Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.15–2.7

Or perhaps it is not right for the emperor, or those whom the emperor has sent, to judge about religion? Why then did your envoys go to the emperor? Why did they make him judge of their case, when they were not going to follow what he judged? But to what purpose is this said? Even if they establish that it does not belong to the emperor to decree anything against those who follow crooked ways in religion, will they be martyrs on that account if he does so and punishes them? For in this way this plea will lie open to all heretics, against whom many very severe coercive measures have been decreed, by the hidden command of God through the open command of men; and not only to heretics, whitewashed in some way at least with the Christian name, but even to the pagans themselves. For certainly they too are impious by a false religion, whose images have been ordered by recent laws to be overthrown and broken, and their sacrifices also to be prohibited under threat of death. If then any of them is condemned for such a crime, is he to be held a martyr because he paid the penalty under the laws for a superstition that he thought a pious religion? Certainly no Christian of any kind dares to say this. So not everyone punished by the emperor in some question of religion becomes a martyr. Nor do those who think such things see that they are advancing to the point of maintaining that even the demons can claim for themselves the glory of martyrs, because they suffer this persecution through Christian emperors, so that through almost the whole world their temples are overthrown, their idols smashed, their sacrifices withdrawn, and those who honour them are punished if caught. If it is utter madness to say this, then it is not suffering that makes righteousness certain, but righteousness that makes suffering glorious. And so the Lord, lest anyone should spread fogs before the unlearned in this matter and seek the praise of martyrs in the condemnation of his own deserts, did not say generally, ‘Blessed are those who suffer persecution’, but added a great difference, by which piety is truly distinguished from sacrilege. For he says: ‘Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness.’ But in no way do they suffer for the sake of righteousness who have divided the church of Christ, and, while with feigned righteousness they try, as it were, to separate her from the chaff before the time, and pursue her wheat with false accusations, have rather themselves been separated from her like the lightest chaff by the various winds of rumours. ‘But’, they say, ‘we did not do this.’ Let them see then that they must first free themselves from this question, and then dare, if they suffer any troubles or punishments from Christian emperors, either to lay them down as a complaint or to take them up as a glory. On this matter, that is, the question of the schism itself, even if I said nothing else, what was said above would suffice.

Or perhaps they will say that, even if they are convicted of sacrilegious dissension, so that they are not martyrs if they suffer anything for that madness, still the coercing or punishing of such things ought not to belong to the power of emperors? In this I ask what they mean: is it that such powers should take no care about vicious or false religion? But we have already said much about the pagans and about the demons themselves, that they suffer persecutions from the emperors. Or does this too displease them? Why then do they themselves overthrow temples where they can, and never cease to do or avenge such things through the madness of the circumcellions? Is private violence more just than royal diligence? But I pass over these things. This I ask: since the apostle enumerates the plain works of the flesh, ‘which are’, he says, ‘sexual immoralities, impurities, licentiousness, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strifes, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and things like these’, what do these men think? Do they hold that the crime of idolatry is justly punished by the emperors? Or, if they do not want even this, why do they admit that the force of the laws is justly brought to bear against sorcerers, but will not admit it against heretics and impious dissensions, when by the apostle’s authority these are numbered among the same fruits of iniquity? Or perhaps they do not allow these powers of human institution to take care even of such things? Why then does he bear the sword, who is called the minister of God, an avenger in wrath on those who do evil? Unless perhaps, as some of them, very unlearned indeed, usually understand it, this was said of church offices, so that the sword is understood as the spiritual punishment that excommunication works; though the most provident apostle shows clearly enough, in the following context of the reading, what he is talking about. For there he added: ‘For because of this you also pay taxes’, and then joined: ‘Render to all what is owed: tax to whom tax is owed, revenue to whom revenue, honour to whom honour, fear to whom fear.’ It remains, then, that by these arguments of theirs they forbid Christians to pay taxes, though the Lord, to the Pharisees who thought such things, and whom these men imitate, answered after looking at the coin: ‘Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.’ But these men, disobedient and impious in both respects, render neither Christian love to God nor human fear to kings; so blind and insane that, though they have driven their own schismatics, the Maximianists, out of basilicas through authorities sent by Catholic emperors, and forced them by great pressure of orders and armed help to give way to them, they accuse the Catholic Church if Catholic princes have ordered anything of the kind to be done on its behalf. And let the Maximianists themselves, before they were Maximianists, that is, when they were still held together in the one fellowship of the Donatists, recall how savage and bitter were the things that the well-known Rogatus the Moor suffered from them through the barbarian king Firmus, and let them be silent and not dare to complain if they suffer anything of this kind, either from the Primianists because of their own schism or together with the Primianists because of the schism of the Donatists, not for sacred religion but for sacrilegious animosity.

