Three Letters to Sympronianus 3.15–3.27

You say that “Blessed are those who mourn” was written of martyrs alone. Does no one else, then, lament his sins? Does not David cry out: “Every night I will wash my bed”? And again: “For I ate ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.” Does not Jacob say: “The years of my life have been very hard”? Does not the Apostle say to Timothy: “Longing to see you, remembering your tears”? Yet he was not speaking of a martyr. What now? Do wretched penitents have dry eyes? Do those who grieve that they have sinned not know how to weep? Do we ourselves, communicants, the faithful, have no tears? Does it delight any of us to rejoice while the world rejoices? You Novatians are already filled, you have already become rich, you have begun to reign without us. So is it not true that as each is wretched, so he begins to deserve pity? After this you propose, and say that it was written by the Lord: “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men; but whoever sins against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, neither here nor in the world to come.” Either I am mistaken, or this example tells against you. For if every sin and blasphemy will be remitted, you see that pardon is not denied to penitents. So every sin; so blasphemy itself too. You have it added in Luke: “And whoever sins against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him.” What could be more than this about the mercy of God, about the clemency of the judge? Or is your eye envious because the householder is good? Is he not permitted to do what he wishes? Indeed, who are you to judge a servant? He stands or falls to his own master; and God is able to make him stand. “But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit,” you say, “will not be forgiven.” You usually run through whole readings: why did you not read here what this “against the Spirit” is? You have it written above that, when the Lord was putting demons to flight by a word and performing many mighty works with a singular power, the Pharisees said: “This man does not cast out demons except by Beelzebul, the prince of demons.” That is to have sinned against the Holy Spirit: to have blasphemed against the things that were done through the Holy Spirit. For in other sins we either slip through error, or are broken by fear, or are overcome by the weakness of the flesh. This is blindness: not to see what you see, and to ascribe the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil, and to call the devil’s power that glory of the Lord by which the devil himself is overcome. This, then, is what will not be forgiven; the rest is granted to good penitents, brother Sympronian.

After this you propose the passage about the branches and the vine thus: The Lord says in John: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he will take away; and every fruitful one he will prune.” You see then that fruit is required in the branches, that is, the good works of penance, as John says: “Bear therefore fruit worthy of repentance.” You see that the branches are pruned: these are the losses of the flesh, the losses of joy, the losses of patrimony, the labours of life; which are properly the acts of penitents. You see also the husbandry of the Lord, who does not destroy even the branches themselves, but prunes and gathers them, some indeed for the fire, some for renewing and replanting vineyards. Eli the priest, you say, speaks and says: “If a man sins against a man, they will pray for him; but if anyone sins against God, who will pray for him?” John likewise: “If anyone knows that his brother is sinning a sin not unto death, he will ask for him, and God will give him life. But there is a sin that leads to death; I do not say that you should pray for that.” You see that all this applies to sins that persist, not to those who once sinned and began to repent before anyone asks for them. It would be long to unroll the examples. Attend to all the sins that the Lord threatens: you will see that they are present ones. And if his past righteousness will not profit the righteous man in the time of his wickedness, the wickedness he has abandoned will not harm the wicked man in the time of his righteousness, since it is written: “Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the criminal his thoughts; and let him turn to God, and he will obtain mercy.” And if God has punished even past sins, and appointed penalty and punishment for things done and passed over, come, does he not have it in his power to change the sentence? Did he not free Rahab, King Nebuchadnezzar, the Gibeonites, the Ninevites, and Zoar from the destruction foretold? Did not the prophet Joel bring this in by him: “Turn to the Lord your God, together with fasting and weeping and mourning; for he is merciful, patient, long-suffering, and of great compassion, and relenting over evils. And who knows whether he will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him?” So wherever you prove that a penalty has been appointed for sinners, you will hold this: either it was appointed for sins that persist, or liberty was left to God to change the sentence for the better, if you repent.

You say further that it is written: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cast it from you.” What this means Moses foretold, as Deuteronomy testifies: “But if your brother entreats you (for these are our eyes and hands), or your daughter, or your wife who is in your bosom, or one equal to your own soul, saying: Let us go and serve gods whom you have not known.” Then he added below: “You shall denounce him, and your hand shall be upon him to kill him.” You see, then, that it was said not of penitents but of those who not only persist in crime themselves but also do not cease to cause us to stumble. These, however dear they are, must be left; however useful, they must be deserted. You propose further that the apostle Paul said: “Remove the evil from among yourselves”: the evil, surely, that persists. But penance is not an evil, since David says: “It is good to make confession to God.” Yet the one who repents is not yet with me, nor joined to the portion or peace of the saints. But the Apostle says: “If anyone who is called a brother is a fornicator, or an idolater, or greedy, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber, do not even eat with such a one.” You see that “is” was not put there without reason: that is, one who does not yet repent, who has not yet ceased to be wicked. And certainly he spoke of the greedy, the drunken, and the revilers at the same time. Answer, brother: is no one of that kind held in your communion? So it is from this too that God cries out through Isaiah: “The wicked and sinners will perish together”: not the penitent, not those who undertake works of mercy, to whom God says again through the same Isaiah: “And if your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow; and if like crimson, I will make them like white wool.”

