Letters 93.6–93.24

Did not Sarah, when the power was given her, rather afflict her stubborn maidservant? And she certainly did not cruelly hate her whom she had earlier made a mother by her own kindness; she was subduing her pride for her good. You are not unaware that these two women, Sarah and Hagar, and their two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, stand for the spiritual and the carnal; and though we read that the maidservant and her son suffered severe trouble from Sarah, the apostle Paul says that Isaac suffered persecution from Ishmael: “But just as then,” he says, “he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now”, so that those who can may understand that it is rather the Catholic Church that suffers persecution from the pride and ungodliness of the carnal, whom she tries to correct by temporal troubles and fears. Whatever, then, the true and lawful mother does, even if it is felt as harsh and bitter, she does not repay evil for evil, but applies the good of discipline to drive out the evil of iniquity, not from hatred that would harm but from love that would heal. When good and bad people do the same things and suffer the same things, they must surely be distinguished not by their deeds and penalties but by their motives. Pharaoh crushed the people of God with hard labour; Moses afflicted the same people with hard punishments when they acted ungodly. They did similar things, but they did not similarly intend good: the one was puffed up with domination, the other aflame with love. Jezebel killed prophets, Elijah killed false prophets; I think the deserts of the doers were different, and those of the sufferers different.

Look also at the times of the New Testament, when the very gentleness of love was not only to be kept in the heart but also to be shown in the light, when Peter's sword was called back into its sheath by Christ, and it was shown that it ought not to have been drawn from its sheath even for Christ. Yet we read not only that the Jews beat the apostle Paul, but also that the Greeks beat Sosthenes, a Jew, on behalf of the apostle Paul. Does not the likeness of the deed seem to join both together, and yet the unlikeness of the motive sets them apart? Indeed, God did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all; indeed, of the Son himself it is said, “who loved me and handed himself over for me”; and indeed of Judas it is said that Satan entered into him so that he would hand Christ over. Since, then, the Father handed over his Son, and Christ himself his body, and Judas his Lord, why in this handing over is God holy and man guilty, unless it is that in the one act which they did the motive for which they did it was not one? There were three crosses in one place: on one a thief to be saved, on another a thief to be condemned, in the middle Christ, who would save the one and condemn the other. What is more alike than those crosses? What more unlike than those hanging on them? Paul was handed over to be shut up and bound; but Satan is surely worse than any jailer, and yet Paul himself handed a man over to him for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. And what do we say here? See, a cruel betrayer handed over to a milder one, a merciful one handed over to a crueller. Let us learn, brothers, to distinguish the intentions of the doers in the likeness of their works, lest with eyes closed we slander and accuse the well-meaning as harmful. Again, when the same apostle says that he handed certain men over to Satan so that they might learn not to blaspheme, did he repay evil for evil, or did he rather judge it a good work to correct evil men even through an evil?

If it were always praiseworthy to suffer persecution, it would have been enough for the Lord to say, “Blessed are those who suffer persecution”, and he would not have added “for righteousness' sake”. Again, if it were always blameworthy to persecute, it would not have been written in the holy books: “Him who secretly slanders his neighbour I persecuted.” Sometimes, then, he who suffers it is unjust and he who inflicts it is just. But clearly the bad have always persecuted the good and the good have always persecuted the bad: the former doing harm through injustice, the latter seeking their good through discipline; the former savagely, the latter with restraint; the former serving greed, the latter love. For one who butchers does not consider how he mangles, but one who heals considers how he cuts; the one pursues what is healthy, the other what is rotten. The ungodly killed prophets, and prophets killed the ungodly; the Jews scourged Christ, and Christ scourged the Jews; the apostles were handed over by men to human power, and the apostles handed men over to the power of Satan. In all these, what is to be looked at except who acted for truth, who for iniquity, who in order to harm, who in order to correct?

