Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 10 part 4/17

I beseech you, tell me: how is a man such as he once was, when he now venerates the Church he used to blaspheme, holds the unity he did not hold, has the charity he did not have, receives the peace he used to reject, and approves the sacrament he used to blow away in scorn? Or are all things really so turned upside down in a false reckoning that those are said not to be changed in whom the things that had been different are corrected by the truth, while those are said to be changed in whom the things that had been alike, one and the same, are repeated in vanity?

Do not then in this matter continue to think not only carnally but even childishly, so as to suppose that your people are received by us just as they were. For by the conversion of the will—from error to truth, from division to unity, from dissension to peace, from enmities to charity, from human presumption to the authority of the divine Scriptures—they do not begin to be ours before they have ceased to be yours. This conversion of the will suddenly changed not only the sinner at the tax-booth but also the thief upon the cross;

unless you suppose that Christ would have willed a bloodstained and wicked man to be with Him in paradise, had not that conversion of the heart at once made him innocent, so that on that very day, from that very place, from that very wood, he passed to the immortal reward of faith, upon which he had received the punishment of death for his iniquity. For whether toward evil or toward good, the soul is changed in a brief moment, yet what it deserves is not therefore small. In bodily and temporal goods and benefits themselves, a single blow destroys an age of whatever length long nourished, and the Lord, as soon as He deigned to command it, healed a sickness of thirty-eight years. Believe in sure realities, not in empty words. Your people, once changed, cross over to us—far be it that they should be the same as they were—;

and would that you too would do this, and believe in yourself how true it is for you! You seemed to say something great by naming Candidus of Villa Regia and Donatus of Macomades, who from being your bishops became bishops even among us, and by their approved life attained to the more honorable merit of old age; as though the sacraments and the invocation of the name of God, which takes place among you, were themselves hostile to us—whereas even in those who are outside the Church, it belongs wholly to none but the Church. In this question, if I labored with my own words, I would be helped by yours. For if you thought that outside the Church nothing ecclesiastical could exist, you would not yourself have said that we and you have one religion, the same sacraments, and nothing different in Christian observance.

With these words of yours I do not agree entirely. For you lack the Christian Church; you do not have Christian charity. In you I indeed recognize the Christian sacraments, and in them I also disapprove and reject this one thing that is different: that although you have the same sacraments even in schism, you blow away in scorn those same sacraments in Catholics. The Church plainly recognizes in you all that is her own, and they are not less hers because they are also found among you. For among you they are alien; but when she receives you corrected, they become also, and healthfully, yours—those things which perniciously you were holding as things belonging to another. Discord possesses you under the title of peace; therefore let discord be driven out, let peace be brought in. What reason is there that the title should be laid aside?

'He is a bishop,' you say, 'you receive a bishop; a presbyter, you receive a presbyter.' You could also say this to me: 'He is a man, you receive a man'; for I recognize in him the Christian sacraments no less than the human members, and I care not by whom they were sown, but by whom they were created. If a man wills to use them badly, by that very thing he becomes bad, because he offends the Creator concerning His good things; but if he begins to use them well, he will correct himself, he will not change those things. And concerning the receiving of bishops or clerics there is indeed another question. For although, when they are ordained among you, the name of Donatus is not invoked over them but the name of God, yet they are received in such a way as seems to accord with the peace and usefulness of the Church.

For we are not bishops for our own sake, but for the sake of those to whom we minister the word and sacrament of the Lord; and therefore, as the necessity of governing them without scandal shall require, so ought we either to be or not to be that which we are not for our own sake but for others'. In short, some men endowed with holy humility, on account of certain stumbling-blocks in themselves by which they were piously and religiously moved, laid down the office of the episcopate not only without fault but even with praise. Would they in like manner lay down the Christian name and faith praiseworthily, and not rather damnably?

