Against Parmenian the Donatist 7.1–7.3

After the traitors were pointed out and the holy church shown, after the slanders you heaped on us were repelled, and after your sins, which deserved to be rebuked by God, the repetition of the sacraments and your presumptions and terrors were shown in their order. By now there ought to have been an end of our answers and sayings. But since, after the forest of odium has been cut down by the axes of truth, I see your provocations, or those of your people, still sprouting, which I hear you say, that you ought not to have been sought for one communion since it is plain that you are sons of traitors, I will answer these few points. Truly the Catholic Church was sufficient for itself, having innumerable peoples in all the provinces; it was sufficient in Africa too, though in few; but your separation did not please God, since the members of one body had been torn apart, and against the will of God you brothers were straying from your brothers. Although a domestic judgment was at work in your parents, so that those who ought to have been cast out for the handing over they had committed withdrew of their own accord, no trial was held, but the effect of a sentence was produced. They ought to have been expelled after the handing over which they confessed to one another in the council of Numidia; but to avoid odium, the severity of judging was excused, since your forebears of their own accord found a plan regarding their guilt, so that, with their crime covered, they went away as if proud, who ought rather to have grieved and blushed. For if at that time they had been willing to make unity for the good of peace, even they ought not to have been driven from the church, since in them necessity had excused the will. For none of them had handed over of his own accord, nor can this sin be made equal to the other offenses. For whatever God did not wish to be done he forbade with his own mouth, as he said, "You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery," and the rest. He could also have forbidden this which was committed by your parents; but since what the mind does is one thing and what circumstance brings about is another, whatever can be done by man of his own will deserved to be forbidden; whatever necessity sins cannot be accused with great force. In short, will incurs punishment, necessity pardon. The murderer, while no one compels the crime, can both do it and not do it; the adulterer, while no one from outside compels him, can commit adultery and can not commit it; and the rest of this kind, in which free choice is held. Therefore forbidden things, when they are done, are destined for judgment; things not forbidden, when they are done by some necessity, he who did not wish to forbid may perhaps readily deign to pardon. In short, the offense that could be charged against your parents as if capital: if at that time they had been stripped or called to judgment, they could have helped themselves by more than one example, where in the first times we read that either the tablets of the law were broken or books handed over or cut up and burned, and no one was condemned. If, as I said above, your parents had been stripped at that time, if they could have been accused, they would without doubt have said that they had done nothing more than Moses the lawgiver; although necessity and will are not alike but conflict with each other, since under the same name of the law your parents and Moses had one case. Your parents could say that they had done out of necessity what Moses had done earlier out of will. When he was indignant with the people, he did not consider that God had written with his finger (and what is written in heaven is more than what is written on earth, and what the finger of God made is not the same as what a pen shaped by human hand wrote). Moses was carrying what he had received through the cloud, and your parents handed over what they had had made for a wage. Your parents would rightly have defended themselves by teaching that it was not a capital crime if each of them, terrified by great fear, had done what Moses had done in anger. And we do not read that the Lord was indignant with Moses or avenged the broken tablets which he had written with his own hand; nor was he called a sinner or punished. So the law came forth from God as water slips from a spring, or fruits that are picked from a tree with the root unharmed. What has been paid out is not lost if it is safe in its origin. In short, after the tablets of the law were scattered and smashed, Moses did not deserve to be condemned, and afterward, called back, he went up Mount Sinai and deserved to speak with God again and received the second, renewed law, which the title of the book published, which is written with the Greek word Deuteronomy. Behold, nothing is lost in the law which was safe in its origin. But lest it seem to anyone that Moses had the merit, from his conversation, of a certain confidence with God, and that God was therefore not angry: if this were so, friendship ought always to have demanded its merit and fruit; why, then, was what he offended in afterward punished in him? Was it not to show that what he had committed in anger was light? The law was whole in God, even after it was broken by a man together with the stone tablets; the devotion that was owed by a man, where it was not shown, Moses deserved this punishment, that he should die midway on the journey and not enter the land of promise. From this it is plain that what could be committed with impunity in the present