Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.1–1.14

I have discussed many things elsewhere against the Donatists, according to the strength the Lord supplies, partly in writing and partly also in preaching. But now, since there has come into our hands a certain letter of Parmenian, formerly their bishop, which he writes to Tyconius, a man indeed gifted with a keen mind and a rich eloquence, but nonetheless a Donatist, since he thought him in error in that very point which Tyconius had been compelled to confess as true, it has pleased the brothers who asked, or rather commanded, that I should answer this same letter of Parmenian here, chiefly because of certain testimonies from the Scriptures which he does not take as they ought to be taken. For Tyconius, beaten about by all the voices of the holy pages, woke up and saw the church of God spread throughout the whole world, as was foreseen and foretold of her so long before through the hearts and mouths of the saints. Having perceived this, he undertook to demonstrate and assert against his own people that no man’s sin, however wicked and monstrous, prejudices the promises of God, and that no impiety of any persons whatever placed within the church brings it about that God’s faithfulness concerning the church that was to be spread to the ends of the earth, a faithfulness held in the promises to the fathers and now displayed, is made void. When Tyconius was arguing this forcefully and abundantly, and was stopping the mouths of those who contradicted him with many great and plain testimonies of the holy Scriptures, he did not see what he ought to have seen as the consequence: namely, that those Christians in Africa belong to the church spread through the whole world who are joined by communion, not to these men who are cut off from the communion and unity of that same world, but to the world itself. But Parmenian and the other Donatists saw that this was the consequence, and they preferred to take up a most obstinate mind against the plainest truth, which Tyconius asserted, rather than, by conceding it, be overcome by the African churches that rejoiced in the communion of that unity which Tyconius asserted, from which these men had separated themselves. And Parmenian at first thought he should correct him by a letter; but afterwards, they report, he was even condemned by a council of theirs. So in this work we have decided to answer the letter of Parmenian which he wrote to Tyconius, rebuking him for preaching the church spread through the whole world and warning him not to dare to do so.

Let us first, then, see what sort of thing it is that he says the Gauls, Spaniards, and Italians and their associates, by whom he certainly wants the whole world to be understood, are like the African traitors in partnership of crimes and fellowship of guilt. For to a man who brings forward from the holy Scriptures so many and such weighty proofs, he himself speaks without proofs, and, proving nothing, wants to be believed, inviting him, it seems, to imitate him, since he too believed some of his fellow bishops, who did nothing but talk, against so many churches established through so great a breadth of all lands. What can be found more rash than this credulity? For he says that certain men, most faithful witnesses as he himself asserts, came to those same provinces on an embassy; then, by a second visit of most holy priests of the Lord, as he says, the things they charge were made public clearly, more fully, and more truly. O man who thinks he should be believed rather than God! Tyconius brings forward the thunders of the divine covenant, which was made in the promise to Abraham, the promise to Isaac, and the promise to Jacob, whose God he testifies that he is, saying: ‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; this is my name for ever’; and this man sets against it the stories of his fellow priests. What was said to Abraham? ‘In your seed all nations shall be blessed.’ What was said to Isaac? ‘And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham your father heard my voice.’ What was said to Jacob? ‘I am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; do not fear. For the land on which you are sleeping I will give to you and to your seed. And your seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and it shall be spread abroad to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east. And in you all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed, and in your seed.’ And lest they think this was said of the Jews, let the apostle explain what the seed of Abraham is, in which it was said that all nations would be blessed: ‘To Abraham’, he says, ‘were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds”, as of many, but as of one, “And to your seed”, which is Christ.’ So it was promised with such great authority, and displayed with such great truth, that all nations would have the blessing in Christ; and those who wish to be called Christians contradict it. And what do they set against these things? ‘Certain most faithful witnesses’, he says, ‘came on an embassy to those same provinces; then, by a second visit of most holy priests of the Lord, it was made public clearly, more fully, and more truly.’ What, I ask you, what was made public through these faithful witnesses, whom you want to be more faithful than God? Was it that, because of the African traitors, the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, was not permitted to reach all nations, and withered there where it had reached? Say now that your colleagues are to be believed rather than the covenant of God; and while saying this, you boast that you preserved from the flames the very covenant that you are trying to blot out with your tongue.