For perhaps they say that they have suffered heavier things from Catholic emperors than these men did to the Rogatists through barbarian kings, or to the Maximianists through the judges of Catholic emperors, or are still doing through the madness of the circumcellions to whomever they can. As if the question were whether they suffer heavier things than they do, which in fact I would by no means grant. For many most savage and most bitter deeds of theirs are counted, or rather cannot be counted; and even if they were fewer, or afflicted less those against whom they are committed, they would certainly be heavier by this very fact, that they are not ordered by ordained powers but committed by extraordinary madness. For the things they did against the Maximianists through judges of human institution are not so many. Let them put in that class of actions, if they like, even the things done by them through the barbarian Firmus to persecute Rogatus the Moor, and let them count him, though a most monstrous enemy of the Romans, among lawful powers. But these are not so many as the things committed every day, against all order of laws and powers, by mad herds of drunken young men over whom they set leaders, who at first armed themselves only with clubs and now have begun to arm themselves with iron too, who wander and rage through all Africa under the well-known name of circumcellions. When their crimes are reported to them, they pretend not to know that kind of men, or with the most shameless face, contrary to what all people know, affirm that they do not belong to them at all; and they do not accept even this voice of the whole world, which says much more probably and truly that it does not know what was done in Africa, either by the party of Donatus or against the party of Donatus, if in Africa itself Donatist bishops may either not know the deeds of Donatist circumcellions or say that they do not belong to them.

But, as I had begun to say, the question now is not whether they suffer heavier things than they do, but whether it is permitted for anything of this kind to be done against heretics and schismatics. For if they say it is not permitted, why do they do it themselves? But if they admit that it is permitted, even if they show, as they by no means can, that they suffer heavier things from Catholic emperors than they themselves have done to their own schismatics through the emperors’ judges or through barbarian kings, or do to every kind of person through the insanity of the circumcellions, this too is no wonder, if princes can do more than judges sent by princes, if Roman emperors can do more than barbarian kings, and if a robber deservedly suffers heavier things under the laws than he himself commits against the laws. Hence the masters of the circumcellions deservedly suffer heavier things under just decrees than the circumcellions do. And yet so great is Christian gentleness that their deeds incomparably exceed their punishments. But see: three hundred and ten Donatist bishops condemned the Maximianists in their council, but these, by the obstinacy of their perversity, refused to give up the basilicas. The judges were approached; their council was entered in the proconsular records. Then it was ordered that those condemned by so great a number of bishops should give up the places. Those who readily gave them up did not suffer much; but who does not know how those who tried to resist were afflicted? Yet if the savagery of the resisters had been so great as to come to injuring the judges, would they not have suffered far bitterer things under Roman law? So also then, after the end of the case in which these men cut themselves off from the Catholic Church, when it began to be enforced, as a consequence, that they should not hold the basilicas, and they held them by resisting the imperial orders, and resisted in such a way that that well-known violence of the circumcellions prevailed, adding besides that they harried with most turbulent and savage riots those who were going through Africa with the gifts to the church that the emperor had sent, laws were issued against them such that they were not allowed to keep even those basilicas which did not belong to unity, but had been built by men separated and already established in their own schism. In this the royal power was now avenging injuries to itself. For what can enemies of justice justly possess?

