to Belshazzar, and what he seemed to have refused before, he afterward gladly received. Rightly God rebukes the prince of Tyre, Donatus, when he says, "Are you wiser than Daniel?" But O how far is the presumption of Donatus from the person of Daniel! For what Belshazzar was giving, he was giving to Daniel, not to the poor; what Constans, the Christian emperor, had then sent, he had sent to the poor, not to Donatus. In short, he says, "The wise have not taught you their wisdom," because you would not learn from Solomon what he says: "Hide bread in the heart of the poor, and he himself will pray for you"; because he would not learn this either from Daniel himself, the counsel he gave Nebuchadnezzar on how one who had offended God might make satisfaction: "And you, O king," he says, "hear my counsel and let it please you: redeem your sins by alms, and your iniquities by mercies to the poor." Daniel persuades a sinful and sacrilegious king to give alms; Donatus, who deserved to be rebuked, prevented the Christian emperor Constans from being merciful. He is therefore rebuked because the wise did not teach him their wisdom, he who did not allow what had been sent by the king to be given through him. From this it is plain that Donatus was the source of the evil causes.

Whatever, then, could be done harshly in bringing about unity, you see, brother Parmenian, to whom it ought to be charged. You say that soldiers were requested by us Catholics; if so, why did no one then see an armed soldier in the proconsular province? Paul and Macarius were coming to distribute to the poor everywhere and to exhort each to unity; and when they were drawing near the city of Bagai, then the other Donatus, as we said above, bishop of that city, wishing to put an impediment in the way of unity and an obstacle before the men named above who were coming, sent heralds through the neighboring places and all the markets, calling the Circumcellions "agonistici", and invited them to run together to that place. And at that time their gathering was demanded, whose madness a little before appeared to have been impiously inflamed by the bishops themselves. For when men of this kind were roaming through the various places before unity, when Axido and Fasir were called by these madmen "leaders of the saints", no one could be secure in his possessions. Bonds of debt had lost their force; no creditor at that time had freedom to collect; all were terrified by the letters of those who boasted that they were leaders of the saints, and if there was delay in obeying their orders, a mad multitude suddenly flew to the spot, and with terror going before, creditors were hemmed in by dangers, so that those who deserved to be entreated for what they had lent were driven by fear of death into humble entreaties. Each hastened to lose even very large debts, and it was reckoned a gain to have escaped their injuries. Even journeys could not be quite safe, for masters thrown out of their carriages ran like slaves before their own slaves, who sat in their masters' places. By their judgment and command the condition of masters and slaves was reversed. Hence, when odium then fell on the bishops of your party, they are said to have written to Taurinus, then count, that men of this kind could not be corrected in the church; they asked that they receive discipline from the count named above. Then Taurinus, in answer to their letters, ordered armed soldiers to go through the markets where the fury of the Circumcellions used to roam. At the place called Octava very many were killed and many were cut down, whose bodies can be counted to this day by the whitewashed altars or tables. When some of their number began to be buried in basilicas, the presbyter Clarus at the place called Subbula was compelled by his bishop to undo the burial. From this it was revealed that what was done had been ordered to be done, since not even burial in the house of God was allowed. Afterward their multitude grew strong again. So Donatus of Bagai found from where he might hire a raging crowd against Macarius. Of the same kind were those who, out of desire for a false martyrdom, hired assassins to their own destruction; of the same kind also those who threw themselves headlong from the peaks of high mountains, casting away their worthless lives. Behold of what kind of number the other bishop Donatus had made cohorts for himself! Frightened by this, those who were carrying the treasures to distribute to the poor found in such necessity the counsel of asking the count Silvester for armed soldiers, not to do violence to anyone through them, but to prevent the violence arranged by the bishop Donatus named above. For this reason it came about that armed soldiers were seen. Whatever followed, see to whom it should or can be ascribed. They had there an infinite crowd of those summoned, and it is plain that a suitable supply of food had been prepared; they had made a basilica into a kind of public granary, waiting for those to come on whom they could exercise their fury; and they would have done whatever their madness dictated, had not the presence of the armed soldiers prevented it. For when quartermasters were sent ahead of the coming soldiers, as is usual, they were not suitably received, against the precepts of the apostle, who says, "Honor to whom honor, toll to whom toll, tribute to whom tribute; owe no one anything." Those who had been sent with their horses were beaten, sent by those whose names you have fanned with the fan of odium. They themselves were the teachers of their own injury, and by the injuries they had done first they themselves taught what they might suffer. The soldiers, roughly handled, returned to their units, and what two or three had suffered, all resented. All were stirred up; not even their officers could restrain the angry soldiers. So that was done which you have recalled as done to the discredit of unity. These and your other things have both their causes and the persons I have shown to be responsible. This we did not even see, but heard of with you. If hearing makes men guilty, we hold you as accomplices, since you heard likewise; if hearing is free of the deed, what was done by others at your provocation ought not to be charged to us. You lodge complaints in order: that under Leontius and under Ursacius very many were injured; that under Paul and Macarius some were killed; that by their successors some or other were proscribed for a time. What has this to do with us, with the Catholic Church? Whatever you have charged, you did, who would not gladly receive the peace commended by God, valuing the inheritance of schism more than the precepts set forth by the Savior. You have accused the workers of unity: condemn unity itself, if you can! For I think you do not deny that unity is the highest good. What does it matter to us what kind of men the workers were, as long as what was worked is plainly good? For wine too is trodden and pressed by sinful workers, and so from it a sacrifice is offered to God; oil also is made by dirty men and some who live badly and speak foully, and yet it is used without distinction for flavor, for light, and even in the holy chrism.

You say that the workers of unity were evil; perhaps with the will of God, who is sometimes pleased even by what he could have forbidden. For some evils are done evilly, some evils are done well. The robber does evil evilly; the judge does evil well when he punishes what the robber sinned. For this is God's voice: "You shall not kill"; and it is his voice too: "If a man is found sleeping with a woman who has a husband, you shall kill them both." One God and two different voices. In short, when Phinehas, the priest's son, found an adulterer with an adulteress, he raised his hand with the sword and stood in doubt between two voices of God. From one side there sounded to him, "You shall not kill"; from the other there sounded, "You shall kill them both." If he struck, he would sin; if he did not strike, he would offend. He chose the better sin, to strike. And perhaps there were some who would have wished to brand the avenger of this deed as a murderer. But to show that some evils are done well, God spoke, saying, "Phinehas has soothed my anger." And the killing pleased God because the adultery was punished. What if what you say you suffered pleased God now too, since you would not have unity with the whole world and with the shrines of the apostles, which is pleasing to God?

Unwillingly I am forced in this place to mention also those men whom I would rather not, whom you place among the martyrs, by whom the men of your communion swear as if by a unique religion. I would like to pass them over in silence, but the claim of truth does not allow itself to be silenced; and from these very names a rabid odium barks without consideration against unity, and some, scorning it, think unity should be accused or fled, because Marculus and Donatus are said to have been killed and to have died. As if no one at all deserved to be killed in God's vengeance! No one should have been hurt by the workers of unity; but neither should the divine commands have been despised by the bishops, who are commanded: "Seek peace and you will obtain it," and again, "How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity," and again, "Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Those who neither wished to hear this gladly nor chose to do it devoutly, whatever they could suffer, if being killed is an evil, are themselves the cause of their evil.

But Macarius, as you say, seems to you to deserve accusation, because you think he could have done this without the will of God. You have ancient defendants of this kind: accuse first Moses himself, the lawgiver, who, as he came down from Mount Sinai, almost before the tablets of the law had been set out, on which was written "You shall not kill," ordered three thousand men to be killed in one moment. Put off Macarius a little; first summon to judgment Phinehas, the priest's son, whom I mentioned a little before, if indeed you find any judge besides God. For what you accuse in his person was praised by God, because it was done in zeal for God. Suppress for a while the words that envy dictates against Macarius. Run back first to the prophet Elijah, who at the brook Kishon, obeying the will of God, killed four hundred and fifty. But perhaps you will say that those were justly killed, these unworthily. Vengeance never follows unless its cause has gone before. Moses avenged, as we said; Elijah avenged; Phinehas avenged; and you will not allow that Macarius avenged. If those who are said to have been killed had committed no offense, let Macarius be guilty in this, that he acted alone, without our knowledge but at your provocation: why is odium stirred against us, when the deeds are another's? And the cause is in you, because it is said to have happened on account of you, who were outside (though you seem to be outside even now), not on account of us, who dwell within and have never withdrawn from the root. But since we have spoken in order of the persons named above, let us see why Moses ordered three thousand men to be killed, why Phinehas two, and why Elijah four hundred and fifty, why Macarius two, whose names, as I said above, you fan daily with the fan of odium. It is plain that they took vengeance on those by whom the divine command was despised. For "You shall not make yourself a carved image" is God's voice, and "You shall not commit adultery" is the voice of the same God; "You shall not sacrifice to idols" the same God spoke, and "You shall not make a schism" and "Seek peace and you will obtain it" is the precept of the same God. In the times of Moses the people of Israel worshiped the head of a calf, which a sacrilegious flame had cast for them; therefore three thousand men deserved to be killed, because God's voice was plainly despised. Phinehas struck the adulterers with one blow: he deserved to be praised by God because he killed the despisers of the divine precepts. And the four hundred and fifty whom Elijah is read to have killed were killed because, against the command of God, in that they were false prophets, they had despised the precepts of God. And those in whose names you accuse Macarius are not far from the false prophets; for God said that you would be false prophets, which we shall prove in the next place; and since they would not regard peace, so as not to dwell in unity with their brothers, they stubbornly resisted against the precepts and against the will of God. So you see that similar things were done by Moses, Phinehas, Elijah and Macarius, since by all of them the precepts of the one God were avenged. But I see you in this place separating the times, so that the times before the gospel were one thing, those after the gospel another; in which you can say, because it is written, that Peter had now to sheathe the sword with which he had cut off the ear of the priest's servant, a servant whom Peter, as a devoted man, could have killed. But Christ had come to suffer, not to be defended; and if Peter had carried out his intention, in the passion of Christ a servant would have appeared to be avenged, not the people set free.

For Macarius did not draw the sword that Peter had put back in its sheath (God proves this when he speaks to the valley of Zion, saying, "Your wounded are not wounded by the sword"); or else prove that anyone was struck by a sword at that time. Then he says, "Your dead are not dead in war." Therefore you should take care that it is not rash to call them martyrs who felt no war against Christians. For nothing of the kind was done or heard of that is usually said or done in a war against Christians, since a persecution is called a war, which was carried out under two beasts out of the four that Daniel saw coming up from the sea. The first was like a lion: this was the persecution under Decius and Valerian. The second like a bear: another persecution, which was under Diocletian and Maximian, at which time there were also impious judges waging war on the Christian name, among whom, more than sixty years ago, in the proconsular province was Anulinus, in Numidia Florus. It is known to all what their ingenious cruelty did. The war declared against Christians raged; in the temples of the demons the devil triumphed; the altars smoked with unclean savors, and since some could not come to the sacrilegious rites, they were forced to offer incense wherever they were. Every place was a temple for crime; old men near death were defiled; infancy was polluted unknowing; little ones were carried by their mothers to the abomination; parents were forced to commit bloodless murders of their children; some were forced to overturn the temples of the living God, others to deny Christ, others to burn the divine laws, others to offer incense. Not even you yourselves will be able to invent that any of these things was done by Macarius. Under the persecutor Florus Christians were forced to the temples of the idols; under Macarius the sluggish were driven to the basilica. Under Florus it was said that Christ should be denied and idols prayed to; on the contrary, under Macarius all were urged that the one God be prayed to alike in the church by all. So, since you see that there was no war against Christians (and God mentions that some died without war, when he says, "And your dead are not dead in war"), and that those can be doubtful martyrs who were not called either to the sacrilegious rites or to unclean incense or to the denial of the name of God; and since there is no passage to martyrdom except through confession, how do you call them martyrs who were not confessors? Or which of them was forced to deny and confessed Christ? If, then, there can be no martyrdom without the confession of Christ's name, and no one confessed, and what you say was done was done in vengeance for God's precepts, and you prove nothing done by us, since God both said that what happened would happen so, and his precepts were avenged: see that it is not only vain but also superstitious to place those who died without war where those are who, confessing Christ, were able to die for the name of God. Or if you want them to be martyrs, prove that they loved peace, in which are the first foundations of martyrdom, or loved the unity pleasing to God, or had charity with their brothers. For that all Christians are brothers we both proved in the first little book and without doubt shall prove in the fourth. Those whom you say should be called martyrs would not acknowledge their brothers; they had no charity. Nor let it be said as an excuse that they would not communicate with traitors, since it has been most plainly proved that these same men were sons of traitors. There is, then, no excuse, because it is most plainly established that they did not have charity, without which no martyrdom can either be named or exist, without which the greatest and most commanding power lacks effect, without which the knowledge of all tongues avails nothing, without which even the fellowship of angels can do nothing, as the apostle Paul says: "If I have in me the power to command mountains to move from place to place, and speak with the tongues of all nations, even of angels, and hand over my body to the flames, and do not have charity in me, I am nothing; but I will be a tinkling brass in the desert," so that the work of the voice is lost where no hearing meets it. If so great a man, if blessed Paul, if the vessel of election, though in commanding power and the fellowship of angels, declares that he is nothing unless he has charity, see whether those who were deserters of charity and could suffer something for that same desertion should not be called martyrs, but deserve another name.

