Here, when the judge himself answered them that it was not customary for petitions to be inserted into a formal rescript, they turned to this: that the Catholics' mandate, by which they had mandated the conference to be petitioned from the emperor, and the same legates whom they had sent to obtain this, should be issued and produced to them, asserting that they ought to examine what had been mandated, and could there find what the Catholics had spoken to the emperor about them.
When the Catholics understood that this was being inquired into precisely so that occasions might be found by which delays and postponements of protracted time might be introduced, they asserted that what they were requesting had nothing at all to do with the cause, inasmuch as the emperor himself — who had appointed the judge, so that manifest reason might confute the superstition — most plainly showed that the conference had been petitioned by them; and they vehemently urged that, with all interpositions of delays and inquiries into interposing further ones removed, that rather be done which the emperor had ordered to be done by that conference — which it was established had been both petitioned from him and granted.
Amid these things a few words were also exchanged and cast back and forth between the two parties concerning the name 'Catholic,' with whom it rather belonged; and it was ordered to be reserved rather for the principal cause. And after some interval, when again, mention having been made of the Catholic name, the Donatists said that the Catholic Church was rather among themselves, the judge ruled that for the time being, without prejudice to anyone, he could not call the Catholics otherwise than the emperor called them — by whom the judge had been appointed — but that those men, the more they said they were Catholics, the more they now ought, with the interpositions of delays removed, to plead the cause itself, in which they might be able to prove that they were rather the Catholics.
Here the Donatists, after so many delays and so many rulings of the judge brought forth against them — the judge demanding that the cause rather be pleaded and testifying that concerning the persons of the legates or the mandate enjoined upon them, nothing pertained to the cause and nothing had been enjoined upon himself that he should inquire into this — said that, if the Catholics had been unwilling to obey the rulings in making manifest the legates or the mandate given to them, they should at least answer this: whether they stood in the place of petitioners — the Catholics greatly wondering why the Donatists said that they were not obeying the rulings in issuing the mandate of the legates, when rather the judge had pronounced against them themselves in so many rulings.
The Catholics therefore asked what rulings they had not obeyed; and when the Donatists made no answer to this, the judge ruled that to that which the Donatists had asked concerning the place of the petitioner, the Catholics should answer. And they answered that they proposed this: that the crimes which the Donatists are wont to cast at their communion be either proved or dispelled, so that the Donatists' separation might be either defended or corrected.
Then, when the judge demanded a response from the Donatists, they answered that the Africans who called themselves Catholics wished to defend another's cause — that is, the Church of the whole world — concerning which nothing ought to be prejudged for them, since this business was being ventilated among Africans; and that they should rather await the Church across the sea, so that those who had won might appear to belong to it and might themselves possess the Catholic name. But at the end of their pleading they again demanded that an answer be given them concerning the person of the petitioner.
Here the Catholics answered briefly to both points: both that the question concerning persons had already been settled in the first and second judgments, and that it is with the Church spread throughout the whole world — to which the divine Scripture bears witness — that they themselves, not the Donatists, hold communion, whence the Catholics both are and are called Catholics with good reason. The Donatists, however, answered that the Catholic name was instituted not from the universality of nations but from the fullness of the sacraments, and they demanded that the Catholics prove that all nations held communion with them.
When the Catholics received this most gladly and requested that they be permitted to prove it, those men again began to rub up the question concerning that mandate which had been enjoined upon the legates and which they had requested to be issued to them, and to recoil once more from the cause of the Church, which had already come into the midst to be examined — now demanding the aforesaid mandate, now insisting that the person of the petitioner be established, now demanding that the judge rule on those very things they had requested, concerning which he had already so often given his ruling and had pronounced that they were requesting those things in vain.
But the judge, although they seemed not rightly to request that the mandate enjoined upon the legates be issued to them — since that which sufficed for the cause, namely that the conference had been petitioned and granted, was established — nevertheless did not seem to him that they were unjustly requesting that the person of the petitioner be established. The Catholics, however, seeing what had already been announced to them beforehand, and understanding it well enough from the very aim of these men — that the Donatists were seeking the persons of the petitioners for no other reason than that it might be permitted them, by the examination of persons, to introduce the longest delays of time and postponements, since they were vehemently unwilling that the cause be reached, in which they had nothing to say, as the matter itself even at last afterward laid bare — knew this most fully:
Seeing this, therefore, the Catholics were unwilling to undertake the person of petitioners, asserting that they were not casting up crimes but defending against those cast up, which, when they had defended them and shown them to be false, it would consequently appear who those men were and with how great iniquity they had divided themselves from unity. Here the Donatists asserted that, in whatever way the Catholics of their own accord compelled their adversaries to answer even concerning those crimes which they wished to dispel, the Catholics held the person of petitioners.
