Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.8–2.21

And the text, ‘As is the ruler of the people, so also are his ministers; and as is the governor of the city, so are its inhabitants’, if they understood what it refers to, they would neither throw at us nor themselves be proud with empty boasting. For we, so as not to place in men the hope of men, which is safe and rightly secure in God alone, since we remember that it is written, ‘Cursed is he who puts his hope in man’, do not understand that the bishop is meant in this place by ‘the ruler of the people’ and ‘the governor of the city’. Not because we cannot see countless holy bishops in the Catholic Church, but so that, as I said, no one’s hope should be placed in a man, and so that, if it should happen to someone to live in a city where there is not a good bishop, he should not think he becomes bad with impunity, taking for his defence this Scripture understood as perversely as these men understand it, and saying that he cannot be good because ‘as is the ruler of the people, so also are his ministers; and as is the governor of the city, so are its inhabitants’. For this error is contradicted by the mouth of the Truth, saying: ‘What they say, do; but what they do, do not do. For they say and do not do.’ So when peoples have such bishops, who say good things from the chair of Moses and do not do what they say, out of their own pestilence, if those peoples do the good things the bishops say and do not do the evil things they do, as the Lord commanded, do they not show clearly enough that ‘ruler of the people’ and ‘governor of the city’ are not to be understood as these men understand them, since there can be good peoples even where there are bad bishops, just as there could be a bad people where Moses was a good ruler and governor? For, erring in the words of the holy Scriptures, and, as the apostle says, ‘understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions’, they themselves rather suffer great straits through the perversity of their understanding, when it is said to them: ‘Then as Optatus was, so was the people of Thamugadi; and if, as you say, through communion in the sacraments even those are contaminated who disapprove of evil deeds, even those they tolerate for the peace of unity, then such are all of you also, who communicated both with that colleague of yours and with that people, when all Africa with open groaning declared him a henchman of Gildo.’ I name him often for this reason, that he appeared so evident that wherever he is named no one answers that he does not know him.

For let them look at themselves and remember how many like him they have among them, whose malice is equal though their notoriety is unequal; and let them at last come to the true meaning of these words, and understand that the one ruler of the people is our Lord Jesus Christ, whose ministers are good, and that he is the governor of that city Jerusalem which is our eternal mother in heaven. To the dignity of this governor the inhabitants conform, not to equality but in their own measure, since it was said to them, ‘You shall be holy, because I too am holy’, that is, according to a certain likeness of image into which we are transformed from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord, by the gift of him who makes us conformed to the image of his Son. There is also the ruler of another, bad people, the devil, and the governor of that city which is mystically called Babylon, since the apostle Paul calls him and his angels the rulers and governors of this darkness, that is, of sins; and his ministers are like him, for they transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, as he does into an angel of light; and the inhabitants conform in like deeds to their most wicked governor. But the separation of these peoples and cities will be made plain when this harvest has been winnowed; until that happens, the love of the wheat tolerates all things, lest, while the grains flee the chaff too hastily, they be impiously separated from their fellow grains.

What force, then, does it now have for the case that these men throw at us what the Lord says through Isaiah about bad sacrificers: ‘The criminal who sacrifices a calf to me is like one who kills a dog, and he who sets out fine flour is like one who offers swine’s blood, and he who offers incense as a memorial is like a blasphemer’? All these things are said much more fittingly of those who have raised the altar of their schism against the church of God, spread through the whole world as it was promised; this sacrilege involves them all. And whoever, wherever, offers sacrifice with such a heart or such deeds that he deserves to hear these things brings ruin on himself, not on those good men who, according to the prophet Ezekiel, groan and grieve over the sins and iniquities that are done in their midst, even though they do not separate themselves bodily from there; for the Lord renders to each according to his heart. For if in earlier times bad priests did not harm either good colleagues, as Zechariah was, or good laymen, as Nathanael was, in whom there was no guile, how much more does a bad bishop in Christian unity do no harm either to good fellow bishops or to good laymen, now that that priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek, our high priest, sitting at the right hand of the Father, intercedes for us, who was handed over for our offences and rose again for our justification. So this too, which is said most truly, harms not the good but the bad who offer: ‘The Most High does not approve the gifts of the wicked.’ For he did not say, ‘The Most High does not approve the gifts of those who tolerate the wicked for the sake of peace’; and yet these men could not even prove what they charged at the time when they made the schism. Otherwise, with those excluded, the inheritance of Christ spread through the whole world would keep these men in Catholic communion.