But let each choose what he likes, and if the smoke of earthly falsehood prevails at all against heavenly lightnings, let him leave heaven and vanish into the winds. For if Parmenian were not favouring his own chair, he would rather choose to believe the Scripture of God than his colleagues. For God says to Jacob: ‘I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.’ But it is much more credible of those men that, because they had already been rejected by a just judgment, they were not admitted to share communion in those regions where God was already fulfilling what he had promised to our fathers, and that for this reason they boasted such things about the holy priests of God, by whom they had not deserved to be received, in order to stir up with false rumours the weak minds of the peoples they had deceived, and to break away from the peace of the world minds rashly credulous and entangled by the pride of their name. What can be found more insane than this folly, or rather madness? In so many nations of the world God has fulfilled, and in large part is still fulfilling, until it comes altogether to all, what he promised, who said: ‘I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you’; and these men now believe those who report that what God promised is not fulfilled, and that therefore the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, has perished from the parts of the world in which it had already been fulfilled, and that God’s promises have been made void, because they themselves were not admitted to the communion of those among whom the world already held this fulfilled. And it is not said to them: ‘God alone is true, but every man is a liar. You say these things from your own, because he who speaks a lie speaks from his own. So you lie as men, because you are angry as men.’ This is not said to them; rather, they are believed when they say that Christ has perished from the world which he had already begun to possess. And those who believe this, while saying shamelessly, ‘We are Christians’, dare to say: ‘We alone are.’

Parmenian also says that the world is proved to have been made criminal by the crimes of handing over and other sacrileges because, though many such things were committed in the time of persecution, no separation of peoples took place afterwards in those provinces. As if it could not have happened that some of the bad remained hidden and were not accused, so that they could be condemned without any rashness, while others were exposed and condemned and, because they were convicted by evident facts, ceased from disturbing and dividing the churches; and that so it came about that, since some were not accused, and certain uncertain charges were left to God for the sake of a certain peace, while certain charges were so made plain and proved that they were condemned and no condemned man could deceive the peoples by feigned innocence, the bond of unity was in no way broken. Nor indeed would this so monstrous evil of cutting off have happened in Africa either, had not the faction of those who invent falsehoods prevailed over the true reasoning of those who convict.

Let those who wish read what Optatus, bishop of Milevis, of the Catholic communion and of venerable memory, relates, and with what documents he makes so many things convincing: whether about Lucilla, at that time a very wealthy and very factious woman, whom the holy Caecilian, then still a deacon, had offended for the sake of the church’s discipline; or about the other partners of her faction, whether thieves of the church’s silver or men grieved that they had not reached the episcopate and pursuing Caecilian, who had been preferred to them, with whatever plots they could; or about the Numidian bishops, whom this faction had summoned for Caecilian’s ruin, so that, he being deposed, another might be ordained for them. These came with their primate at that time, Secundus of Tigisis, and with others whose confessed crimes of handing over Secundus himself had pardoned, as if consulting for peace, as the church records testify; and without any delay for a more careful inquiry, with no place kept for a reply, they judged the absent Caecilian to be a traitor: so that, obviously, the crimes of handing over merely charged against him harmed him in his absence, while they, being present, pardoned to one another crimes confessed. So against a man seated in the chair, with whom the whole Christian world communicated in lands overseas and far distant, and among the Africans themselves in the weightier churches, stronger against deceits of this kind, they ordained another bishop, so that for their own deed they might contradict the promises of God, that in the seed of Abraham all nations should not be blessed, and might say that even those parts of the world were defiled by the African traitors which had either never heard the name of Caecilian or had at least heard of his life, of which these men convicted him of no crime, as of an innocent man’s. Moreover, against the world when it says, ‘What you charge against your fellow citizens I could neither find out nor ought I to condemn it unknown’, they bring forward the testimony of the apostle saying: ‘Not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to those who do them.’ For it was not enough for them to condemn so many great Christian peoples unheard, unless they also dared to bring out against the apostle himself his words indeed, but not his meaning. For if consenting to evildoers is being with them in the church, then the apostle himself consented to false brothers, among whom he testified that he was in danger, and whom he nonetheless allows to preach, though they preach the gospel not purely but out of envy, without love. But if consenting to evildoers is nothing other than approving and praising their evil deeds, then by the apostle’s example the world would not consent to the crimes of the Africans even if, knowing them, it tolerated them for the peace of the church; yet these men do not prove that the world knew them, even if they could have proved them true.

