Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.1–6.8

As it seems to me, it has been clearly shown what you have wickedly done in the divine sacraments. Now those things must be shown which you will in no way be able to deny you did cruelly and foolishly. For what is so sacrilegious as to break, scrape and remove the altars of God, on which you too once offered, on which both the prayers of the people and the members of Christ have been carried, where almighty God has been invoked, where the Holy Spirit, when asked, has come down, from which many have received the pledge of eternal salvation, the protection of faith and the hope of resurrection? Altars, I say, on which the Savior ordered no gifts of the brotherhood to be placed except those made up in peace: "Lay down your gift," he says, "before the altar, and go back first, be reconciled with your brother, so that the priest may offer for you." For what is the altar but the seat of both the body and the blood of Christ? All these your fury either scraped or broke or removed. This inexpiable crime, then, if it came from any reason, ought to have been done in one way. But, as I think, in one place an abundance of wood ordered them to be broken; in others a lack of wood commanded that they scrape the altars; and that others should remove them, shame in part persuaded. Yet everywhere it is a crime, since you laid sacrilegious and impious hands on so great a thing. Why should I relate the hired multitude of the abandoned, and the wine given as wage for the crime? So that it might be drunk with unclean mouth in sacrilegious draughts, hot drink was made from the fragments of the altars. If in the judgment of envy we seemed unclean to you, what had God done to you, who used to be invoked there? How had Christ offended you, whose body and blood dwelt there at certain moments? How did you yourselves offend, that you should break those altars on which, before us, for long spaces of time, you offered, as you think, in holiness? While you impiously persecute our hands, where the body of Christ dwelt, you struck yours too. In this way you have imitated the Jews: they laid hands on Christ on the cross; by you he was struck on the altar. If you wanted to attack the Catholics there, you should at least have spared your own ancient offerings there. There you are now found proud, where long ago you offered humbly; there you gladly sin, where you used to pray for the sins of many. By doing this you gladly entered the number of the sacrilegious priests, joined to the crimes of the profane, of whom the prophet Elijah lodged a complaint with the Lord; for he spoke in these words, in which you too among others deserved to be accused by him: "Lord," he says, "they have broken down your altars." When he says "your", he indicates that it is God's property, where something has been offered to God by anyone. It should have been enough for your madness that you tore the members of the church, that by your seductions you divided the peoples of God long settled in unity. Amid all this you should at least have spared the altars. Why did you break the prayers and desires of men together with the altars themselves? For from there the prayer of the people used to rise to the ears of God. Why did you cut off the way of prayers? And did you labor with impious hand, as it were, to pull away the ladder, so that supplication should not have its usual ascent to God? And yet, though you all have one conspiracy, under this heading you have offended in a different way with a similar error. If it was enough to remove, it was not lawful to break; if it was necessary to break, it was a sin to scrape; for if it was not lawful, as you agreed among yourselves, he who broke seems to have broken rightly; he is now guilty who by scraping preserved the greater part. What is this new and foolish wisdom, to seek novelty in the inward parts of antiquity, and, removing as it were the skin of a body, to seek in the hidden body as it were another skin! A gift that belongs to itself and is wholly in itself, which is one, can be diminished when something has been taken from it; it cannot be changed. You scraped indeed what you saw fit; but what you hate is still there. What? What if you conspired that what was touched by us in the name of God in that very ministry should seem unclean? Which of the faithful does not know that in performing the mysteries the wood itself is covered with a linen cloth? During the sacraments themselves the covering could be touched, not the wood; or if coverings can be penetrated by touch, then the wood too is penetrated; if the wood can be penetrated, the earth too is penetrated; if the wood is scraped by you, let the earth beneath also be dug; make a deep trench, while you seek purity according to your will. But take care that you do not come to the lower world and find there Korah, Dathan and Abiram, the schismatics, your masters, namely. So it is plain that you both broke and scraped altars. Why is it that in this matter your fury afterward seemed somewhat to languish? For we see that afterward you changed your counsel, and altars are no longer broken or scraped by you, but only removed. If this was enough, you yourselves show that what was done by you before ought not to have been done at all.