“No example is found in the Gospels and the apostolic writings of anything asked of the kings of the earth for the church against the church's enemies.” Who denies that none is found? But that prophecy was not yet being fulfilled: “And now, O kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth; serve the Lord in fear.” For what is said a little earlier in the same psalm was still being fulfilled: “Why have the nations raged and the peoples devised vain things? The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” Yet if past events in the prophetic books were figures of things to come, both times were figured in the king called Nebuchadnezzar: what the church had under the apostles and what she has now. In the times of the apostles and martyrs, then, what was figured was being fulfilled when that king compelled the godly and righteous to worship an image and threw those who refused into the flames; but now what was figured a little later in the same king is being fulfilled, when, converted to honour the true God, he decreed in his kingdom that whoever blasphemed the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego should undergo the punishment due. The earlier time of that king, then, signified the earlier times of unbelieving kings, under whom Christians suffered in place of the ungodly; but the later time of that king signified the times of later kings, now believers, under whom the ungodly suffer in place of Christians.

But clearly, in the case of those who go astray under the name of Christ, led astray by perverse men, lest perhaps they be Christ's straying sheep who must be called back to the flock some other way, a tempered severity, and rather gentleness, is observed, so that by the constraint of exile and fines they may be warned to consider why they suffer, and learn to prefer the Scriptures they read to the rumours and slanders of men. For which of us, which of you, does not praise the laws issued by the emperors against the sacrifices of the pagans? And certainly a far severer penalty is laid down there: that ungodliness carries the death penalty. But in correcting and restraining you, the aim was rather that you should be warned to depart from error than punished for a crime. For perhaps what the apostle says of the Jews can be said of you too: “I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to the righteousness of God.” For what else do you want but to establish your own righteousness, when you say that none are justified except those whom you have been able to baptize? In this sentence of the apostle that he spoke about the Jews, you differ from the Jews in that you have the Christian sacraments, which they still lack. But as to what he says, “being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own”, and that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge, you are entirely alike, except only those among you who know what is true and fight, from the animosity of their perversity, even against a truth well known to them. Their ungodliness perhaps surpasses even idolatry. But since they cannot easily be convicted, for this evil lies hidden in the mind, you are all restrained by a milder severity, as people not too far removed from us. And this I would say either of all heretics who are imbued with the Christian sacraments and dissent from the truth or unity of Christ, or of all the Donatists.

As for you, who are called not only Donatists after Donatus, in common with them, but also, in particular, Rogatists after Rogatus, you do seem milder, because you do not rage with the savage gangs of the Circumcellions. But no beast is called tame because it wounds no one, when it has no teeth or claws. You say you do not wish to rage; I think you cannot. For you are so few in number that you would not dare to move against the multitudes opposed to you, even if you wished. But let us suppose that you do not even wish what you are unable to do; let us suppose that you so understand and so hold the Gospel saying, in which it is written, “If anyone wishes to take your tunic and go to law with you, let him have your cloak as well”, that you think those who persecute you are to be resisted not only with no injury but even with no legal right. Certainly Rogatus, your founder, either did not have this understanding or did not fulfil it, for he fought with the most stubborn persistence, even in litigation in the courts, over some property or other that you say was yours. If it were said to him, “Which of the apostles ever defended his property in a public court in a matter of faith?”, just as you put it in your letter, “Which of the apostles ever seized other people's property in a matter of faith?”, he would indeed find no example of this deed in the divine writings; but perhaps he would find some true defence, if he held the true church and did not shamelessly possess anything under the name of the true church.

As for asking for or carrying out orders of the earthly powers against schismatics or heretics, those from whom you separated were very fierce, both against you, as far as we have been able to hear, and against the Maximianists, which we prove by sure documents from the public records. Yet you had not yet separated from them when they said to the emperor Julian in their petition that with him justice alone had a place, though they knew him to be an apostate and saw him so given over to idolatry that either they would have to admit that idolatry is justice or they could not deny that they had lied wickedly, saying that justice alone had a place with a man with whom they saw idolatry had a great place. But let that be a slip of the tongue. What do you say about the deed itself? If nothing just is to be asked of an emperor, why was what was thought just asked of Julian?

