Letters 185.27–185.49

For the bishop of Bagai mentioned above, because by a sentence pronounced between the parties before the ordinary judge he had recovered a basilica which they had seized although it was Catholic, they rushed upon him as he stood at the altar with a horrible onslaught and cruel fury, and beat him savagely with clubs and weapons of every kind, and finally with the timbers of the altar itself, which they had broken up. They also stabbed him with a dagger in the groin, and the blood flowing from that wound would have left him lifeless, had not their greater savagery served to save his life. For as they dragged him, gravely wounded, along the ground besides, the dust packed into the gushing vein stopped the blood, by whose outpouring he was going to his death. Then, when at last they had left him and our people tried to carry him away with psalms, they, inflamed with hotter anger, took him from the hands of those carrying him, beating and putting to flight the Catholics, whom they far outnumbered and easily terrified by their savagery. Then, thinking he had already died, though he was still alive, they lifted him up into a tower and threw him down. But he was caught by a soft heap of earth, and, seen by the light of a lamp by some people passing by at night, he was recognized, picked up, and carried to a religious house; and with great care, after many days, he was restored from that desperate state. But rumor had reported, even across the sea, that he had been killed by the crime of the Donatists; and when he afterward went there and appeared, most unexpectedly, alive, he showed by his scars, so many, so great, so fresh, that rumor had not announced his death without cause.

So he sought help from the Christian emperor, not so much to avenge himself as to protect the church entrusted to him. Had he neglected this, his patience would not have deserved praise; rather his negligence would rightly have deserved blame. For the apostle Paul too was not taking thought for his own passing life but for the church of God, when he arranged that the plan of those who had conspired to kill him be made known to the tribune; as a result, an armed soldiery escorted him to the place where he was to be taken, so that he might not suffer their ambush. Nor did he hesitate at all to invoke the Roman laws, proclaiming himself a Roman citizen, whom it was then unlawful to afflict with scourging; and likewise, so as not to be handed over to the Jews who wanted to kill him, he asked for the help of Caesar, a Roman emperor, indeed, but not a Christian. By this he showed clearly enough what the stewards of Christ ought to do afterward, when they found the emperors Christian while the church was in danger. Hence it came about that a religious and pious emperor, when such cases were brought to his knowledge, preferred to correct the error of that impiety entirely by most pious laws, and to bring those who carried the standards of Christ against Christ into Catholic unity by frightening and restraining them, rather than merely to take away their license to rage and leave them license to err and perish.

Now when these laws came to Africa, those above all who were looking for an opportunity, or feared the savagery of the raging men, or were ashamed to offend their own people, immediately crossed over to the church. Many too who were held there only by custom handed down from their parents, but had never before thought what kind of case the heresy itself had, and had never wished to inquire and consider it, as soon as they began to pay attention and found nothing in it worth suffering such great losses for, became Catholics without any difficulty; for anxiety taught those whom security had made careless. And many followed the authority and persuasion of all these who went before them, being less able to understand by themselves what the difference was between the error of the Donatists and Catholic truth.

So, while the true mother joyfully received great columns of peoples into her bosom, hard crowds remained, persisting in that plague with unhappy animosity. Of these too very many communicated by pretense, while others escaped notice by their small numbers. But those who pretended, by gradually growing used to it and hearing the preaching of the truth, especially after the conference and debate held between us and their bishops at Carthage, were for the most part corrected. In certain places, however, where a more obstinate and unpeaceful multitude prevailed, which the fewer people who held a better view of communion could not resist, or where crowds subject to the authority of a few powerful men obeyed them for the worse, the labor took somewhat longer. Among these are places where the labor still goes on, and in that labor the Catholics, especially bishops and clergy, have suffered many horrible and hard things, which it would take long to recount: some have had their eyes put out, a certain bishop had his hand and tongue cut off, some were even slaughtered. I pass over the most cruel murders and the plundering of houses by night attacks, and the burning not only of private dwellings but even of churches; and there were not lacking those who threw the Lord's books into those flames.

But the fruit that followed consoled us, afflicted by such evils. For wherever these things were committed by the lost, there Christian unity advanced more fervently and more completely, and the Lord is praised more richly, who deigned to grant that his servants should gain their brothers by their sufferings and gather by their blood his sheep, scattered by deadly error, into the peace of eternal salvation. The Lord is powerful and merciful, and we pray him daily to give repentance to the rest too, that they may come to their senses from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive to his will. They seek nothing but grounds for slandering us and returning evil for good, because they do not know how to understand what mind and love we keep toward them, and how we wish, according to the Lord's command given to shepherds through the prophet Ezekiel, to bring back the straying and find the lost.