The whole world rejoices in Catholic unity, except a part of Africa, in which a fire was kindled from a spark. You complain that some things or other were committed by the workers of unity. Italy does not complain of this, nor Gaul, nor Spain, nor Pannonia, nor Galatia, nor Greece, nor Asia with its many provinces. Since nothing there needed to be corrected, no corrector was sent there; since nothing there had been torn, no, so to speak, mender was sent there. And here in Africa, while the people had long remained in unity, the garment was whole; it was torn by the jealous hand of the enemy. The pieces hung, as it were, from the one origin of the garment, and the branches coming from one root were divided from each other. Why does one part set itself before the other part? Why does one piece raise itself above the other piece, when it cannot prove itself better? For what if the despised piece should say: "Why do you raise yourself so much? Did we not grow up equal, were we not in the hands of the makers together, were we not cleaned alike at the fuller's? The enemy wished to cut us off from each other; the adversary wished to deform our beauty. In part of the garment we are still one, but we hang in different directions." For what is torn is divided in part, not wholly, since it is rightly established that for us and for you the ecclesiastical way of life is one, and if the minds of men quarrel, the sacraments do not quarrel. In short, we too can say: "We believe alike, and we have been sealed with one seal, and we were not baptized otherwise than you; we read the divine testament alike, we pray to one God alike; the Lord's Prayer is one with us and with you." But since, as we said above, the part was torn and the parts hung on this side and that, mending was necessary. And yet the craftsman or worker in this matter, while he wishes to bring the garment back to its old appearance, pricks the neighboring threads. The mender displeases you, who wounds while he heals the tear; let him displease you who caused it that the mender could do wrong. And the things you say were committed against you by the workers of unity either belong to your parents, for whose sake they were done, or come down from the will of God; we, however, are strangers to them.

What if, though harsh, they appear, as we said, to have been committed with the will of God? For we read in the prophet Ezekiel of the whitewashed wall, which God threatened with storm, rain, catapult stones and accusations: "There will be," he says, "false prophets, who will build a ruinous wall, saying, Peace, peace; and where is peace?" Remember how long ago the members of mother church were pulled apart from each other by you. For you could not lead astray each household all at once. Either the wife went away and the husband stayed, or the parents were led astray and the children would not follow, or the brother stood firm while the sister went over. By your persuasions both bodies and the names of family affection were divided; and you could not leave out what is prescribed. Certainly you said, "Peace be with you," while God says against you, "Peace, and where is peace?" That is to say: "Why do you greet with what you do not have? Why do you name what you have exterminated? You greet with peace, who do not love peace." "These," he says, "build a ruinous wall." The house of God is one; those who went outside and wished to make a party made a wall, not a house, because there is no other God to dwell in another house. Therefore the false prophets are said to have made a wall, in which, if a door is placed, whoever enters is outside. Nor can one wall have a cornerstone, which stone is Christ, receiving in himself two peoples, one from the Gentiles, the other from the Jews, who joins both walls with the bond of peace. For as many advantages as a house has, so many disadvantages has a wall: a house guards what is shut in, beats back the storm, sheds the rain, does not admit robber or thief or beast; so too the Catholic Church embraces all the sons of peace in her lap and bosom. On the contrary, the wall that has been built ruinous neither holds a cornerstone, and it has a door to no purpose; it does not guard what is shut in, it is soaked by the rain, beaten by storms, and can neither keep out the robber nor stop the thief who comes. A wall is part of a house, but it is not a house; and your party is like a church, but it is not the Catholic Church. "And they whitewash it," he says: that is, that you think yourselves alone holy. You complain that you suffered some things without us; so it is plain that you alone suffered something, because the time of peace is one thing, the time of persecution another. If you think it a persecution, say what all the provinces in which the Catholic Church is established suffered with you? But since it was vengeance, not persecution, the wall alone suffered, which God threatened with storm, rain, catapult stones and accusations. For thus he spoke: "Why have you built a ruin? Why have you whitewashed it? Why have you plastered it? This is against my will, says the Lord." The times of Leontius, Ursacius, Macarius and the rest, whoever they were, displease you. Correct the will of God, if you can, who said: "I will rise against the wall with my anger, and I will send a great storm and rain, floods and catapult stones, and I will strike the ruinous wall, and its joints will be loosened." But lest any of you say, "If unity is good, why could it not last when it was so often made?": because the matter itself was so ordered by God, who threatened storm, rain, stones and accusations, and these four things could not happen at one time. First there was the storm under Ursacius: the wall was shaken but did not fall, so that the rain might have something to work on. The rain followed under Gregory: the wall was soaked but not softened, so that the stones might have something to work on. After the rain followed the stones under the workers of unity: the wall was scattered, but it repaired itself again from its foundations. Three things have now been done: accusations are due to you, but how and when, he knows whom it pleased to announce these things through us.

And so that no one should doubt this meaning, God added, saying: "What I say is not about mud or brick or wall, but about the false prophets who lead my people astray." See to which party this word "lead astray" applies. All were with us; you rushed in when we were absent; but to have those you wanted to have, you could only lead astray, and what the words of your seduction are is known to all. It is yours to say, "Look behind you"; yours to say, "Redeem your souls"; yours to say to faithful men and to clergy, "Be Christians." But when you say, "Look behind you," you act against the gospel, where it is said, "No one who holds the handle of the plow and looks behind him will enter the kingdom of heaven." And do you want to know what the one deserved who looked behind him, and what the one who looked ahead? Remember the fugitives from Sodom, Lot and his wife: she, looking behind her, was changed into a pillar of salt; he who looked ahead escaped. What is it, then, that you say, "Look behind you"? For when you say, "Redeem your souls," where did you buy them, to sell them? Who is that angel or other who holds a market of souls? When you say, "Redeem your souls," you renounce the Redeemer, since Christ alone is the redeemer of souls, which the devil possessed before his coming. These Christ our Savior redeemed with his blood, as the apostle says, "For you have been bought with a great price." It is plain that all have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Christ did not sell those whom he redeemed; souls bought by Christ could not be sold, so as to be redeemed again by you, as you wish. Or how can one soul have two masters? Or is there another redeemer? What prophets announced that another would come? What Gabriel spoke again to another Mary? What virgin gave birth again? Who did new or other mighty works? If there is no one but the one who redeemed the souls of all believers, what is it you say, "Redeem your souls"? Now what kind of thing is it that you say to Christian men, even clergy, "Be Christians"? And with a kind of wonder you dare to say to each one, "Gaius Seius, Gaia Seia, are you still a pagan?" Him who has professed that he has turned to God you call a pagan; him who was dipped, whether by us or by you, not in our name nor in yours but in the name of Christ, you call a pagan (for there are some who were baptized by you and afterward passed over to our communion); him who has prayed to God the Father through his Son before the altar you call a pagan. For whoever has believed has believed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and you call him a pagan after his profession of faith. If any Christian, God forbid, has sinned, he can be called a sinner; he cannot be a pagan again. But you want all these things to be of no account; and if the one you lead astray consents to you, one consent and the stretching out of your hand and a few words now make for you a Christian out of a Christian, and that man seems a Christian to you who has done what you want, not one whom faith has brought.

And if assent to your seduction is given a little slowly, you do not lack those arguments either, with which you can persuade even the unwilling of what you want, as if easily, when you say that it was heard from the mouth of those who had long been in your fellowship that whoever tasted or received of the sacrifice of the arriving unity would seem to taste of an idol sacrifice. We do not deny that this was said by some, who, it is plain, afterward did with complete confidence what they had a little before been frightening the people away from. But one reason drew out these words, another invited them to the deed. For a false opinion had filled their ears and those of all the people, so that those who are reported to have said this said it. For it was said at that time that Paul and Macarius would come to be present at the sacrifice, so that, when the altars were solemnly prepared, they would bring out an image, which they would first place on the altar, and so the sacrifice would be offered. When ears received this, minds were struck, and the tongue of each was moved to these words, so that everyone who had heard it said, "Whoever tastes of it tastes of an idol sacrifice." And it would have been rightly said, if a like truth had followed such a rumor. But when the men named above came, nothing of the kind was seen of what the rumor had falsely said a little before. Christian eyes saw nothing to shudder at; sight proved none of the things by which hearing had been disturbed. Purity was seen, and the solemn custom was observed in its usual rite, since they saw that nothing in the divine sacrifices was changed or added or taken away. The peace commended by God pleased those who wished it; therefore none of those who passed over from your fellowship to peace should be blamed. Those who had been disturbed by a sinister opinion were strengthened by simple and pure truth. Nor let it be said that they made sweet from bitter or bitter from sweet. The bitterness that seemed to have been announced by falsehood settled and stayed in the bosom of opinion; the truth seen by the eyes, having its sweetness in itself, was separated from the bounds of false opinion. So neither was sweet made from bitter nor bitter from sweet, because what was seen is both other and outside, and what seemed to be heard had been far off. Therefore you see that you made an insult without cause, inventing at will what you wanted, so as to tear Macarius and Taurinus. You have lost your reputation for wisdom, since envy corrupted your senses and closed the approaches of understanding to you.

It has been shown openly and clearly, brother Parmenian, that the slander you made against us about the request for soldiers was in vain. Learn this too: that what you said about the oil and the sacrifice of the sinner applies rather to you. For the sinner is not to be whoever you wish. For we too could imitate your presumption and say that you are sinners. But let presumption cease on both sides: let none of us condemn another by human judgment. It is God's part to know the guilty, his to pass sentence. Let all of us men be silent; let God alone point out the sinner, whose sacrifice is a dog's victim and whose oil strikes fear into one who wishes to be anointed.

Recognize, brother Parmenian, the most open truth of this matter, if indeed you deign to hear gladly this name of brotherhood so often spoken by me. Suppose it is distasteful to you; still it is necessary for us, lest perhaps, as this name is proved, we should seem guilty by keeping silent. For if you do not wish to be a brother, I begin to be impious if I keep silent about this name. For you are our brothers and we yours, as the prophet says: "Has not one God created you and one father begotten you?" For you cannot fail to be brothers, since it was said to all, "You are gods and all sons of the Most High." Both we and you have received one precept, in which it was said, "Call no one on earth your father, for one is your Father in heaven." Our Savior Christ alone was born Son of God; but both we and you were made sons of God in one way, as it is written in the gospel: "The Son of God came: as many as received him, he gave them power to become sons of God, who believe in his name." We have both been made so and are called so; you have been made so and are not called so, because you will not be peacemakers or hear the Son of God himself saying, "Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Christ, coming, called God and man back into peace, "and he made both one, taking away the middle hedge of the wall." You will not have peace with us, that is, with your brothers. For you cannot fail to be brothers, whom one mother church begot from the same womb of the sacraments, whom God the Father received in the same way as adopted sons. Hence Christ, foreknowing this time, since it was going to happen that you would today be at variance with us, gave such commands for prayer that unity might remain at least in prayer, so that those whose parties would disagree might join their prayers. We pray for you because we wish to, and you for us even when you do not wish to. Or else let each of you say, "My Father, who are in heaven," and "Give me today my daily bread," and "Forgive me my sins, as I also forgive my debtor." So, if what has been commanded cannot be changed, you see that we are not wholly separated from each other, since we pray for you willingly and you pray for us even unwillingly. You see, brother Parmenian, that the bonds of holy brotherhood between us and you cannot be wholly broken.

Now we must look for the sinner whose oil could be feared or whose sacrifice rejected. Let human suspicion cease; let the presumption of both parties be silent; let God alone point out who the sinner is. We read in the forty-ninth psalm, after the second pause, that the Holy Spirit said, "But to the sinner God said." Here the whole attention of the mind must be turned, and we must see who the sinner is. For if after what is read, "But to the sinner God said," there followed words such as these: "You took up arms, you threw yourself into the camp, you stood against the enemy in the battle line," the soldier would have to fear, because he himself could seem the sinner. Or if it said, "You bought goods, you traveled abroad, you traded at markets, you sold for gain what you had bought," the merchant would have to fear, because he himself could seem the sinner. Or if it said, "You built a ship, fitted it with ropes, adorned it with sails, caught favorable winds to sail," the sailor would have to fear, because he himself could seem the sinner. Or if after what is read, "But to the sinner God said," these words followed: "Dissension and schism displeased you, you agreed with your brother and with the one church that is in the whole world, you communicated with the seven churches and the shrines of the apostles, you embraced unity," if the following reading contained this, we would have to fear; we could be the sinners. But when God says, "Why do you set forth my righteous decrees and take my covenant in your mouth? But you have despised discipline and cast my words behind you; sitting, you spoke against your brother, and you set a stumbling block against your mother's son. You saw a thief and ran with him, and you put your portion with adulterers": all these things are said to you. Clear yourselves of all these, if you can.

For discipline has been despised by you. Why do you recite the covenant, who do not keep the covenant in which the discipline is written that you will not keep? For you cannot say that you keep what you fight against. God says, "Seek peace and you will obtain it"; you have rejected peace: is that not despising discipline? In the gospel we read, "Peace on earth to men of good will"; you will have neither good will nor peace: is that not despising discipline? Likewise in the hundred and thirty-second psalm we read, "Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity"; you will not dwell in unity with your brothers: is that not despising discipline? Christ says in the gospel, "He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again"; you wash again by rebaptizing: is that not despising discipline? God says, "Do not touch my anointed ones, and do not lay your hand on my prophets"; you have stripped so many priests of God of their honors: is that not despising discipline? Christ says, "By this I know that you are my disciples, if you love one another"; you hate us, who are certainly your brothers, nor would you imitate the apostles, by whom even Peter who denied was loved: is that not despising discipline? You set forth the righteous decrees of God and take his covenant in your mouth. How do you argue "Seek peace" when you do not have peace? How do you recite the covenant and not keep the covenant in which discipline is written?