Just as in accepting these offices there can be just reasons why anyone should excuse himself from becoming a bishop, yet in like manner there can be no just reason why anyone should excuse himself from becoming a Christian. Why so, unless because without the episcopate or clericate we can be saved, but without the Christian religion we cannot? Accordingly, your bishops or any clerics whatsoever, as far as pertains to the ecclesiastical offices themselves, are received into Catholic unity in such a manner as seemed expedient for those to whose salvation provision was made through the exercising or the omitting of their office. Nevertheless, even concerning those who among us have administered the same honors—could you, just as you were able to say:

'He is a bishop, you receive a bishop'—could you likewise say: 'He is a heretic, you receive a heretic,' or: 'He is a schismatic, you receive a schismatic,' or: 'He is a Donatian, you receive a Donatian'? For by these names it is not a grade of honor above plebeian dignity, but the crime of error against Catholic truth, that is marked out. Accordingly, those things which are, as it were, ecclesiastical gifts, even when found among aliens, in the case of those who by leaving you and crossing over to us become ours, are either received or not received according to the benefit of the peoples whom by this dispensation we serve.

But those things that are faulty and properly your own are healed, corrected, changed, provided nevertheless that those sacraments, without which a man cannot become a Christian, are so handled even among heretics that, when they come to the Church, what was lacking may be added, what is recognized may be approved; lest, while we are too much offended by those evils which they have brought forth against the Church, we should persecute also the good things which they drew away in departing from the Church. For even a broken branch, if again, as the Apostle says, it is to be grafted in, has its root restored to it, not its form changed. But indeed—'because,' you say, 'you call our men heretics and sacrilegious, which is a nefarious and inexpiable crime'—ought such men, or can they, be pardoned without some expiation?

'Why then,' you say, 'do you not cleanse the one who comes, why do you not first wash and purify him, and so let him commune with you?' What of this—that from these words of yours another might much more fittingly say that such men now neither ought nor can be pardoned, and might show that you have spoken things contrary to yourself, since you said that such men are to be pardoned with some expiation, because that which is charged against them is inexpiable? How then is that expiated which is inexpiable? How shall I hope that you will hear what I say, you who so near at hand do not yourself hear what you say, when you immediately contradict yourself by judging that to be expiable which you called inexpiable? But we so call your heretical and sacrilegious error that we do not, however, call it inexpiable;

otherwise it would be in vain that we judged we must deal with you by whatever means we can, so that, leaving that error behind and being corrected, you might cross over to the Catholic Church. Nor should you suppose, as you write, that you are using our own word, as though we said this evil to be without pardon and without a physician; which we by no means say, since both they merit pardon who have repented of this evil, and He is an almighty physician who says through the prophet: 'If you turn back and groan, then you shall be saved.'

Wherefore, if you happened to fall in with someone less instructed in these matters or less attentive to what he was saying—although he who said this to you might seem to be of Catholic communion—let him rather deserve pardon for this ill-considered word, just as you, who although you are so liberally educated and not moderately learned in the art of words, yet attending less to what you say, judge that to be expiable which you called inexpiable, and—what is more monstrous—to be expiable for the very reason that it is inexpiable. But it is not Catholic to exhort men to be saved by having their error corrected, whom we should assert to err inexpiably and incurably.

But for this reason they do not seem to you to be cleansed when they cross over from you to us, because they are not baptized anew, as though men were cleansed from error by baptism alone—which ought not to be repeated, since it is one and the same. They are cleansed also by the word of truth, by Him who says: 'You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.' They are cleansed also by the sacrifice of a contrite heart, by Him of whom it is said: 'A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise.' They are cleansed also by almsgiving, by Him who says: 'Give alms, and behold all things are clean to you.' They are cleansed by that very charity which surpasses all things, by Him who said through the Apostle Peter: 'Charity covers a multitude of sins.'

If this one thing be present, all those things are rightly done; but if it be absent, all those things are done in vain. But hear the Apostle telling whence this comes: 'The charity of God,' he says, 'is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.' Whence deservedly are those believed, who outside the Church have received the baptism of the Church, not to have the Holy Spirit, except when they cling to the Church herself in the bond of peace through the connection of charity. For now there is place to show what in the first book I had deferred: what in the Church, which is the holy body of Christ, can properly be received, which cannot be received apart from her. For concerning those who made schisms, the same Apostle says:

'But the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God'; read the first epistle to the Corinthians and you will find it. Baptism, therefore, is the sacrament of the new life and of eternal salvation, which many have not unto eternal life but unto eternal punishment, not using so great a good well; but holy charity, which is the bond of perfection, no one can have who is not good. No one who has it can be either a schismatic or a heretic. When therefore anyone, coming to the unity of the Church, is truly joined with her members, let him receive the Holy Spirit, through whom charity is poured forth in our hearts, and let that same charity cover a multitude of sins, so that the baptism also—

which he formerly had unto judgment—he may now deserve to have unto reward. How do you deny that he is cleansed, unless it be that you are altogether ignorant of what spiritual cleansing is? We do not therefore, as you reproach us, receive your guilty men as into the asylum of Romulus; men whom the City of God, by receiving, makes innocent, when with a truthful heart they cross over to her, of whom her Founder says: 'A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.' For He did not found her who in his pride slew his brother in anger, but He who in humility redeemed His brethren by being slain. He gladdens her by the cleansing of the Holy Spirit, of whom He cried out, saying:

'If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink'—not commending the visible water which is given in the sacrament of baptism, which both the good and the bad can have (although without it the good cannot be saved), which, although it belongs to the Church, yet also flows forth outside, since it is found even among those who went out from us but were not of us; just as water in any of those four famous rivers cannot be denied to be the water of paradise, although it is not in paradise alone, because it also flowed out from there beyond. He was therefore commending not this water, but by the name of water the invisible gift of God, the Holy Spirit, when He said: 'If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink,' as the Evangelist plainly testifies, adding:

'But this He said of the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.' And indeed, as far as pertains to the sacrament of the visible washing, before He was glorified by rising again, He had already baptized more than John, as the Gospel itself says. Whence He says to His disciples: 'John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit,' whom also you shall receive not after many of these days—up to Pentecost.

This Holy Spirit, coming upon them, first gave such a sign, that those who had received Him spoke in the tongues of all nations, because it foreshadowed the Church that was to be throughout all nations, and that no one would receive the Holy Spirit save he who was joined to His unity. With the abundant and invisible river of this fountain God gladdens His city, of which the prophet foretold: 'The rushing of a river makes glad the city of God.' For to this fountain no stranger draws near, because none but he who is worthy of eternal life. This is the fountain proper to the Church of Christ, of which it was so long beforehand prophesied: 'Let the fountain of your water be your own, and let no stranger share it with you.' For concerning this Church and this fountain it is also said in the Song of Songs:

'A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, a well of living water.' Your people, receiving these things concerning the visible sacrament of baptism, so err that they are compelled unwillingly to confess most absurd things: namely, that to that fountain which is proper to the one dove—of which it is said, 'Let no stranger share it with you'—to the enclosed garden and the sealed well, there could have access Simon Magus, whom we read was baptized by Philip; that there could have access so many feigned men, of whom Cyprian speaks with groaning: 'renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds'; so many greedy bishops, of whom the same man testifies: 'seizing estates by treacherous frauds, multiplying interest by heaping up usury.'

For these men are found to be baptized, and baptizing, with visible baptism; yet to that proper fountain, with which no stranger communicates, to that sealed fountain—that is, to the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts—none of them draws near except changed, and so wholly to be changed that he may not be a stranger, but may be a partaker of heavenly peace, an associate of holy unity, full of undivided charity, a citizen of the angelic city.

To this city, therefore, whoever, having laid aside the error of heresy or schism, with corrected morals and pious mind turns himself, if he already bore the sacraments—which could flow forth outwardly even to the unworthy—these are honored in him, because even among aliens they do not seem alien; but now he is flooded by that proper fountain, with which no stranger communicates, by that sealed fountain of the Holy Spirit, from which even among you, whoever should be praiseworthy in the rest of his morals, is separated by the sole crime of schism or heresy. When therefore your people come to us, ceasing to be yours and beginning to be ours, they receive what they did not have, so that they may healthfully begin to have what they had the more perniciously the more unworthily they had it.

For they receive first the Church herself, and in her peace, unity, and charity, through her own proper and invisible fountain, the Holy Spirit—without which without any doubt they would have perished, whatever else among you, which could be drawn outside from the Church, they had had. But with an easier pardon they receive what they did not yet have than if they had had it and had deserted it. And this is distinguished among us, so that those are received in one way who have forsaken the Catholic Church, in another way those who come to her for the first time. For the former the crime of desertion burdens more heavily; but the latter the bond of unity relieves—not broken by them, but recognized and retained. Whence it can come about that those who rebaptized the seduced may themselves entreat the Lord for them as they repent,