They, however, as we have said elsewhere too, do not charge themselves with what they do to us, and they charge us with what they do to themselves. For which of us would wish not only that any of them should perish, but even that he should lose anything? But if the house of David could not deserve to have peace unless his son Absalom was killed in the war he waged against his father, although David had ordered his men with great care to keep him alive and safe as far as they could, so that there might be one whom a father's affection could pardon on his repentance, what was left to him but to weep for the lost son and console his sorrow with the peace of his kingdom regained? So, then, the Catholic mother: when those who wage war against her are her own sons (for certainly this little branch in Africa was broken from that great tree which, by the spreading of its branches, is spread through the whole world), while she travails with them in love that they may return to the root, without which they cannot have true life, if by the loss of some she gathers so many others, especially since these perish not by the chance of war like Absalom but rather by a death of their own choosing, she soothes and heals the grief of a mother's heart by the deliverance of such great peoples. If you could see their joys in the peace of Christ, their crowds, their eagerness, their thronged and cheerful assemblies for hearing and singing hymns and receiving the word of God; and in many of them the remembrance of past error with great grief, and the contemplation of the truth now known with joy, and indignation and loathing of their lying teachers, because they now know what falsehoods those teachers boasted about our sacraments; and the confessions of many that they had long wished to be Catholics but did not dare among men of such fury: if, then, you saw in one view the congregations of these peoples, freed from that perdition throughout very many regions of Africa, you would then say that it would have been excessive cruelty if, through fear that desperate men, in no way comparable to the countless multitude of these, might burn themselves in their own voluntary fires, these were left to perish forever and be tormented in everlasting fires.

For suppose two people were living in a house which we knew most certainly would collapse, and when we foretold it they would not believe us and persisted in staying in it: if we could pull them out even against their will, and afterward show them the impending collapse so that they would not dare to return into its danger, I think that if we did not do it, we would rightly be judged cruel. Further, if one of them said to us, “When you come in to pull us out, I will kill myself at once,” while the other neither wished to come out nor to be pulled out, but did not dare to kill himself, what would we choose? To leave both to be crushed by the collapse, or, with one at least freed by our merciful effort, to let the other perish, not by our fault but rather by his own? No one is so unhappy as not to judge very easily what ought to be done in such cases. And I have offered this comparison about two people, one lost and one freed. What then should we think about a few lost and a countless multitude of peoples freed? For those who perish by their own will are not as many as the estates, villages, hamlets, forts, towns, and cities freed by these laws from that pestilent and eternal destruction.

But if we consider more carefully the matter we are speaking of, I think that if very many were in a house about to collapse, and at least one could be freed from it, and, when we tried to do so, the others killed themselves by throwing themselves down, we would console our grief for the rest by the safety of at least the one; yet we would not allow all to perish with none freed, so that the others might not destroy themselves. What judgment, then, must be passed on the work of mercy which we owe to people for gaining eternal life and avoiding eternal punishment, if true and kindly reason compels us to help people in this way for the sake of a safety that is not only temporal but brief, to be saved for a short time?

As for their charge that we covet and take away their property: would that they became Catholics and possessed in peace and love with us not only what they call theirs but also what is ours! But they are so blinded by the desire to slander that they do not notice how contradictory their statements are. They certainly say, and seem to complain most bitterly, that we force them into our communion by the violent command of the laws. We would certainly in no way do this if we wished to possess their property. What greedy man seeks a co-owner? Who, inflamed with the desire to dominate or puffed up with the pride of dominion, wishes to have a partner? Let them look at those who were once theirs and are now our companions, joined to us in brotherly love: how they hold not only what they had, but also what was ours, which they did not have; and yet, if we are poor alongside the poor, these things are both ours and theirs; but if we privately possess what suffices for us, those things are not ours but the poor's, whose management we carry on in a certain way; we do not claim ownership for ourselves by damnable usurpation.