You were chosen to sit and teach the people, and you speak against us, who are surely your brothers, since, as I said above, one mother church begot us, one God the Father received us; and yet you set stumbling blocks against us by commanding individuals not to greet us, not to receive courtesy from us. Consider the words of your pride, consider your sermons, consider your commands; go over your acts too, and you will find that he who asked feared your oil. There is none of you who does not mix insults against us into his sermons, who does not begin with one thing and end with another. You begin the Lord's readings and develop your sermons into injuries against us; you bring forth the gospel and insult an absent brother; you pour hatreds into the minds of the hearers; by teaching you urge enmities; by saying all these things you set stumbling blocks against us. So it was said to each of you, "Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and you set a stumbling block against your mother's son." Since God rebukes the sinner and reproves the one who sits, it is plain that it was said specially to you, not to the people, who have no permission to sit in the church. You see, then, that it must without doubt be charged to you, when God says, "Sitting, you set stumbling blocks against your mother's son." That we have one mother I have proved so often already, nor can you deny it, you who set stumbling blocks against us, while some of you bring forth readings not understood, so as to take away even what is usually common among all, namely the duty of greeting. For some of you yourselves, in a perfunctory greeting, refuse the customary kisses, and many are taught not to say "Hail" to any of us, and they think this is commanded them from a reading, but one not understood, not knowing of whom the apostle said this: "With such do not even eat; do not say Hail to him; for their word creeps like a canker." He said this of heretics, whose teaching had begun in those times to be faulty, who by a subtle seduction of words corrupted the soundness of the faith with diseases creeping in secret: such as Marcion, who, from a bishop become an apostate, brought in two gods and two Christs; such as Praxeas, who argued that the Father suffered, not the Son; such as Valentinus, who tried to take the flesh away from Christ. Theirs is the word that had a canker to plague the members of the faith. Such too is the word of the Scorpian heretic, who denied that there ought to be martyrdoms. But let them keep their poisons to themselves, and let not the telling of them trouble even slightly the simple understanding of the hearers. It is his word, then, that must be avoided, lest it creep like a canker. This was said also of Arius, who tried to teach that the Son of God was made from no substance, not born of God; whose teaching, had it not been scattered at the council of Nicaea by three hundred and eighteen bishops, had entered the breasts of many like a canker. This was said of Photinus, a heretic of the present time, who dared to say that the Son of God was only a man, not God. It could be said of you too, because your word has brought no slight canker into the minds and ears of some. For yours is the word you have for the sons of peace, when you say: "You are lost; look behind you; your soul will perish; how long will you hold out?" Thus you have made penitents of the faithful, thus you have put to death the honors in priests. Behold, yours too is the word that creeps like a canker today, so that greeting and table fellowship are forbidden. What of this kind could our word do, who keep the sons of peace with simple teaching, do not lead strangers astray, and exterminate no one? It is plain, then, that you set stumbling blocks against us daily; and it would take long to run through all the ways in which you speak against us and all the kinds of stumbling blocks you set.

For when he says, "You saw a thief and ran with him," about what do you think this was said? Was it about a garment taken away or a purse stolen, or about some things whose removal makes gains or losses among men? Those things too are indeed forbidden; but in this reading God rebukes the thefts done to himself. You ask what thefts are done to God? They are found among you. God's possession is the throng of the faithful, from which the thief, the devil, longs daily to steal something, who wishes to corrupt in some part the morals of a Christian man or woman, and, if not the whole man, to snatch whatever he can of the man. When you saw such a thief doing violence against us, you helped him with your works. For it escapes no one that every man who is born, even if he is born of Christian parents, cannot be without an unclean spirit, which must be shut out and separated from the man before the saving bath. Exorcism does this, by which the unclean spirit is driven out and put to flight into desert places. The house in the believer's breast is made empty; the house is made clean; God enters and dwells there, as the apostle says, "You are the temple of God, and God dwells in you." And since each one is full of God, from whom the thief, the devil, strives to steal something, you, by rebaptizing, exorcize a faithful man and say to God who dwells there, "Accursed one, go out," so that what was said by God through the prophet Ezekiel is fulfilled: "And they cursed me among my people for a handful of barley and a morsel, to kill souls that ought not to die, while they announce vain seductions to my people." God therefore hears insults not due to him and deserts such a dwelling; and the man who had entered the church full of God goes out an empty vessel. The devil, who wished like a thief to steal something, helped by your works, sees that the whole has become his, from which he wished to take a little. So God said of you, "You saw a thief and ran with him." In short, so it is written in the gospel: "But when God has deserted a man, the vessel remains empty, and the unclean spirit, wandering hungry through desert places, says, My house is empty" (that is to say, "He who had shut me out has been shut out"), "I will return there and dwell; and he brings with him seven others more savage and will dwell there, and the last state of that man will be worse than the first." This is: "You saw a thief and ran with him, and you put your little portion with adulterers." He calls heretics adulterers, and their churches adulteresses, which Christ scorns and rejects in the Song of Songs, as if he said, "Why do you gather to me those I do not need? One is my beloved, one is my bride, one is my dove," that is, the Catholic Church, in which, though you could be in it, you chose by rebaptizing to have your little portion among the adulterers. And since it has been most plainly proved by divine testimony that you are sinners, it has also been shown that your supports have fought against you; for you had added in support the prophet in whom we read, "The sacrifice of the sinner is like one who sacrifices a dog." Recognize now with sorrow, if you have any shame, that you are sinners.

Learn this too, whose voice this is: "Let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head." For you did not understand whose voice this is: surely Christ's, who had not yet been anointed when he asked that the oil of the sinner should not defile his head. Not understanding this, you said that the prophet David feared the oil of the sinner. He who sang it had long since been anointed by Samuel; there was no reason for him to be anointed again. So it is the voice of Christ saying, "Let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head." These are prayers, not commands; they are desires, not precepts. For if it were a command, it would say, "The oil of the sinner shall not anoint my head." It is, then, the voice of the Son of God, fearing even then to meet the oil of a sinner, that is, of any man, because no one is without sin except God alone. Therefore his Son feared man's oil, because it would have been unseemly for God to be anointed by a man. Therefore he entreats the Father that he be anointed not by a man but by God the Father himself. The Son, then, asks; let us see whether the Father consented. The Holy Spirit indicates and makes this plain in the forty-fourth psalm, where he says to the Son himself: "The Lord your God will anoint you with the oil of gladness, otherwise than your fellows." His fellows were the priests and kings of the Jews, each of whom, it is plain, was anointed by men. But since the Son was to be anointed by the Father, God by God, according to what the Son asked and the Spirit announced as promised, the Father fulfilled it in the Jordan. When the Son of God, our Savior, came there to John, he was pointed out with these words: "Behold the Lamb of God, this is he who takes away the sins of the world." He went down into the water, not because there was anything in God to be cleansed, but because water had to go before the oil that was to come upon him, to begin, order and fulfil the mysteries of baptism. When he had been washed, while he was held in John's hands, the order of the mystery followed, and the Father fulfilled what the Son had asked and what the Holy Spirit had announced. Heaven was opened as God the Father anointed; the spiritual oil at once came down in the likeness of a dove and settled on his head and poured over him; the oil was spread, from which he began to be called Christ, when he was anointed by God the Father; and lest a laying on of a hand should seem lacking to him, the voice of God was heard from the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him." This, then, is what is read: "Let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head." Learn, even late, brother Parmenian, the account of the truth, since now is the time to find learning.

And what you said is read in Solomon the prophet, that "the sons of adulterers are incomplete" and that "bastard shoots cannot put down deep roots," can be understood as said simply. Hence if you make it a figure, you have excused real adulterers. But suppose it was said figuratively: this was said of heretics, among whom are false marriages of the sacraments, in whose beds iniquity is found, where the seeds have been corrupted to the destruction of faith. When Valentinus contends that the Son of God was in a phantom, not in flesh, he corrupted his own faith and that of his followers. The seed of the birth of those has been destroyed who did not believe that the Son of God was born in the flesh of the virgin Mary and suffered in the flesh.

For that too which you recall reading in the prophet Jeremiah, that heaven shuddered because the people of God did two evils, forsaking the fountain of living water and digging for themselves worn-out cisterns that could not hold water: you read it indeed, but would not understand it as it stands; arranging everything for the insult of Catholics out of zeal for accusing, you tried to bend it much to your own will. For if you think all things were said through the prophets so as to apply to our times, you have excused the Jews, of whom it is plain these things were said, who abandoned the living God, the true God, the God who had shown them benefits, and made idols for themselves, that is, worn-out cisterns that cannot hold water. In God an everlasting majesty overflows, as water abounds in a spring with copiously flowing veins; but idols, if they are not made, do not exist, and cisterns, if they are not dug, cannot have capacious hollows. A cistern cannot be hollowed without skill and iron tools, nor can an idol be made without a craftsman. In idols there is no natural power, but it is added and attached by men's error; a power is supposed in the idol that was not born there. The cistern is worn out by skill; its making is a harassing, so that it neither has water of itself nor can hold what it receives; so the idol too is nothing of itself and, while it is worshiped, is nothing. This is what God said, that his people did two evils, because they forsook the fountain of living water and made for themselves dug and worn-out cisterns. For the people of the Jews had deserted the true water, had not known the majesty of God, and had followed the defiled religion of idols. This is what God grieves over; this is what he says heaven shuddered at. For through the prophet Isaiah too there is the same grief of God, when he calls two elements to witness in this, saying: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth: I have begotten and raised sons, and they have forsaken me." Why did you say nothing about this reading, brother Parmenian? Or because water is not named here? For you are understood to have struck at the law out of zeal for accusing, so that wherever you read "water" written you gathered it with some tricks to stir up odium, and with a kind of dragnet of malice woven of arguments you have drawn everything that is good to yourself. For what is your understanding in this chapter of Jeremiah, when God cries out that he has been forsaken and cisterns dug in this way (he is angry for himself, not for his property; for the water of baptism is God's property, not God), and if you think he has been forsaken when those who were baptized with us were with you, so that your deserters would rightly seem to be coming to us? It has been proved, then, that what you said of the oil and the sacrifice of the sinner you said not against us but against yourselves.

Who the traitors of the law and the authors of the schism were we showed in the first book by the plainest documents; that the one true Catholic Church is with us we showed in the second; in the third we proved that what is said to have been done harshly has nothing to do with us; and we taught by divine evidence that you are rather the sinners. Now in this place we must speak of baptism, the matter in which the whole question now at issue consists, since your boldness has violated baptism, when you chose to repeat what Christ commanded to be done once. Nor do you deny this, brother Parmenian, since at the beginning of your treatise you said many things that are ours, for us and against you. For in comparing baptism you recalled that the flood happened once and that there was one circumcision for the Jewish people. And though you treated these things at the start of your speech, in the course of your treatise you forgot them, bringing in two waters; and, intending to speak in your arguments of true and false water, you foolishly laid down the beginning of your speech in an order that, by weakening, confirms the oneness of holy baptism. You wished to lay as a kind of foundation, from Jewish circumcision, that the baptism of Christians had been foreshadowed in the circumcision of the Hebrews; you defended the Catholic Church while you attacked it. For in the progress of your treatise you professed to empty one so as to seem to fill the other. When you speak, apart from the baptism of heretics, of one and another, though you tried to show that they are different, you cannot deny that they are two; and while you try to take away one of them, you labored to seem to make the second, as it were, the first. But circumcision was sent ahead as a figure before the coming of baptism, and you argued that among Christians there are two waters; then show also two circumcisions among the Jews, one better, the other worse. If you look for this, you will not be able to find it. The stock of Abraham, from which the Jews are reckoned, boasts of being marked with this seal. So the truth ought to follow such as its image was sent ahead. For God too, who wished to show that it should be a single thing afterward when the truth followed, did not wish anything to be taken from the ear or the finger, but that part of the body was chosen from which the foreskin, once removed, would make a saving sign in them, which cannot be done again. For done once it keeps salvation; if it were done again, it could bring destruction. So too the baptism of Christians, performed in the Trinity, confers grace; if it is repeated, it causes the loss of life. Why, then, did you see fit, brother Parmenian, to set forth a single thing and against it to compare two baptisms, though different, one true, the other false? For so you argued afterward that there are two waters, claiming the true one for yourselves and wishing to ascribe the lying one to us. After this you also mentioned the deluge; it was indeed an image of baptism, that the whole defiled world, the sinners being drowned, might be cleansed to its former face by the intervening washing. But since you were going to say afterward that, apart from the diseased fonts of the heretics, there is also another water, that is, a lying one against the true: why did you wish to mention the deluge, which happened once? If that is so, first show two arks, even if not alike, and two unlike doves carrying different branches in their mouths, if you are going to prove a true and a false water. The only and true water, then, is that which is made holy not by place, not by person, but by the Trinity. And since you said there is also a lying water, learn this too, where you can find it: with Praxeas the Patripassian, who denies the Son entirely and contends that the Father suffered. And since the Son of God is the truth, as he himself testifies, saying, "I am the door and the way and the truth": if the Son of God is the truth, where he is not, there is a lie. Since with the Patripassian the Son is not, the truth is not either; and where the truth is not, there is lying water. So, even late, stop inventing crimes now, and do not transfer to Catholics what was said against the Patripassians. Now, since we have plainly shown that what you said about the flood and circumcision could be said for us and for you, it follows to show how you so spoke the praise of baptism that in it there is much for us and for you, yet something against you. For both is what is common to us and to you; and so to you too, because you came out from us. In short, both with you and with us there is one ecclesiastical way of life, common readings, the same faith, the very sacraments of faith, the same mysteries. You praised baptism well, then; for which of the faithful does not know that the single baptism is the life of virtues, the death of crimes, an immortal birth, the acquiring of the heavenly kingdom, the harbor of innocence, and, as you too said, the shipwreck of sins? These things are given to each believer not by the worker of that thing, but by the faith of the believer and by the Trinity.