“And yet,” as you say, “the Apostle condemned the one who went astray.” For in the first letter to the Corinthians he says this: “I indeed, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who committed such a crime: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are all gathered together in the power of God, to hand such a one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” Note first, brother, that he does not condemn those with whom this man communicates: he alone who had committed such a crime is handed over to Satan, he alone is excluded, the peace of the saints remaining intact. Do you condemn all the churches for one sinner? Next you see that this incestuous sinner himself is handed over not to death but to Satan, for amendment, for buffeting, for repentance. Finally he says, “for the destruction of the flesh,” not of the soul, not of the spirit too, but for the destruction of the flesh alone, that is, temptations, the distresses of the flesh, the harm to the members, as he says elsewhere of the intemperate: “Such will suffer tribulation of the flesh.” Do you wish to know this? In Second Corinthians the same Paul absolves this very ungodly man. For he says of him: “For such a one this rebuke by the many is enough, so that you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest such a one be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. Therefore I beg you to confirm your love toward him.” And again below: “If you have forgiven anyone anything, I have too; for what I have forgiven I have forgiven for your sake in the person of Christ, so that he may not be possessed by Satan.” Do you see the indulgence of the Apostle, tempering even his own judgments? Do you see the gentlest mildness, far removed from your haughtiness, far unlike the face of Novatian, but taking thought for the common life and salvation of all?

But you also inveigh against us as a severe censor. You say that by the heavenly law it is not permitted to loosen one of the commandments, nor to bring lambs into communion with wolves, and that every consent shares in the crime; and that therefore whoever touches pitch is defiled; and that there is no fellowship of light with darkness, or of the temple of God with idols, or agreement of Christ with Belial. And that is why David says: “If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and you put your portion with adulterers.” At last you say that we cut away the Lord’s commandments. Do we bend one stroke of the law, or rather the Novatians, who have violated all the laws of the church and of concord, who after so many years of peace, so many covenants of holiness, have brought forth for themselves new laws, new institutions, new rites, feigning a secret righteousness with an inexorable face? Have we received wolves into the church, we who shun the mouths of heretics; or rather the Novatians, who, though they themselves are ravening wolves, dread the little sheep who are a little more wretched? Do we consent to the wicked, do we touch pitch, do we cling to darkness, are we joined to an idol and to Belial; or rather those who received Evaristus, who received Nicostratus, and the others who departed from the church, defiled in tongue, hand, and conduct? Do we meet with adulterers and thieves; or rather those who preferred Novatus to their own life and head, after he had seized the money of orphans and widows, the parricide of his wretched father and of his wife’s child, not only not repentant but even boasting? But the apostle Paul said: “Lay hands hastily on no one.” He teaches the same thing: that hands are not to be denied, at least late, or after penance.

“But after the destruction of Jericho, Achar the son of Carmi was put to death for the theft of a garment.” Come then: you kill all the thieves of our money and books, and rage against the bones of Novatus. Take up again that yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. Why do you hold back, Novatians, from demanding eye for eye, tooth for tooth, from requiring life, from restoring the commerce of circumcision and the Sabbath? Kill thieves, stone the insolent. Do not read in the Gospel that the Lord spared even the adulteress who confessed, whom no one had condemned; that he absolved the sinful woman who washed his feet with tears; that he freed Rahab in the very city of Jericho of the Phoenicians; that he acquitted Tamar of the patriarch’s sentence; that, when Sodom too was perishing, he did not destroy Lot’s daughters, and would have freed his sons-in-law as well, if they had believed in the coming destruction. Come, do you not hold that the Lord says in David: “With those who hated peace I was peaceable”? And the saying of Solomon too: “A brother helping a brother will be exalted”? What of the Apostle? “Brothers, even if a man is overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourselves, lest you be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ.” And what I have already mentioned before: “For I could wish to be accursed in Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” And again: “I have become all things to all, that I might win all”: that is, to share groans with the wounded, labour with the sick, death with the dying; to be able to mingle the fall of brothers with one’s own standing; to give up something of one’s own health and to apply medicine to the failing.

