Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 18 part 3/17

'They themselves indeed gazed and looked upon me; they divided my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots.' How great, then, is that which was bought at so great a price, read a little further in that same Psalm: 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and be turned to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations.' But who could suffice to recall the rest — the innumerable prophetic testimonies concerning the world that would believe? Yet you praise the prophecy because you see in it the man who sold Christ, and do not see in it the possession which Christ, being sold, purchased. Behold a second vanity; hear a third. Among the many words of your invective you said:

'If you were to burn a dead man's will with fire, would you not be punished as a forger? What then shall become of you, who have burned the most holy law of God?' In saying this you did not attend to what ought surely to have moved you: how it could come to pass that we should burn the testament and yet abide in that inheritance which was written in that testament — whereas it is a marvel that you should have kept the testament and yet lost the inheritance. Is it not written in that testament: 'Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession'? Enter into fellowship with this inheritance, and then object to me whatever you please out of the testament.

For what madness is it that you were unwilling to hand over the testament to the flames, only that you might contend against the words of the testator? But we, though we hold in our hands ecclesiastical and municipal records, in which we may read that those who ordained a rival bishop against Caecilian were rather the ones who handed over the divine books — we nevertheless do not insult, we do not inveigh against you, nor do we bewail in your hands the ashes of the holy pages, nor do we set the burning torments of the Maccabees against the sacrilege of your swelling pride, saying: 'You would sooner deliver your own limbs than the oracles of God to the fires.' For we are unwilling to be empty men, so as to stir up an idle uproar against you over the deeds of others, which you either do not know of or disapprove.

But that we see you separated from the communion of the whole world — a crime both very great and manifest and belonging to all of you — if I should wish to exaggerate it, time would fail me sooner than words. And if you wish to defend this, you are going to object against the whole world the very things which, if they ought to be objected, you only warn us whence you may be the more accused, and if they ought not to be objected, do not defend you. Why then are you puffed up against me over a betrayal which is neither mine nor yours, if that pact still stands, that we should not object to each other the deeds of others; but if it does not stand, the betrayal is rather yours than mine? And yet, even if that pact stands, I think I say most justly that he should be judged the companion of him who betrayed Christ, who together with the whole world has not given himself over to Christ.

'Therefore,' says the apostle, 'you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise'; and again he says: 'heirs indeed of God, but joint-heirs with Christ.' And the same apostle shows that Abraham's seed pertains to all nations, from that which was said to Abraham: 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed.' Wherefore I think it just that I ask that we should give some attention to the testament of God, which has long since been opened, and that whomever we find not to be a joint-heir of him who was betrayed, we should judge to be the heir of the traitor; let him pertain to the seller of Christ, who denies Christ to be the purchaser of the world. For assuredly, when after his resurrection he showed himself to his disciples and offered his limbs to be handled by those who doubted, he said to them this:

'Because thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.' Behold from what inheritance you estrange yourselves; behold what heir you resist! Would he then spare Christ walking on the earth, who contradicts him seated in heaven? Do you not yet understand that whatever you object to us, you object to his word? A Christian world is promised, and is believed; it is fulfilled, and is contradicted. Consider, I beseech you, what you ought to have suffered for such great impiety; and yet, if you have suffered anything, I know not, I have not seen it, I have not done it. You who today do not suffer the violence of any persecution from me, render me the account of your separation.

But you are going to say, again and often, things which, if you do not prove, pertain to no one, and if you do prove, do not pertain to me. Petilian said: Hedged about therefore by these crimes, you cannot be a true bishop. Augustine replied: By what crimes? What have you taught, what have you shown? And even if you had shown the crimes of I know not whom, what has this to do with the seed of Abraham in whom all nations are blessed? Petilian said: Did the apostles ever persecute anyone, or did Christ betray anyone? Augustine replied: I could indeed say that Satan himself is worse than all wicked men, to whom nevertheless the apostle handed over a man for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, and likewise others of whom he says:

'Whom I have delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.' And the Lord Christ, having scourged them, drove the wicked merchants out of the temple, where also there is joined the testimony of Scripture which says: 'The zeal of your house has consumed me.' Behold, we find an apostle a betrayer, Christ a persecutor. I could say these things and cast you into no small turmoil, so that you would be forced to seek, not the complaints of those who suffer, but the mind of those who act. But do not labour over this; I do not say these things, but I say that it does not pertain to the seed of Abraham which is in all nations, if perhaps something has been done to you not rightly by some chaff of the Lord's crop, which nonetheless is in all nations.