This monstrous crime was doubled by you when you also broke the chalices, the bearers of Christ's blood, whose forms you turned back into lumps, procuring merchandise in wicked markets (for which merchandise you would not even choose the buyers): sacrilegious, in that you sold without consideration; greedy, in that you sell. You allowed your hands to be burned too, with which before us you handled those same chalices. Yet you ordered the thing to be sold anywhere; perhaps foul women bought it for their uses, pagans bought it to make vessels in which to burn incense to their idols. O wicked crime, O unheard-of deed, to take away from God what you supply to idols, to remove from Christ what profits sacrilege!

But I see that in this place, stirring up odium against us falsely, you wish to take refuge in the prophet Haggai, where it is written: "What one who is polluted touches is polluted." When envy intervenes, it is easy for the angry to throw insults; but whenever a charge is pressed, plain proof is necessary. For which of us entered the temples? Who saw sacrilegious rites? Men can be polluted by fumes, by savors, by sacrileges, by sacrifices, by blood; but in this case who entered a temple? Who offered incense to idols? Who was stained by unclean savors? Who watched the blood of an unclean beast or of a man being poured out? Whom do you prove to have lent counsel to any crime? Convict even one bishop of partnership in any crime, if you can. You suspect some primate or other, who was said to have been walking about at that time. Suspicion is not an adequate charge. Who accused him? Who convicted him? Where did he either blush or was he confounded? Keep your suspicions to yourselves. So, as we said above, whatever could be done harshly in this case, when the matter is traced back to its origin, we have shown belongs to your leaders. Why is it, then, that you call the Catholics polluted? Is it because we followed the will and command of God by loving peace, by communicating with the whole world, joined to the Easterners, where Christ was born according to his humanity, where his holy footprints were impressed, where his adorable feet walked, where so many and such great mighty works were done by the Son of God himself, where so many apostles accompanied him, where the sevenfold church is, from which you not only do not grieve to be cut off but in a way congratulate yourselves? Because we loved the unity pleasing to God, you call us polluted; because we gave assent to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Thessalonians and join communion with them, you call us polluted; because we do not read stolen readings with you, you call us polluted (or else deny that you read others' readings, if you can). Why do you dare to read the letters written to the Corinthians, you who would not communicate with the Corinthians? Why do you recite what was written to the Galatians, to the Thessalonians, in whose communion you are not? Since it is plain that all this is so, understand that you have been cut off from the holy church and that we are not polluted. Where, then, is the help you think the prophet Haggai can give you? So the altars and vessels mentioned above were long in your hands and in ours: if you defame our hands, why do you condemn yours too there? But you say that we read: "What one who is polluted touches is polluted." Suppose someone is polluted, so that what he touches may seem polluted. Let it be so, if there is touch alone and no invocation of the name of God intervenes: what the polluted touches can be defiled if God is passed over in silence. For if there is invocation of the name of God, the invocation itself sanctifies even what seemed polluted. In short, when the earth swallowed the two hundred and fifty censers which were carried by the hands of sacrilegious men and sinners, together with those same sinners, the censers shaken out of their hands remained. And while the holy priest Aaron hesitated what to do with them, he heard the voice of God saying: "Take, Aaron, these vessels and make plates from them and put them at the corners of the ark of the Lord's covenant; for although those who carried them sinned, yet those vessels are holy, because my name has been invoked there," says God. And surely to carry is more than to touch. So it now appears clearly that something can be sanctified by the invocation of the name of God, even if a sinner invokes God; for touch cannot have so much force as the invocation of the divine name has. For you too, who presume on your own holiness, tell us whether touch sanctifies or invocation. Surely invocation, not touch; or if you presume on touch alone, touch a board, a stone, a garment: let us see whether they can be holy if God is passed over in silence.