Or is it to be asked on the ground that each may recover his own property, not that one may accuse someone in order to have him restrained by the emperor? Even in reclaiming one's own property one departs from the example of the apostles, for none of them is found to have done this. But when your forebears accused Caecilian himself, then bishop of the church of Carthage, with whom they refused to communicate as a criminal, before the emperor Constantine through the proconsul Anulinus, they were not reclaiming property they had lost; they were slanderously attacking an innocent man, as we believe and as the outcome of the trials itself showed. What could they have done more wicked than that? But if, as you falsely suppose, they handed over a man who really was a criminal to be judged by the earthly powers, why do you reproach us with what the presumption of your own people did first? We would not blame them for having done it, if they had done it not with an envious and harmful mind but with the will to amend and correct. You, however, we blame without hesitation, who think it a crime to make any complaint to a Christian emperor about the enemies of our communion, when the petition given by your forebears to the proconsul Anulinus, to be sent to the emperor Constantine, was headed thus: “Petition of the Catholic Church concerning the crimes of Caecilian, submitted by the party of Majorinus.” And we blame them still more for this: that though they of their own accord accused Caecilian before the emperor, whom they certainly ought first to have convicted before their colleagues overseas, and though the emperor acted far more properly in sending the case of bishops, brought before him, to bishops, they would not, when defeated, have peace with their brothers; they came again to the same emperor, again accused before an earthly king not only Caecilian but also the bishops given them as judges, again appealed from another episcopal judgment to the same emperor, and even when he himself heard and judged between the parties, they did not think they should yield either to truth or to peace.

And what else would Constantine have decreed against Caecilian and his associates, if they had been defeated when your forebears accused them, than what he decreed against those very men who, having accused of their own accord and been unable to prove their charges, would not yield to the truth even when defeated? For that emperor was the first to decree in this case that the property of those convicted and stubbornly resisting unity should be confiscated to the treasury. But of course, if your forebears had accused and prevailed, and the emperor had decreed something of the kind against the communion of Caecilian, you would want to be called guardians of the church, defenders of peace and unity. But when such things are decreed by emperors against those who, accusing of their own accord, could prove nothing and would not consent when the bosom of peace was offered them, in which they would be received on correction, then it is shouted that this is an outrage, and it is argued that no one is to be compelled to unity, that evil is to be repaid to no one for evil. What is this but what someone wrote of you: “What we want is holy”? And now it was not a great or difficult thing to consider and reflect that the judgment and sentence of Constantine against you is still in force, which was issued against you when your forebears so often accused Caecilian before the emperor and failed to convict him; and that the other emperors, especially Catholic Christians, necessarily follow it whenever the necessity created by your obstinacy compels them to take any action concerning you.