Next you ask what you said against yourselves in praising baptism. Hear; but first confess what none of you will be able to deny. For you say that the Trinity counts for nothing where your presence has not been. If you disparage us, at least revere God, who is first in the Trinity, who with his Son and the Holy Spirit works and accomplishes all things, even there where no human person has been. But you, brother Parmenian, in praising water from the reading of Genesis, said that the waters first brought forth living souls. Could they have generated them of their own accord? Was not the whole Trinity there too? Surely God the Father was there, who deigned to command, who said, "Let the waters bring forth swimming things, flying things," and the rest. If what was made were made without a worker, God would say, "Bring forth, O waters." So the Son of God was there, who worked; the Holy Spirit was there, as we read: "And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters." I see nothing there as a fourth, nothing less than the three; and yet what the Trinity worked was born, and you were not there. Or if nothing ought to be permitted to the Trinity without you, call the fish back to their origin; plunge the birds already flying into the waves, if the Trinity ought to work nothing in your absence.

Since, then, you said both that there was one flood and that circumcision cannot be repeated, and we have taught that the heavenly gift is conferred on each believer by the Trinity, not by a man: why did you see fit to double baptism, not after us, but after the Trinity? About whose sacrament no slight contest has arisen, and it is doubted whether, after the Trinity, it is lawful to do this again in the same Trinity. You say, "It is lawful"; we say, "It is not lawful." Between your "it is lawful" and our "it is not lawful" the souls of the peoples waver and row to and fro. Let no one believe you, no one us: we are all contentious men. Judges must be sought. If Christians, they cannot be given from either side, because truth is hindered by partisanship. A judge must be sought from outside. If a pagan, he cannot know the Christian secrets; if a Jew, he is an enemy of Christian baptism. So on earth no judgment of this matter can be found: a judge must be sought from heaven. But why do we knock at heaven, when we have here a testament in the gospel? For here earthly things can rightly be compared with heavenly. It is as when any man has many sons: as long as the father is present, the father himself gives orders to each; a testament is not yet necessary. So too Christ, as long as he was present on earth (though he is not absent now either), commanded the apostles whatever was necessary for the time. But just as an earthly father, when he feels himself on the border of death, fearing that after his death the brothers will break the peace and quarrel, calls witnesses and transfers his will from his dying breast into tablets that will last long; and if a dispute arises among the brothers, one does not go to the tomb but seeks the testament, and he who rests in the tomb speaks silently from the tablets: so he whose testament it is, living, is in heaven; therefore let his will be sought in the gospel as in a testament. For by foreknowledge Christ had already seen as future what you are doing now. In short, when he washed his disciples' feet, the Son of God said thus to Peter: "What I am doing you do not know; but you will know afterward." By saying "you will know afterward" he pointed to these times. So among the other clauses of the testament he established this clause about water. When he washed his disciples' feet, if Peter had been silent while the rest were silent, he would have given only a pattern of humility and would have pronounced nothing about the sacrament of baptism. But when Peter refuses and does not allow his feet to be washed, Christ denies him the kingdom unless he accepts the service. But when mention was made of the heavenly kingdom, though a part of his body was asked for service, he offered his whole body for washing. Now be present, all you crowds and each of the Christian peoples; learn what is lawful. While Peter challenges, Christ teaches. Let him who doubts learn; for it is Christ's voice: "He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again, because he is wholly clean." And he pronounced about that washing which he had commanded to be celebrated from the Trinity, not that of the Jews or of the heretics, who, while they wash, defile, but about the holy water that flows from the springs of the three names. For so the Lord himself commanded, saying, "Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Of this washing he said: "He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again." He who said "once" forbade it to be done again, and he spoke of the thing, not of the person. For if there were a difference, he would say, "He who has been washed well once"; but since he did not add the word "well", he indicates that whatever has been done in the Trinity is well. That is why we receive simply those who come from you. When he says, "has no need to be washed again," this sentence is general, not particular; for if this were said to Peter alone, Christ would say, "Because you have been washed once, you have no need to be washed again." Therefore, whenever anyone baptized by you wishes to pass over to us, we receive him as he comes with complete simplicity, by this teaching and example. For far be it from us ever to exorcize a sound believer; far be it from us to call one already washed back to the font; far be it from us to sin against the Holy Spirit, for which crime pardon is denied both in the present and in the future age; far be it from us to repeat what is once, or to double what is one. For so it is written, as the apostle says: "One God, one Christ, one faith, one dipping." In short, you who strive so gladly, as it seems, to double baptism: if you give a second baptism, give a second faith; if you give a second faith, give also a second Christ; if you give a second Christ, give a second God. You cannot deny that God is one, lest you fall into Marcion's pits. So God is one; from the one God is one Christ. He who is rebaptized was already a Christian; how can he be called a Christian again? "One faith": in this place the single faith is separated from the errors of the heretics and from their varied faith. It is laid down for us too, against you who do again after "once", putting everything in the dowries, nothing in the sacraments, since this name of faith belongs to the believer, not to the worker. For whoever has believed God, whoever questioned him, has believed; and after his one "I believe" you demand a second "I believe." Next follows "one baptism," so that, since what is one is holy, through what is one it may be separated not only from the profane and sacrilegious baptisms of the heretics, but also so that what is one is not doubled, nor what is once repeated.

In celebrating this sacrament of baptism there are plainly three elements, which you too will not be able to increase, diminish or pass over. The first element is in the Trinity, the second in the believer, the third in the one who works. But they are not to be weighed each with equal balance. For I see two as necessary and one as quasi-necessary. The Trinity holds the principal place, without which the thing itself cannot be done; the faith of the believer follows it; then the person of the one who works is close by, which cannot be of like authority. The two former remain always unchangeable and unmoved; for the Trinity is always itself, faith is one in each, both always keep their force. But the person of the one who works is understood not to be able to be equal to the two former elements, because it alone appears changeable. You want there to be a difference of this same person between us and you, and thinking yourselves holier, you do not hesitate to put your pride before the Trinity, though the person of the one who works can be changed, the Trinity cannot. And though baptism ought to be desired by those who receive it, you propose that you are to be desired. Since you are workers among others, show what place you have in this same mystery and whether you can be of the same body. Baptism is a single name, under which lies its own body, to which body belong definite members, to which nothing can be added or taken away; if among these members a worker to be chosen is found, the whole body belongs to the one who works. All these members of this body are both always and once with one another and cannot be changed; but the workers change daily, in places and times and persons. For it is not one man who baptizes always or everywhere. In this work there were others long ago, now others, others will be afterward; the workers can be changed, the sacraments cannot be changed. Since, then, you see that all who baptize are workers, not lords, and that the sacraments are holy of themselves, not through men, why do you claim so much for yourselves? Why do you strive to shut God out of his own gifts? Allow God to bestow what is his. For a gift that is divine cannot be given by a man. If you think so, you strive to empty the voices of the prophets and the promises of God, by which it is proved that God washes, not man. Against you stands the prophet David, who says in the fiftieth psalm: "You will wash me and I shall be made whiter than snow"; likewise in the same psalm: "O God, wash me from my injustice and cleanse me from my offense." "Wash me," he said; he did not say, "Choose by whom I am to be washed." And the prophet Isaiah said thus: "For the Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion" (that Zion is the church we proved in the third book; so God washes the sons and daughters of the church); he did not say, "Those who think themselves holy will wash." Deign to let the prophets at least overcome you, or so recognize that man does not wash, but God. How long will you say, "He who does not have what to give, how does he give?" See that the Lord is the giver; see that God cleanses each one; for the filth and stains of the mind no one can wash except God, who is the maker of that same mind. Or if you think the washing is yours, say what the mind itself is like that is washed through the body, or what form it has, or in what place in a man it dwells: it has been denied to man to know this. So how do you think that you wash, you who do not know what it is you wash? It is God's to cleanse, not man's; for he himself promised through the prophet Isaiah that he would wash, when he says: "And if your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow." "I will make white," he said, not "I will cause to be made white." If God promised this, why do you want to render what you are permitted neither to promise nor to render nor to have? Behold, in Isaiah God promised that he would make white those affected by sins, not through a man. Return to the gospel, see what Christ promised for the salvation of the human race. When the Samaritan woman refused him water, then the Son of God said what refutes your presumptions: "Whoever drinks the water that I give," he says, "will not thirst for ever." "The water that I give," he says; he did not say, "that those will give who think themselves holy," as you seem to yourselves, but he said he would give it. He, then, is the one who gives; what is given is his. Why do you strive with all importunity to claim it for yourselves?

John the Baptist adds to this, who had come as forerunner of the Savior. When he was dipping many for repentance and the remission of sins, he announced that the Son of God would come; his words are these: "Behold, he comes who will baptize you." And yet we do not read that after John Christ rebaptized anyone. So as to what he said, "who will baptize you": Christ, coming at that time, dipped no one after John. It was promised for our times, that he himself would give what is given today, according to what he says: "Whoever drinks the water that I give will not thirst for ever." For when John's disciples said to their master, "Behold, the one you baptized is baptizing," he was indeed baptizing, but through the hands of the apostles, to whom he had given the laws of baptism. In short, we read in another place: "For he himself baptized no one, but his disciples." In this matter we are all his disciples, so that we may work, so that he may give, who promised that he would give. And yet, while John was baptizing countless thousands of men, with Christ already present, the servant was working and the Lord was at rest, before he gave the form of baptizing. For no short time thousands of men were dipped for repentance and the remission of sins. But no one had been dipped in the Trinity, no one yet knew Christ, no one had heard that there is a Holy Spirit. But when the time of fullness came, at a fixed time the Son of God gave the laws of baptism and gave the way by which one might go to the kingdom of heaven; and then he commanded, saying, "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." From that day what was commanded had to be done. He would not correct what had been done before the time, lest he give license to rebaptize, although John's baptism was one thing and Christ's is another. He wished John's baptism, before the law, to count as full, though it was not full; and yet he could not deny the kingdom of heaven to the thousands of men mentioned above, because they had believed in God, though they did not know the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. Hence the voice of the Son of God saying: "From the days of John until today the kingdom of God suffers violence, and those who do violence seize it." He said "do violence" because John was still baptizing. In short, since one time was before the precepts and another after the precepts, those who were baptized in the name of the Savior after the precepts entered the kingdom by the laws; those before the precepts did violence without law, but they were not shut out. So before the precepts John's baptism, though imperfect, was judged as perfect by him whom no one judges, and because a kind of boundary of the command had been fixed between the preceding and following times. When at Ephesus some were baptized in John's baptism after the precepts, the most blessed Paul, seeing them, asked whether they had received the Holy Spirit. They told him that they did not know whether there was a Holy Spirit, and he told them to receive the Holy Spirit after John's baptism. For they had been baptized as many had been baptized by John. But those who were baptized before the law belonged to pardon, because he who could give pardon was present; those who had not been bound by the laws were not wholly guilty. But those who are read to have been baptized at Ephesus with John's baptism after the law had erred in the sacrament after the laws, because the Lord's baptism had already been brought in and the servant's shut out; and therefore, because after the divine commands they ought to have gone into the kingdom by the laws, not by violence; for Christ had already fixed the limit of the time, by saying "from the days of John until today." After "today" what was lawful yesterday was no longer lawful. So do not flatter yourselves with the saying of the apostle Paul, who did not ask about the person of the worker but about the thing, whom the thing displeased, not the person. In short, he ordered the baptism of the Savior, so that those who did not know might learn that they had received not that, but something else. But what do you change? If you were able to change the thing, you would have done rightly, if indeed you did anything according to the law. Paul said, "In what baptism were you baptized?" and they said to him, "John's"; he persuaded them to receive the baptism of Christ. You do not say, "What did you receive?" but "From whom did you receive it?" and you persecute the persons of men and want to repeat what is once. Those who were baptized at Ephesus had believed for repentance and the remission of sins; it was rightly said to them that they should be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But what do you change in men who have already said that they believed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? Whether you ask the same thing or something else, you must be convicted of sinning, whether you ask what was not commanded or want to do what has already been done.

I return now to that saying of yours: "He who does not have what to give, how does he give?" Where does this saying come from, from what reading can it be recited? It is a saying gathered from the street, not read from a book: "He who does not have what to give, how does he give?" These words are not written in the law. For if, as you wish, man gives and God is idle, and if God is idle and everything that is to be given is with you, let conversion be to you; let those whom you baptize be dipped in your name. Blush before the most blessed Paul, who cries out and professes his own rejoicing: "Were you baptized in my name?" He rejoices that he baptized only two and one household; and you strive to rebaptize peoples, and rejoice that you have sinned and are sinning, saying, "What does he give who does not have what to give?" He in whom one believes gives what is believed, not he through whom one believes. In short, under John a countless multitude of men was baptized; prove that John either received or had what he might give. But while he worked, God gave, who does not fail in giving; and now, while all work, the works are human, but the gifts are God's.