What does it profit you to harden yourselves with a proud and harsh face, to hold your necks high, to turn your faces away from the wretched, to shut your ears and eyes? Have you never fallen, I ask you? Is there no stain in your minds? No speck, I ask, in your eyes? Who will boast that he has a chaste heart, or that he is clean from sins? I believe it: you are righteous, kindly, temperate; all your members are sound, your whole body untouched; you need no physician, nor medicine for diseases. Enter heaven now; pass through the entrance of paradise, the flaming sword giving way; shut off your gifts from so many peoples of ours who confess the one God. But if these things are far otherwise than your implacable cruelty and rigour falsely claim, then you understand, Novatians, that God can have mercy; that medicine, even late, lies open to wretched brothers who confess the past; that the man wounded and passed by the Levite and the priest can be healed through Christ; that the church’s prayers must not be denied to the humble; that the hands of the priests must be held out to pitiable brothers. We, however, understand the church of God, as you reproach us, as a dove not bitter with gall, not violent with tearing claws, with little and small feathers too. We know also that the well of living water and the sealed fountain are not fouled by any stain from a heretical whirlpool, and that the enclosed garden is full of herbs both great and small, cheap and precious. We hold too that there were eight souls from the ark, yet among them was Ham; and those thousands of birds and beasts, by twos and by sevens, clean and unclean alike; but the dry springs and the mists driven by whirlwinds we take to be the barrenness of the heretics and the onrush of insane voices. Nor do we promise freedom, since we ourselves are slaves of punishment; but having confessed our own crimes, we urge the rest also to confess, and to believe in him who justifies the ungodly by faith, who turns back the sentence pronounced against wickedness. We also beware of false prophets and ravening wolves when we guard ourselves against you. And we think that Jannes and Mambres resisted Moses just as you resist the Catholics. Hence the Apostle puts it so: “For as Jannes and Mambres resisted Moses, so these also resist the truth: men corrupt in mind and reprobate before God; but they will not make further progress, for their folly will be plain to all, as theirs was.” It is plain that this was said against you, who have been able neither to make further progress nor to hide your folly.

He who is baptized by a dead man gains nothing: that is, one washed in a heretical font; so too one who is anointed with the oil of a sinner, that is, who is filled with an unclean spirit. So you too will be sons of blood. For you desire not the peace of your brothers but their blood. Your credulity is a false faith. The adulterous woman is the heretical congregation; for the Catholic church from the beginning has not left the bed and chamber of her husband, nor desired other lovers or strangers. You have painted an exile’s form with a new colour; you have separated your bed from the ancient marriage; you have departed from the body of the mother who has known one bed, polished with a new kind of pleasing and new allurements of corruption. As for your setting before me the most blessed Cyprian as a witness on the other side, because in his letter On the Lapsed he says that Moses and Daniel and Job prayed for sinners and did not obtain it, since the Lord says: “Even if three were in their midst, Noah, Job, and Daniel, they will not deliver sons or daughters, but they alone will be saved”: would, would that you relied on Cyprian as witness; would that you assented to such wholesome judgments! For when he was driving to penance the lapsed who did not wish to repent, saying that they had received peace from the confessors or martyrs, he taught and showed that not even those patriarchs obtained anything for those who did not repent. For who can free a man against his will? Who can be humbled for the proud? Who can obtain anything for those who do not repent? And when he said this, he was certainly driving them to the remedies of penance. Nor did a man of such gravity and merit say anything against himself; but he taught that prayers must be poured out by sinners and confession must be loved. Yet the very examples of Cyprian move you, in which he records that Moses and the other saints who interceded for sinners did not obtain it.

Really? Do you not see for whom Moses did not obtain it? When he returned to the people, what does he hear in the camp? The voices of drunkards and songs to an idol were resounding. The people were still persisting in wickedness, still remaining in the very crime, and did not know how to repent. And yet who of us told you that Moses did not obtain it? God had indeed said to him: “He has sinned before me; I will blot him out of the book.” He had said it with the authority of a judge and the power of the Lord; but see how quickly he turned back the sentence pronounced against the people’s wickedness. Listen. The prophet at once, in the same place: “And Moses prayed,” it says, “in the presence of the Lord his God: Why, Lord, are you so angry with your people?” and the rest. And again below: “And the Lord was appeased concerning the evil that he had said he would do to his people.” Do you see that the wrath of God was softened? Do you see that the offence was appeased? And this for a people that did not ask, nor repent of what it had done!

“But Noah,” you say, “and Daniel and Job could not deliver sons and daughters.” And this is so: if they ask for those who do not ask; if they intercede for one who persists in crime; if they defend not individuals, not a few, but many thousands. But Noah freed his house from the common ruin; and Job received back all that he had lost; and Daniel by prayer struck down that sword which threatened the wise men of Babylon. Lot certainly prays for the safety of a town, Paul for the passengers of a ship. So those who know how to repent are set free by the righteous. Finally I look also at what it says is written: “They alone will be saved.” Who are they? Surely those who intercede for sinners will ask for such people without harm to themselves. Why then do you condemn the church? Why do you forbid intercession for penitents, if it is permitted to ask even for those for whom it is not permitted to obtain? Read my Cyprian more carefully, then: read the whole letter On the Lapsed; read the other that he sent to Antonianus, where Novatian is pressed with every example: then you will know what he declares about the healing of penitents. I speak of Cyprian, who attacks your positions and holds to the catholic laws. Tertullian, after his heresy (for you have taken much from there), you will hear confessing in his own letter, and in that very one which he published as a Catholic, that the church can forgive sins.