It was easy to reflect on these things, so that you might at some time say to yourselves: “If Caecilian was either innocent or, if guilty, could not be convicted, how has the Christian society, spread so far and wide, sinned in this matter? Why was the Christian world not permitted to be ignorant of what the accusers could not prove? Why are those whom Christ sowed in his field, that is, in this world, and commanded to grow among the weeds until the harvest, why are so many thousands of believers in all nations, whose multitude the Lord compared to the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea, whom he promised would be blessed in the seed of Abraham and has made good his promise, denied to be Christians on this account: that in this case, at whose examination they were not present, they chose to believe the judges, who judged at their own peril, rather than the defeated litigants?” Certainly no one's crime stains one who does not know of it. How could the believers spread throughout the world know the crime of the traditors, which the accusers, even if they knew it, were unable to show them? That they are innocent of this crime their very ignorance most easily shows. Why then are the innocent accused of false crimes because they did not know of other people's crimes, whether false or true? What room is left for innocence, if it is one's own crime not to know another's crime? Further, if, as has been said, their very ignorance shows the peoples of so many nations to be innocent, how great a crime it is to separate from the communion of these innocent people! For the deeds of the guilty, which cannot be shown to the innocent or believed by the innocent, stain no one, even if, once known, they are borne for the sake of fellowship with the innocent. For the good are not to be deserted because of the bad, but the bad are to be tolerated because of the good: as the prophets tolerated them, against whom they said so much, and yet did not leave the communion of the sacraments of that people; as the Lord himself tolerated guilty Judas until his fitting end and allowed him to share the holy supper with the innocent; as the apostles tolerated those who proclaimed Christ out of envy, which is the vice of the devil himself; as Cyprian tolerated the avarice of his colleagues, which, following the apostle, he calls idolatry. Finally, whatever was done then among those bishops, even if perhaps some of them knew of it, is now, without respect of persons, unknown to all. Why then is peace not loved by all? You could very easily reflect on these things, or perhaps you even do reflect on them. But it would be better for you to love your earthly possessions, so that through fear of losing them you would consent to the truth you know, than to love the emptiest glory of men, which you think you will lose if you consent to the truth you know.

You see, then, I think, that what must be considered is not whether someone is compelled, but what that is to which he is compelled, whether good or bad. Not that anyone can be good against his will; but through fear of suffering what he does not wish, he either gives up the animosity that stood in his way or is driven to know a truth of which he was ignorant, so that through fear he either rejects the falsehood he was contending for or seeks the truth he did not know, and now willingly holds what he did not want. It would perhaps be superfluous to say this in any words at all, if it were not shown by so many examples. We see that not this or that man but many cities were Donatist and are now Catholic, vehemently detest the diabolical separation, and ardently love unity. Yet they became Catholic on the occasion of this fear that displeases you, through the laws of the emperors, from Constantine, before whom your people first accused Caecilian of their own accord, down to the present emperors, who decree most justly that the judgment of him whom your people chose, whom they preferred to the episcopal judges, is to be upheld against you.

So I yielded to these examples put before me by my colleagues. For my opinion originally was that no one should be compelled to the unity of Christ, that one should act by word, fight by discussion, conquer by reason, lest we have pretended Catholics whom we had known as open heretics. But this opinion of mine was overcome, not by the words of those who contradicted it, but by the examples of those who demonstrated otherwise. For first my own city was set against me, which, though it had been wholly in the party of Donatus, was converted to Catholic unity by fear of the imperial laws, and which we now see detesting the ruin of this animosity of yours so much that one would think it had never been in it. So too many others, which were mentioned to me by name, so that I recognized from the facts themselves that what is written can rightly be understood in this case too: “Give a wise man an opportunity and he will be wiser.” For how many, as we know for certain, already wished to be Catholics, moved by the most manifest truth, and put it off from day to day out of regard for offending their own people! How many were bound, not by the truth, on which you never relied, but by the heavy chain of hardened habit, so that in them that divine saying was fulfilled: “A hard servant will not be corrected by words; for even if he understands, he will not obey”! How many thought the party of Donatus was the true church because security made them sluggish, disdainful and lazy about learning the Catholic truth! For how many the rumours of slanderers, who kept claiming that we place I know not what else on the altar of God, barred the way in! How many, believing that it makes no difference in which party one is a Christian, remained in the party of Donatus because they had been born there and no one compelled them to leave it and pass over to the Catholic Church!