Do you therefore render the account of your separation; but first consider what sort of men you have whom you do not wish to be objected against you, and see how unjustly you act when you object to us the deeds of others, even if you were to prove the things you say. Thus there will be no reason for your separation. Petilian said: But some will say: 'We are not the sons of a traitor.' A man is the son of him whose deeds he follows. For these are most certainly sons and also like their parents, whom not this flesh nor blood, but manners and deeds like their parents' have begotten. Augustine replied: A little before you were saying nothing against us; now you have begun to say something even for us.

For this proposition of yours holds you fast in this: that unless you convict us of today, with whom you are dealing, of being traitors and murderers, or whatever else you charge — then whatever such thing you show in those who preceded us in time can in no way harm us; for we cannot be the sons of those whose deeds are unlike ours. And see into what you have committed yourself. If you should perhaps convict even a man of our own age, living among us, of some such guilt, in no way does it prejudge all the nations which are blessed in the seed of Abraham, from which, by separating yourself, you are found sacrilegious.

Thus — a thing which cannot be done — unless you should know all who are everywhere, and should not only learn the manners and deeds of all, but also demonstrate them to be as evil as you say, you have no ground to object to the world, which is among the saints, certain unknown parents to whom you may prove them to be alike. Nor will it help you at all, even if you could demonstrate that those who are not such receive the common sacraments with those who are such; first, because you ought to regard your own selves, with whom you celebrate them, to whom you give them, from whom you receive them, and do not wish them to be objected against you.

Then, if they are sons of Judas, who was a devil among the apostles, whoever imitate his deeds — why should we not call those the sons of the apostles who share, not their own deeds with such men, but the sacraments of the Lord, just as the apostles took the Lord's Supper with that traitor? Therein you are far unlike them, in that you object to men keeping unity the very thing which you yourselves do by rending unity. Petilian said: Concerning himself the Lord Christ says to the Jews: 'If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.' Augustine replied: I have already answered above; this too is true, and is for us against you. Petilian said: The false-speaking and lying he thus rebukes again and again: 'You are the sons of the devil;'

'for he was an accuser from the beginning, and stood not in the truth.' Augustine replied: We are not accustomed to read: 'he was an accuser,' but: 'he was a murderer.' We ask, however, whence the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and we find that he killed the first man not by drawing a sword or inflicting any bodily violence, but by persuading sin and casting him down from the felicity of paradise. What paradise was then, that the Church is now. The sons of the devil, therefore, are those who by seducing men from the Church cut them off. And as by the words of God we have learned where paradise was planted, so by the words of Christ we have learned where the Church is: 'among all nations,' he says, 'beginning at Jerusalem.'

From that universal whole to any part whatsoever, whoever separates a man, he is convicted to be a son of the devil and a murderer. But even the word which you yourself put forward, that you might say of the devil, 'he was an accuser and stood not in the truth' — see upon whom it fits. For you accuse the world with the crimes of others, whom even you could rather accuse than convict, and you have not stood in the truth of Christ. For he says the Church is among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, but you say it is in the part of Donatus. Petilian said: A third time likewise he calls the madness of persecutors by this name: 'Brood of vipers, how shall you flee the judgment of Gehenna?'

'And therefore I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you will kill and crucify, and scourge in your synagogues, until upon us come all the righteous blood which you have shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you slew between the temple and the altar.' Are they truly and carnally sons of vipers, and not rather serpents in mind, and scourging with three-tongued malice, and with a deadly touch and a spirit of venom? Truly they have become vipers, who have spewed forth deaths upon innocent peoples by their bitings. Augustine replied: If I should say that these things were said of such men as you are, you will answer: 'Prove it.' Well then? Did you prove it?