example cannot be reckoned a great sin. If this were said by your parents, who could have denied them communion? What if they had set forth also the following examples, in which we read that when the renewed law was kept in the ark, the people of Israel were defeated in battle? The law which was brought in the ark against the enemies by the counsel of the peoples, which could not be defended by the elders themselves and the other sons of Israel, was handed over to the enemies, since it was not brought back. When the law was handed over, those who had said it should be brought fled in fear, and we do not read that they afterward suffered anything as punishment. If this account were given by your parents, who could have driven them from his communion? What if your leaders had not kept silent about those examples either, in which we read that Baruch handed over to the scribe Jehudi the book of the law which he had taken down from the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, and that it was ordered by the king's princes that both Baruch himself, who had taken it down, and Jeremiah, through whom God had spoken, should flee and hide? Jeremiah dictated, Baruch handed it over, both had fled. The book was brought to King Jehoiakim; the king, since, because it was a cold season, he had a burning brazier before him, did not gladly hear the book read by the scribe Jehudi, and from time to time he cut it up in small pieces and put it on the fire. And God was not angry either with Jeremiah, who had fled, or with Baruch, who, fleeing with him, had handed it over. If God had been angry with them, he would have spoken to some other prophet; he spoke not to another but to Jeremiah himself. For so we read: "And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, after the king had burned the scroll of the book and the words which Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah. God said to Jeremiah: Take for yourself another sheet and write all your words which were then written in the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned." Behold, neither was God angry, nor did what had burned perish, nor was Baruch punished, nor was Jeremiah despised by God. From this it appears that in this matter there was never a grave fault, since punishment could never follow it. If your parents cited this, who could have called them away from communion? In short, when God saw that the tablets of the law had been broken by Moses, and the ark left to the enemies, and the book of the law after Baruch's handing over cut up and burned, he showed his providence and promised that he would no longer write the law on tablets or in books, but in the inner man himself, that is, in the mind and in the heart of each believer, as he had written it in the heart of Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the other patriarchs, who plainly lived lawfully without the law. The blessed apostle Paul too proves this, saying: "written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart." After the law was broken by Moses and left by the sons of Israel to the enemies, and, when Baruch offered it to King Jehoiakim, cut up and burned, before Christian times, God indicated through the prophet where he would afterward write the law better, saying: "For this is my covenant which I will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and after those days, says the Lord, putting my laws in their heart, I will also write them in their minds." He promised this long ago and fulfilled it recently in Christian times. So now paper is in the second place, parchment in the second place. If the law was written there by God, from where it cannot be handed over, so that your parents, who had already believed in the Trinity, though they handed over books, did not hand over their hearts or minds, in which God wrote his law as he had promised he would write it: where, then, brother Parmenian, is what you said, that the law was utterly burned up by the traitors? Behold, it was neither utterly burned up nor wholly taken away, since it remains in the hearts of believers and thousands of books are read everywhere. From this it appears that you wished in vain, though through ignorance, to accuse your parents. If, then, your parents had come to the times of unity, with so many examples reasonably given, and they themselves could not have been driven from communion, how much less you, who are plainly not traitors but sons of traitors, since the persons and names of fathers and sons are distinguished, and between these persons, if the fault is not common, the sentence cannot be one? Although, even if unity had been made with them, and if they had come to the Catholic Church of their own accord (not like you, who were plainly brought, not without the will of God, so that you should return from where you had strayed, though you still stray), if, as I said, they had come to the Catholic Church of their own accord, our forebears would perhaps have hesitated about receiving such men, because they had been traitors; but we must rejoice that such men did not last at all down to our times. So today the business is new, since the matter is to be dealt with with you, not with them. Although an inherited stain seems to have been passed on from them to you, yet under this heading you cannot be guilty with your fathers, according to the judgment of God, who spoke through the prophet Ezekiel, saying: "The soul of the father is mine and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it alone will be punished." This was proved already