‘The sacrifices of the impious’, he says, ‘are an abomination to the Lord; for they offer them unjustly.’ It has already been answered above that Christ is not unjust, who offered himself for us and is our mediator in heaven; while he governs his church, the bad will not harm the good, whether they are unknown or tolerated for the sake of peace, until he himself comes and, sending the reapers ahead, separates the weeds from the harvest and, with the winnowing fork, the chaff from the wheat. Although these men (as must often be said) have made false charges, which, even if they were true, would do no harm to the love of the good, tolerating all things in unity for the sake of unity, if perhaps, even when the charges were known, they could not convince church judges of them. So the sacrifices of the impious will harm those very men who offer impiously. For one and the same sacrifice, because of the name of God which is invoked there and is always holy, becomes to each such as the heart with which he approaches to receive it. For ‘whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself’. He does not say ‘to others’, but ‘to himself’. So whoever eats and drinks worthily eats and drinks grace to himself. Let those men see, then, whether they eat worthily who by an abominable schism have divided so many parents and children, husbands and wives, and, what is most important, so many heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ spread through the whole world; when, if they were good and truly rebuked the bad, they could certainly tolerate fruitfully for the peace of Christ what they tolerate ruinously for the party of Donatus.

‘In Exodus’, he says, ‘it is written: But let the priests who approach the Lord God be sanctified, lest perhaps the Lord forsake them; and again: And when the ministers approach the holy altar, let them not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die; and that text in Leviticus: The man who has a blemish and a defect shall not approach to offer gifts to God.’ It is well that they put forward these testimonies from the old books. Let them tell me, then, which holy man, whether placed among the priests or among the people, was harmed in his spiritual salvation by a bad or blemished priest. Where Moses and Aaron were, there were sacrilegious murmurers, whom God was always threatening to destroy from his presence; where Caiaphas and others like him were, there were Zechariah, Simeon, and other good men; where Saul was, there was David; where Jeremiah, where Isaiah, where Daniel, where Ezekiel were, there were bad priests and bad peoples; but each carried his own load.

I omit to say with what wicked pride it is said that none of their colleagues, or they themselves, are without some blemish and defect, not of limbs but, what is worse, of morals. When we begin to deal with them about this, they answer that it matters what kind of blemish and what kind of defect it is; as if Scripture had made a distinction when it says: ‘The man who has a blemish and a defect shall not approach to offer gifts to God.’ Had no blemish and defect, I do not say Optatus, but Parmenian himself, or Donatus himself? But these men are so blinded by love of men, and with an unchaste heart do not hesitate to make the adulterers of their mind equal to the one lawful husband, that they contend that what could be said of the Lord Jesus Christ alone was perfected even in Donatus. Who will give my eyes a fountain of tears? What groan fit for this crime is uttered from a stricken breast? But meanwhile let them consider whether at least Optatus had some blemish or some defect; they are not so blind as to answer that his life too was altogether unblemished and free of every defect. Why then did he approach to offer gifts to God, and why did the others receive from him with joined hands what a blemished and defective man had offered? Let them consider among the rest of their men whether drunkenness is no blemish; but let them first read with what criminals the apostle Paul joined the drunkards; whether greed is no blemish, which the same apostle so detests that he compares it to the service of idols.

But those who think most rightly understand that any man whatever, though it may not absurdly be said, with regard to the fellowship of human society, that he lives most righteously, cannot yet be without some defect, so long as the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; and that ‘he who is born of God does not sin’, and ‘if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’. For though, in so far as we are born of God, we do not sin, there is still in us also what we are from Adam, since death has not yet been swallowed up in victory, which is promised also in the resurrection of bodies, so that we who are already sons of God by faith may be in every way blessed and unblemished and incorrupt; but by sight ‘it has not yet appeared what we shall be’. For we have been saved not yet in reality but in hope. ‘But hope that is seen is not hope. For what one sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it through patience.’ But so long as we wait through patience for the redemption of our body, let us not dare to say that we lack every defect, lest that very pride be a most monstrous defect; and let us at last wake up and see that in the priests of that time, when bodily defects were avoided, he was prefigured who, being God, was made man for us, the only truly unblemished lamb and the priest without defect. And so then too the priest alone entered the holy of holies, while the people stood outside, just as now that priest after his resurrection has entered the secret places of heaven, to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father, while the people whose priest he is still groan outside. For the people are within with the bishop, and pray with him, and, as if signing to his words, answer Amen. So far, then, when the bodies of priests were required to be without any blemish and without any defect, because their souls could not be, he alone was prefigured, not these proud and impious men who, when the soul commits fornication, are not jealous for the bridegroom, but dare to show themselves off instead of the bridegroom.