You see then that the church is the queen in a golden and many-coloured robe; made up, surely, of the variety of many bodies and many peoples. This embroidery is not of one colour, nor does so great a diversity shine out in a single garment. One part of the dress covers, another arranges. Some clings to the breast, some trails in the last fold and is soiled among the very footsteps. One part is compared to the purple of the martyrs, another to the silk of virgins; some is stitched underneath with a folding seam, or repaired by the inserting needle. For one has this gift, another that; and yet in all one queen is adorned. So too this fruitful and rich vine, having many branches, spread out the more with a great mane of shoots: has none of them suffered from the winter cold? Has none endured harsh hail? Has none complained of scorching summers? This bud is rougher on its shoots, that one stronger, another purer; this one spreads itself into fruit, that one abounds only in leaves. Yet the vine is everywhere beautiful. She is the mother of young maidens without number. Count the catholic flocks, then, if you can, and reckon on your fingers the swarms of our people. Not only those spread through the whole world, filling every region, but these, brother Sympronian, that live with you in the nearest territories and the neighbouring city. Consider how many of ours you alone see, how many peoples of mine you alone meet. Are you not swallowed up like drops by great springs, like a drop by the ocean? Tell me, tell me whether these young maidens are born of your people, or whether you alone bear them. Ours, I say, is this queen, chosen by her mother and perfect. For nothing is chosen unless it is better and greater than another; nothing can be perfect unless it is full.

Now consider this too: whether she in particular has been built “on the foundations of the prophets and apostles, with Jesus Christ himself the cornerstone”: whether she began before you, whether she believed before you, whether she did not depart from the earlier foundations, did not move from them, did not separate from the rest of the body and set up her own teachers and her own documents. If she argued for something unusual, if she found some new law, if she declared a divorce from peace against her own body: then plainly she would seem to have departed from Christ, then to have stood outside the prophets and apostles. This, then, will be the great house, rich in every variety of vessels, in which pure gold shines, in which ductile silver gleams; but which also, as it is written, thinks wooden and earthenware vessels worthy. For a great house sets many uses in motion and calls for diverse works. It does not seek only silver, nor delight only in golden ornament. Often despised things suit the great better; and amid noble display even small things are pleasant. No craftsman despises his own works, nor thinks cheap what he has made. And why do you think Christ suffered for sinners, if not because he did not wish to lose whatever he himself had formed? Why do you think he intercedes even today for the wretched, if not because he does not reject what is small, even the most despised, intending to lose none of those whom he has received, though they be compared to wood and earthenware; and so he arranges all the vessels in his house?

At last, brother Sympronian, do not be reluctant to be with the many; at last be pleased to despise the hangnails of the Novatians and your own parings; at last look upon the catholic flocks and the peoples of the church spreading so widely. “Where one is,” you will say, “there am I too; and where two are, there is the church.” Yes, where one is, but in concord; where two, but peaceable. Where there is one, there is the church too; how much more where there are many? “Two,” it says, “are better than one,” and “a threefold cord is not broken.” Hear David: “I will sing to your name in the great assembly.” And again: “In a mighty people I will praise you.” And: “The God of gods has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” What of the seed of Abraham, according to the measure of the stars and the number of the sands: is it content with your poverty? “In you,” it says, “all the tribes of the earth will be blessed.” Tell me: does Novatian fill these? God has not redeemed so little with his blood, nor is Christ so poor. Recognize now, brother, the church of God enlarging her tents and fixing the stakes of her curtains to the right and to the left; understand that “from the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised.” See, see, I beg you, while the Novatians struggle over words, how the catholic riches are spread through the whole world. I have instructed you on all the points on which you consulted me. I have passed over no heading or opinion among those proposed. I have answered down to the very strokes and words. If you asked with the mind of one who consults, it has been shown you lovingly; if with the mind of one who provokes, it has been argued with no slackness. When there is leisure I shall add another letter too, in which I shall not refute your positions but set out ours; and if you read it kindly and without disdain, perhaps it will not hurt. Meanwhile, in this one, I ask you to examine each point. Everything read quickly passes by: if you desire the better gifts and have a soul of good learning, you will not easily despise things so true. May the Lord deign to keep and protect you for ever, and make you live as a Christian in spiritual concord. Amen.