Whatever, then, was possessed in the name of the churches of the party of Donatus, the Christian emperors by religious laws ordered to pass to the Catholic Church together with the churches themselves. Since, then, the congregations of those same churches are with us, and the poor who were fed from those same small possessions are with us, let them rather, who are placed outside, cease to covet what belongs to others, and enter into the fellowship of unity, so that we may manage together not only what they call theirs but also what is called ours. For it is written: “All things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.” Under that head, in his one body, let us be one, and with such things let us do what is written in the Acts of the Apostles: “They had one soul and one heart, and no one called anything his own, but they had all things in common.” Let us love what we sing: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity,” so that they may experience and know how truly the Catholic mother cries out to them what the blessed apostle writes to the Corinthians: “I do not seek what is yours, but you.”

But if we consider what is written in the book of Wisdom, “Therefore the righteous took the spoils of the ungodly,” and likewise what is read in Proverbs, “But the wealth of the ungodly is stored up for the righteous,” then we shall see that the question is not who holds the property of heretics, but who are in the fellowship of the righteous. We know indeed that they claim such righteousness for themselves that they boast not only of having it but even of giving it to others. For they say that whoever they baptize is justified by them. Nothing is left for them but to tell the one baptized by them to believe in his baptizer. For why should he not, when the apostle says, “To one who believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness”? Let him believe in him, then, if he justifies him, so that his faith may be reckoned as righteousness. But I think even they shudder at themselves, if indeed they deign even to think of such things. For no one is righteous and justifying except God. And of them too what the apostle said of the Jews can be said: that, being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

God forbid that any of us should call himself righteous in such a way as either to wish to establish his own righteousness, that is, as if given to himself by himself, when it is said to him, “For what do you have that you did not receive?” or to dare boast that he is without sin in this life, as they themselves said at our conference that they are in that church which already has no spot or wrinkle or any such thing. They do not know that this is fulfilled now in those who leave this body either immediately after baptism or after the debts have been forgiven which are asked to be forgiven in prayer; but in the whole church it will be the case that it has no spot or wrinkle or any such thing only when it will be said, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin.”

But in this life, where the corruptible body weighs down the soul, if their church is already such, then let them not say to God what the Lord taught us to pray: “Forgive us our debts.” For since everything was forgiven in baptism, why does the church ask this if already in this life it has no spot or wrinkle or any such thing? Let them also despise the apostle John, crying out in his letter: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all iniquity.” Because of this hope the whole church says, “Forgive us our debts,” so that he may cleanse from all iniquity those who confess, and so the Lord Christ may present to himself on that day a glorious church, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, which he now cleanses by the washing of water in the word. For nothing remains in baptism that is not forgiven of all past sins (if only baptism itself is not held outside to no purpose, but is either given inside, or, if it has already been given outside, one does not remain outside with it); and whatever is contracted, of any faults whatever, by human weakness by those who live here after receiving baptism is forgiven because of that very washing. For it profits nothing for one who is not baptized to say, “Forgive us our debts.”

So he now cleanses his church by the washing of water in the word, so that he may then present it to himself having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that is, wholly beautiful and perfect, when death will be swallowed up in victory. Now, therefore, in so far as what we are by being born of God, living by faith, is strong in us, we are righteous; but in so far as we drag along the remnants of mortality from Adam, we are not without sin. For both are true: “Whoever 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.” So the Lord Christ is both righteous and the one who justifies, while we are justified freely by his grace. And he justifies only his body, which is the church; and therefore, if the body of Christ takes the spoils of the ungodly, and the wealth of the ungodly is stored up for the body of Christ, the ungodly ought not to remain outside to slander, but rather to come in to be justified.

Hence also what is written of the day of judgment, “Then the righteous will stand with great boldness against those who afflicted them and took away their labors,” is certainly not to be understood as though the Canaanite will stand against Israel, because Israel took away the Canaanite's labors; but Naboth will stand against Ahab, because Ahab took away Naboth's labors; for the Canaanite was ungodly, Naboth righteous. In the same way, the pagan will not stand against the Christian who took away his labors when the temples of idols were despoiled or given away; but the Christian will stand against the pagan who took away his labors when the bodies of the martyrs were laid low. So, then, the heretic will not stand against the Catholic who received his labors when the laws of the Catholic emperors prevailed; but the Catholic will stand against the heretic who took away his labors when the fury of the ungodly Circumcellions prevailed. For Scripture itself resolves the question, since it does not say, “Then men will stand,” but “Then the righteous will stand,” and therefore “with great boldness,” because with a good conscience.