‘In the gospel’, he says, ‘it is written: God will not hear sinners; but if anyone worships the Lord and does his will, him he will hear.’ Here too the answer is unconditional. For if two pray together, one a sinner and the other one who worships the Lord and does his will, he surely hears the one and does not hear the other. What then is the point of this testimony, or how do they think it should be brought forward on their own behalf, when by these words the good among the bad are made most secure, and there is no cause at all for bodily separation such that people should be separated even from the good, by spiritual discord, through an abominable schism, since both the bad among the good can go unheard because of their unbelief and the good among the bad can be heard because of their faith? For God, who searches the heart, does not make mistakes so as either to hear or to reject one person in place of another. Or do they say this so that it may be understood that a bad bishop is not heard when he prays for the people? Even if this were so, the people, if they are good and faithful, ought not on that account to be anxious. For that Scripture makes them secure which says: ‘Brothers, I write these things to you so that you may not sin; and if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.’ Let them hear with what truthful and pious humility this was said, if they have ears with which to hear. For John had said: ‘I have written these things to you so that you may not sin.’ If he had gone on to say, ‘And if anyone does sin, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for your sins’, he would seem to have set himself apart from sinners, as it were, so that he no longer needed the propitiation that is made through the mediator who sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us. That would certainly be said not only proudly but also falsely. But if he had even said, ‘I have written these things to you so that you may not sin; and if anyone does sin, you have me as mediator with the Father; I obtain pardon for your sins’, as Parmenian in one place made the bishop mediator between the people and God, which of the good and faithful Christians would tolerate him, who would look on him as an apostle of Christ and not as an antichrist? And yet these broken cisterns bear the smoky pride of these men, and cannot contain the Holy Spirit, so as to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and to be secure, in all their prayers, about the one mediator.

For all Christian people commend one another in their prayers. But he for whom no one intercedes, while he intercedes for all, is the one true mediator; and since his type was prefigured in the priest of the old covenant, no one is found there either to have prayed for the priest. The apostle Paul, however, though a chief member under the head, yet because he is a member of the body of Christ and knew that the greatest and truest priest had entered for us, not through a figure into the inner part of the veil, into the holy of holies, but through the expressed and fulfilled truth into the inner part of heaven, into a holiness not imaginary but eternal, himself also commends himself to the prayers of the church; and he does not make himself mediator between the people and God, but asks that all the members of the body of Christ pray for one another, since the members are anxious for one another, and if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it. And so the prayer of all the members for one another, while they still labour on earth, will ascend to the head who has gone before into heaven, in whom is the propitiation for our sins. For if Paul were mediator, so certainly would his fellow apostles be, and so there would be many mediators, and Paul’s own reasoning would not hold when he said: ‘For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’ In him we too are one, if we keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and do not desert the good because of the bad, but bear with the bad because of the good, lest, while we want to defend what we abandon by rash presumption, unknown, we are forced by a greater crime to condemn men unheard.

What of the fact that in the Scriptures we also find the prophet Balaam, not of the people of Israel but a foreigner hired by the enemy to curse the people of God, turned by the Lord to blessing? We hear and read all his words as he called down good, and though he had something else in his wish, yet the words of his prayer are good and are heard by the Lord for the people. So it is no wonder that good words spoken in prayers for the people, even if they are spoken by bad bishops, are nevertheless heard, not because of the perversity of those set over them but because of the devotion of the peoples. But the text written in the gospel, ‘God does not hear a sinner; but if anyone worships the Lord and does his will, him he will hear’, was not said by the Lord, but by the man who now indeed had the eyes of his body restored, but whose eyes of the heart were not yet open, so that he still thought the Lord himself a prophet. For afterwards, when he knew him as the Son of God, he worshipped him as a suppliant. But the Lord himself, when the tax collector and the Pharisee were praying in the one temple, says that the sinner who confessed his sins was justified rather than the Pharisee who boasted of his merits, whom these men resemble. For although, once justified, he ceased to be a sinner, yet he prayed as a sinner to be justified and confessed his sins, and, being heard, was justified, so that he ceased to be a sinner. So he would not cease to be a sinner unless he were first heard as a sinner. Therefore the truth testifies, not that every sinner is heard, but that not every sinner goes unheard.