Nor is anyone found to have issued anything in their favour except Julian the Apostate, to whom Christian peace and unity were most displeasing, since the very religion from which he had impiously fallen displeased him. To him these Donatists, as the records of the judges testify, before whom they produced what they had obtained, made their petition in such words that perhaps some who consented out of fear to the worship of idols did so more mildly than these men praised him in their madness. For they said that with him justice alone had a place. What else, then, are they found to have said than either that Christian holiness is not justice, since it had no place with him, or that the honouring of demons is justice, since it had the first place with him? But who does not know how severe were the laws of other emperors issued against them? Among them one general law against all who wish to be called Christians and do not communicate with the Catholic Church, but gather in their own separated conventicles, provides that both the one who ordains a cleric and the one ordained be fined ten pounds of gold each, and that the place itself where the impious separation gathers be confiscated to the treasury. There are also other general orders by which they are deprived of the power to make wills or to confer anything by gift, or to receive anything by gift or will. For in a certain case, when a man of rank petitioned the emperors that his sister, who was of the party of Donatus, had at her death conferred a great deal on some persons of her communion, and especially on a certain Augustine, their bishop, it was ordered on the basis of that general law that everything be restored to the brother; and there mention was also made of the circumcellions, with what kind of help and support they were to be repelled if, in their usual way, they resisted with violence. For so well known were they, so proved in many battles, that neither the petitioner to the emperor nor the emperor could be silent about them.

Since this is so, since they are thus condemned by both divine and human laws, yet so great is Christian gentleness that they not only keep the basilicas they built after they were cut off, but have not even returned to unity all those that unity held from the beginning. And though they themselves urgently drove the Maximianists out of basilicas belonging to the party of Donatus through judges sent by Catholic emperors, yet they are not driven out of many places which Catholic unity formerly held, not even by the laws of those Catholic emperors. Finally, if perhaps something was at some time done against them too immoderately, so that it went beyond Christian mildness, it displeases all the wheat of the Lord’s harvest, that is, Christians praiseworthy in Christ, who grow up in the Catholic Church through the whole world with fruit of a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold.

Therefore let them accuse with us, as abundantly as they like, the weeds or chaff of the Catholic crop, but let them not refuse to bear it with us most patiently. For he who did not want the weeds rooted up before the time and separated from their mingling with the wheat said: ‘Let both grow until the harvest.’ And when he explained the covering of that same parable to the disciples who asked, he did not say, ‘The field is Africa’, but said: ‘The field is this world.’ So this crop has been sown through the whole world, through the whole world the weeds have been sown over it, through the whole world both grow until the harvest. Was Donatus the greatest of the reapers, or had the time of harvest come at the time when these men separated themselves from the world, when the same Lord, so that no one should be free to interpret as he liked, said most plainly: ‘The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels’? For such reapers cannot err so as to gather wheat in place of weeds or store up weeds in place of wheat. But these men, while they flee the weeds, as it were, have shown that they themselves are the weeds, preaching in most manifest sacrilege against the Lord’s sentence: so that, though he says, ‘Let both grow until the harvest’, they contend that throughout so great a field, that is, the whole world, only the weeds grow, while the wheat has dwindled and remained in Africa alone, doing sacrilegious injury to Christ our king and prince. For it is written: ‘In a numerous nation is the king’s glory, but in the dwindling of the people is the prince’s ruin.’ But now it is time, I think, to attend carefully to the very testimonies of the Scriptures by which, misinterpreting them, they deceive the unlearned, and, as far as the Lord grants, to open them according to the understanding of Catholic truth.