But no one here is righteous by his own righteousness, that is, as if made for himself by himself, but, as the apostle says, according as God has apportioned to each the measure of faith. And he goes on to add: “For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ.” And therefore no one can be righteous as long as he is separated from the unity of this body. For just as a limb, if it is cut off from the body of a living man, cannot keep the spirit of life, so a man who is cut off from the body of the righteous Christ can in no way keep the spirit of righteousness, even if he keeps the shape of the limb which he took in the body. Let them come, then, into the structure of this body and possess their labors, not out of the desire to dominate but out of the piety of using them well. As for us, we cleanse our will, as has already been said, from the filth of this desire, with any enemy as judge, when we seek out, as much as we can, the very people whose labors they are said to be, so that they may use both theirs and ours with us in Catholic fellowship.

“But this,” they say, “is what troubles us: if we are unrighteous, why do you seek us?” We answer them: “We seek you who are unrighteous so that you may not remain unrighteous; we seek the lost so that we may rejoice over them when found, saying, ‘Our brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and is found.’” “Why then,” one says, “do you not baptize me, to wash me from sins?” I answer: “Because I do not wrong the emperor's mark when I correct the deserter's error.” “Why,” he says, “do I not at least do penance with you?” “On the contrary, unless you do, you cannot be saved; for how will you rejoice at being corrected unless you grieve at having been perverse?” “What then,” he says, “do we receive with you when we come over to you?” I answer: “You do not indeed receive baptism, which could be in you outside the structure of the body of Christ, but could not profit you; but you receive the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, without which no one will be able to see God, and love, which, as it is written, covers a multitude of sins.” The apostle is witness that without so great a good neither the tongues of men and angels, nor the knowledge of all mysteries, nor prophecy, nor faith so great as to move mountains, nor all that a man possesses distributed to the poor, nor the suffering of the body in fire profits anything. If, then, you think so great a good small or nothing, you rightly err unhappily; you rightly perish if you do not come over to Catholic unity.

“If, then,” they say, “we must repent of having been outside the church and against the church in order to be saved, how is it that after this penance we remain clerics or even bishops among you?” This would not be done, since in truth, it must be admitted, it ought not to be done, unless it were healed by the compensation of peace itself. But let them say this to themselves, and much more grieve humbly, who lie in so deep a death of being cut off that they come to life again by a kind of wound to the Catholic mother. For when a cut branch is grafted in, another wound is made in the tree, by which it can be received so as to live, the branch that was perishing without the life of the root; and when the received branch has grown together with the one receiving it, vigor and fruit follow; but if it does not grow together, it withers, yet the life of the tree remains. There is also a kind of grafting in which, without cutting off any branch that is inside, the one that is outside is grafted in, yet not without a wound to the tree, though a very slight one. So too with these men: when they come to the Catholic root, and the honor of the clerical office or the episcopate is not taken from them even after penance for their error, something is indeed done, as it were, in the bark of the mother tree against the strictness of severity. Yet, since neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, … when prayers are poured out to God's mercy, and the peace of the grafted branches grows together, love covers a multitude of sins.

For the rule was made in the church that no one should receive clerical office, or return to it, or remain in it, after doing penance for any crime, not from despair of pardon but from the rigor of discipline; otherwise there would be argument against the keys given to the church, of which it was said, “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven.” But lest perhaps, even when crimes were discovered, a mind swelling with hope of church honor should do penance proudly, it was decided most severely that after penance done for a damnable crime no one should be a cleric, so that, by despair of temporal elevation, the medicine of humility might be greater and truer. For holy David too did penance for deadly crimes and yet kept his honor; and blessed Peter, when he shed most bitter tears, certainly repented of having denied the Lord, and yet remained an apostle. But the care of later generations is not therefore to be thought superfluous, who, where nothing was taken from salvation, added something to humility, by which salvation might be more securely protected; having experienced, I believe, the feigned penances of some, aimed at the power of honors. For the experience of many diseases compels the discovery of many medicines. But in cases of this kind, where through grave rifts of dissension it is not the danger of this or that man, but whole peoples lie in ruin, something must be taken from severity, so that sincere love may come to the aid of healing greater evils.