Now how foolish, how vain is this, which you wished to bring back to your will and as it were to your dignity: that virgins of God should learn to do penance, that those who had long since made profession should afterward, at your command, change the signs of their will upon their heads, should throw away some headbands and take others. First tell us where anything about headbands was commanded you. For virginity is a matter of will, not of necessity. In short, that innkeeper, the apostle Paul, to whom the people pierced with the wounds of sins was entrusted, had received two denarii to spend, namely the two testaments. These he spent by teaching, as expenses as it were; he taught how married Christians ought to live. When he was asked what he commanded about virgins, he answered that nothing had been commanded about virgins. He confessed that he had spent the two testaments, that is, the two denarii; the expenses were in a way used up. But since he who had entrusted the wounded man had promised that he would repay whatever more was spent on the cure, after the two denarii were spent Paul spends not precepts but counsel toward virginity; and he neither hinders those who wish nor drives or compels those who do not: "He who gives his virgin does well, and he who does not give her does better." These are words of counsel, and no precepts are joined to them, either of what wool the headband should be made or with what purple it should be colored. For virginity cannot be helped by this cloth; by it the heats of the mind, which age sometimes kindles, are not checked; by it the mind is not relieved, which is sometimes pressed by the weights of desires. For if it were so, not one but very many would be put on a virgin's head, so that, as often as the desires of the flesh stung the mind, the number of headbands might fight against the assault on the mind. The thing was invented as a sign on the head, not as a remedy of chastity. In short, such a cloth can grow old and be worn and perish; and yet virginity, if it is unhurt, can be safe without a headband. This is a spiritual kind of marrying. They had already come into the marriage of the bridegroom by their will and profession; and to show that they had renounced worldly marriage and were joined to a spiritual bridegroom, they had loosened their hair: they had already celebrated a heavenly marriage. Why is it that you forced them to loosen their hair again? Why, I say, was a second profession exacted of them by you? Who is the other spiritual bridegroom, to whom they should marry again? When did he die whom they had married, that they should marry again? You bared again heads already veiled, from which you took away the marks of their profession, which seem to have been invented against abductors or suitors. In the headband there is a sign of will, not an aid of chastity, so that the suitor should not persist in seeking a thing already vowed to God, nor the abductor dare to violate it. It is a sign, then, not a sacrament. You found virgins of this kind, who had already married spiritually, whom you forced into second marriages, and you commanded them to loosen their hair again. Not even women who marry in the flesh suffer this. If it happens to one of them to change husbands after being bereft of a marriage, that temporal festivity is not repeated; she is not raised aloft; no crowd of people is procured. So you took away not ornaments of the head but, as we said above, signs of a better will. You sprinkled with unclean ashes hair already consecrated to God; you even ordered it to be drenched with salt water. And would that you had at least quickly put back what you took away: you prolonged the delays, so that some, drawn back into their former dress, remained so longer, the signs withdrawn with which they had long protected themselves against suitors and abductors. When the suitors saw that the bar long set against them had been removed by you, from suitors they became abductors; nor did each think he had sinned when he carried off such a one as he had seen when he was asking to take her as wife.

In this kind of thing, what great losses you caused God, what great gains you procured for the devil! You impiously melted down chalices, cruelly broke and thoughtlessly scraped altars; you forced wretched girls, not without disgrace, to receive a second headband, though nothing about the first can be recited in a reading. And I cannot pass over this, which neither pleases God nor can be excused by your adherents nor defended by any man. Through secular courts and public laws, by the execution of officials, you thought the documents of the divine law should be extorted from very many, wishing to have alone what peace had possessed in common. I am not afraid, as a Christian, to say what the pagan execution, at your request, could not fail to know: you extorted the Lord's coverings and documents, which had long been possessed in common; you extorted altar cloths together with books; in the judgment of your pride you reckoned both polluted. Unless I am mistaken, you hastened to purify all these. You washed the altar cloths, no doubt; show what you did with the books. In all things the judgment of your foresight ought to be equal: either wash both or leave both. But if you act otherwise, you have spoiled your diligence. You wash the cloth, you do not wash the book: if it is good in one part, it is evil in the other. You cannot deny that you offend in the one if you gain merit in the other; and if you rejoice that you seem devout in the one, you ought also to lament, because you seem sacrilegious in the other.

