Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.21–2.8

You see, then, brother Parmenian, that these two crimes, so evil and so grave, handing over and schism, belong to your leaders. Recognize, even late, that while you attack others you have run into your own; and since it is plain that your predecessors committed this second outrage, you too labor to follow them in their criminal footsteps, so that what those predecessors did under the heading of schism you seem both to have done long ago and to be doing now. They broke the peace in their time; you are exterminating unity. Of your fathers and of you it can rightly be said: "If the blind leads the blind, both fall into the pit." Raging envy had blinded the eyes of your fathers; rivalry has bereaved yours. You will not be able to deny that schism is the supreme evil. And yet you have imitated, without trembling, Dathan and Abiram and Korah, your lost masters, and you were unwilling to set before your eyes that this evil was both forbidden by the words of God and, when committed, severely punished. Then the difference between offenses is attested either by pardon or by punishment. In short, among the other commandments the divine command forbade these three: "You shall not kill"; "You shall not go after other gods"; and among the heads of the commandments, "You shall not make a schism." Let us see which of these three had to be punished and which deserved to be remitted. Murder of kin is a principal offense; and yet Cain, though guilty, is not struck by God, but, should he be slain, he is avenged besides. In the city of Nineveh there were a hundred and twenty thousand sacrilegious men, who were seen to follow other gods; after the anger of God and the message of the prophet Jonah, a fast of a short time and prayer won pardon. Let us see whether those who first dared to split the people of God obtained anything of the kind. Over so many thousands of the sons of Israel, from whose necks divine providence had cast the yoke of slavery, he had set Aaron as the one holy priest. But when his ministers, coveting a priesthood not due to them, led away part of the people and invaded it unlawfully, imitating the rite of the sacred things, they set two hundred ministers and more, who would perish with them, with censers at the head of the people they had led astray. God, who is displeased by schism, could not look on this with favor. They had declared war on God, as it were, as if there were another god to accept another sacrifice. So God was angry with a great anger for the schism that had been made; and what he had not done to the sacrilegious and to the murderer, he did to the schismatics. There stood the line of ministers and the sacrilegious multitude with their forbidden sacrifices, about to perish on the spot; time for repentance was denied and withdrawn, because the fault was not such as to deserve pardon. Hunger was sent to the earth: at once it opened its jaws against the dividers of the people and swallowed with greedy gaping the despisers of God's commandments. Within the space of a moment the earth opened to swallow them, seized them, and closed. And lest they seem to gain the benefit of a quick death, since they were not worthy to live, they were not even allowed to die: suddenly shut in the prison of Tartarus, they were buried before they were dead. And you wonder that anything harsh of this kind has been done against you, who either make schism or cherish it, when you see what the masters of the first schism deserved to suffer? Or, because such vengeance has ceased now, do you therefore claim innocence for yourself and yours? God has set a pattern of examples in individual matters, so that he may have something to charge to those who imitate them. Present punishment checked the first sins as an example; the second he will reserve for the judgment. What will you say to this, who, having usurped the name of the church, both secretly nourish schism and shamelessly defend it?

But since I hear that some of your society, out of zeal for litigation, hold some documents or other, we must ask which should be trusted, which agree with reason, which accord with truth. Yours, if there are any, may perhaps seem sprinkled with lies. Our documents are proved by the conflicts of the cases, the contentions of the parties, the outcomes of the judgments, and the letters of Constantine. As for what you say of us, "What have Christians to do with kings? Or what have bishops to do with the palace?": if it is a mark of disgrace to have dealings with kings, the whole odium falls on you. For your forebears, Lucianus, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius and the rest, petitioned the emperor Constantine, who was still unaware of these matters, with this request, a copy of which is written below: "We ask you, Constantine, best emperor, since you are of a just race, whose father, alone among the other emperors, did not carry out the persecution, and Gaul is free of this crime (for in Africa there are disputes between us and the other bishops): we petition that your piety order judges to be given us from Gaul. Given by Lucianus, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius and the other bishops of the party of Donatus."

When he had read this, Constantine answered full of indignation; and in that answer he also disclosed their petition, when he says: "You ask of me a judgment in the world, though I myself await the judgment of Christ." And yet judges were given: Maternus from the city of Agrippina, Reticius from the city of Augustodunum, Marinus of Arles. These three Gauls and fifteen other Italians came to the city of Rome. They met in the house of Fausta in the Lateran, in the consulship of Constantine for the fourth time and Licinius for the third, on the sixth day before the Nones of October, a Friday, when there sat Miltiades, bishop of the city of Rome, and Reticius, Maternus and Marinus, the Gallic bishops, and Merocles of Milan, Florianus of Sinna, Zoticus of Quintianum, Stennius of Ariminum, Felix of Florence of the Tuscans, Gaudentius of Pisa, Constantius of Faventia, Proterius of Capua, Theophilus of Beneventum, Sabinus of Terracina, Secundus of Praeneste, Felix of Tres Tabernae, Maximus of Ostia, Evandrus of Ursinum, and Donatianus of Forum Claudii.