Or if you think it proved because such things are said, there is no need to repeat the same. Recite those very words to yourself and from us against you: behold, I too have proved it, if this be to prove. And yet learn what it is to prove. For I do not seek documents from without, in order to prove you vipers. Behold, this very thing is viperous: not to have in one's mouth the firm ground of truth, but the venom of cursing, as it is written: 'The venom of asps is under their lips.' And because this can be said everywhere by anyone against anyone, as though it were being asked of whom, he at once added: 'whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.'

When, therefore, you say such things against men scattered throughout the whole world whom you utterly do not know, of whom many have not even heard the name of Caecilian or Donatus, nor, hearing you, answer in silence: 'Whatever you say does not pertain to us; we have not seen, we have not done, we are utterly ignorant of what you are speaking' — you who wish nothing else than to say what you can by no means prove, what else is it than that your mouth is full of cursing and bitterness? Now see whether you can show yourselves not to be vipers, unless you show all the Christians of all nations to be traitors and murderers and not to be Christians.

Nay rather, even if you could know and show the lives and deeds of individual men diffused throughout the whole world, yet before you do that, when you rashly hurl forth these charges, your mouth is viperous, your mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Show now, if you can, what prophet, what wise man, what scribe we have killed and crucified and scourged in our synagogues. Consider with how much labour expended you will be in no way able to prove that Donatus and Marculus were prophets or wise men or scribes, since they were not. And even if you could, what would you do to show that men were killed by us whom not even we ourselves know — how much less the world, which you curse with a venomous mouth?

Or whence can you show that we have a mind like that of the killers of those men, whom you cannot even show to have been killed by anyone at all? Consider all these things; see whether you can prove any of these things either about the world or against the world — to which nevertheless, because you do not cease to curse it, you show to be true in yourselves the things you falsely hurl about it. Moreover, if we wished to prove you to be killers of prophets, we would not go far afield to gather from place to place what slaughters your frenzied leaders of the Circumcellions and the very hordes of drunken and insane men have not only produced from the beginning of your schism, but do not at all cease to produce. I deal with what is near at hand.

Let the divine oracles be brought forth which are handled in both our hands and yours: let us hold as killers of the prophets those whom we find to be contradictors of the tongues of the prophets. What can be said more swiftly, what shown more quickly? You would act more mildly by driving a sword through the entrails of the prophets than by what you attempt to slay with the tongue — the words of the prophets. The prophet says: 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and be turned to the Lord.' Behold, it is being done; behold, it is being fulfilled; but you not only close your unbelieving ears against what is spoken, you even thrust out your frenzied tongues against what is already being done. Abraham heard it said: 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed,' and he believed, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.

You see the deed and cry out against it, and you are unwilling that there be reckoned to you for unrighteousness what would rightly be reckoned even if you did not believe it not yet done but only spoken. Nay, not only are you unwilling that it be reckoned to you for unrighteousness, but even if you suffer anything for this impiety, you wish it to be reckoned to you for righteousness. Or if these are not persecutions of the prophets, because they are done not with iron but with word, what was the reason that it was said by divine inspiration: 'Sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword'? But when shall I gather from all the prophets all the testimonies of the Church diffused throughout the whole world, all of which by contradicting you strive to slay and extinguish?

But you are bound fast, because 'into all the earth their sound has gone forth, and their words unto the ends of the world.' Nevertheless I will recall that one saying from the mouth of the Lord, who is the witness of the witnesses: 'It behoved,' he says, 'that all things should be fulfilled which are written in the law and the prophets and the psalms concerning me.' What these are, let him himself declare. 'Then he opened their understanding,' he says, 'that they might understand the Scriptures, and he said to them: Because thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.' Behold what is written in the law and the prophets and the psalms concerning the Lord;

behold what the Lord himself opened up concerning himself and concerning the Church, showing himself and promising her. But you, resisting these so manifest testimonies and, because you cannot destroy them, attempting to corrupt them — what would you do if you found the limbs of the prophets, you who so rage against the oracles of the prophets that you do not even hear the Lord, the fulfiller, revealer, and expounder of the prophets? For as far as you can, you strike even him, when you do not yield even to himself. Petilian said: David too says these things against you as persecutors: 'Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they dealt deceitfully; the venom of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood;'

'destruction and unhappiness are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes. Shall not all who work iniquity know, who devour my people as the food of bread?' Augustine replied: 'Their throat is an open sepulchre,' from which the deaths of lies breathe forth; for the mouth that lies kills the soul. But if nothing is truer than that which Christ said — that his Church is among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem — nothing is more lying than what you say: 'in the part of Donatus.'