Now what kind of thing is this, that in many places you even chose to wash walls and ordered the enclosed spaces to be sprinkled with salt water? O water, created sweet by God, over which the Holy Spirit was borne before the very birth of the world! O water, which washed the earth to make the world pure! O water, which under Moses, losing your natural bitterness, sweetened by the wood, satisfied the breasts of so many peoples with most pleasant draughts! It remained for you, after your promotion, to be degraded not lightly. By Moses' presence bitterness dies in you, and today your sweetness is harassed by schismatics together with the crowd of Catholics. We suffer the war alike; alike we await God as avenger. Tell me, brother Parmenian, what had the place done to you, what the walls themselves, that they should suffer these things from you? Was it because God was prayed to there? Because Christ was praised there? Because the Holy Spirit was invoked there? Because in your absence the prophets and the holy gospels were read there? Because there the minds of brothers long at odds had come into agreement? Because the unity pleasing to God had found a house to dwell in? Show what you could wash there. If we trod Catholic footprints both in the street and in the square, why do you not correct everything? For the same baths have washed both us and you alike for the care of our bodies, and before you many of ours have often bathed there. If you think everything must be purified after us, wash the water too, if you can; or if, as we said above, our footprints seem polluted to you, the ground would have been enough: why did you choose to wash walls too, on which human footprints cannot be placed? We could not tread the walls, but only see them. If you judge that what sight touches must be washed, why did you leave the rest unwashed? We see the roof, we see the sky too; these cannot be washed by you. By washing those you have earned merit with God; by not washing these you seem to have incurred inexpiable sin. Since, then, you wish to seem diligent in one place, you are found negligent in another (if indeed your folly is to be called diligence, and, to call it by its true name, your vanity); unless perhaps by doing this you sent the unskilled peoples into dread, so that, since the column was washed, their bodies too should be washed. If counsel lies hidden in these things, you have subtly deceived the wretched; if such a thing was done without counsel, your dullness is plain. That you did these things foolishly even those led astray by you know, nor will you yourselves be able to deny it.

Why should I relate also that impiety coming from your conspiracy, that you wished to invade the basilicas for this purpose, to claim the cemeteries for yourselves alone, not allowing Catholic bodies to be buried? To terrify the living, you also ill-treat the dead, denying them a place for burial. If there had been a contest among the living, let another's death at least check your hatreds. He with whom you were quarreling a little before is now silent; why do you insult the dead? Why do you hinder burial? Why do you quarrel with the dead? You have lost the fruit of your malice. And if you do not want bodies to rest together, you will not be able to separate the souls placed together with God.

In short, everything that is done by you cannot be told in full; but let it be granted to you, who hold the mastery of this error. Now who could be silent about your people too, namely those whom you were able to lead astray, by faction or by subtlety, so as to make them yours, not only men but also women? From sheep they suddenly became foxes, from faithful faithless, from patient raging, from peaceable quarrelsome, from simple seducers, from modest shameless, fierce from gentle, from innocent craftsmen of malice. After they have slipped over to you, men or women, they grieve that others are where they were born; they invite those who stand well into their own falls. If they knew they had attained glory, they would enjoy their happiness in silence. But now, wishing to console their lost crossings, they invite the rest to slip in the same way, and they accuse those who remain in the bosom of mother church as sluggish and slow. For they do not blush to speak in these words: "Gaius Seius, or Gaia Seia, how long will you hold out?" That is to say: "Now you ought to follow my error, now you ought to desert the truth; imitate my falls, imitate my shameful crossings. How long are you called faithful? Now desert the faith, now learn penance." You are the fowlers, and they, men or women, are the birds. But there is not one kind of fowler. There are some who with simple skill seek trees founded on deep roots and spread over the face of the grove, where the birds settle with simple flight on natural branches; there no frauds are counted, no artful plans; there is one skill and the sole expertise of catching. To that fowler I say you are like who, after the night has gone, before the coming of light, does not go to natural trees like the others; but carrying a tree himself, he binds a future grove into a bundle, and with manifold fraud he sets up a dry tree supported by no roots, into which he inserts counterfeit branches, and the tree, which, cut down, had long since lost its own, receives foreign leaves. Some birds he carries shut in a cage; others, disemboweled into the likeness of the living, long dead, he sets on the deceitful branches as if alive. Some lie hidden in the cages; others seem alive on the branches. One cunning is joined with a doubled fraud: so that the simplicity of the living, flying birds may be deceived, those that are plainly dead seem to stretch their necks with voices, and those that lie hidden in their prison sing as if from another's throat. Between the image of one and the voice of another one guile works: captives catch the free, and the dead kill the living. Such are those whom you have wounded either by rebaptism or by penance: so as not to seem to have perished alone, men or women, they strive with great zeal and labor that others, men or women, should perish with them.