With these nineteen bishops sitting together, the case of Donatus and Caecilian was brought into the open. These sentences were passed against Donatus by each of them: that he had confessed that he had rebaptized and had laid hands on lapsed bishops, which is foreign to the church. The witnesses brought in by Donatus confessed that they had nothing to say against Caecilian. Caecilian was pronounced innocent by the sentences of all those mentioned above, and also by the sentence of Miltiades, by which the judgment was closed in these words: "Since it is established that Caecilian is not accused by those who came with Donatus, according to their own statement, and it is established that he has not been convicted by Donatus on any point, I judge that he is rightly to be kept in his ecclesiastical communion with his standing intact."

It is enough, then, that Donatus was struck by so many sentences and Caecilian cleared by so great a judgment. And yet Donatus thought he should appeal. To this appeal the emperor Constantine replied thus: "O raging boldness of madness! As is usually done in the cases of pagans, a bishop has thought he should appeal," and the rest.

At the same time the same Donatus asked to be allowed to return ... and go to Carthage. Then it was suggested to the emperor by Filuminus, his supporter, that for the good of peace Caecilian should be kept at Brescia; and it was done. Then two bishops, Eunomius and Olympius, were sent to Africa, to remove the two and ordain one. They came and were at Carthage for forty days, so as to pronounce where the Catholic Church was. The seditious party of Donatus did not allow this to be done; daily uproars were raised out of partisan zeal. The final sentence of these same bishops, Eunomius and Olympius, is read as follows: they said that the Catholic Church is the one spread through the whole world, and that the sentence of the nineteen bishops given long before could not be undone. So they communicated with the clergy of Caecilian and went back. Of these things we have a volume of acts, which anyone who wishes may read in the last parts. While this was happening, Donatus went back to Carthage first of his own accord. When he heard this, Caecilian hurried to his people. In this way the parties were renewed again. Yet it is plain that Donatus was struck by so many sentences and Caecilian pronounced innocent by as many.

But since in that case two persons in the Catholic Church had long seemed to be in difficulty, the ordained and the ordainer, after the ordained had been cleared in the City, the ordainer still remained to be cleared. Then Constantine wrote to the proconsul Aelianus that, setting aside public business, an inquiry should be made publicly into the life of Felix of Abthugni. He to whom it had been enjoined sat. Brought in were Claudius Saturianus, curator of the city, who had been in Felix's city at the time of the persecution; and the curator at the time when the case was being pressed, Callidius Gratianus; and the magistrate Alfius Caecilianus; and also Superius, a police officer, was brought, and Ingentius, a public scribe, was hung up under fear of imminent tortures. From the answers of all, nothing of the kind was found that could have stained the life of bishop Felix. There is a volume of acts which contains the names of those present at the case: Claudius Saturianus the curator, Caecilianus the magistrate, Superius the police officer, Ingentius the scribe, and Solon, a public official of that time. After their answers this part of the sentence was pronounced by the proconsul mentioned above: "It is plain that Felix, the devout bishop, is free of the burning of the divine documents, since no one has been able to prove anything against him, that he betrayed or burned the most holy Scriptures. For the questioning of all those written above has made it plain that no divine Scriptures were either found or damaged or burned. It is contained in the acts that Felix, the devout bishop, was not present at those times, nor gave his knowledge, nor ordered any such thing to be done." So, the infamy driven off and wiped away, he left that judgment with great praise. For a long time, amid uncertain opinion and the mists that envy and jealousy had breathed out, the truth seemed to lie hidden; but every writing mentioned has been revealed, both in the volumes of acts and in the letters mentioned or read.

You see, brother Parmenian, that you attacked the Catholics in vain by throwing the name of traitors at them falsely, exchanging the persons, that is, and transferring the guilt. You closed your eyes so as not to recognize your fathers as guilty; you opened them to strike at innocent and undeserving men with accusations. Everything for the occasion, nothing for the truth, so that the most blessed apostle Paul said of you too: "But some have turned aside to vain talk, wanting to be teachers of the law, not understanding what they say or the things about which they make assertions." We showed a little before that your fathers were traitors and schismatics; and you, their heir, have wished to spare neither schismatics nor traitors. Now, then, by the documents mentioned above, all the weapons that you wished to throw falsely at others, beaten back by the shield of truth, are turned by a rebounding blow on your fathers. Everything, then, that could be said by you against traitors and schismatics is yours, for it is not ours: we remain in the root and are with all in the whole world.