in ancient ages, at the very birth of the world, since the father's offense did not belong to Seth, the son of Adam. But lest anyone say that it is written in another place, the Lord saying that he will repay the evils of the fathers to the fourth generation: both sayings are without doubt his, but they do not both sound to one people. The first is through Moses to a certain kind of men, the second through Ezekiel to another kind of men. Since God knew that the Jews before Pontius Pilate would profess, saying, "His blood be on us and on our children," God saw by foreknowledge that what they were going to say was too little for the greatness of the fault; and so that the offense might be paid for with fitting punishments, he threatened the Jews themselves, saying that he would repay the evils of the fathers to the fourth generation. So this saying belongs specially to the Jews alone; but that other belongs to the Christians, by which he deigned to promise not to punish in the sons whatever is sinned by the fathers, nor in the fathers whatever may perhaps be offended by the sons. Since in the times of Moses the law was repeated without punishment of anyone, and the ark of the covenant was returned of their own accord by the enemies, and a second sheet was written by Jeremiah at God's command: why is it thought that among your forebears alone there was a capital sin, in which, through so many examples, no one was condemned? For if the law was given so that men might be taught, not so that the law itself should be worshiped as if in place of God, after the deed of your fathers the throng of believers suffered no loss; each of them lost his own volumes under fear. For the law, which had been necessary, is in force among the teachers of the peoples and the worshipers of God. Libraries are crammed with books; nothing is lacking to the church; in each place the divine proclamation sounds everywhere; the mouths of the readers are not silent; the hands of all are full of volumes; nothing is lacking to the peoples who desire to be taught, although the law seems to have been written not more for teaching than for the future judgment, so that the sinner may know what he may suffer if he lives less justly. In short, it is written and read that the law was not given for the just, because each just man is a law to himself; and in another place the same blessed apostle Paul says that the law does not make men just, but itself loves justice. Always in all things the effects are sought from the causes: the law, which brings about, is idle if what is brought about has been prepared by a shortcut. In short, it was not said to Abraham, "Believe"; he believed of his own accord, in which the effect of the law was fulfilled without the law. We do not read, "Abraham heard the law and believed," but we read, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." And in the first times the patriarch Noah did nothing by which he might become righteous, and he was chosen as righteous, to build an ark and sail happily in the flood. It would be long to go through each of those who were found righteous without the law. If this were said by your parents in their time, who would have driven them from his communion? What if they said that what the apostle says of those outside the law ought not to be passed over in silence: "The Gentiles, who do not know the law, do what belongs to the law; for they have the law written in their hearts"? For many are proved to have sinned under the law and many to have lived well without the law. The law and man are two things, but they cannot be equal: for man was not made for the law, but the law was given for men. Nowhere do I see loss brought on God, since the origin of the law remains with him. And after the Scripture is said to have been handed over by your parents, nothing is lacking: all the members of the law are whole, safe, read aloud; there is nothing less of the law both for those who desire to teach and for those who desire to be taught. Or was it more necessary that a man be killed, so that no scripture be handed over? What of the fact that neither were men killed nor are any of the Scriptures lacking? The law and God are not one thing. If one had to die for God, who can both raise the dead and give the reward, a book not handed over can do neither of these two things. Necessity, then, hinders its own powers. We see negligence often working no less than necessity worked. For if the parchments or books containing the Scripture of the law must be kept wholly unharmed, as if some negligent people were not condemned, handing over is not far from putting badly or carrying badly. One put a book in a house, which house was burned by fire: let him be condemned who put it negligently, if he is to be condemned who, terrified, gave the book when it was demanded. Let those too be condemned who put neglected parchments or books in such a way that the little household beasts, that is, mice, gnawed them so that they cannot be read. Let him too be condemned who put them in a house where, from an excess of rains, some drippings so leaked through the roof that everything was blotted out by the damp and cannot be read. Let those too be condemned who, carrying books of the law, rashly trusted themselves to the greedy waves of rivers and, wishing to be saved, let the Scriptures go from their hands into the waves. So if the Scripture is one, and he who could not keep it is guilty: one handed it over to the waves, another left it to gnawing beasts, another neglected it to be spoiled by