Now how ridiculous is that which is always heard from you as if to your glory: that this gift of baptism belongs to the giver, not to the receiver. And would that you said this of God, who is the giver of this thing! But, what is foolish, you say that you are the givers. If so, let us and you each take a pagan. You, who call yourselves holy, ask the one you hold whether he renounces the devil and believes in the Lord; and let him say, "I will not." On the other side, let us sinners, as you would have it, ask another pagan whether he renounces the devil and believes in God, and the rest, and let him say, "I renounce and I believe," and the rest. Since you dip the unwilling one and we the willing one, let it be said which of them can belong to the grace of God. Surely, without doubt, he obtains it who believes, not he for whose will, as you say, your holiness substitutes. Recognize, even late, that you are workers; or if the thing itself is in the worker and not in itself, let some men claim this for themselves in their crafts, so that, since you provoke us so, we may compare human crafts with divine things too. When a precious color is dyed in, nature is often changed, as by the process a white fleece turns purple. So white wool passes into royal purple, as a catechumen into one of the faithful. Surely, as it begins to be what it was not, it ceases to be what it had been. The wool changes both color and name; and the man changes both his name and his mind. The effects must be considered, the things that produce them examined. You say that it was given by you that a man was made one of the faithful. If this is all yours, let the workman who is a craftsman in purple also say that he has the precious color in his hands and does not procure the precious dyes from the Ocean, unknown to many, by which fleeces dyed are promoted by color into an admirable dignity, and let him make purple by touch alone, without mixing in the blood of the fish. If, then, this workman cannot give color by touch alone, so neither can the workman of baptism give anything of himself without the Trinity. Such is this too about which the dispute now is. For in what the nations are to be baptized was commanded by the Savior; by whom they are to be baptized was not distinguished by any exception. He did not say to the apostles, "You do it; let others not do it." Whoever has baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit has fulfilled the work of the apostles. In short, we read in the gospel, John saying: "Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he does not follow with us." So Christ said: "Do not forbid him; for he who is not against you is for you." For it was commanded to the apostles themselves in such a way that the work was theirs, the sanctification the Trinity's; and they were not to dip in their own name, but in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So it is the name that sanctifies, not the work. Understand, even late, that you are workers, not lords. And if the church is a vineyard, and the vines are men, and the ordained are the cultivators, why do you rush into the ownership of the householder? Why do you claim for yourselves what is God's? Why do you want the whole to be yours, where you cannot have even a part? For on account of the swelling with which you swell against us, the most blessed Paul rebukes the Corinthians; in himself and Apollos he shapes the acts of our time: "Let not one," he says, "swell against another." To show that this whole sacrament of baptism is God's, so that the worker claims nothing for himself there, he says: "I planted" (that is, I made a catechumen out of a pagan), "Apollos watered" (that is, he baptized the catechumen); but that what was planted or watered should grow, God did. For today too anyone who wishes to plant his vineyard hires a worker at an agreed wage, who with bent back and sweating sides makes hollows in the earth, where he may set the chosen cuttings, and brings water over the trodden trenches. He can dig a trench and set cuttings; he can bring water; he cannot order it to take root; for it belongs to God alone to bring forth from the pith of the shoots roots that grow together into the earth, and to call forth budding eyes and the increase of leaves. In short, the blessed apostle Paul, to check your presumption and swelling, so that the worker of baptism should not think that he has ownership or claim for himself any small part of so great a gift, showing that it is all God's, says thus: "Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but God alone, who brings to growth." You are workers among others; when the sun goes in, that is, when the world is ended, on the day of recompense you can contend with us over the wage. Do not claim for yourselves the ownership of the majesty. For if that is so, let the servants too who wait on the Lord's table claim for themselves that thanks be returned to them by the guests for the hospitality shown. It is the voice of Christ inviting: "Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world." The nations come to grace; he provides who deigned to invite; the crowd of servants does the serving; thanks are to be returned not to those who serve but to the one who feeds. You, though you are servants, shamelessly claim for yourselves the whole ownership of the banquet, though the most blessed Paul confesses with humility that he and the rest are servants; lest anyone should think that his hope must be placed in the apostles or bishops alone, he says thus: "For what is Paul, or what is Apollos? Surely ministers of him in whom you have believed." So in all who serve there is not lordship but ministry. You see now, then, brother Parmenian, that of the three elements mentioned above, the first, threefold, is unmoved, unconquered and unchangeable, but the person of the one who works is temporary.

It remains now to say something of the merit of the believer, to whom belongs faith, which the Son of God set before both his holiness and his majesty. For you cannot be holier than Christ is. When that woman whose daughter was dead came to him and asked that she be raised, he promised nothing about his own power, but asks after another's faith, so that, if the woman believed, the daughter would rise because of her mother's belief; if she did not believe, the power of the Son of God would rest idle. The woman is asked; she answered that she believed that what she asked could be done. She is told to go; the woman returns home and finds alive the girl she had left dead. She does not rush into kisses, does not hurry into embraces, but goes back to give thanks to the Savior. And to show that the Son of God had been at rest and that faith alone had worked, he says, "Go in peace, woman; your faith has saved you." Where is what you say, "It belongs to the giver, not to the receiver"? What do you think of the centurion's faith too? When his servant was ill, he asked the Savior to drive death from him. Christ was already coming to the dying servant; the centurion stopped him, confessing the unworthiness of his roof, that the Son of God should not enter wholly but send his power, by which the servant, death put to flight, could revive. Not the centurion's strength, not his wisdom, was praised, but his faith; and the servant was healed in that hour. Certainly, "it belongs to the giver, not to the receiver"! There are many such things in the gospel about perfect faith, but at least three testimonies of faith should be completed. What do you think of that woman too who, from the secret cause of women, had suffered for twelve years and spent all her substance on physicians, when she saw such great mighty works done by the Son of God, came forward into the crowd: she sees the physician, she sees also the people. Pain urged her to seek a cure; shame hindered her from telling her cause before men. Silent faith found a plan: "I will put out my hand," she says, "and touch the fringe of his garment, and I shall be made well." With no one seeing, she put out her hand among the crowds, touched, and was healed; nor did she dare to tell what she had not dared to ask. But lest the fruit of faith should seem hidden among those who did not know, the Savior said thus: "Who touched me?" His disciples wondered, saying, "The crowds press you, and you say, Who touched me?" And Christ: "Who touched me, I say? I felt power go out from me." So the woman confessed that she had touched and was well. Earlier the mother asked for her daughter, the centurion requested for his servant; in this place neither did the woman ask nor did Christ promise, but faith exacted as much as it presumed. Certainly, "it belongs to the giver, not to the receiver"!

As for your wish, brother Parmenian, to amplify your treatises by describing at length Naaman the Syrian, as a sort of unripe mass of very hard growing sores, what does this have to do with the present case? You would have said this well and could rightly have used a long speech, if you found some catechumen of very rough morals, who had a very hard mind, who refused to receive the very gentle grace of the saving water. You would show well the renewal of the man by the words you said; you would show well that an aged natural hardness can be changed and softened into a child's flesh. But in this business that is now being discussed between the parties, why was such a reading mentioned by you? In it we do not read that anyone washed that leprous Syrian before, even by Elisha's order, so that he might rightly be washed better a second time. And even if that happened, not even so would it meet us with anything you could rightly imitate. For we do not read that he first washed in the rivers of Syria, or was washed by anyone and gained nothing. For even if this were read, it would belong not to the praise of Elisha, who did not wash him but gave counsel, but to the glory of the Jordan, that the first grace came to that man in the river in which afterward, under John, the sins of the peoples were to die through confession for repentance.

Finally, what kind of thing is that part of your treatise about the heavenly wedding, where, cutting off the hope of things to come, you put everything in the present time, by saying that he has been thrown out of your society who deceived your doorkeepers and ministers, so that he was sent out from the communion of the faithful with injury? If that is so, there is nothing for faith to hope, nothing for the resurrection to bring, nothing more to be awaited in heaven, nothing for that King and householder, God, to recognize at his banquet, when he rejoices in the presence of many and is saddened by the absence of some, and says that many are called but few chosen. There will be nothing for him to be angry at in one who does not have a wedding garment, since the Son of God, Christ himself, is the bridegroom and the garment, a tunic swimming in water, which clothes many and awaits countless more and does not run out in clothing them. But lest anyone say that I have rashly called the Son of God a garment, let him read the apostle saying: "As many as have been baptized in the name of Christ have put on Christ." O tunic always one and unchangeable, which fittingly clothes all ages and shapes, which is neither wrinkled on infants nor stretched on young men nor changed on women! That day will surely come when the heavenly wedding begins to be celebrated; there those who have kept the single baptism will recline secure. For whoever consents to be rebaptized by you, to such a man the resurrection is not denied, because he believed in the resurrection of the flesh; he will rise indeed, but naked. But since he allowed himself to be stripped of the wedding garment by you, he will hear this voice of the householder: "Friend" (that is to say, "I recognize you"; you had once renounced the devil and turned to me, and I had given you a wedding garment), "why did you come in thus, not having what I gave you?" That is to say, "Why do you not have what I gave you?" For no one can be angry at one who does not have a thing that was not given. "You had received the wedding garment among these, and you alone do not have it? Why have you come naked and mourning? Who stripped you of your spoils? What deceitful jaws did you approach? What robbers did you run into?" As many as come in such a state will have no place at that banquet.

And to make a summary, even late, I believe this too suffices, even if we had not given so many proofs: suppose a thousand were baptized in your absence by word of mouth; of these, a hundred have died by their own lot. Keep your hands off this crime for a little. Let your holiness, as you call it, first raise the buried, correct the dead, if it can, and so return to the living. If you cannot raise the dead, why do you try to lay hands on the living, except that what God spoke of you through the prophet Ezekiel may be fulfilled, saying, "to kill souls that ought not to die"?

As it seems to me, it has been clearly shown what you have wickedly done in the divine sacraments. Now those things must be shown which you will in no way be able to deny you did cruelly and foolishly. For what is so sacrilegious as to break, scrape and remove the altars of God, on which you too once offered, on which both the prayers of the people and the members of Christ have been carried, where almighty God has been invoked, where the Holy Spirit, when asked, has come down, from which many have received the pledge of eternal salvation, the protection of faith and the hope of resurrection? Altars, I say, on which the Savior ordered no gifts of the brotherhood to be placed except those made up in peace: "Lay down your gift," he says, "before the altar, and go back first, be reconciled with your brother, so that the priest may offer for you." For what is the altar but the seat of both the body and the blood of Christ? All these your fury either scraped or broke or removed. This inexpiable crime, then, if it came from any reason, ought to have been done in one way. But, as I think, in one place an abundance of wood ordered them to be broken; in others a lack of wood commanded that they scrape the altars; and that others should remove them, shame in part persuaded. Yet everywhere it is a crime, since you laid sacrilegious and impious hands on so great a thing. Why should I relate the hired multitude of the abandoned, and the wine given as wage for the crime? So that it might be drunk with unclean mouth in sacrilegious draughts, hot drink was made from the fragments of the altars. If in the judgment of envy we seemed unclean to you, what had God done to you, who used to be invoked there? How had Christ offended you, whose body and blood dwelt there at certain moments? How did you yourselves offend, that you should break those altars on which, before us, for long spaces of time, you offered, as you think, in holiness? While you impiously persecute our hands, where the body of Christ dwelt, you struck yours too. In this way you have imitated the Jews: they laid hands on Christ on the cross; by you he was struck on the altar. If you wanted to attack the Catholics there, you should at least have spared your own ancient offerings there. There you are now found proud, where long ago you offered humbly; there you gladly sin, where you used to pray for the sins of many. By doing this you gladly entered the number of the sacrilegious priests, joined to the crimes of the profane, of whom the prophet Elijah lodged a complaint with the Lord; for he spoke in these words, in which you too among others deserved to be accused by him: "Lord," he says, "they have broken down your altars." When he says "your", he indicates that it is God's property, where something has been offered to God by anyone. It should have been enough for your madness that you tore the members of the church, that by your seductions you divided the peoples of God long settled in unity. Amid all this you should at least have spared the altars. Why did you break the prayers and desires of men together with the altars themselves? For from there the prayer of the people used to rise to the ears of God. Why did you cut off the way of prayers? And did you labor with impious hand, as it were, to pull away the ladder, so that supplication should not have its usual ascent to God? And yet, though you all have one conspiracy, under this heading you have offended in a different way with a similar error. If it was enough to remove, it was not lawful to break; if it was necessary to break, it was a sin to scrape; for if it was not lawful, as you agreed among yourselves, he who broke seems to have broken rightly; he is now guilty who by scraping preserved the greater part. What is this new and foolish wisdom, to seek novelty in the inward parts of antiquity, and, removing as it were the skin of a body, to seek in the hidden body as it were another skin! A gift that belongs to itself and is wholly in itself, which is one, can be diminished when something has been taken from it; it cannot be changed. You scraped indeed what you saw fit; but what you hate is still there. What? What if you conspired that what was touched by us in the name of God in that very ministry should seem unclean? Which of the faithful does not know that in performing the mysteries the wood itself is covered with a linen cloth? During the sacraments themselves the covering could be touched, not the wood; or if coverings can be penetrated by touch, then the wood too is penetrated; if the wood can be penetrated, the earth too is penetrated; if the wood is scraped by you, let the earth beneath also be dug; make a deep trench, while you seek purity according to your will. But take care that you do not come to the lower world and find there Korah, Dathan and Abiram, the schismatics, your masters, namely. So it is plain that you both broke and scraped altars. Why is it that in this matter your fury afterward seemed somewhat to languish? For we see that afterward you changed your counsel, and altars are no longer broken or scraped by you, but only removed. If this was enough, you yourselves show that what was done by you before ought not to have been done at all.

This monstrous crime was doubled by you when you also broke the chalices, the bearers of Christ's blood, whose forms you turned back into lumps, procuring merchandise in wicked markets (for which merchandise you would not even choose the buyers): sacrilegious, in that you sold without consideration; greedy, in that you sell. You allowed your hands to be burned too, with which before us you handled those same chalices. Yet you ordered the thing to be sold anywhere; perhaps foul women bought it for their uses, pagans bought it to make vessels in which to burn incense to their idols. O wicked crime, O unheard-of deed, to take away from God what you supply to idols, to remove from Christ what profits sacrilege!