They also throw at us what is said in the Psalms: ‘But to the sinner God says: Why do you expound my statutes and take my covenant in your mouth? But you have hated discipline and cast my words behind you. If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and you put your portion with adulterers. Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and you put a stumbling block against your mother’s son.’ But let them at last open the ears of the heart and stop ‘understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions’. For they attend to what was said to the sinner, ‘Why do you expound my statutes and take my covenant in your mouth?’, and do not understand that it was said so that he may know that the words of God which he pronounces with his mouth do him no good if he does not himself do what he says, but that they do good to others who hear them even through bad men and do them. That this is what the Lord commands, the Lord himself teaches in the gospel, saying of the Pharisees: ‘They sit on Moses’ seat. What they say, do; but what they do, do not do. For they say and do not do.’

And would that they were willing to look at themselves in these words, which they quote from the psalm, as in a mirror: how they cast God’s words behind them who proclaim peace to the peoples and do not love peace; how they hate discipline who dare to condemn the world unheard, and, because they suffer temporal troubles according to the discipline of divine mercy, deservedly, or rather far less than they deserve for the audacity of so great a frenzy, do not confess that their sins are being punished but boast that their merits are being crowned. I do not say that they have run with a thief, for a robber is worse than a thief, and that is what Optatus was everywhere cried out to be. Or do they perhaps not put their portion with adulterers, who allow the drunken herds of their nuns, mixed day and night with the drunken herds of circumcellions, to wander about shamefully? Or do they not sit and speak against their brothers, who, because of certain men whom they could not convict, contend that there are no Christians in the inheritance of Christ spread through the whole world, and so put a most ruinous stumbling block against their mother’s son, that is, one still a little child in the faith who must be nourished on the milk of the sacraments, while, not yet knowing how to follow God the Father, he weakly follows a man, and, lured by a feigned and shadowy appearance of truth, is torn away from the framework of unity by a cruel laceration? But if those in that same party who do not do evil are displeased by the evil deeds of the others and believe that others’ crimes, which they groan and grieve to see done in their midst, do not harm them, why do they ruinously tolerate in the common sacrilege of schism what they could have tolerated fruitfully in the wholeness of unity? For they can say, if they ever wake up, having learned by the facts themselves, they can say that the evils of individuals do not harm the others who neither do nor approve such things; but that the sacrilege of schism is not the evil of individuals but belongs to all who do not communicate with Catholic unity: of this they can very easily be convinced, though they would very hardly confess it. For the very reason why, in their communion, the crimes of some do not belong to others is the reason why schism is the crime of all: because when they say that among their own people they cannot be stained by the crimes of others, they must at the same time confess that they had no reason to depart from unity, where others’ crimes could not stain them; and therefore they are all bound together equally by the most evident crime of schism, as by one deadly chain.