What force, then, except blindness and vanity of mind, compels men, with their eyes shut, as the saying goes, to throw something at another, as it were, which at once comes back on the thrower and strikes him with a return blow, leaving untouched the one he wanted to wound? This is what these Donatists do with almost all the testimonies of the Scriptures: when they think they are bringing them forward against us, they seem rather to be reminding us what sort of men the Scripture itself convicts them of being. For what else does the text that Parmenian thinks is either for himself or against us do, where it is written: ‘Woe to those who say that what is wicked is good and what is good is wicked, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put what is bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter’? O most foolish blindness! For what is so good and so pleasant as brothers dwelling in one? This they call wicked and put for bitter, who have separated themselves from all their brothers because they were unwilling either not to stir up their empty suspicions, not to say their factious slanders, or, once stirred up, to tolerate them. If they hated the true chaff and were not chaff themselves, they would not, on its account, cut themselves off from the Lord’s wheat sown and growing throughout the whole field, that is, this world.

Let them cry out, then, as loudly as they can: ‘Woe to those who say that what is wicked is good and what is good is wicked.’ We answer: this is true; and we add another: ‘Woe to those who have lost endurance’, since they put light for darkness and darkness for light. For what is brighter than the promises of God, who in our times has shown what he foretold thousands of years before, that all nations would have the blessing in the seed of Abraham, which is Christ? And what is darker than the presumptions of men who, because of charges against traitors rashly made and never proved, which, even if they were true, would never prejudice God from fulfilling what he promised, say that the Christian name has perished from so many nations in the world and has remained in Africa alone? And this presumption of theirs they call light, while they strive to cover with the darkness of lies the promises of God, now lit up by the very outcome of events; and on top of that they cry out their own deeds against us, saying: ‘Woe to those who put light for darkness and darkness for light.’ Was Optatus light, then, and did the whole of Africa call him darkness? Or did the whole of Africa rather perceive that he was darkness, and these men called him light, they who do not put light for darkness and darkness for light? ‘But’, they say, ‘Optatus displeased all good men in our communion.’ So you did not call him light, and yet you communicated with him. Choose, then, what you want: either that in one communion darkness does not harm light, but it is enough for the light to disapprove of the darkness and, if it cannot expel it, to tolerate it for the sake of unity, and so there was no reason why you should be disjoined by the dark sacrilege of schism from innocent brothers, to whom you certainly could not show the bad men even if you say they were known to you; or, if it is not enough for the light to disapprove of the darkness it cannot expel, that is, if it is not enough for the good to disapprove of the bad whom they cannot exclude or correct, then one Optatus, most notorious and most evident in Africa alone, stained the party of Donatus more easily than any African traitor stained so many nations throughout the world, being, if I may not say accused on false charges, at any rate (which is most shamelessly denied) unknown to them.

Taking the Scriptures with a perverse heart, then, they make them harm not us but themselves, when they think that ‘Woe to those who say that what is wicked is good and what is good is wicked’ was written so that the grain should not tolerate the chaff among itself until the time of winnowing; so that, while they misunderstand ‘Woe to those who say that what is wicked is good and what is good is wicked’, there is fulfilled in them: ‘Woe to those who have lost endurance.’ But if they understood that this was said against those who, thinking that what is evil is good, commit evil, or those who consent to such men by praising and approving them (two kinds that Scripture mentions in one place, saying: ‘For the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does unjust things will be blessed’), they would understand rightly and would not be troubled when bad men are found among themselves too; except that they tolerate for the party of Donatus those whom they ought to have tolerated for the unity of Christ, and through this obstinacy of their animosity the wretches are forced in their schism to bear those they know, and in the world to accuse those they do not know. Whoever, therefore, either corrects by rebuke what he can, or excludes, keeping the bond of peace, what he cannot correct, or, what he cannot exclude keeping the bond of peace, disapproves with fairness and bears with firmness, he is a peacemaker, and from that curse by which Scripture says, ‘Woe to those who say that what is wicked is good and what is good is wicked, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put what is bitter for sweet and what is sweet for bitter’, he is altogether free, entirely safe, completely removed.

