Psalm against the Party of Donatus

Contents

Translation in progress.

1. 1Augustine opens his popular song against the Donatists with Christ’s parable of the net, which holds good and bad fish together until they are sorted at the end of the world.
2. 14The net was broken by proud men who, after handing over the sacred books in persecution, set up a rival altar in time of peace and blamed others for their own crime.
3. 27Augustine prays for deliverance from false prophets in sheep’s clothing who deceive the unlearned with the charge of ‘traitors’ that they cannot prove.
4. 39Augustine tells how Numidian bishops, themselves traitors, came to Carthage, found Caecilian already ordained, and with his enemies accused his ordainer of handing over the Scriptures.
5. 52Quoting the psalm on brothers dwelling in unity, Augustine argues that the charge of handing over was never proved and was invented by the guilty to hide themselves.
6. 65The condemnation of Caecilian had no proper judges, accuser, witnesses, or proof; a bad bishop should have been deposed or else tolerated within the net.
7. 78The Donatists now tolerate many violent men in their own communion, yet their fathers would not bear with one innocent bishop for the sake of unity.
8. 91Donatus, seeking to rule all Africa, asked the emperor for overseas judges, lost his case at Rome, appealed to the emperor, and, defeated everywhere, began to rebaptize.
9. 104The Donatists should have sought overseas judges before making a schism; now they know the truth but pride keeps them in the seat of pestilence.
10. 117Augustine appeals to the Donatist laity: they would never side with bishops who rejected the verdict of neutral judges, yet that is what their party did.
11. 130The documents prove the case; if the Donatists charge Macarius, the Catholics can charge the circumcellions, whose violence still continues and on whom the Donatist bishops depend.
12. 143Macarius may have exceeded Christian bounds but acted under the emperor’s law; the circumcellions’ private violence with clubs, excused by a literal reading of ‘put back your sword’, is worse.
13. 156Bad members of the church harm no one who does not consent; like those sealed in Ezekiel, the faithful groan over sins without leaving their mother the church.
14. 169The first harvest from Israel was winnowed by the cross; the second, from the whole world, grows among weeds and chaff until the final winnowing, so the sins of a Macarius are no ground for rebaptism.
15. 182In Israel, too, the righteous lived among idolaters and prophet-killers, yet none of them set up a separate altar.
16. 195Christ kept Judas among the apostles, sent him to preach, and did not exclude him from the Last Supper, giving the church an example of tolerating bad brothers.
17. 206The Donatists do not rebaptize those baptized by their own deposed bishops, so their rebaptism of Catholics is inconsistent; the sins of the fathers do not pass to the sons, but no one cut off from the vine bears fruit.
18. 219Catholics do not rebaptize because Donatist baptism has the true form, like a severed branch, but without life from the root; the succession of bishops from Peter’s see is the rock the gates of hell do not conquer.
19. 232A Catholic asked to be rebaptized answers that if unknown sins of others defile, the Donatist himself is defiled by his own communion’s hidden sins.
20. 245The Donatists cannot appeal to the mixed net or the chaff, since they broke the net; the apostles received the Supper with Judas and were not defiled.
21. 258In the epilogue mother church pleads with the Donatists: she prayed for kings as the apostle commanded, bears the bad she cannot expel until the end, and asks why her sons have left her.