if these are first won over than those are reconciled to the Church; just as it can happen that even worshippers of idols, if they perchance have made apostates of some Christians seduced to idols—if the seducers first became Christians and attained some great merit in the Church—that through those very ones, those whom they had deceived may return, and through those very ones may be commended and reconciled to the Lord, through whom they had forsaken the Lord. For what the rightly received sacrament of baptism avails to cleanse the sacrileges of the Gentiles, this the truly apprehended charity of unity avails to cleanse the sacrileges of schismatics and heretics. Wherefore, just as seducers of faithful Christians, coming to Christ, are set before the seduced who return,

whence these can even be made bishops, but those cannot—so those deceived by heretics ought not to wonder, when they return to the Catholic Church, that their deceivers are set before them, when they come to the Catholic Church. For the former with more excuse seek the things that were lacking to them; the latter more humbly seek again what they had been. The former we call, more honorably, to where they had not yet stood; the latter we recall, more suspiciously, from whence they had fallen. Accordingly, you now see, as I suppose, that not in vain did I call the sacrilegious error of the Donatist—or, as you prefer, 'Donatian'—heretics.

If you both dissent from the Catholic Church and rend asunder the sacraments which you confess to be one and the same, yet you are not without pardon nor incurable by the mercy of God, because, having laid aside your discordant error and being converted to Catholic truth and peace, through His own proper gift—that is, His Holy Spirit, through whom charity is poured forth in our hearts—you will be able to be cleansed and healed; not so that the sacraments of the Church may be destroyed in you, which you were holding as alien and perniciously outside, but so that you may healthfully have those very sacraments within, now as your own. Now let us see how you show that Petilian, or anyone else, rightly said: 'The conscience of the one giving holily is regarded, which is to cleanse that of the one receiving.' Where I said:

'What if the conscience of the giver be hidden and perhaps stained—how can it cleanse the conscience of the one receiving?' You, on the contrary, discoursed at length not on what might be said by you, a sharp man, but on what is said by your people; which whole thing can be briefly put thus: that the conscience of the giver is regarded not according to its sincerity, which cannot be seen in it, but according to the reputation, whether true or false, which exists concerning it—because, forsooth, it is the conscience of a man who, even if he be a hidden criminal, it suffices for the receiver that he be of good estimation, not yet known, not yet judged, not yet separated from the Church. See, I beseech you, into what precipice the straits of not finding a way out have driven men.

Can then the stained conscience of the giver cleanse the conscience of the receiver, if it have a good reputation, and can it avail as much for cleansing as a good conscience, if it acquired a good reputation by deceiving? Do you attend to what is said, and do you wish that we now pass over this point, or shall I still turn this same matter over, so that you may be compelled more diligently to attend? Petilian said: 'The conscience of the one giving holily is regarded, which is to cleanse that of the one receiving.' I said: 'What if the conscience of the giver be hidden and perhaps stained—how can it cleanse the conscience of the one receiving?' You, or rather your people, said—for you, such a man, when would you have said these things?—:

'Although he may have a stained conscience, yet for me, who am baptized by him, since it is hidden and I do not know it, it suffices that I receive from one whose conscience I think innocent, because he is in the Church. For therefore,' you say, 'I regard the conscience of the giver, not that I may judge—which cannot be done—concerning hidden things, but that, if anything about him is in the public conscience, I may not be ignorant of it. For on this account it was said by the almighty God: The things that are known are for you, the things that are hidden for me. I therefore always regard the conscience of the giver, and because I do not see it, I inquire what about it is publicly known; nor does it pertain to the matter if one thing be in the secret conscience, another in public fame. For it suffices to have known that

'—the conscience of him from whom I receive has not yet been condemned.' Behold, I have set down your very words, by which I might show that you say what I briefly and openly comprised in my own words: that the conscience of the one who cleanses is regarded for this end—that what the reputation about it may be, might be known. It is not therefore that very conscience that is regarded, good man; not that very conscience which cannot be seen is regarded, but the reputation is regarded, which can even be false—which you yourself confess and concede; for you too saw that a stained conscience does not avail for cleansing. It is not therefore the conscience of the one giving holily that is regarded, which is to cleanse that of the receiver, but the reputation by which he is thought to give holily who does not give holily, and is thought to cleanse who does not cleanse.