Again, with their usual blindness, they throw something similar at us. ‘Of you’, they say, ‘Scripture says: He who judges the righteous unrighteous and the unrighteous righteous is accursed before God.’ Why does this curse not fall rather on those who dared to condemn unheard the whole Christian world, in which, among so huge a number of people, there were and are without any doubt men innocent of their crimes? In this way, then, they judged what is righteous unrighteous, and what is unrighteous they judged righteous, when they kept in their communion Optatus the Gildonian, the ten-year groan of all Africa, honouring him as a bishop and colleague. Or if they disapproved of him in their heart but tolerated him for the sake of peace, let them learn that the patience of no peacemaker who does not consent to evil can be stained by any bad men; and so let them perceive in what perdition those lie who, because of crimes of Africans, false or true (for that is not now the question), do not keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace with the world. If they said, ‘We do not know whether there are good Christians throughout so many nations of the lands overseas’, they would say it most shamelessly. For God bears witness to his wheat, which he sowed through the whole field and foretold would grow until the harvest, though with weeds sown over it by the devil; so that, even if we know the people themselves less, yet we know that they exist, because we hold with most certain faith that God could not lie. Since, then, they would be saying with sacrilegious shamelessness, ‘We do not know whether there are good Christians in the rest of the world’, let them see with what madness they dare to say (for every day they do not hesitate to say it): ‘We know that there are no Christians there.’ For it is one thing to say, ‘We do not know whether there are’, another, ‘We know that there are not’: both are unbelieving and impious. But if the man is to be detested who says, ‘I do not know whether God spoke the truth’, what is the man who says, ‘I know that God did not speak the truth’?

Surely, I think, I ought not to offend any of these men if I put God before Donatus. For however much they love Donatus, they fear God more; and in the end, however much they love Donatus, we know that ‘God alone is true, but every man a liar’. Christ, then, who is God over all, blessed for ever, and who said most truly of himself, ‘I am the truth’, when his servants asked him whether he wanted them to go and gather the weeds, said, ‘Let both grow until the harvest’; but Donatus says that the weeds have indeed grown, but the wheat has dwindled. Let these men choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says, ‘The field is this world’; but Donatus says that only Africa has remained as God’s field. Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says, ‘At the time of harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather first the weeds’, and explains, saying, ‘The harvest is the end of the age’; but Donatus says that by the cutting off of his party the weeds were separated from the wheat before the harvest. Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the truth, says, ‘The reapers are the angels’; but Donatus says that he and his colleagues did before the harvest what Christ said the angels would do at the harvest. Let them choose whom to believe. Certainly they call themselves Christians: we set before them Christ and Donatus. If they give words to Christ but their heart to Donatus, let them consider what they are. I spare them, I do not inveigh, I do not exaggerate; I better press down my grief than express it. But if they say that they give their heart to Christ, then let them believe Christ when he says that through the whole world both the sons of the kingdom grow and the sons of the evil one, not Donatus when he says that through the world only the sons of the evil one have grown, while the good sons have dwindled to Africa alone. And if they believe Christ, we no longer say ‘with the churches of the world’, but let them have peace with the gospel itself, which they lyingly boast that they kept from the fire, since they do not prove it by their deeds.