drippings, another, terrified by fear of death, a man gave it to a man. If what is committed by all is one, why is one chosen to be condemned, when the fault of the traitor is lighter than that of the negligent? He who put it before mice or left it under dripping was negligent by will; and he who lost it in the river sinned from rashness; he who handed something over from fear of death, a man gave it to a man: it was whole with the giver, whole with the receiver. If he who received it gave it to the flames, the sin is rather the burner's, not the hander-over's. If this were said by your forebears, when could we have driven them from our communion? What if they had wished to recall also the times of King Antiochus, in which all the Jews were compelled to give their books to the fire, and the whole Scripture was so given up that not one stroke remained in any book? None of the Jews was condemned at that time, nor was any sentence spoken by God or by any angel against any Jew, because the sin had been that of the one who commanded and threatened, not of the people handing over with trembling and grief. So that this Antiochus should not seem to have harmed the first people in anything, God at once provided that through one man, Ezra, who at that time was called a reader, the whole law, as it had been before, was dictated to the last stroke. So the tyrant Antiochus could not have the fruit of his malice, since, apart from the seven brothers and one old man who refused to eat pork, he killed no Jew, and the law could not perish. So too your parents in their time were neither killed themselves, and the books of the Lord's law are read whole everywhere. If your parents, as I said above, had said this, who would not have received them fearlessly into his communion, where, as has been said, necessity, not will, had sinned? In the times of unity your leaders, who are proved to have done these things, had already departed from the living, leaving you as it were an inherited stain, which God by his providence had first washed from you in this way, when, as we said above, he separated between fathers and sons. Since, then, handing over is a sin, let your parents see what they will answer at the judgment of God; yet yours, who are of other times, it cannot be a sin.

That is why we have long wished to receive you into our communion, because you did not sin at that time, but your leaders. For a sinner such as your forebears were, if he comes to the church and shows the reason for his necessity, is first to be received, then to be borne with in the devoted bosom of mother church. Nor should anyone, as if wholly holy, judge another, because it is written in the gospel, Christ saying, "Do not judge, lest you be judged," especially since no one can be found wholly holy. For if there are any who can be without sins, they lie in the Lord's Prayer, if without cause they ask for pardon, saying to God the Father, "Forgive us our sins, as we too forgive our debtors," since the apostle John both discloses the consciences of all and unseals his own with these words: "If we say," he says, "that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." We explained the meaning of this saying more plainly in the fourth book. But suppose there are some perfect in all holiness: it is not permitted that they be without brothers, whom the gospel precepts cry out must not be driven away. In them the field is described, which is the whole world, in which is the church, and the sower is Christ, who gives saving precepts. On the contrary, the evil man is the devil, who sows untimely sins not in the light but in the darkness; and in one field different seeds spring up, as in the church the crowd of souls is not alike. The field receives good or bad seeds; there is a diversity of seeds; but there is one creator of all souls, one lord of the field. Where the tares have sprung up, there are two authors of the seeds, but the field has one lord, the Lord God himself. His is the earth, his the good seeds, his also the rain. That is why we agreed to receive you, brought into unity, because it is not permitted to us either to separate or to drive away, even sinners, born with us in one field and nourished by one rain, that is, one baptism, just as it was not permitted to the apostles to separate the tares from the wheat, because separation cannot be done without destruction, lest, while what is not needed is pulled up, what is needed is trampled. Christ ordered alike that in his field throughout the whole world, in which there is one church, both his seeds and another's should grow. After the common growth the day of judgment will come, which is the harvest of souls; the judge, the Son of God, will sit, who recognizes what is his and what is another's. His it will be to choose what to store in the barn and what to hand to the fire, whom to destine for endless torments and to whom to give the promised rewards. Let us all recognize that we are men; let no one usurp for himself the power of divine judgment. For if any bishop claims everything for himself, let it be said what Christ will do in the judgment. Let it be enough for a man if he is not guilty of his own sin, rather than desiring to be judge of another's. In short, our profession is not only not to drive you away, but, if it had happened in their times and unity had been made, not to drive away your parents either, for the good of peace. For it is wrong that we bishops should do what the apostles did not do, who were not permitted either to separate the seeds or to pull up the tares from the wheat.