In vain therefore does Parmenian say that traitors condemned in Africa were received into the fellowship of holiness by the provinces overseas. For this is what we must not believe, lest by a sacrilegious rashness we condemn the whole world, founded in the unity of Christ, on these men’s false accusation, rather than love it on the true promise of God. For which is more to be believed: what God said, ‘In your seed all nations shall be blessed’, or what these men say, ‘In the seed of the African traitors all nations are cursed’, so that what iniquity committed is stronger than what truth promised? Why then do we not rather believe that those who were received into communion by the provinces overseas either were innocent and could not be crushed by their slanderers, which can be shown more probably by many documents, or at least, since they could not be convicted, even if they were bad, were received as innocent without any contamination of those who received them? What if, even through bad brothers, such as the apostle tolerated in the unity of the church, such as the martyr Cyprian groans over in his letter on the lapsed, if then through such brothers, placed even among the judges, some crookedness had brought it about that the traitors could not be excluded and convicted, and the Christian world were deceived by their feigned innocence, it would in no way have lost its own innocence.

As for what he said about Ossius, formerly Catholic bishop of Cordoba, they must be pressed to prove not only that he was such as they say, but also that it was evident that he was such to those with whom they assert he communicated. Unless they prove this, they say in vain that they knew what he was, since it could not harm those who did not know; and by separating themselves from these innocent men, these men cannot be innocent, because of the sacrilegious iniquity of separation itself. For this is more credible, if indeed Ossius, condemned by the Spaniards, was acquitted by the Gauls: that it could have happened that the Spaniards, taken in by false accusations and deceived by the cunning fraud of plots, gave sentence against an innocent man, and afterwards peaceably, in Christian humility, yielded to the sentence of their colleagues, by whom his innocence was established, lest by defending their earlier sentences with stubborn and spirited perversity they should rush, in the blindness of impiety, into the sacrilege of schism, which surpasses all crimes; as these wretched men have done, and, though so often divided and cut up, do not even late perceive what they have done.

So they declare plainly enough how they became incurable: namely, so that they would not be forced to condemn their earlier sentences, which they rashly pronounced against the absent Caecilian, if, at the overseas judgment, where they were defeated by Caecilian when he was present, they had acquiesced out of regard for truth and peace; though they would have carried off a greater victory if, at least after the judgment, they had overcome human animosity rather than a man in the judgment itself. For that victory is loftier, and fuller of a loftier triumph, than if it were reported over a whole subjugated city, not merely over one defeated man, as Scripture says: ‘Better is he who conquers anger than he who takes a city.’ So those whom anger was conquering desired to conquer a man; and since they could not conquer the man, they were overcome both by the man and by anger: by the man, because they were defeated in the judgment; by anger, because even when defeated they did not rest, hearing or reading with a most perverse heart the apostle’s sentence when he says: ‘For if I build again the very things that I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.’ If the apostle himself had understood these words with so wrong a mind, he would have become neither a Christian nor an apostle, nor as a preacher would he have built up the churches which as a persecutor he had previously destroyed. Nowhere, then, have these men shown so openly why, even when overcome, they would not be corrected, as when they condemn the Spaniards because, after pronouncing their sentences otherwise, they yielded to the later examination and judgment of their colleagues. For as much as this was done from Christian gentleness, so much was that done from diabolical contention; and so it is no wonder that by this humility peace was kept, by that pride it was broken. Accordingly what they did is rightly paid back to them, for they taught such things to their descendants. For the Maximianists too would not yield to the council of three hundred and ten of their colleagues, by whom Primian, whom they themselves had first condemned, was judged innocent, for no other reason than that with lost obstinacy they set before the unlearned the apostle’s sentence, saying: ‘For if I build again the very things that I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.’ For a hundred colleagues had destroyed Primian, and therefore they refused to build him up again with the three hundred. So while they pretend to be careful not to build up a man whom they had destroyed, they destroyed themselves by a greater sacrilege in another schism.

But if Parmenian were alive, he would not now dare to rebuke the Spaniards and call them transgressors because they changed their sentence to that of their colleagues, lest he offend his own colleagues, many of whom, after Primian had been condemned by them, were corrected for the better and went over to the council of the three hundred, choosing to go against their own over-hasty sentences rather than against the peace of unity, even in the party of Donatus. And Parmenian would especially spare Praetextatus of Assuras and Felicianus of Musti, who, though condemned by three hundred and ten of their fellow bishops, returned out of zeal for concord to the very men by whom they had been condemned, and were received by their condemners with the same zeal, for the sake of peace, without any loss of their rank; nor did anyone think that those whom they had baptized outside, in schism, should be rebaptized. Or perhaps, since those who correct their sentences greatly displease Parmenian, and he calls them transgressors, not understanding the apostle, he would condemn these men because they chose to return inside rather than remain outside, and, joining to himself some similar associates, would create Parmenianists as well, just as many pieces have already been made of this large piece throughout all Africa? So, so it must be: those who preferred the swelling of their own animosity to the most holy bond of Catholic peace perish cut up and cut down into little pieces. For what Parmenian charges is not so much to be feared as what he confesses is to be examined.