Now what is the point of what the same Parmenian thought he should charge against us from the prophet Isaiah: ‘Is the hand of the Lord not strong to save, or has he made his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your offences make a division between you and God, and because of your sins he has turned his face from you, so as not to have mercy. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with sins; and your lips have spoken iniquity, and your tongue meditates injustice. No one speaks just things, nor is there true judgment. They trust in vain things and speak empty things, for they conceive pain and bring forth iniquity. They have hatched asps’ eggs and weave a spider’s web, and whoever was going to eat of those eggs, crushing one, found it rotten and a basilisk in it. Their web will not serve for clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their works. For their works are works of iniquity, and their feet run to wickedness, swift to shed blood, and their thoughts are the thoughts of fools. Ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known’? Those whom Scripture describes in this place, wherever they are, even among the good, do not harm the good, just as the chaff does not harm the wheat, until the Lord of the threshing floor comes with the winnowing fork in his hand and cleans his threshing floor, stores the wheat in the barn, but burns the chaff with unquenchable fire; just as so great a multitude of the wicked did not harm the good, as we have learned through the prophet Ezekiel, namely those who groaned and grieved over the crimes of the people that were done in their midst. Hence, because they could not correct them and ought in no way to separate themselves from the unity of God’s people, they deserved, for the merit of their most innocent tolerance, to be sealed and delivered in the devastation and destruction of those lost men. But why do these men who throw these things at Catholics not look at themselves, whose troops of mad herds fly here and there armed with iron and clubs, and are never sated in such savagery with the frequent massacres they commit where they can; where, at the tombs of their corpses, with women who, mixed with them everywhere against the order of things divine and human, wander about day and night, such drunkenness seethes that from it they conceive a daily madness not only of attacking others but even of throwing themselves headlong? Do their feet not run to malice, and are they not swift to shed blood? Does judgment not depart from these men, who usurp for themselves even the most unjust licences of a lawless power? Does darkness not come upon these men, while they await the light in a false martyrdom? Do they not walk in the middle of the night even by day, since the apostle says, ‘Those who get drunk are drunk at night’? Do these men not fall at noon as if at midnight? This indeed belongs to all heretics, who cannot see a thing most evident, set in the light of all nations, outside whose unity whatever they do, though it seems to be done with great skill and diligence, profits them as little against the wrath of God as spiders’ webs can protect from cold.

What then do they set down from this prophetic chapter that cannot be turned back on themselves? Unless perhaps the asps’ eggs, which the drafter of the sentence of the plenary council of the three hundred and ten, when they met from all the provinces of Africa, remembered so well. Certainly, if Parmenian were alive now, he would not say this or set it against us from the prophet Isaiah: ‘They have hatched asps’ eggs.’ For he would look at Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, joined to his college, whom, out of the number of the condemned, they received back as if unblemished for the good of peace, though the peace of Donatus, not of Christ; and these were both asps’ eggs and had hatched. For so the three hundred and ten of the plenary council describe them with truthful mouth, as their proceedings, also entered in the proconsular records, testify. For these are certainly the words of their council: ‘For although the hollow of a poisoned womb long covered the harmful offspring of viperous seed, and the moist curds of conceived crime were slowly warmed with heat into the limbs of asps, yet the conceived venom could not be concealed by a vanishing shade. For, though late, the wishes pregnant with crimes brought forth their public crime and parricide.’ These asps’ eggs had already hatched, and already, horrible and foul-smelling, with their venomous offspring, they had been cast out of their communion; but inside there was Optatus, the basilisk, who with a kind of royal nod, by which it is said to excel among serpents, could call back even the asps that had been cast out. Or if these things do no harm for the sake of peace, why do they charge Catholics, whom they could not convict, when they themselves received back those whom they condemned with their own mouth? If these things do no harm for the sake of peace, still they do harm for the peace of Donatus, which is greatly favoured to the injury of the peace of Christ; and for this sacrilege, whatever they suffer in bodily troubles is God’s warning to avoid eternal damnation. For they truly shed blood, not only bodily through the frenzies of the circumcellions but also spiritually, who try, if they could, to rebaptize the world. Or if only he sheds blood who wounds mortal flesh or kills with a wound, but he does not who kills seduced souls by the sacrilege of schism, why did they say such things against their own schismatics, the Maximianists, in the same sentence of their plenary council: ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood’, when it is agreed that no one was bodily killed by them, no one wounded, but rather that they suffered much at the hands of these men when they were being driven out of the basilicas by judicial authorities? Such things they did to many before the separation of the Maximianists, when they were together in one, to those who had made earlier schisms from the party of Donatus. For what schismatic of theirs did they ever spare, they who most shamelessly want to be spared by the world, whose schismatics they themselves are, though schisms are most justly punished only by the true unity itself, if they are to be punished in that way?