Let these men, then, have bitter grief for their past detestable error, as Peter had for his lying fear, and let them come to the true church of Christ, that is, the Catholic mother; let those who were against her as enemies be clerics in her, be bishops in her, to her profit. We do not begrudge it; rather, we embrace, we desire, we exhort; and those we find in the roads and hedges we compel to come in; and even so we do not yet persuade some that we seek not their property but themselves. The apostle Peter, when he denied the Savior, wept, and remained an apostle, had not yet received the promised Holy Spirit; but much more have these men not received him, since, divided from the structure of the body which alone the Holy Spirit gives life to, they held the church's sacraments outside the church and against the church, and fought against us, as in a civil war, with our own standards and arms raised against us. Let them come; let there be peace in the strength of Jerusalem, and that strength is love, to which holy city it was said, “Let there be peace in your strength, and abundance in your towers.” Let them not exalt themselves against the motherly care which she has had and has for gathering them and the many peoples whom they deceive or used to deceive. Let them not be proud because she receives them in this way; let them not turn to the evil of their own self-exaltation what she does for the good of peace.

This is how she has been accustomed to come to the aid of multitudes perishing through schisms and heresies. This displeased Lucifer, because it was done in receiving and healing those who had perished by the Arian poison; and he whom it displeased fell into the darkness of schism, having lost the light of love. The African Catholic Church has kept this toward these men from the beginning, according to the sentence of the bishops who judged in the Roman church between Caecilian and the party of Donatus. Having condemned one Donatus, who was shown to have been the author of the schism, they decided that the rest, when corrected, should be received in their offices, even if they had been ordained outside the church; not because they could have the Holy Spirit even outside the unity of the body of Christ, but above all for the sake of those whom, placed outside, they could deceive and keep from receiving that gift; and then so that their own weakness too, received more gently, might become curable within, with no obstinacy any longer closing the eyes of the heart against the evidence of the truth. And what else did they themselves have in mind when they received back in their offices the Maximianists, whom they had condemned for sacrilegious schism, as their council shows, and in whose places they had already ordained others, once they saw that the people did not leave them, lest they lose them all; and raised no objection or question about the baptism which those condemned by them had given outside? Why then are they surprised, or complain, or slander us for receiving them in this way for the true peace of Christ, and do not remember what they themselves did for the vain peace of Donatus, which is against Christ? If this act of theirs is held against them and intelligently pressed, they will have nothing at all to answer.

As for what they say: “If we have sinned against the Holy Spirit because we exorcised your baptism, why do you seek us, since this sin can never be forgiven us, as the Lord says, ‘Whoever sins against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come’?” they do not notice that according to this sense no one is to be freed. For who does not speak against the Holy Spirit and sin against him, whether one who is not yet a Christian, or a heretic, an Arian or Eunomian or Macedonian, who say he is a creature, or a Photinian, who denies that he has any substance at all, saying that there is only one God, the Father, or other heretics, whom it would take long to list? Are none of these, then, to be freed? Or were the Jews themselves, to whom the Lord made this charge, not to be baptized if they believed in him? For the Savior did not say, “It will be forgiven in baptism,” but, “It will not be forgiven,” he said, “either in this age or in the age to come.”

Let them understand, then, that not every sin, but a certain sin against the Holy Spirit is meant, which will never be forgiven. For just as, when he had said, “If I had not come, they would not have sin,” he certainly did not wish every sin to be understood, since they were full of many great sins, but a certain particular sin, which if they did not have, all the sins they had could be forgiven them, namely, that they did not believe in him when he came (for they would not have had this sin if he had not come); so too, when he said, “Whoever sins against the Holy Spirit,” or, “whoever speaks a word against the Holy Spirit,” he certainly did not wish to be understood everything sinned against the Holy Spirit in deed or word, but a certain particular sin. And this is hardness of heart to the end of this life, by which a person refuses to receive the forgiveness of sins in the unity of the body of Christ, to which the Holy Spirit gives life. For when he had said to the disciples, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he immediately added, “If you forgive anyone's sins, they will be forgiven him; if you retain anyone's, they will be retained.” Whoever, then, resists and fights against this gift of God's grace, or is in any way estranged from it until the end of this temporal life, it will not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come; this sin, that is, so great that all sins are held fast by it, and which is not proved to have been committed by anyone until he has left the body. But as long as he lives here, the patience of God, as the apostle says, leads him to repentance; but if he, by most persistent iniquity, as the apostle adds next, according to his hardness of heart and impenitent heart treasures up wrath for himself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, it will not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come.