For when he said that through the Spaniard Ossius help was given to Caecilian, so that the number of the holy and undefiled might be forced into their communion, and that the unbroken faith of the servants of God resisted this impiety, he confessed of his own accord that his own people had even gone to Constantine, and that by his decision the case was heard by bishops as judges, over whom Miltiades, bishop of the city of Rome, presided. At that judgment, as the church records testify, because these men were defeated and Caecilian was found innocent, they accuse that same Miltiades of the crime of handing over. I ask when they found this out. For if before the judgment, they ought not to have prejudiced themselves by beginning to plead their case before such a judge and submitting to such a judgment on the command of the emperor, to whom they themselves had gone. But if they claim to have learned that he was a traitor after the case was pleaded and sentence pronounced, are men so mad as to believe defeated litigants against the judges before whom they were defeated? And yet in all these things, with great rashness, they accuse the Italians and the Gauls and the Spaniards, leaving aside the many other provinces and nations from which they are separated by an abominable sacrilege, which the crimes of the Italians, Spaniards, and Gauls could certainly not harm even if they were said truly. For they now blindly, or rather madly, accuse the other lands and are angry with them because, when there were two parties in Africa, one, as they say, of traitors and the other of innocent men, they preferred to join themselves to the traitors rather than to the innocent. This empty accusation is refuted most briefly and most truly thus: when the others heard that there were two parties in Africa, one of traitors and the other of innocent men, they believed that party to be innocent which had won its case before neighbouring church judges. Therefore those always remained innocent who, not knowing how these things were done in Africa, nonetheless believed what they ought to believe peaceably and religiously; and separation from these innocent men could in no way be innocent.

Parmenian also confesses that both bishops as judges and the parties from Africa, that is, Caecilian and the Donatists, met at the town of Arles. There he believed his own people in everything, though, being defeated, they could do nothing but complain about the judges; nor does he deny that they came again to Constantine, and, because there too they were overcome in a final judgment, he charges that Constantine himself was corrupted by favour. Having considered all this, let one who judges without partisanship choose whom to believe: the judges who pronounced the sentences, or the litigants against whom they were pronounced and who refused to end the dispute. And certainly the world believed the judges. But those who agree with the Donatists and defend them confess that they believe men who, whatever their case was, could not win it in so many overseas hearings, and with credulous vanity they take up their murmurs and accusations against the judges. In this matter, if they call themselves innocent and are unwilling to believe rashly that those whom they see defeated were defeated by the truth, how much more innocent are those who are unwilling rashly to believe anything bad about the judges themselves, against whom those who have been defeated must complain! For not only does the man who lost a good case complain of an unjust or slow or negligent judge, but also the man who was most justly defeated murmurs against an innocent judge with the same blindness with which he contended against an innocent opponent. Therefore these men are not wicked because they are unwilling to believe anything rashly about the defeated, but because by the madness of schism they have cut themselves off from those innocent men who, much more reasonably, are unwilling to believe any such thing about the judges themselves.