Therefore the good reputation of a bad man cleanses the receiver, not the polluted conscience of the giver himself. Why then was it said: 'The conscience of the one giving holily is regarded, which is to cleanse that of the receiver,' unless because it does not cleanse that of the receiver if there is not the conscience of one giving holily, if it is stained and unclean? What then is regarded at that time? 'It itself,' you say, 'is regarded, when its reputation is regarded; and if the reputation is good, it makes no difference for cleansing the receiver even when the conscience is bad, but his good reputation cleanses.' Tell me, I ask you, when the conscience is bad, is his good reputation true or false? Without any doubt, certainly false.

Accordingly, when the conscience of the giver is not good and is hidden, however you may seem to yourself to regard it, according to this opinion nothing cleanses the receiver except either the false reputation or the polluted conscience of the giver. Both are insane; if such things delight you, do you choose which is the more insane.

Furthermore, since the truth does not admit that either the false reputation of the giver or his polluted conscience should cleanse the conscience of the receiver, it remains that we should also require from you what we there inquired—since, as Petilian says (or anyone else with your consent), when there is the conscience of one giving holily, that is, when there is a good and clean conscience, it cleanses the conscience of the receiver—whence is the receiver cleansed, when the stained conscience of the giver is hidden? For I think you will not now repeat and say that his false good reputation fulfills, in cleansing, the office of a good conscience; it is enough that you asserted your people, not you, to say this. Be ashamed of them, but not also of yourself.

It remains, therefore, that at that time either God or some holy angel cleanses. And if you should say this, that horrible absurdity will follow, which I mentioned in that letter of mine—I do not say you were unwilling to see it, because you did not touch it at all, but you saw it the more attentively and keenly the more you feared to touch it. For if you say this—that when a holy man baptizes, his holy conscience washes the conscience of the receiver, but when the conscience of the giver is secretly unclean, then God or an angel cleanses—beware lest those who believe you saying these things should desire to find hidden wicked men by whom to be baptized, that they may be far more holily cleansed by God Himself or by His angel.

Since you perceived this absurdity—to be either derided or detested—together with the preceding words of Petilian, and consequently mentioned by me in my letter, you cautiously indeed, as though I had said none of these things, thought so great a matter should be passed over in silence; but you fled to something I know not more absurd: that when the stained conscience of the giver is hidden and therefore cannot cleanse that of the receiver, then by his false reputation the receiver is cleansed, and in him falsehood works truth. Go now and accuse the dialecticians calumniously, that by the shiftiness of speech to be avoided they bring it about that if a thing is false it should be true, if true it should be false. Behold, you yourself introduce something of this sort into the sacraments of Christian regeneration—nay, worse and more to be avoided.

For they, not in their own fraud nor in the truth of things, but in the perplexity of human speech, say that certain words then seem true when they are false, then false when they are true; which words, when they have fallen into disputation, can be discerned by the mind even if they cannot be resolved by speech. But you say that not any word whatsoever, nor any thing whatsoever, but the very cleansing of the conscience by which we are reborn unto eternal life, can truly come about in a man through the false reputation of another's conscience. And lest this be attributed to you, who learned dialectic, you say that this is the opinion of your people, to whom you consented not as a dialectician but plainly as a heretic. Through you therefore, or through your people, this magnificent doctrine has been invented or demonstrated:

when the good conscience of one giving holily is present, then he who is baptized becomes good in relation to it, then the good tree brings forth good fruit; but when the conscience of the giver is bad and hidden, then his good reputation, which is false, is consulted, so that then a man may receive true baptism from a deceiver, when he has believed what is false about him; and thus, lest there be lacking a tree to bring forth the fruit of heretical error, falsehood becomes the mother of truth. All this therefore is so execrable, so marvelously perverse and insane, in order that what is God's may not be said to be God's—so that what is received from God may be attributed to men—lest he who said, 'The conscience of the one giving holily is regarded, which is to cleanse that of the receiver,' should seem to have erred. 'Our people,' you say,

'prove this from the Scriptures, since Judas the betrayer, before he was condemned, did all things just as an apostle.' What has this to do with Petilian's fixed and defined opinion: 'The conscience of the one giving holily is regarded, which is to cleanse that of the receiver,' except that this Judas too is very much against you, when you attempt to furnish patronage to words uttered inconsiderately by another? For when Judas baptized just as an apostle—seeing that he was wicked, because he was a thief and carried off the things that were put into the money-boxes committed to him—it was surely not his conscience that was regarded, but God and Christ in whom belief was placed.