But 'their tongues are deceitful' — the tongues of those who, though they know their own deeds, not only say they are righteous men but even justifiers of men, which was said of the One who 'justifies the ungodly' and who 'is himself righteous and justifying.' Now concerning the venom of asps and the mouth full of cursing and bitterness we have said enough. But 'feet swift to shed blood' you said the Maximianists too have; witness the sentence of your plenary council, so often alleged in proconsular and municipal records. Yet those men, as far as we hear, killed no one bodily. You understood, therefore, that even by the spiritual slaughter of souls blood is shed by the sword of schism, which you condemned in Maximian.

See therefore whether your feet are not swift to shed blood, when you cut men off from the unity of the whole world — if you rightly said this of the Maximianists, because they cut some off from the part of Donatus. Have we then not known the way of peace, we who are zealous to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; and do you know it, who so resist the word of Christ which he had with his disciples after the resurrection — so peaceful that he began with it, saying: 'Peace be with you' — that you are convicted of saying nothing else to him than this: 'What you said about the unity of all nations is false; what we say about the crime of all nations is true'? Who would say such things, if there were the fear of God before their eyes?

See therefore whether by daily saying these things you are not attempting to finish off with your teeth, as the food of bread, the people of God diffused throughout the whole world. Petilian said: The Lord Christ also warns: 'Beware of false prophets; they come to you in the clothing of sheep, but within they are ravening wolves. By their fruits you shall know them.' Augustine replied: If I should ask of you by what fruits you know us to be ravening wolves, you are going to say the crimes of others, never proved even against those whose crimes they are said to be. But if you should ask of me by what fruits we rather know you to be ravening wolves, I object the crime of schism, which you will deny but I will immediately prove:

for you do not have communion with all nations and with those churches founded by apostolic labour. Here you are going to say: 'I do not have communion with traitors and murderers.' The seed of Abraham answers you: 'These crimes are either not true or not mine.' But these things I lay aside for the moment; do you show the Church. Now that voice will sound in my ears which the Lord warned us to avoid in false prophets who point out parties and try to estrange men from the universal: 'Behold, here is Christ, behold, there.' But do you think the true sheep of Christ, to whom it was said, 'do not believe,' are so heartless as to hear the wolf saying, 'Behold, here is Christ,' and not hear the Shepherd saying, 'among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem'? Petilian said:

Thus, thus, wicked persecutor, with whatever veil of goodness you cover yourself, under whatever name of peace you wage war with kisses, with whatever word of unity you entice the human race, you who thus far deceive and beguile — truly you are a son of the devil, since by your manners you point out your father. Augustine replied: Reckon these things to have been said by us against you, and, that you may know upon whom they rather fit, recall the things I said above. Petilian said: Nor is it any wonder that you unlawfully assume to yourself the name of bishop. This is the true custom of the devil, so at last to deceive, if he claim for himself the title of holiness, as the apostle preaches:

'It is no wonder,' he says, 'if Satan himself transforms himself as an angel of light, and his ministers as ministers of righteousness.' It is no wonder, therefore, that you falsely call yourself a bishop. For even those lost angels, lovers of worldly virgins, who by corrupting flesh were themselves corrupted — although, stripped of divine powers, they ceased to be angels — nevertheless retain the name of angels and still ever think themselves angels, who, released from the divine warfare, passed over like into the army of the devil, while the great God cried out: 'My spirit shall not remain in these men for ever, for they are flesh.' To these guilty ones and to you the Lord Christ will say: 'Go into eternal fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels.'