But I see that in this place, stirring up odium against us falsely, you wish to take refuge in the prophet Haggai, where it is written: "What one who is polluted touches is polluted." When envy intervenes, it is easy for the angry to throw insults; but whenever a charge is pressed, plain proof is necessary. For which of us entered the temples? Who saw sacrilegious rites? Men can be polluted by fumes, by savors, by sacrileges, by sacrifices, by blood; but in this case who entered a temple? Who offered incense to idols? Who was stained by unclean savors? Who watched the blood of an unclean beast or of a man being poured out? Whom do you prove to have lent counsel to any crime? Convict even one bishop of partnership in any crime, if you can. You suspect some primate or other, who was said to have been walking about at that time. Suspicion is not an adequate charge. Who accused him? Who convicted him? Where did he either blush or was he confounded? Keep your suspicions to yourselves. So, as we said above, whatever could be done harshly in this case, when the matter is traced back to its origin, we have shown belongs to your leaders. Why is it, then, that you call the Catholics polluted? Is it because we followed the will and command of God by loving peace, by communicating with the whole world, joined to the Easterners, where Christ was born according to his humanity, where his holy footprints were impressed, where his adorable feet walked, where so many and such great mighty works were done by the Son of God himself, where so many apostles accompanied him, where the sevenfold church is, from which you not only do not grieve to be cut off but in a way congratulate yourselves? Because we loved the unity pleasing to God, you call us polluted; because we gave assent to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Thessalonians and join communion with them, you call us polluted; because we do not read stolen readings with you, you call us polluted (or else deny that you read others' readings, if you can). Why do you dare to read the letters written to the Corinthians, you who would not communicate with the Corinthians? Why do you recite what was written to the Galatians, to the Thessalonians, in whose communion you are not? Since it is plain that all this is so, understand that you have been cut off from the holy church and that we are not polluted. Where, then, is the help you think the prophet Haggai can give you? So the altars and vessels mentioned above were long in your hands and in ours: if you defame our hands, why do you condemn yours too there? But you say that we read: "What one who is polluted touches is polluted." Suppose someone is polluted, so that what he touches may seem polluted. Let it be so, if there is touch alone and no invocation of the name of God intervenes: what the polluted touches can be defiled if God is passed over in silence. For if there is invocation of the name of God, the invocation itself sanctifies even what seemed polluted. In short, when the earth swallowed the two hundred and fifty censers which were carried by the hands of sacrilegious men and sinners, together with those same sinners, the censers shaken out of their hands remained. And while the holy priest Aaron hesitated what to do with them, he heard the voice of God saying: "Take, Aaron, these vessels and make plates from them and put them at the corners of the ark of the Lord's covenant; for although those who carried them sinned, yet those vessels are holy, because my name has been invoked there," says God. And surely to carry is more than to touch. So it now appears clearly that something can be sanctified by the invocation of the name of God, even if a sinner invokes God; for touch cannot have so much force as the invocation of the divine name has. For you too, who presume on your own holiness, tell us whether touch sanctifies or invocation. Surely invocation, not touch; or if you presume on touch alone, touch a board, a stone, a garment: let us see whether they can be holy if God is passed over in silence.

Now how foolish, how vain is this, which you wished to bring back to your will and as it were to your dignity: that virgins of God should learn to do penance, that those who had long since made profession should afterward, at your command, change the signs of their will upon their heads, should throw away some headbands and take others. First tell us where anything about headbands was commanded you. For virginity is a matter of will, not of necessity. In short, that innkeeper, the apostle Paul, to whom the people pierced with the wounds of sins was entrusted, had received two denarii to spend, namely the two testaments. These he spent by teaching, as expenses as it were; he taught how married Christians ought to live. When he was asked what he commanded about virgins, he answered that nothing had been commanded about virgins. He confessed that he had spent the two testaments, that is, the two denarii; the expenses were in a way used up. But since he who had entrusted the wounded man had promised that he would repay whatever more was spent on the cure, after the two denarii were spent Paul spends not precepts but counsel toward virginity; and he neither hinders those who wish nor drives or compels those who do not: "He who gives his virgin does well, and he who does not give her does better." These are words of counsel, and no precepts are joined to them, either of what wool the headband should be made or with what purple it should be colored. For virginity cannot be helped by this cloth; by it the heats of the mind, which age sometimes kindles, are not checked; by it the mind is not relieved, which is sometimes pressed by the weights of desires. For if it were so, not one but very many would be put on a virgin's head, so that, as often as the desires of the flesh stung the mind, the number of headbands might fight against the assault on the mind. The thing was invented as a sign on the head, not as a remedy of chastity. In short, such a cloth can grow old and be worn and perish; and yet virginity, if it is unhurt, can be safe without a headband. This is a spiritual kind of marrying. They had already come into the marriage of the bridegroom by their will and profession; and to show that they had renounced worldly marriage and were joined to a spiritual bridegroom, they had loosened their hair: they had already celebrated a heavenly marriage. Why is it that you forced them to loosen their hair again? Why, I say, was a second profession exacted of them by you? Who is the other spiritual bridegroom, to whom they should marry again? When did he die whom they had married, that they should marry again? You bared again heads already veiled, from which you took away the marks of their profession, which seem to have been invented against abductors or suitors. In the headband there is a sign of will, not an aid of chastity, so that the suitor should not persist in seeking a thing already vowed to God, nor the abductor dare to violate it. It is a sign, then, not a sacrament. You found virgins of this kind, who had already married spiritually, whom you forced into second marriages, and you commanded them to loosen their hair again. Not even women who marry in the flesh suffer this. If it happens to one of them to change husbands after being bereft of a marriage, that temporal festivity is not repeated; she is not raised aloft; no crowd of people is procured. So you took away not ornaments of the head but, as we said above, signs of a better will. You sprinkled with unclean ashes hair already consecrated to God; you even ordered it to be drenched with salt water. And would that you had at least quickly put back what you took away: you prolonged the delays, so that some, drawn back into their former dress, remained so longer, the signs withdrawn with which they had long protected themselves against suitors and abductors. When the suitors saw that the bar long set against them had been removed by you, from suitors they became abductors; nor did each think he had sinned when he carried off such a one as he had seen when he was asking to take her as wife.

In this kind of thing, what great losses you caused God, what great gains you procured for the devil! You impiously melted down chalices, cruelly broke and thoughtlessly scraped altars; you forced wretched girls, not without disgrace, to receive a second headband, though nothing about the first can be recited in a reading. And I cannot pass over this, which neither pleases God nor can be excused by your adherents nor defended by any man. Through secular courts and public laws, by the execution of officials, you thought the documents of the divine law should be extorted from very many, wishing to have alone what peace had possessed in common. I am not afraid, as a Christian, to say what the pagan execution, at your request, could not fail to know: you extorted the Lord's coverings and documents, which had long been possessed in common; you extorted altar cloths together with books; in the judgment of your pride you reckoned both polluted. Unless I am mistaken, you hastened to purify all these. You washed the altar cloths, no doubt; show what you did with the books. In all things the judgment of your foresight ought to be equal: either wash both or leave both. But if you act otherwise, you have spoiled your diligence. You wash the cloth, you do not wash the book: if it is good in one part, it is evil in the other. You cannot deny that you offend in the one if you gain merit in the other; and if you rejoice that you seem devout in the one, you ought also to lament, because you seem sacrilegious in the other.

Now what kind of thing is this, that in many places you even chose to wash walls and ordered the enclosed spaces to be sprinkled with salt water? O water, created sweet by God, over which the Holy Spirit was borne before the very birth of the world! O water, which washed the earth to make the world pure! O water, which under Moses, losing your natural bitterness, sweetened by the wood, satisfied the breasts of so many peoples with most pleasant draughts! It remained for you, after your promotion, to be degraded not lightly. By Moses' presence bitterness dies in you, and today your sweetness is harassed by schismatics together with the crowd of Catholics. We suffer the war alike; alike we await God as avenger. Tell me, brother Parmenian, what had the place done to you, what the walls themselves, that they should suffer these things from you? Was it because God was prayed to there? Because Christ was praised there? Because the Holy Spirit was invoked there? Because in your absence the prophets and the holy gospels were read there? Because there the minds of brothers long at odds had come into agreement? Because the unity pleasing to God had found a house to dwell in? Show what you could wash there. If we trod Catholic footprints both in the street and in the square, why do you not correct everything? For the same baths have washed both us and you alike for the care of our bodies, and before you many of ours have often bathed there. If you think everything must be purified after us, wash the water too, if you can; or if, as we said above, our footprints seem polluted to you, the ground would have been enough: why did you choose to wash walls too, on which human footprints cannot be placed? We could not tread the walls, but only see them. If you judge that what sight touches must be washed, why did you leave the rest unwashed? We see the roof, we see the sky too; these cannot be washed by you. By washing those you have earned merit with God; by not washing these you seem to have incurred inexpiable sin. Since, then, you wish to seem diligent in one place, you are found negligent in another (if indeed your folly is to be called diligence, and, to call it by its true name, your vanity); unless perhaps by doing this you sent the unskilled peoples into dread, so that, since the column was washed, their bodies too should be washed. If counsel lies hidden in these things, you have subtly deceived the wretched; if such a thing was done without counsel, your dullness is plain. That you did these things foolishly even those led astray by you know, nor will you yourselves be able to deny it.

Why should I relate also that impiety coming from your conspiracy, that you wished to invade the basilicas for this purpose, to claim the cemeteries for yourselves alone, not allowing Catholic bodies to be buried? To terrify the living, you also ill-treat the dead, denying them a place for burial. If there had been a contest among the living, let another's death at least check your hatreds. He with whom you were quarreling a little before is now silent; why do you insult the dead? Why do you hinder burial? Why do you quarrel with the dead? You have lost the fruit of your malice. And if you do not want bodies to rest together, you will not be able to separate the souls placed together with God.

In short, everything that is done by you cannot be told in full; but let it be granted to you, who hold the mastery of this error. Now who could be silent about your people too, namely those whom you were able to lead astray, by faction or by subtlety, so as to make them yours, not only men but also women? From sheep they suddenly became foxes, from faithful faithless, from patient raging, from peaceable quarrelsome, from simple seducers, from modest shameless, fierce from gentle, from innocent craftsmen of malice. After they have slipped over to you, men or women, they grieve that others are where they were born; they invite those who stand well into their own falls. If they knew they had attained glory, they would enjoy their happiness in silence. But now, wishing to console their lost crossings, they invite the rest to slip in the same way, and they accuse those who remain in the bosom of mother church as sluggish and slow. For they do not blush to speak in these words: "Gaius Seius, or Gaia Seia, how long will you hold out?" That is to say: "Now you ought to follow my error, now you ought to desert the truth; imitate my falls, imitate my shameful crossings. How long are you called faithful? Now desert the faith, now learn penance." You are the fowlers, and they, men or women, are the birds. But there is not one kind of fowler. There are some who with simple skill seek trees founded on deep roots and spread over the face of the grove, where the birds settle with simple flight on natural branches; there no frauds are counted, no artful plans; there is one skill and the sole expertise of catching. To that fowler I say you are like who, after the night has gone, before the coming of light, does not go to natural trees like the others; but carrying a tree himself, he binds a future grove into a bundle, and with manifold fraud he sets up a dry tree supported by no roots, into which he inserts counterfeit branches, and the tree, which, cut down, had long since lost its own, receives foreign leaves. Some birds he carries shut in a cage; others, disemboweled into the likeness of the living, long dead, he sets on the deceitful branches as if alive. Some lie hidden in the cages; others seem alive on the branches. One cunning is joined with a doubled fraud: so that the simplicity of the living, flying birds may be deceived, those that are plainly dead seem to stretch their necks with voices, and those that lie hidden in their prison sing as if from another's throat. Between the image of one and the voice of another one guile works: captives catch the free, and the dead kill the living. Such are those whom you have wounded either by rebaptism or by penance: so as not to seem to have perished alone, men or women, they strive with great zeal and labor that others, men or women, should perish with them.