To all these the terror of these laws, in promulgating which kings serve the Lord in fear, has been so beneficial that now some say: “We wanted this secretly; but thanks be to God, who has given us the occasion to do it at once and has cut off the little delays of postponement.” Others say: “We already knew this was the truth, but we were held by some habit or other; thanks be to the Lord, who has broken our bonds and brought us over to the bond of peace.” Others say: “We did not know that the truth was here, nor did we wish to learn it; but fear made us intent on knowing it, the fear that we might be struck by the loss of temporal things without any gain of eternal things; thanks be to the Lord, who shook off our negligence with the goad of terror, so that at least when anxious we sought what when secure we never cared to know.” Others say: “We were frightened of entering by false rumours, which we would not have known to be false unless we entered, and we would not have entered unless we were compelled; thanks be to the Lord, who took away our trepidation with the scourge, and taught us by experience how vain and empty were the things that lying report spread about his church; from this we now believe that those things too are false which the founders of this heresy charged, since their successors have invented things so false and worse.” Others say: “We thought it made no difference where we held the faith of Christ; but thanks be to the Lord, who has gathered us from division and shown that it befits the one God to be worshipped in unity.”

Should I set myself to contradict my colleagues so as to hinder these gains for the Lord, so that Christ's straying sheep on your mountains and hills, that is, on the swellings of your pride, should not be gathered into the fold of peace, where there is one flock and one shepherd? Ought I really to have opposed this provision so that you should not lose the property you call yours, and might proscribe Christ in security? So that you might make wills under Roman law, and by slanderous charges break the will made under divine law to the fathers, where it is written, “In your seed shall all nations be blessed”? So that you might have free contracts in buying and selling, and dare to divide what Christ bought when he was sold? So that what any of you had given to anyone should be valid, and what the God of gods has given to his children, called from the rising of the sun to its setting, should not be valid? So that you should not be sent into exile from the land of your body, and you might try to make Christ an exile from the kingdom of his blood, from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth? No indeed: let the kings of the earth serve Christ by making laws for Christ too. Your forebears exposed Caecilian and his associates to the kings of the earth to be punished on false charges; let the lions be turned to crush the bones of the slanderers, and let not Daniel himself intercede, proved innocent and delivered from the den in which they perish; for he who prepares a pit for his neighbour will more justly fall into it himself.

Rescue yourself, brother, while you live in this flesh, from the wrath that will come upon the obstinate and proud. When the terror of temporal powers attacks the truth, it is a glorious testing for the strong and righteous and a dangerous temptation for the weak; but when it proclaims the truth, it is a useful warning for those who err but have sense, and a useless affliction for the senseless. Yet “there is no power except from God; and whoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God; for rulers are a terror not to good work but to bad. Do you wish not to fear the power? Do good, and you will have praise from it.” For whether the power, favouring the truth, corrects someone, he who has been amended has praise from it; or whether, hostile to the truth, it rages against someone, he who has been crowned as victor has praise from it. But you are not doing good, so as to have no need to fear the power; unless perhaps it is good to sit and speak against, not a brother, but all the brothers established in all nations, to whom the prophets, Christ and the apostles bear witness when we read, “In your seed shall all nations be blessed”; when we read, “From the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice is offered to my name, for my name is glorified among the nations, says the Lord” (listen: “says the Lord”, not “says Donatus”, or Rogatus, or Vincentius, or Hilary, or Ambrose, or Augustine, but “says the Lord”); when we read, “And all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed in him; all nations shall magnify him. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who alone does wonders, and blessed be the name of his glory for ever and for ages of ages; and the whole earth shall be filled with his glory. So be it, so be it.” And you sit at Cartenna and with the ten Rogatists who are left you say, “Let it not be, let it not be!”

