書信與論戰集（CSEL） 第 18 章 第 17/17 段

how much more can anyone receive the baptism of Christ, which no one of the Apostles so ministered as to dare to call it his own, without the contagion of a bad minister, provided he approaches Christ in good faith! Accordingly, if Petilian—when I did not fail to demonstrate that the testimonies of the Scriptures which he set down were not against us—himself in part did not touch at all the things I set down, and in part, as to those he wished to handle, showed that he was able to do nothing else than to fail to get out of them, you need not be long exhorted or admonished, that you may see what you ought to hold fast and what to beware of. But perhaps in the testimonies of the holy Scriptures he appeared to be such a man, while in those documents which have been transacted among men concerning the schism itself he availed something.

Nay rather, even in these—although, after the divine testimonies, they are superfluous to require—what did he recall, or what did he prove? For when he had inveighed gravely against the betrayers and had proclaimed against them many testimonies even from the holy books, yet he said nothing whereby he might show us to be betrayers. But I recalled Silvanus of Cirta—whom, with certain persons intervening, he himself even succeeded—that while he was still a subdeacon he was recorded as a betrayer in the municipal records. Against this he did not dare to mutter a thing.

And assuredly you see by what great necessity he was compelled to reply, namely, that he might show his predecessor—and not only his associate, but, so to speak, even his own chair-holder—to be innocent of the crime of betrayal; especially since you place your whole case in this, that you call those men betrayers whom you either feign or suppose to have succeeded betrayers by the line of communion. He, then, who by the necessity of your very case would be compelled by every means to defend him even if I named as a betrayer, shown in the municipal records, someone of your party from Rusiccada or Calama or any other city whatsoever, kept silent about his own predecessor.

Whence, but because here he found no fog to spread abroad, whereby he might deceive even the slowest and most somnolent of minds? For what could he say, save that these charges about Silvanus were being falsely bandied about? But we recite the records, and when the deed was done, and when it was also alleged before the consular Zenophilus. How could he withstand these things, hedged about on every side—the cause of the Catholics being the best, but yours the worst? Whence I recall these words from that letter of mine, to which he wished to seem to have replied by this one which I am now refuting—precisely that you may see how unconquerably it was set down, against which he could find nothing safer than silence. For when he had set down as it were a testimony against us from the Gospel, where the Lord says:

'They will come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. By their fruits you shall know them,' I replied and said: 'Therefore let us consider the fruits.' Then at once I subjoined and added: You object betrayal to us: this same thing we, with much greater probability, object to you. And, not to run through many instances, in that same city of Constantina your elders, at the very beginning of their schism, ordained Silvanus as bishop. This man, while he was still a subdeacon, was recorded most manifestly as a betrayer in the municipal records. If you too bring forth some documents against our elders, an equitable condition is demanded: that we should believe either both to be true or both to be false.

If both are true, you are without doubt guilty of schism, you who feigned to flee, in the communion of the whole world, the crimes which you had in that very fragment of your division. But if both are false, you are without doubt guilty of schism, you who are stained with the monstrous crime of separation on account of the false crimes of betrayers. But if some are brought forth by us and none by you, or true ones by us and false ones by you, there is no need to discuss how utterly your mouths are stopped.

What, if the holy and true Church of Christ should convict and overcome you, even though we should hold no documents of betrayal, or false ones, while you held some that were true—what would then remain for you, but that, if you will, you should love peace, and if you will not, at least fall silent? For whatever you might bring forth, I would most easily and most truly say that then you ought to have proved these things to the plenary and Catholic unity, already diffused and established through so many nations, so that you might be within, while those whom you convicted should be driven forth. But if you attempted to do this, without doubt you were unable to prove it, and, conquered or enraged, you separated yourselves by monstrous sacrilege from the innocent, who could not condemn things uncertain.