After the traitors were pointed out and the holy church shown, after the slanders you heaped on us were repelled, and after your sins, which deserved to be rebuked by God, the repetition of the sacraments and your presumptions and terrors were shown in their order. By now there ought to have been an end of our answers and sayings. But since, after the forest of odium has been cut down by the axes of truth, I see your provocations, or those of your people, still sprouting, which I hear you say, that you ought not to have been sought for one communion since it is plain that you are sons of traitors, I will answer these few points. Truly the Catholic Church was sufficient for itself, having innumerable peoples in all the provinces; it was sufficient in Africa too, though in few; but your separation did not please God, since the members of one body had been torn apart, and against the will of God you brothers were straying from your brothers. Although a domestic judgment was at work in your parents, so that those who ought to have been cast out for the handing over they had committed withdrew of their own accord, no trial was held, but the effect of a sentence was produced. They ought to have been expelled after the handing over which they confessed to one another in the council of Numidia; but to avoid odium, the severity of judging was excused, since your forebears of their own accord found a plan regarding their guilt, so that, with their crime covered, they went away as if proud, who ought rather to have grieved and blushed. For if at that time they had been willing to make unity for the good of peace, even they ought not to have been driven from the church, since in them necessity had excused the will. For none of them had handed over of his own accord, nor can this sin be made equal to the other offenses. For whatever God did not wish to be done he forbade with his own mouth, as he said, "You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery," and the rest. He could also have forbidden this which was committed by your parents; but since what the mind does is one thing and what circumstance brings about is another, whatever can be done by man of his own will deserved to be forbidden; whatever necessity sins cannot be accused with great force. In short, will incurs punishment, necessity pardon. The murderer, while no one compels the crime, can both do it and not do it; the adulterer, while no one from outside compels him, can commit adultery and can not commit it; and the rest of this kind, in which free choice is held. Therefore forbidden things, when they are done, are destined for judgment; things not forbidden, when they are done by some necessity, he who did not wish to forbid may perhaps readily deign to pardon. In short, the offense that could be charged against your parents as if capital: if at that time they had been stripped or called to judgment, they could have helped themselves by more than one example, where in the first times we read that either the tablets of the law were broken or books handed over or cut up and burned, and no one was condemned. If, as I said above, your parents had been stripped at that time, if they could have been accused, they would without doubt have said that they had done nothing more than Moses the lawgiver; although necessity and will are not alike but conflict with each other, since under the same name of the law your parents and Moses had one case. Your parents could say that they had done out of necessity what Moses had done earlier out of will. When he was indignant with the people, he did not consider that God had written with his finger (and what is written in heaven is more than what is written on earth, and what the finger of God made is not the same as what a pen shaped by human hand wrote). Moses was carrying what he had received through the cloud, and your parents handed over what they had had made for a wage. Your parents would rightly have defended themselves by teaching that it was not a capital crime if each of them, terrified by great fear, had done what Moses had done in anger. And we do not read that the Lord was indignant with Moses or avenged the broken tablets which he had written with his own hand; nor was he called a sinner or punished. So the law came forth from God as water slips from a spring, or fruits that are picked from a tree with the root unharmed. What has been paid out is not lost if it is safe in its origin. In short, after the tablets of the law were scattered and smashed, Moses did not deserve to be condemned, and afterward, called back, he went up Mount Sinai and deserved to speak with God again and received the second, renewed law, which the title of the book published, which is written with the Greek word Deuteronomy. Behold, nothing is lost in the law which was safe in its origin. But lest it seem to anyone that Moses had the merit, from his conversation, of a certain confidence with God, and that God was therefore not angry: if this were so, friendship ought always to have demanded its merit and fruit; why, then, was what he offended in afterward punished in him? Was it not to show that what he had committed in anger was light? The law was whole in God, even after it was broken by a man together with the stone tablets; the devotion that was owed by a man, where it was not shown, Moses deserved this punishment, that he should die midway on the journey and not enter the land of promise. From this it is plain that what could be committed with impunity in the present example cannot be reckoned a great sin. If this were said by your parents, who could have denied them communion? What if they had set forth also the following examples, in which we read that when the renewed law was kept in the ark, the people of Israel were defeated in battle? The law which was brought in the ark against the enemies by the counsel of the peoples, which could not be defended by the elders themselves and the other sons of Israel, was handed over to the enemies, since it was not brought back. When the law was handed over, those who had said it should be brought fled in fear, and we do not read that they afterward suffered anything as punishment. If this account were given by your parents, who could have driven them from his communion? What if your leaders had not kept silent about those examples either, in which we read that Baruch handed over to the scribe Jehudi the book of the law which he had taken down from the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, and that it was ordered by the king's princes that both Baruch himself, who had taken it down, and Jeremiah, through whom God had spoken, should flee and hide? Jeremiah dictated, Baruch handed it over, both had fled. The book was brought to King Jehoiakim; the king, since, because it was a cold season, he had a burning brazier before him, did not gladly hear the book read by the scribe Jehudi, and from time to time he cut it up in small pieces and put it on the fire. And God was not angry either with Jeremiah, who had fled, or with Baruch, who, fleeing with him, had handed it over. If God had been angry with them, he would have spoken to some other prophet; he spoke not to another but to Jeremiah himself. For so we read: "And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, after the king had burned the scroll of the book and the words which Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah. God said to Jeremiah: Take for yourself another sheet and write all your words which were then written in the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned." Behold, neither was God angry, nor did what had burned perish, nor was Baruch punished, nor was Jeremiah despised by God. From this it appears that in this matter there was never a grave fault, since punishment could never follow it. If your parents cited this, who could have called them away from communion? In short, when God saw that the tablets of the law had been broken by Moses, and the ark left to the enemies, and the book of the law after Baruch's handing over cut up and burned, he showed his providence and promised that he would no longer write the law on tablets or in books, but in the inner man himself, that is, in the mind and in the heart of each believer, as he had written it in the heart of Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the other patriarchs, who plainly lived lawfully without the law. The blessed apostle Paul too proves this, saying: "written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart." After the law was broken by Moses and left by the sons of Israel to the enemies, and, when Baruch offered it to King Jehoiakim, cut up and burned, before Christian times, God indicated through the prophet where he would afterward write the law better, saying: "For this is my covenant which I will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and after those days, says the Lord, putting my laws in their heart, I will also write them in their minds." He promised this long ago and fulfilled it recently in Christian times. So now paper is in the second place, parchment in the second place. If the law was written there by God, from where it cannot be handed over, so that your parents, who had already believed in the Trinity, though they handed over books, did not hand over their hearts or minds, in which God wrote his law as he had promised he would write it: where, then, brother Parmenian, is what you said, that the law was utterly burned up by the traitors? Behold, it was neither utterly burned up nor wholly taken away, since it remains in the hearts of believers and thousands of books are read everywhere. From this it appears that you wished in vain, though through ignorance, to accuse your parents. If, then, your parents had come to the times of unity, with so many examples reasonably given, and they themselves could not have been driven from communion, how much less you, who are plainly not traitors but sons of traitors, since the persons and names of fathers and sons are distinguished, and between these persons, if the fault is not common, the sentence cannot be one? Although, even if unity had been made with them, and if they had come to the Catholic Church of their own accord (not like you, who were plainly brought, not without the will of God, so that you should return from where you had strayed, though you still stray), if, as I said, they had come to the Catholic Church of their own accord, our forebears would perhaps have hesitated about receiving such men, because they had been traitors; but we must rejoice that such men did not last at all down to our times. So today the business is new, since the matter is to be dealt with with you, not with them. Although an inherited stain seems to have been passed on from them to you, yet under this heading you cannot be guilty with your fathers, according to the judgment of God, who spoke through the prophet Ezekiel, saying: "The soul of the father is mine and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it alone will be punished." This was proved already in ancient ages, at the very birth of the world, since the father's offense did not belong to Seth, the son of Adam. But lest anyone say that it is written in another place, the Lord saying that he will repay the evils of the fathers to the fourth generation: both sayings are without doubt his, but they do not both sound to one people. The first is through Moses to a certain kind of men, the second through Ezekiel to another kind of men. Since God knew that the Jews before Pontius Pilate would profess, saying, "His blood be on us and on our children," God saw by foreknowledge that what they were going to say was too little for the greatness of the fault; and so that the offense might be paid for with fitting punishments, he threatened the Jews themselves, saying that he would repay the evils of the fathers to the fourth generation. So this saying belongs specially to the Jews alone; but that other belongs to the Christians, by which he deigned to promise not to punish in the sons whatever is sinned by the fathers, nor in the fathers whatever may perhaps be offended by the sons. Since in the times of Moses the law was repeated without punishment of anyone, and the ark of the covenant was returned of their own accord by the enemies, and a second sheet was written by Jeremiah at God's command: why is it thought that among your forebears alone there was a capital sin, in which, through so many examples, no one was condemned? For if the law was given so that men might be taught, not so that the law itself should be worshiped as if in place of God, after the deed of your fathers the throng of believers suffered no loss; each of them lost his own volumes under fear. For the law, which had been necessary, is in force among the teachers of the peoples and the worshipers of God. Libraries are crammed with books; nothing is lacking to the church; in each place the divine proclamation sounds everywhere; the mouths of the readers are not silent; the hands of all are full of volumes; nothing is lacking to the peoples who desire to be taught, although the law seems to have been written not more for teaching than for the future judgment, so that the sinner may know what he may suffer if he lives less justly. In short, it is written and read that the law was not given for the just, because each just man is a law to himself; and in another place the same blessed apostle Paul says that the law does not make men just, but itself loves justice. Always in all things the effects are sought from the causes: the law, which brings about, is idle if what is brought about has been prepared by a shortcut. In short, it was not said to Abraham, "Believe"; he believed of his own accord, in which the effect of the law was fulfilled without the law. We do not read, "Abraham heard the law and believed," but we read, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." And in the first times the patriarch Noah did nothing by which he might become righteous, and he was chosen as righteous, to build an ark and sail happily in the flood. It would be long to go through each of those who were found righteous without the law. If this were said by your parents in their time, who would have driven them from his communion? What if they said that what the apostle says of those outside the law ought not to be passed over in silence: "The Gentiles, who do not know the law, do what belongs to the law; for they have the law written in their hearts"? For many are proved to have sinned under the law and many to have lived well without the law. The law and man are two things, but they cannot be equal: for man was not made for the law, but the law was given for men. Nowhere do I see loss brought on God, since the origin of the law remains with him. And after the Scripture is said to have been handed over by your parents, nothing is lacking: all the members of the law are whole, safe, read aloud; there is nothing less of the law both for those who desire to teach and for those who desire to be taught. Or was it more necessary that a man be killed, so that no scripture be handed over? What of the fact that neither were men killed nor are any of the Scriptures lacking? The law and God are not one thing. If one had to die for God, who can both raise the dead and give the reward, a book not handed over can do neither of these two things. Necessity, then, hinders its own powers. We see negligence often working no less than necessity worked. For if the parchments or books containing the Scripture of the law must be kept wholly unharmed, as if some negligent people were not condemned, handing over is not far from putting badly or carrying badly. One put a book in a house, which house was burned by fire: let him be condemned who put it negligently, if he is to be condemned who, terrified, gave the book when it was demanded. Let those too be condemned who put neglected parchments or books in such a way that the little household beasts, that is, mice, gnawed them so that they cannot be read. Let him too be condemned who put them in a house where, from an excess of rains, some drippings so leaked through the roof that everything was blotted out by the damp and cannot be read. Let those too be condemned who, carrying books of the law, rashly trusted themselves to the greedy waves of rivers and, wishing to be saved, let the Scriptures go from their hands into the waves. So if the Scripture is one, and he who could not keep it is guilty: one handed it over to the waves, another left it to gnawing beasts, another neglected it to be spoiled by drippings, another, terrified by fear of death, a man gave it to a man. If what is committed by all is one, why is one chosen to be condemned, when the fault of the traitor is lighter than that of the negligent? He who put it before mice or left it under dripping was negligent by will; and he who lost it in the river sinned from rashness; he who handed something over from fear of death, a man gave it to a man: it was whole with the giver, whole with the receiver. If he who received it gave it to the flames, the sin is rather the burner's, not the hander-over's. If this were said by your forebears, when could we have driven them from our communion? What if they had wished to recall also the times of King Antiochus, in which all the Jews were compelled to give their books to the fire, and the whole Scripture was so given up that not one stroke remained in any book? None of the Jews was condemned at that time, nor was any sentence spoken by God or by any angel against any Jew, because the sin had been that of the one who commanded and threatened, not of the people handing over with trembling and grief. So that this Antiochus should not seem to have harmed the first people in anything, God at once provided that through one man, Ezra, who at that time was called a reader, the whole law, as it had been before, was dictated to the last stroke. So the tyrant Antiochus could not have the fruit of his malice, since, apart from the seven brothers and one old man who refused to eat pork, he killed no Jew, and the law could not perish. So too your parents in their time were neither killed themselves, and the books of the Lord's law are read whole everywhere. If your parents, as I said above, had said this, who would not have received them fearlessly into his communion, where, as has been said, necessity, not will, had sinned? In the times of unity your leaders, who are proved to have done these things, had already departed from the living, leaving you as it were an inherited stain, which God by his providence had first washed from you in this way, when, as we said above, he separated between fathers and sons. Since, then, handing over is a sin, let your parents see what they will answer at the judgment of God; yet yours, who are of other times, it cannot be a sin.

That is why we have long wished to receive you into our communion, because you did not sin at that time, but your leaders. For a sinner such as your forebears were, if he comes to the church and shows the reason for his necessity, is first to be received, then to be borne with in the devoted bosom of mother church. Nor should anyone, as if wholly holy, judge another, because it is written in the gospel, Christ saying, "Do not judge, lest you be judged," especially since no one can be found wholly holy. For if there are any who can be without sins, they lie in the Lord's Prayer, if without cause they ask for pardon, saying to God the Father, "Forgive us our sins, as we too forgive our debtors," since the apostle John both discloses the consciences of all and unseals his own with these words: "If we say," he says, "that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." We explained the meaning of this saying more plainly in the fourth book. But suppose there are some perfect in all holiness: it is not permitted that they be without brothers, whom the gospel precepts cry out must not be driven away. In them the field is described, which is the whole world, in which is the church, and the sower is Christ, who gives saving precepts. On the contrary, the evil man is the devil, who sows untimely sins not in the light but in the darkness; and in one field different seeds spring up, as in the church the crowd of souls is not alike. The field receives good or bad seeds; there is a diversity of seeds; but there is one creator of all souls, one lord of the field. Where the tares have sprung up, there are two authors of the seeds, but the field has one lord, the Lord God himself. His is the earth, his the good seeds, his also the rain. That is why we agreed to receive you, brought into unity, because it is not permitted to us either to separate or to drive away, even sinners, born with us in one field and nourished by one rain, that is, one baptism, just as it was not permitted to the apostles to separate the tares from the wheat, because separation cannot be done without destruction, lest, while what is not needed is pulled up, what is needed is trampled. Christ ordered alike that in his field throughout the whole world, in which there is one church, both his seeds and another's should grow. After the common growth the day of judgment will come, which is the harvest of souls; the judge, the Son of God, will sit, who recognizes what is his and what is another's. His it will be to choose what to store in the barn and what to hand to the fire, whom to destine for endless torments and to whom to give the promised rewards. Let us all recognize that we are men; let no one usurp for himself the power of divine judgment. For if any bishop claims everything for himself, let it be said what Christ will do in the judgment. Let it be enough for a man if he is not guilty of his own sin, rather than desiring to be judge of another's. In short, our profession is not only not to drive you away, but, if it had happened in their times and unity had been made, not to drive away your parents either, for the good of peace. For it is wrong that we bishops should do what the apostles did not do, who were not permitted either to separate the seeds or to pull up the tares from the wheat.