Since it has been shown who the traitors were, and the origin of the schism has been so displayed that it seems almost seen with the eyes, and we have also shown how heresy differs from schism, the next thing is to show (as we promised to say in the second place) which is the one church that Christ calls his dove and bride. The church, then, is one, whose holiness is gathered from the sacraments, not weighed from the pride of persons; this one, then, Christ calls his dove and beloved bride. It cannot be among all the heretics and schismatics; it remains that it is in one place. You, brother Parmenian, said that it is with you alone, unless perhaps, because you strive to claim a special holiness for yourselves out of pride, the church is to be where you wish and not where you do not wish. So, that it may be with you in a small part of Africa, in a corner of a little region, will it not be with us in another part of Africa? Will it not be in the Spains, in Gaul, in Italy, where you are not? If you want it to be with you only, will it not be in the three Pannonias, in Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Achaia, Macedonia and all Greece, where you are not? That it may be with you, will it not be in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cilicia, the three Syrias, the two Armenias, all Egypt and Mesopotamia, where you are not? And through so many innumerable islands and other provinces, which can scarcely be counted, where you are not, will it not be? Where then will be the proper meaning of the name catholic, since it is called catholic because it is according to reason and spread everywhere? For if at your will you squeeze the church into a narrow space, if you take away all the nations, where will be what the Son of God earned? Where what the Father gladly granted him in the second psalm, saying, "I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession"? Why do you break such a promise, so that the breadth of kingdoms is sent by you, as it were, into a prison? Why do you strive to obstruct so great a kindness? Why do you fight against the merits of the Savior? Allow the Son to possess what was granted; allow the Father to fulfil what was promised. Why do you set limits? Why fix boundaries? Since the whole earth was promised to the Savior by God the Father, there is nothing in any part of the earth that seems excepted from his possession. The whole earth with its nations has been given; the whole world is one possession of Christ. God proves this, who says, "I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession." And in the seventy-first psalm it is written thus of the Savior himself: "He will rule from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the earth." The Father, when he gives, excepts nothing; you, to grant an ounce, try to take away the whole pound. And still you strive to persuade men that the church is with you alone, taking away from Christ what he earned and denying what God bestowed. O your ungrateful and foolish presumption! Christ invites you with the rest into the fellowship of the heavenly kingdom and urges you to be coheirs, and you labor to cheat him of the inheritance granted him by the Father, while you grant him a part of Africa and deny him the whole world given him by the Father. Why do you want the Holy Spirit to seem a liar, who in the forty-ninth psalm tells the goodwill of almighty God when he says, "The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting"? The earth, then, was called so that flesh might come to be, and, as we read, it came to be, and it owes praises to its Creator. In short, it is reminded by the Holy Spirit, who exhorts and says in the hundred and twelfth psalm, "The name of the Lord is to be praised from the rising of the sun to its setting," and again in the ninety-fifth psalm, "Sing to the Lord a new song." If he said this verse alone, you could say that the Holy Spirit exhorted you alone. But to show that it was said not to you alone but to the church that is everywhere, he went on, saying, "Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples." "Proclaim," he says, "among the nations"; he did not say "in a small part of Africa, where you are." "Proclaim," he says, "among all peoples." He who said all peoples excepted no one; and you congratulate yourselves on being separated from all the peoples to whom this was commanded, and you want to be alone the whole, who are not in the whole at all. "The name of the Lord," he says, "is to be praised" both by the whole earth and "from the rising of the sun to its setting." Can pagans outside the law either sing to God or praise the name of the Lord, and not the church alone, which is within the law? If you say it is with you only, you cheat the ears of God. If you alone praise, the whole world from the rising of the sun to its setting will be silent. You have closed the mouths of all the Christian nations; you have imposed silence on all the peoples who long to praise God at every moment. So, if God awaits the praises due to him, and the Holy Spirit exhorts that they sound, and the whole world is ready to render what it owes to God, then, lest God be cheated, either praise with all, you too, or, since you would not be with all, fall silent alone.