‘But’, he says, ‘Jeremiah prophesied.’ What did Jeremiah prophesy? ‘That those who forsake God’, he says, ‘do not have true baptism.’ For he says: ‘Heaven was astonished at this and shuddered much more violently, says the Lord, because this people has done two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of life, and dug for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water’; and again: ‘It has become to me’, he says, ‘like lying water that has no faithfulness’; and the text that is written: ‘He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit?’; and that in the Psalms: ‘Let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head’; and again elsewhere: ‘Dying flies destroy the oil of sweetness’; and elsewhere: ‘For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful and will withdraw from thoughts that are without understanding.’ If all these are to be understood in the way these men understand them, the reasoning of truth does not square either for us or for them. But if I show that they are to be understood in another way, they alone are troubled by their own perversity, and, so as not to be troubled, they take refuge in the Catholic understanding; and where they find a way out of the reply, there they are caught in the crime of schism. For certainly they too have (I will not say ‘such they are’, but I will say what they either confess or most insanely deny), they too, then, have men who forsake God, who is the fountain of living water, that is, who live wickedly; for God is forsaken not with the feet but with the heart. They also have liars and men without faithfulness, that is, men professing one thing and living otherwise. They certainly have dead men. For if the apostle does not allow luxury to the more delicate and weaker sex, saying of the widow, ‘But she who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives’, let them ask whether no men among them, and, what is more, no leaders or ministers, live in pleasures; and so, if they dare, let them declare that they have no dead men and are better than that church to whose angel, standing for its leaders or for its souls, it is said that it is not alive but dead, and yet it is counted among the seven churches, and commands of life are moreover given to it, not as divided from the framework of Christ’s body, but as persevering in unity. I pass over what they said in their council against the Maximianists: ‘Just as in the example of the Egyptians perishing, the shores are full of their corpses.’ Of that number of dead men Felicianus is now inside, who still baptizes while dead, or, if he has now come back to life, has with him those whom he baptized while dead in schism. They certainly have sinners. For if any who seem great among them are asked, they do not deny that they themselves are sinners. For they either do not beat their breasts, or when they do it, do it in pretence (and if so, they certainly sin wretchedly then at least, deceiving their peoples with feigned humility), or they do not say in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.’ This is certainly not said of the sins that were forgiven in the regeneration of baptism, but of those that the weakness of human life contracts every day from the most bitter waves of the world, for whose healing the medicines of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer are supplied, so that in prayer is said what is done in almsgiving. For to forgive the sin that another has committed against you, so that God may also forgive you, is a great work of mercy. But if they say this in prayer feignedly, not truly, thinking that they have nothing for God to forgive them, that very thing is an inexpiable sacrilege, that very thing is impious and insane pride, which is certainly a monstrous sin. As for the dying flies, what shall I say, when we have shown that among them are found, many times over, not men still about to die but men already dead, whether they confess it or are convicted of it? And as for the deceitful, whom the holy Spirit of discipline flees, and those who live ruinously without understanding, let them consider, from what has been said above, how many they have among them. For whatever bad men lie hidden there (which is certain from this, that men are often exposed, convicted, and condemned, not only for recent deeds but also for an old habit of shameful acts, who could long be concealed by most cunning pretence), these are surely the more deceitful, who deceive by pretending to be good.

If, then, these texts are to be understood as these men understand them, how can their reasoning stand? Why, among them, are those who forsake God by living badly, whether they are hidden or known, not broken cisterns that cannot hold water, if the sacrament of baptism is to be understood in this place? Why are their liars and unfaithful men believed to give or have not lying water but truthful? Why does washing profit those who are baptized by their dead men? Why do their sinners anoint the heads of others with oil? What have the dying or dead flies there deserved, that they do not destroy the oil of sweetness? With what privilege are the deceitful there protected, that is, those who cover a wolf with the skin of righteousness, so that the holy Spirit of discipline does not flee them? Or if the Holy Spirit flees them, how is he given through them to those they baptize? For here one cannot say what they usually say, most foolishly and shamelessly, that someone can be baptized by a bad man only if the baptizer’s badness is hidden. For the deceitful man is the more deceitful the more he is hidden. Since the Holy Spirit withdraws from him, then, what hope will the baptized person have, if the merit of the baptizing man is to be considered in that grace of God? Here they find nothing at all to answer, because they deny that they have open bad men; in which they are most clearly convicted. But what is that to us? It is enough for us, for the necessary point of the case, that they cannot deny that they have deceitful ‘good’ men, that is, hidden bad men. For they are refuted by the many who, living there with lost and wicked morals and long hidden through that very pretence, were at some point exposed and expelled. If, then, they do not want us to believe that there are still some such men there, certainly those who were cast out, when they were hiding there in that same pretence and the Holy Spirit was fleeing them, of whom it is written, ‘For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful’, how could they baptize? Why are at least those they baptized who are still living not counted again, so as to receive baptism, which they certainly could not receive from deceitful men whom the Holy Spirit was deserting? But if they say, ‘The Holy Spirit was absent indeed from the pretending givers, to justify them, but present to the believing receivers, to wash them, by the ineffable efficacy of his power, easily able to do both: to flee the former and cherish the latter, to blame the former and cleanse the latter’, then, in solving the question for themselves, let them see at the same time that it is solved for us.