If there were no evil angels, the devil would not have angels, whom the holy apostle also says are to be condemned in that judgment of rising again by holy men: 'Do you not know that we shall judge angels?' If they were true angels, men would not have judgment over the angels of God. So too the sixty apostles, who together with the twelve, having forsaken the Lord Christ, withdrew as apostates from the faith, are still by wretched men thought to be apostles, so that from these Manichaeus and the rest entangle many souls in many diabolical sects, souls which they came forth to capture. For assuredly the lost Manichaeus, if indeed he existed, is to be placed among those sixty, if his name is not contained among the twelve apostles.

But in place of Judas the traitor, Matthias being substituted, there was ordained by the voice of Christ, as a thirteenth, Paul, who recalls himself to be the least of the apostles, lest anyone whatsoever, being later, should be believed an apostle. For thus he said: 'For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.' Nor flatter yourselves in this: 'A Jew had done these things,' although you too, as pagans, work destruction upon us. For you unlawfully wage war, you who are not permitted to fight back. For you desire to live once we are killed, but for us the victory is to flee or to be slain. Augustine replied: You may be seen how you have set forth the testimonies of the Scriptures or how you have understood them: nothing to the matter now under discussion.

For you certainly said all these things to this end, that you might prove there are false bishops, just as there are false angels and false apostles. We too know that there are false angels and false apostles and false bishops, and, as the true apostle says, false brethren; but since these things can be hurled by each side against the other, it is necessary to prove something, not to speak in vain. Upon whom, however, the crime of deceit fits, recollect what we said above and you will find it, lest we be tedious to our readers by repeating the same things too often. And yet what is this to the Church diffused throughout the whole world — whether what you could say about her chaff, which is with her throughout the whole world, or what you said about Manichaeus or about the rest of the diabolical sects?

For if it does not pertain to the wheat, whatever is even said about the chaff which is still with it, how much less do those monstrosities, so long ago and so openly separated, pertain to the members of Christ diffused throughout the whole world! Petilian said: The Lord Christ commands us: 'When men have persecuted you in this city, flee into another; and if in that they persecute you, flee into yet another. For amen I say to you, you shall not finish the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man come.' If he forewarns us concerning Jews and pagans, you who call yourself a Christian ought not to imitate the dread stuffings of the Gentiles. Or do you so serve God, that we may be killed by your hands? You err, you err, if you believe this, wretched men; for God does not have executioner-priests.

Augustine replied: To flee from city to city before the face of persecution was not commanded or permitted to heretics or schismatics — which you are — but to the preachers of the Gospel, whom you resist. And that we may easily prove it, you are now certainly in your cities, and no one persecutes you. You ought therefore to come forth and render the account of your separation. For it is not the case that, as the weakness of the flesh is excused when it yields to the violence of persecution, so too the truth ought to yield to falsehood. Accordingly, if you suffer persecution, why do you not leave the cities in which you are, that you may fulfil what you cite from the Gospel? But if you do not suffer persecution, why are you unwilling to answer us?

Or if you perhaps fear lest, when you have answered, you should suffer persecution — how then do you imitate those preachers to whom it was said: 'Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves,' to whom likewise it was said: 'Fear not those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul'? And how do you not act against the precept of the apostle Peter, who says: 'Be always ready to give an answer to everyone that asks you a reason concerning your faith and hope'? Finally, why, through most violent mobs, are you even of your own accord wicked against the catholic churches wherever you can — a thing which the matter itself shows by innumerable examples? Yet you say you are defending your own places, and you resist with clubs and slaughters wherever you can.

Why then have you not heard there the voice of the Lord who says: 'But I say to you, do not resist evil'? Or, if it can happen that a person may sometimes rightly resist the violent by bodily force without thereby violating the precept which we hear from the Lord, 'But I say to you, do not resist evil,' why can it not also happen that through ordained and lawful powers the pious man may drive out the impious, and the just the unjust, from seats which are unlawfully usurped or held to the injury of God? For the false prophets did not suffer persecution from Elijah in the same manner as Elijah himself suffered it from a most wicked king; nor, because the Lord was scourged by persecutors, are those to be compared to His sufferings whom He Himself scourged and cast out of the temple.