You hear the Gospel speak: “All things had to be fulfilled that are written in the law and the prophets and the psalms concerning me. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them: Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and for repentance and forgiveness of sins to be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” You read also in the Acts of the Apostles how this Gospel began from Jerusalem, where the Holy Spirit first filled those hundred and twenty, and went out from there into Judea and Samaria and to all nations, as he had told them when about to ascend into heaven: “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth”; for “their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” And you contradict divine testimonies so firmly established and so clearly manifest, and try to bring Christ's inheritance to such a proscription that, though repentance is preached in his name among all nations, as he said, whoever is moved by this preaching, in whatever part of the world, cannot have his sins forgiven unless he seeks out and finds Vincentius of Cartenna, hidden away in Mauretania Caesariensis, or one of his nine or ten partners! What would the conceit of a scrap of dead skin not dare? Where would the presumption of flesh and blood not hurl itself? Is this your good work, on account of which you need not fear the power? You set so great a stumbling block against your mother's son, a little one, weak, for whom Christ died, not yet fit for his father's food but still to be fed on his mother's milk; and you set against me the books of Hilary, to deny the church growing in all nations to the end of the world, which God promised with an oath against your unbelief! And though you would have been most unhappy if you had resisted when it was promised, now you contradict it even when it is fulfilled.

But, as a learned historian, you have found something great that you thought could be brought against the testimonies of God. For you say: “As regards the parts of the whole world, the part in which the Christian faith is named is small compared with the whole world.” And you will not consider, or you pretend not to know, into how many barbarian nations the Gospel has already come in so short a time, so that not even the enemies of Christ can now doubt that what he answered the disciples when they asked about the end of the world will come to pass in a short time: “And this Gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Go now, shout and argue as much as you can: even if the Gospel is preached among the Indians and Persians, where indeed it has long been preached, unless whoever hears it comes to Cartenna or the neighbourhood of Cartenna, he can by no means be cleansed from his sins! Is it, then, that if you refrained from saying this you fear you would be laughed at, and since you do not refrain, you do not want to be wept over?

You seem to say something clever when you interpret the name “Catholic” not from the communion of the whole world but from the observance of all the divine commandments and all the sacraments; as if we, even if the church is perhaps called Catholic because it truly holds the whole (some small particles of which truth are found even in various heresies), relied on the testimony of this name to prove the church in all nations, and not on the promises of God and so many and such manifest oracles of the Truth himself. But this, of course, is the whole of what you try to persuade us: that the Rogatists alone are left, who are rightly to be called Catholics from the observance of all the divine commandments and all the sacraments, and that you are the only ones in whom the Son of Man will find faith when he comes. Pardon us, we do not believe it. For though you may perhaps dare to say even this, that you are to be reckoned not on earth but in heaven, so that in you may be found the faith that the Lord said he would not find on earth, yet the apostle has made us so wary that he commanded that even an angel from heaven preaching to us any other gospel than what we have received should be anathema. And how do we trust that we have received from the divine writings a manifest Christ, if we have not received from them a manifest church too? Whatever handles and hooks anyone may weave against the simplicity of truth, whatever fogs of cunning falsehood he may spread, just as anyone will be anathema who proclaims that Christ neither suffered nor rose on the third day, since we have received in the truth of the Gospel, “It was necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day”, so anyone will be anathema who proclaims a church apart from the communion of all nations, since we have received in the same truth, immediately after, “and for repentance and forgiveness of sins to be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem”; and we must hold unshaken: “Whoever proclaims to you anything other than what you have received, let him be anathema.”

If we do not listen to all the Donatists when they put themselves forward as the church of Christ, because they bring no testimony from the divine books to teach it, how much less, I ask you, ought we to listen to the Rogatists, who will not even try to interpret for themselves what is written: “Where do you feed, where do you lie down at noon?” For if in this passage of Scripture “noon” is to be understood as Africa, in the party of Donatus, because it lies under the hotter zone of the sky, the Maximianists will beat all of you, whose schism blazed up in Byzacena and Tripoli. But let the Arzuges fight it out with them and argue that this applies rather to themselves. Mauretania Caesariensis, however, being nearer the west than the south, since it does not even wish to be called Africa, how will it boast of the noon, I do not say against the whole world, but against the very party of Donatus, from which the party of Rogatus is a tiny scrap cut off from a bigger scrap? And who would not be most shameless to try to interpret something put in allegory in his own favour, unless he also has clear testimonies by whose light the obscure things may be illuminated?