Let one of the churches of those regions, most renowned in the name of Christ, come forward: one of the seven, and, if you please, above all Philadelphia, which by a mystical name signifies in the Greek tongue brotherly love. Let us hear her voice, and let not her chaff speak, but her wheat. Suppose she says to these men: ‘What do you charge in me, brothers, of what do you accuse me? How great a distance on the earth I am from Africa you could partly know and partly hear. What either traitors, or the accusers or condemners of traitors, or the slanderers or oppressors of the innocent did there at that time, I know nothing at all. But our Lord, who bought the whole world at the price of his blood, whose holy purchase the prophet sang so long before, saying: “They dug my hands and feet, they numbered all my bones. But they considered and looked at me, they divided my garments among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots”, did not set between you and us spaces empty and bare of Christians; he filled all these with the sanctification of his name. For in that very psalm of the passion it is declared not only at what price, but also how much he bought. For there it is said a little later: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight, for the kingdom is his, and he shall rule the nations.” So I might perhaps be forced to judge your case then, if I were either a neighbour or so far away that no other Christians lived between us and you, marked with the same name, at peace in the same unity. Many families of the nations lie between, bought together with me by his blood, in whose sight they worship equally with me. Through them the report about you came across to me; they could examine your case from nearby. If this was not done, you neglected it; for had you been neglected by the others, you would surely have come even as far as us. But if something was judged, forgive me: I do not dare rashly to believe you, the defeated, and to condemn your judges with the same rashness. There is something else that moves me greatly: if you had been innocent and oppressed, you would at least love us, brothers who have done you no harm. But since you try to tear us with curses and pursue us with bitter hatreds, though we know well in our conscience that your case was entrusted by the right law of the church to your neighbours, who know before God how they judged, and even try to rebaptize us, as though because of you Christ had lost his inheritance among us, what good can we think of that case of yours? For in not at all hesitating to condemn your brothers far, far away by rash suspicions, you show how justly you were condemned by your neighbours. For why should I not believe that a man heard by a neighbouring judge could have been rightly condemned, when he does not hesitate to condemn me, his brother, so far away and unheard, charging me with this as the greatest crime: that I, who could not be present, believed the judges to whom the case was brought rather than the defeated litigants? If I had not rather believed these judges, even if those who were defeated were innocent, I could not be innocent. For we would be entangled in a great offence if, when we could not see human hearts, we neither kept church discipline nor were willing to believe them as judges, beyond whom the case could not pass and through whom the report could run to us. Do you, splitting yourself off from these innocent men by an impious separation, call yourself innocent? If you were, then, seeing in the holy Scriptures that the harvest of your Lord cannot be separated from weeds and chaff before the last sorting and winnowing, you would rather choose to be strong in tolerating the bad than impious in deserting the good.’ For how many such voices, and how very just ones, do we think there are from churches far away through the world, such as I have pictured in Philadelphia!

Indeed Parmenian even dares to complain that Constantine ordered to be led to the field, that is, to execution, those who, defeated before church judges, could not prove what they said before him either, and were still being carried by sacrilegious madness into cuttings-off of the holy church; and he charges him with having ordered this as a monstrous thing at the suggestion of the Spaniard Ossius, condemning men unheard, as always, by his own suspicions. As if another man would not more humanely and more probably have believed that it was rather done at the suggestion of Ossius, as a bishop, that the emperor should turn his sentence to a milder punishment of what was nonetheless a most monstrous crime, that is, sacrilegious schism. For what do these men not suffer justly, when they suffer by the most high judgment of God, who presides and warns by such scourges to avoid the eternal fire, both by the desert of their crimes and by the order of the powers? Let them first prove that they are not heretics or schismatics; then, and only then, let them raise a free voice about their undeserved punishments; then, and only then, let them dare to call themselves martyrs of the truth when they suffer something of this kind. Otherwise, if whoever pays a penalty at the hands of the emperor or of judges sent by him is at once a martyr, all prisons are full of martyrs, all the chains of the courts drag martyrs, in all the mines are suffering martyrs, martyrs are deported to all the islands, in all places of punishment martyrs are struck by the sword of justice, all are martyrs who are put to the beasts or by the judges’ orders are burned alive. But if, as the apostle says, ‘there is no power except from God’, and ‘the minister of God is an avenger in wrath on him who does evil; he does not bear the sword in vain. Do you want not to fear the power? Do good, and you will have praise from it.’ For when any good man suffers, praise comes to him from the power of the one who inflicts it; but let the bad man not impute to the cruelty of the power what he suffers deservedly for his iniquity.

And yet what do these men suffer such as they do, except that the multitude of people has its heart not in the heart but in the eyes? For if blood comes out of mortal flesh, whoever looks on shudders; but if souls cut off and separated from the peace of Christ die in the sacrilege of heresy or schism, because it is not seen it is not mourned; rather, that death, more hideous and more lamentable and, to speak plainly, more truly death, is even laughed at by the law of custom, when the authors of so many deaths insult us publicly and do not deign to discuss with us even for the sake of making the truth plain. And if they suffer any temporal trouble through the most certain and most correct order of the powers, while they themselves, with private bands of madmen, commit much heavier things everywhere and every day under no royal and no church law, they call us persecutors of bodies but do not call themselves killers of souls, though by private licence they do not spare bodies either. But because, through Christian gentleness, an eye torn out in a quarrel is punished much more severely than a mind blinded in schism, they speak out, and they speak against us, and they do not speak with us; and when the truth compels them to fall silent, iniquity does not allow them to be quiet.