But if the Catholic Church had hesitated about receiving you, ought you not to have followed the pattern of unity? But you would not set forth the examples read in the gospel, such as the reading about the person of the most blessed Peter, from which the pattern of keeping or making unity is recited as described. It is indeed evil to do anything against a prohibition; but it is worse not to have unity when you can. This unity we see that Christ himself set before his own vengeance, who wished all his disciples to be in one rather than to avenge what had offended him. Though he did not wish to be denied, he promised that he would deny before his Father whoever denied him before men; and yet he did not promise that he would punish whoever handed over some scripture: for it is graver to deny him who spoke than to have handed over the words he spoke. And though these things are so written, yet for the good of unity blessed Peter, for whom it would have been enough if, after he denied, he obtained pardon alone, both deserved to be preferred to all the apostles and alone received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to be shared with the rest. That sins are to be buried for the good of unity is to be understood from the fact that the most blessed apostle Paul says that charity can cover a multitude of sins: "Bear one another's burdens," he says; and in another place he says: "Charity is magnanimous, charity is kind, charity is not jealous, charity is not puffed up, does not seek its own." And he said it well. For he had seen all this in the other apostles, who for the good of unity, through charity, would not withdraw from the communion of Peter, namely of him who had denied Christ. But if love of innocence were greater than the usefulness of peace and unity, they would say that they ought not to communicate with Peter, who had denied his master and the Son of God, the Lord. They could, as was said above, not communicate with the most blessed Peter; they could recite against him the words of Christ, who had promised that he would deny before his Father whoever denied him before men. To this pattern careful attention must be paid. While I recall a few things about it, may the blessedness of holy Peter himself grant pardon if I seem to recall what was plainly done and is read. I hesitate to say that such great holiness sinned; but he himself proves this deed, who both grieved bitterly and wept abundantly, who would neither grieve nor weep if no offense had intervened. Surely the head of the apostles could have governed himself so as to incur nothing to grieve over; but under this one heading many errors appear in him so that it could be shown that for the good of unity everything must be reserved for God. And I do not know whether in another this kind of sin can be of such great weight as it plainly was in blessed Peter. For whoever perhaps in some persecution denied the Son of God will seem to have offended more lightly in comparison with blessed Peter, if he denied one he did not see, if he denied one he did not know, if he denied one to whom he had promised nothing, if he denied once. For in blessed Peter this kind of sin was enlarged. First, when Christ asked all of them whom men said he was, one said Elijah, another said a prophet; then Christ is read to have said, "Whom do you say that I am?" And Peter said to him, "You are the Son of the living God." For this recognition he deserved to be praised by him, because he said it by the prompting of God the Father. Behold, while the rest did not recognize the Son of God, Peter alone recognized him. Then, on the day of the passion, when Christ said, "Behold, I am taken, and you will all flee," while the rest were silent, he alone promised that he would not withdraw. From foreknowledge the Son of God said, "Peter, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." Something else was added to the weight of the sin, namely a promise he was not going to fulfil. After Christ was led into the house of Caiaphas, to complete the measure of the offense, of so great a number no one else is questioned except blessed Peter. Questioned the first time, he denies; questioned again, he denies; the third time he said that he did not know Christ at all; and the cock crowed, not to mark the hours with its crowing, but so that blessed Peter might recognize that he had sinned. In short, he grieved bitterly and wept abundantly. Behold, as was said above, while the rest did not recognize, he alone recognized; while the rest did not promise, he alone promised; while the rest did not deny even once, he alone denied three times; and yet for the good of unity he did not deserve to be separated from the number of the apostles. From this it is understood that everything was ordered by the providence of the Savior, so that he himself should receive the keys; the way of malice was shut off, so that the apostles should not conceive in their minds a license to judge and despise in any way him who had denied Christ. So many innocent men stand, and the sinner receives the keys, so that the business of unity might be formed. It was provided that the sinner should open to the innocent, lest the innocent should close against sinners and the unity that is necessary could not exist. If you recalled these things, desiring to communicate, when would the Catholic Church hesitate to receive you into her devoted bosom, since it is plain that you are not traitors but sons of traitors?

For some of you, wishing to show us to your people as contemptible, also mix into their sermons what was said by Solomon the prophet: "Flies about to die destroy the sweetness of oil"; and they call us the flies about to die, and they name the oil, namely that liquid which is prepared with the name of Christ, which after it has been prepared is called chrism. Before it is made, it is still oil, of simple nature; it becomes sweet when it is prepared with the name of Christ. So there are three things that Solomon the prophet named: oil, sweetness, and flies about to die destroying the sweetness. These three things have their places in order: first is oil, second the sweetness from the preparation, third the dying flies destroying the sweetness. Whoever among you is such a preacher, let him prove how he calls us flies about to die. If you think that the preparation which gives the oil sweetness is with you, the oil and the sweetness are with you. Do we destroy your oil, so that you may rightly call us flies about to die? What is yours is with you. And if anyone makes the crossing from you to us, he is kept by us just as he is let go by you. How do you say that we are flies about to die, corrupting the sweetness of the oil, when after you we do nothing of the kind? Or if you say that the sweetness of the oil can be corrupted by us, either we are able to do something and we give the oil sweetness; or if, as you wish, we can do nothing, the oil has remained such as it was born. How do you say that we are flies about to die corrupting the sweetness of the oil? So oil, before it is prepared by us, is such as it was born; prepared, it can receive sweetness from the name of Christ. How can we by one act both prepare and corrupt? It remains that, if the oil were sweet of itself, what is done by men would be idle, if it is prepared by a man in the name of Christ. The same worker cannot do two conflicting and contrary things at once. If we prepare it in your absence, we do not corrupt it. If we corrupt it, who prepared it before us, for us to corrupt? So, lest the saying of the prophet be idle, if it is so, understand that you are the flies about to die. For you destroyed not what was born but what was prepared; for we read that sweetness, not nature, can be corrupted. For oil is simple and has its one proper name; prepared, it is now called chrism, in which there is the sweetness that softens the skin of the conscience, with the hardness of sins shut out, that renews the gentle mind, that prepares a seat for the Holy Spirit, so that, invited there, harshness put to flight, he may deign to dwell there gladly. This is the sweetness of the oil which the flies about to die can corrupt. If we destroyed the oil prepared by you, you could rightly call us flies about to die. But since we keep what has been anointed by you such as we receive it, we cannot be flies about to die. But while you, driven by the storms of envy, fall as it were into the oil, you destroy in rebaptism the sweetness of that oil which was prepared in the name of Christ, by which morals might be seasoned, by which the light of the mind might be kindled to saving and true understanding. You destroy the thing where there was oil and sweetness. How could we corrupt a sweetness which no one had prepared before us? You led men astray, you rebaptized them, you anointed them again. Alas! not without your own death you destroyed what had been prepared from the name of Christ, after the manner of flies, which destroy as they perish. For death is the sin that has no pardon. It is written that whoever sins against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come. So, since you both falsely call us flies and hasten to undo everything done by us, and say that we are to be despised or looked down on, claiming holiness for yourselves alone, you put forward your innocence so as to promise that you can forgive others' sins. You see, then, that the most blessed apostle Paul spoke not of us, as you argue, but of you: "There will be," he says, "men loving themselves, covetous, boasting to themselves, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, not keeping peace, without affection, slanderers, ungentle, without kindness," and the rest.

Now what kind of thing is this, that at your own will you wished to put on yourselves the person of Moses, against whom the apostle Paul recalls that Jannes and Jambres stood out? If that is so, what truth can be found with you, which the Catholic Church seems to oppose, or what lie can you prove to be with us? Can you prove it a lie to be in one communion with the whole world? Can you prove it a lie to keep and defend the true and single creed? Can you prove it a lie, the chair of Peter and the keys of the kingdom of heaven granted by Christ, where our fellowship is? In the very reading you recalled, among the persons themselves, consider the order of things, observe who was first. Surely Jannes and Jambres are in the second place, who wished to fight with false arts against Moses and the truth. And Moses had gone before, whose mighty works they tried in vain to attack. As Moses is first, so too the Catholic Church is first; as Jannes and Jambres opposed and resisted, so you too fight as rebels against the true Catholic Church. Why is it, then, that you wished to exchange the names for us and for you, except to make yourself equal with your colleagues? For there are some of you who, forgetting or ignorant of past times, say against us things that belong to those who long ago slipped from the Catholic Church and ordained Maiorinus, namely those authors of schism and handing over. While they still kept peace, before they destroyed the unity pleasing to God, they were the light of the world and were rightly called the salt of the earth. While they taught peace, they were still called peacemakers; before they were puffed up, they were blessed for poverty of spirit, they were part of the seasoning; they were blessed while they were meek, they had been part of the seasoning; they were blessed while they were just, they were part of the seasoning; blessed while they were peacemakers, they had been the whole seasoning. After they gave the riches of error to their spirit and their lungs, and making a schism were found ungentle and less merciful, while they impiously divided the members of the church, and following injustice held the kingdom of God in disdain, and by dividing the church would not be peacemakers, they themselves became salt that has lost its savor, with which nothing could be seasoned that would please God by its sweetness. And though this evil belongs to your leaders, some of your colleagues argue otherwise, saying that those were foolish who recognized the truth, even late, and, withdrawing from the schism and recognizing their Catholic mother, followed peace. Some of you think that these have erred; they consider them as if they had lost their savor and withdrawn from wisdom. From this it appears that you all err in the same way in transferring names, since you too compared the peaceable Catholics to Jannes and Jambres and you schismatics to Moses, which is foreign to the truth. And some of your colleagues, being foolish, wished to judge the wise, saying that the peacemakers had become insipid, and would not understand that their own parents had become insipid through dissension.

Now your odium slips to this point, that you say that Macarius after those deeds ought not to have been admitted to communion, but rather to have been excluded by the Catholic bishops. First, the name of communion is one, but its modes are different: it is one thing for a bishop to communicate with a bishop and another for a lay person to communicate with a bishop. It would then have been grave if Macarius had done of his own will what he is said to have done; for when men do such a deed, it is punished by public courts and Roman laws. For he is a murderer who, with no necessity compelling, no command, no authority, but driven by fury, has done of his own will what the laws forbid. But what Macarius is said to have done he did at your provocation; and he was not a bishop, nor was he engaged in the episcopal office, nor did he lay a hand on anyone, nor did he offer the sacrifice. Hence, since it is plain that he was a stranger to the acts of bishops, no bishop seems to have been polluted by one who did not offer with the bishops. It remains that you say that he communicated with the people; and it is plain that he said something among the people, but for the purpose of making something known, not of preaching, which belongs to bishops. For he spoke plainly, if he could say anything. On the other hand, episcopal preaching is shown by all to be clothed with holiness, namely with a doubled greeting. For a bishop begins to say nothing to the people unless he has first greeted the people in the name of God. Endings are like beginnings: every sermon in the church begins with the name of God and ends with the name of the same God. Which of you dares to say that Macarius greeted the people in the manner of bishops? Since, then, he neither greeted before he said anything, nor dared to greet after he had spoken, nor laid on a hand, nor offered the sacrifice to God in the episcopal rite, why do you say that the episcopal college could have been polluted, when you see that Macarius was a stranger to every office of bishops? Here, with the footprint of truth trodden down, your odium seems to raise its head again. For you say that he ought not to have communicated even among the laity. Indeed it is plain that he was, as the apostle Paul proves, a minister of the will of God. And what wonder, if even pagan judges deserved to be reckoned ministers of the will of God, as the apostle says: "Not without cause does the judge carry the sword; for he is a minister of the will of God"? For Macarius too seemed to be a judge in his affair. But if he was not a judge in what he did, it ought to have been punished in him by the judges according to Roman laws. Or if you say that even so he ought not to have communicated, we still do not see that he ought to have been excluded who did such a thing as was done by Moses, whom, after twenty-three thousand men were killed, God did not exclude in contempt, but invited again to speak with him. We do not see that he ought to have been excluded who did what Phinehas did, whom I mentioned a little before, who deserved to be praised by God himself for a killing. It does not seem to us that he ought to have been excluded by whom was done what was done by the prophet Elijah, who killed so many false prophets. For we proved above that those too were false prophets.

But to leave these examples in silence, let us too say, as you say, that Macarius was guilty: if he was, with the accuser silent, it was not lawful for us to exclude him. For it is written that no one is to be condemned before the case is known. Tell us who accused him and was not heard. Tell us that Macarius confessed the fault and our sentence was silent. For we are judges of a sort in the church, which you yourselves do not deny, since you contend that we ought to have been severe judges. For we cannot do what God did not do, who in his judgment deigned to separate the persons: he did not want the same one to be accuser and judge. For no one can bear two persons at the same moment in one case, so as to be in the same trial both accuser and judge. This God did not do even by his omnipotence: to show us the form of judging, he taught that the guilty ought not to be condemned without an accuser, nor that he should be the accuser who is to be judge in that case. In short, among the very beginnings of the ages, when the birth of men had been renewed, when Abel the brother was killed by Cain, we read: "And God called Cain and asked him where his brother was"; he, doubling his sin, as if he made God ignorant, said he did not know. And when could the Lord be ignorant of anything, under whose eyes and face are all things that are done? And yet God does not judge without an accuser, and he asks, certainly, what he knew. And you want us to have excluded one whom we did not see doing anything evil and who had no accuser. I see here what your odium murmurs. For you say that what was done did not escape us. We confess that we heard of it; but it was a sin to condemn one whom no one dared to accuse. But if you say that the deed did not escape us, tell God why he asked, who had seen the murder of a brother. Nor ought we to have done what God would not do, who would not pronounce sentence except on the guilty. Produce an accuser; otherwise the sentence could not be just unless the one who was to judge accused. Therefore he says: "Behold, the blood of your brother cries to me from the earth." So you too, since you cannot at all prove that Macarius was accused by anyone before us, cannot condemn our judgment.