But if the Catholic Church had hesitated about receiving you, ought you not to have followed the pattern of unity? But you would not set forth the examples read in the gospel, such as the reading about the person of the most blessed Peter, from which the pattern of keeping or making unity is recited as described. It is indeed evil to do anything against a prohibition; but it is worse not to have unity when you can. This unity we see that Christ himself set before his own vengeance, who wished all his disciples to be in one rather than to avenge what had offended him. Though he did not wish to be denied, he promised that he would deny before his Father whoever denied him before men; and yet he did not promise that he would punish whoever handed over some scripture: for it is graver to deny him who spoke than to have handed over the words he spoke. And though these things are so written, yet for the good of unity blessed Peter, for whom it would have been enough if, after he denied, he obtained pardon alone, both deserved to be preferred to all the apostles and alone received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to be shared with the rest. That sins are to be buried for the good of unity is to be understood from the fact that the most blessed apostle Paul says that charity can cover a multitude of sins: "Bear one another's burdens," he says; and in another place he says: "Charity is magnanimous, charity is kind, charity is not jealous, charity is not puffed up, does not seek its own." And he said it well. For he had seen all this in the other apostles, who for the good of unity, through charity, would not withdraw from the communion of Peter, namely of him who had denied Christ. But if love of innocence were greater than the usefulness of peace and unity, they would say that they ought not to communicate with Peter, who had denied his master and the Son of God, the Lord. They could, as was said above, not communicate with the most blessed Peter; they could recite against him the words of Christ, who had promised that he would deny before his Father whoever denied him before men. To this pattern careful attention must be paid. While I recall a few things about it, may the blessedness of holy Peter himself grant pardon if I seem to recall what was plainly done and is read. I hesitate to say that such great holiness sinned; but he himself proves this deed, who both grieved bitterly and wept abundantly, who would neither grieve nor weep if no offense had intervened. Surely the head of the apostles could have governed himself so as to incur nothing to grieve over; but under this one heading many errors appear in him so that it could be shown that for the good of unity everything must be reserved for God. And I do not know whether in another this kind of sin can be of such great weight as it plainly was in blessed Peter. For whoever perhaps in some persecution denied the Son of God will seem to have offended more lightly in comparison with blessed Peter, if he denied one he did not see, if he denied one he did not know, if he denied one to whom he had promised nothing, if he denied once. For in blessed Peter this kind of sin was enlarged. First, when Christ asked all of them whom men said he was, one said Elijah, another said a prophet; then Christ is read to have said, "Whom do you say that I am?" And Peter said to him, "You are the Son of the living God." For this recognition he deserved to be praised by him, because he said it by the prompting of God the Father. Behold, while the rest did not recognize the Son of God, Peter alone recognized him. Then, on the day of the passion, when Christ said, "Behold, I am taken, and you will all flee," while the rest were silent, he alone promised that he would not withdraw. From foreknowledge the Son of God said, "Peter, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." Something else was added to the weight of the sin, namely a promise he was not going to fulfil. After Christ was led into the house of Caiaphas, to complete the measure of the offense, of so great a number no one else is questioned except blessed Peter. Questioned the first time, he denies; questioned again, he denies; the third time he said that he did not know Christ at all; and the cock crowed, not to mark the hours with its crowing, but so that blessed Peter might recognize that he had sinned. In short, he grieved bitterly and wept abundantly. Behold, as was said above, while the rest did not recognize, he alone recognized; while the rest did not promise, he alone promised; while the rest did not deny even once, he alone denied three times; and yet for the good of unity he did not deserve to be separated from the number of the apostles. From this it is understood that everything was ordered by the providence of the Savior, so that he himself should receive the keys; the way of malice was shut off, so that the apostles should not conceive in their minds a license to judge and despise in any way him who had denied Christ. So many innocent men stand, and the sinner receives the keys, so that the business of unity might be formed. It was provided that the sinner should open to the innocent, lest the innocent should close against sinners and the unity that is necessary could not exist. If you recalled these things, desiring to communicate, when would the Catholic Church hesitate to receive you into her devoted bosom, since it is plain that you are not traitors but sons of traitors?