Since, then, we have proved that the Catholic Church is the one spread through the whole world, its ornaments must now be mentioned, and we must see where the five dowries are, which you said were six. Among them the chair is first; unless a bishop sits in it, the second dowry, which is the angel, cannot be joined. We must see who first sat in the chair, and where. If you do not know, learn; if you know, blush. Ignorance cannot be ascribed to you; it remains, then, that you know. To err knowingly is a sin; for the ignorant are sometimes pardoned. So you cannot deny that you know that in the city of Rome the episcopal chair was first conferred on Peter, in which Peter, the head of all the apostles, sat (whence he was also called Cephas), so that in this one chair unity might be kept by all, lest the other apostles each defend a chair of his own, so that whoever set up another chair against the single chair would already be a schismatic and a sinner.

So in the single chair, which is the first of the dowries, Peter sat first. Linus succeeded him; Clement succeeded Linus; Anacletus Clement; Evaristus Anacletus; Sixtus Evaristus; Telesphorus Sixtus; Hyginus Telesphorus; Anicetus Hyginus; Pius Anicetus; Soter Pius; Victor Soter; Zephyrinus Victor; Callistus Zephyrinus; Urban Callistus; Pontianus Urban; Anterus Pontianus; Fabian Anterus; Cornelius Fabian; Lucius Cornelius; Stephen Lucius; Sixtus Stephen; Dionysius Sixtus; Felix Dionysius; Marcellinus Felix; Eusebius Marcellinus; Miltiades Eusebius; Silvester Miltiades; Mark Silvester; Julius Mark; Liberius Julius; Damasus Liberius; Siricius Damasus, who today is our colleague, with whom the whole world agrees with us in one fellowship of communion by the exchange of letters of communion. You who wish to claim the holy church for yourselves, show the origin of your chair.

But you say that you too have some part in the city of Rome. It is a branch of your error, grown out from a lie, not from the root of truth. In short, if Macrobius were asked where he sits there, could he say, "In the chair of Peter"? I do not know that he has even seen it with his eyes, and he does not approach Peter's shrine, acting like a schismatic against the apostle, who says, "sharing in the shrines of the saints." Behold, the shrines of the two apostles are there. Tell us whether he has been able to enter them or has offered there, where the shrines of the saints plainly are. So it remains that your colleague Macrobius must confess that he sits where Encolpius once sat; and if Encolpius himself could be asked, he would say that he sits where Boniface of Balla sat before; then, if he too could be asked, he would say, where Victor of Garba sat, sent long ago by your people from Africa to a few wanderers. What is this, that your party could not have a bishop at Rome who was a citizen there? What is this, that it is known that all who succeeded one another in that city were Africans and foreigners? Is not the guile apparent, is not the faction apparent, which is the mother of schism? Meanwhile, so that Victor of Garba might be the first sent from here (I do not say a stone into a spring, because he could not disturb the purity of the Catholic multitude, but because some Africans had liked living in the City and seemed to have gone out from you), they themselves asked that someone be sent from here to gather them. So Victor was sent. There he was a son without a father, a recruit without a commander, a disciple without a master, a follower without a leader, a tenant without a house, a guest without lodging, a shepherd without a flock, a bishop without a people. For the few could not be called a flock or a people, who among more than forty basilicas had no place to gather. So they fenced off with hurdles a cave outside the city, where they could hold their little assembly at that time; whence they were called Montenses. So, since Claudianus appears to have succeeded Lucianus, Lucianus Macrobius, Macrobius Encolpius, Encolpius Boniface, Boniface Victor: if Victor were asked where he sat, he could neither show that anyone had been there before him nor show any chair except that of pestilence. For pestilence sends men killed by diseases to the lower world, which is known to have its gates; against which gates we read that Peter, our chief, received the saving keys, to whom it was said by Christ, "To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the gates of the lower world will not overcome them."