But if you did not even attempt to do this, then with a most execrable and impious blindness you cut yourselves off from the wheat of Christ—which grows throughout the whole field, that is, the whole world, unto the end—being offended by a few tares in Africa. To these things which I recalled from that former letter of mine, Petilian made no reply at all. And assuredly you see that in these few words the whole case which is being pleaded between us is contained; for what could he try to say, where whatever he chose would be overcome? For when documents about betrayers are brought forth, both by us against yours and by you against ours—if indeed any are brought forth by you, which to this very day we know nothing of at all;

for Petilian would not have failed to insert them in his own writings, he who so diligently took care to recall and insert against me the portions of the records which pertain to the case—nevertheless, as I had already begun to say, if such documents are brought forth both by us and by you, then assuredly either both are true, or both are false, or ours are true and yours false, or ours false and yours true. No more than this can be said. But in all these four propositions the truth is on the side of the Catholic communion; because, if both are true, on account of such men as you too had, you ought by no means to have deserted the communion of the whole world;

If both are false, then for the sake of no crimes of betrayal ought the most atrocious crime of division to have been committed; if our charges are true and yours false, you have long had nothing to say; but if your charges are true and ours false, we could have been deceived, along with the whole world, concerning men's iniquity, not concerning the truth of the faith. For the seed of Abraham, spread abroad among every nation, ought not to have attended to what you might say you knew, but to what you might prove before judges. How do we know what those men did whom your forefathers accused — even if true charges were laid against them — such that either by the examiners of the case, or at any rate by the Church everywhere diffused, which had a duty to attend to nothing but the verdicts of the examiners, those charges were reckoned not true but false?

God does not therefore acquit whatever wickedness of men that men cannot know; yet I think no one is rightly judged guilty who has believed a man innocent whom he has not seen convicted. Whence, then, is the world guilty, if it could not know even the true crime — supposing it were true — of the Africans, and could not know it either because no one reported it to it, or because, in that which was reported, it trusted the examiners who were judging rather than the vanquished who were murmuring? On this account, then, Petilianus is to be praised, in that, when he saw this point to be wholly unanswerable, he passed it over in silence.

But he is by no means to be praised in that he tried to cover with clouds of words the other points, likewise unanswerable, which he nevertheless supposed could be obscured; and in that he made me his subject, since he had failed in the cause itself, saying nothing even about me except what was either wholly false, or blameless, or no longer pertinent to me. But meanwhile you, whom I have set as judges between him and me — have you the sense to discern anything between the true and the false, between the inflated and the solid, between the turbid and the tranquil, between the swollen and the sound, between things divinely foretold and things humanly presumed, between proofs and accusations, between documents and fabrications, between the pleading of a cause and the turning-aside from a cause? If you have such sense, well and rightly.

But if you have not such sense, we shall not repent of having taken thought for you, because, even though your heart is not turned toward peace, yet our peace returns to us. THREE BOOKS AGAINST THE LETTERS OF PETILIANUS. Before I finished the books on the Trinity and the books on Genesis according to the letter, there rushed upon me the necessity of answering the letter of Petilianus the Donatist, which he wrote against the Catholic Church — a duty I could not defer; and I wrote on this matter three volumes. In the first of these I replied, with all the speed and truthfulness I could, to the first part of his epistle, which he had written to his own people, because it had not come whole into our hands, but only its first small part. That reply too is addressed to our own people, yet it is reckoned among the books, because the other two on the same case are books.

For afterward we found the whole letter, and I answered it with as great diligence as I had answered Faustus the Manichaean — setting down his own words, that is, under his own name, piece by piece, and under my own name, point by point, my response. But that which I had written before we found the whole came first to Petilianus, and, enraged, he tried to answer, saying against me rather whatever he pleased, while wholly failing in the cause itself. And although this can most easily be perceived by comparing the writings of us both, nevertheless, for the sake of the slower, I took care to show it by my very answering. Thus a third book was added to that same work of ours. This work begins thus in the first book: 'You know that we have often wished'; and in the second thus: 'To the first parts — of the epistle of Petilianus';

and in the third thus: 'I have read your letter, Petilianus.'