How is it, then, that you strive to usurp for yourselves the keys of the kingdom of heaven, you who fight against the chair of Peter with your presumptions and bold sacrilege, rejecting the blessedness for which he deserved to be praised "who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly and did not stand in the way of sinners and did not sit in the chair of pestilence"? Your forebears walked in the counsel of ungodliness, so that the church was divided. They entered also on the way of sinners, when they tried to divide Christ, whose very clothing the Jews would not tear, while the apostle cries out and says, "Is Christ divided?" And would that, having entered on the evil way, they had recognized their sin and turned back on themselves, that is, had corrected what they had erred in and called back the peace they had driven away. This would have been to turn back from the way; for on a way one walks, one does not stand. But since your parents would not turn back, they plainly stood in the way of sinners; those whose steps fury had driven on, sluggish discord held fast and bound. And so that they could not go back to better things, they put on themselves the shackles of schism, so as to stand stubbornly in error and be unable to return to the peace they had deserted. Nor did they hear the Holy Spirit saying in the thirty-third psalm, "Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it"; but they stood in the way of their sins. They sat also in the chair of pestilence, which, as we said above, sends those it leads astray to death. But while you too cherish the error of your parents and zealously defend it, you have chosen to be heirs of the crime, though you could, even late, be sons of peace. Since it is written in the prophet Ezekiel, "Raise your voice over the son of the sinner, lest he follow the footsteps of his father; for the soul of the father is mine and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it alone will be punished," if you were displeased that your parents sinned, they alone would give account for what they committed. In this way you too could be blessed and receive praise from the mouth of the prophet, who says in the first psalm, "Blessed is the man who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly and did not stand in the way of sinners and did not sit in the chair of pestilence; but his will was in the law of the Lord." What is it to have one's will in the law, but both to learn the divine precepts devoutly and to fulfil them with fear? In that law it is written, "Peace on earth to men of good will"; and in another place, in the prophet Isaiah, "I will lay the foundations of peace in Zion"; and in another place, "Let us see what the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people"; and in another place, "The Son of God came, and his place was made in peace"; and in another place, "Let the mountains receive peace for the people, and the hills righteousness"; and in the gospel, "My peace I give you, my peace I leave with you"; and Paul says, "He who sows peace will also reap peace"; and in all his letters, "Peace be multiplied to you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"; and in the thirty-third psalm, "Seek peace and you will obtain it." Peace, driven away, had departed from your fathers; you ought to seek it, as God commanded, but you would neither seek it of your own accord nor gladly accept it when offered. For who in so many provinces has heard of the places where you were born? And if anyone has heard, who would not wonder at your error, who would not condemn your crime? Since, then, it is plain and clearer than light itself that we are with so many innumerable peoples and so many provinces are with us, you now see that you, placed in a part of one region and separated from the church by your errors, claim in vain for yourselves alone this name of church with its dowries, which are with us rather than with you. They are plainly so connected with one another and undivided that it is understood that one cannot be separated from another. For they are counted by name, but by their one meaning they are joined in a body, like the fingers on a hand, which we see marked off singly by intervals. Hence whoever holds one must hold all, since each cannot be separated from its fellows. Add that we possess properly not one alone but all of them.

Of the dowries named above, then, the chair, as we said, is the first, which we have proved to be ours through Peter, and it draws the angel to itself, unless perhaps, claiming him for yourselves, you keep him shut up in a coffer. Send him out, if you can; let him shut out the seven angels who are with our colleagues in Asia, to whose churches John the apostle writes, churches with which you are proved to have no fellowship of communion. Where do you get an angel who could move the fountain among you, or be counted among the other dowries of the church? Whatever is outside the seven churches is foreign. Or if you have any one from there, through that one you are in communion with the other angels too, and through the angels with the churches mentioned above, and through those churches with us. If that is so, you have lost the dispute.

Behold, then, all the dowries cannot be with you; for you will not be able to claim for yourselves alone, or shut in, the Spirit of God, who is understood and not seen. For so it is written in the gospel: "For the Spirit is God, and blows where he wills, and you hear his voice and do not know where he comes from or where he goes." Allow God to go from where he wills and to have freedom to come where he wills, who can be heard and cannot be seen. And yet, out of zeal for accusing, you were glad to blaspheme, so as to say, "For what spirit can there be in that church except one who bears sons of Gehenna?" You vomited an insult from your breast and thought a testimony from the gospel should be added, where we read, "Woe to you, hypocrites, who go round seas and lands to make one proselyte, and when you have found him, you make him a son of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves." If this insult had to be made (which is not lawful, even though made without cause), would that someone else of your number had made it! But I wonder greatly that you said it: that you should say falsely against another a thing for which, if you consider your own ordination, you could well blush. For you recalled that it is read in the gospel, "Woe to you, hypocrites, who go round seas and lands to make one proselyte," that is, to change someone's sect. I do not know of what sect you were; yet I judge that this was said by you inopportunely, so that perhaps you now regret this saying. Have we traveled through any lands? Have we gone round any seas? Have we come to foreign ports? Have we brought any Spaniard or Gaul, or have we ordained a foreigner for people who did not know him?

For the fountain too is plainly one of the dowries, from which heretics can neither drink themselves nor give others to drink, because they alone, not having the seal intact, that is, the Catholic creed, cannot open to the true fountain. ... For since it is written in the Song of Songs, "Your navel is like a turned bowl," you tried to assert that the navel is the altar. If the navel is a member of the body, what is a member cannot be among the dowries; if it is an ornament, it is not part of the body.