But the Catholics answered to this that they had petitioned for the conference not where they might cast up things to be dispelled, but where they might dispel things cast up — since both the Donatists' mandate had been made against 'traitors and persecutors,' and the words of Primianus, when he was first approached by the Catholics about a conference, testified that he was casting a crime at them, where he had said: 'It is unworthy that the sons of martyrs and the offspring of traitors should come together into one'; and although he had then been unwilling to confer, yet afterward he had said, in the tribunal of the prefects, that he wished to be heard and examined. Holding fast to that consent of theirs concerning a conference, the Catholics had petitioned the emperor that this be done.
Then the judge ordered them now to prove the crimes cast up by them, and that the person of the petitioner not be pointed out concerning the petitioned conference, even if both were proved to have petitioned. Here the Donatists repeatedly began to request that he rule on the person. And the judge pronounced, saying that, if both parties had petitioned the conference, he was the petitioner who cast up the crimes. And the Donatists demanded that it be proved by the Catholics whether both had petitioned the conference. When the judge had said, 'This the Catholics will have to prove,' there arose again a dilatory strife concerning the name 'Catholic,' both of the Donatists and of the Caecilianists. Then the Catholics produced the proceedings held in the tribunal of the prefecture, by which they might prove that the Donatists too had petitioned the conference.
When the judge had ordered these to be read, they again returned to things past and began to clamor that the judge rule on those matters concerning which he had so often ruled — that is, concerning the person and concerning the mandate of the legates, which they had so often superfluously demanded to be issued to them. This, moreover, they did, as far as could be understood, fearing lest the prefectorial proceedings be read, in which they had wounded their own cause by certain ill-considered and rash answers.
Long therefore was the strife carried on by them, and especially with the judge himself, while they requested that the mandate enjoined upon the legates be issued to them, or that he rule that they had superfluously requested this; but he both said that he had ruled and ruled that this pertained not at all to the present judgment, wherein it was being declared by the imperial letters what had been petitioned and what granted. And at length at some point, at his order, the prefectorial proceedings had begun to be read. When the day and consuls of these proceedings had been read, immediately the Donatists again interrupted and began to demand those same past matters.
But when the judge ruled that the proceedings ought to be read, so that the person of the petitioner might be established, they on the contrary began from the outset to say that there were earlier proceedings which ought rather to be read. On the contrary it was said by the Catholics that these men were unwilling for this reason that the prefectorial proceedings be read: because in them they dreaded their own pleadings.
The Donatists therefore produced the proconsular proceedings and those of the vicarial prefecture, wherein the Catholics had petitioned that these men be summoned by the municipal records, so that, a comparison of both being made, error might be removed from their midst — long before they had petitioned the conference itself from the emperor; and by these proceedings they wished to show the Catholics to stand in the place of petitioners, because there they had called these men heretics committing many things against the divine and human laws. Against this the Catholics said that they had demanded the conference even then for this reason: that they might answer on behalf of the Church against these men's crimes. And so they had petitioned it repeatedly,
that, if those proceedings were to be read which it was established were earlier, rather those should be read wherein the Donatists had first sent the cause of Caecilian to the emperor Constantine, accusing him through the proconsul Anullinus; and when the proceedings which they themselves brought forward had been read, those were not read which, held before the prefects, had already begun to be read. And a strife arose: that, if for this reason the proceedings which the Donatists had produced were preferred to the proceedings which had been produced by the Catholics — because they were found to be earlier, so that these rather should be read — at least after the reading of these there should also be read those far earlier ones, wherein it would appear that they, in this whole cause which was being pleaded, had first stood forth as accusers, through the proconsul, before the emperor.
Lest these therefore be read, the Donatists vehemently struggled, resisting with many and manifold pleadings, just as they had struggled out and wrested that those prefectorial proceedings not be read. In this struggle, moreover, they often repeated that now worn-out point, repelled by so many rulings of the judge, about the mandate of the legates being issued to them. They repeated too the question, which had already before been settled, whether the Catholics preferred to proceed by the testimonies of the law or by the public proceedings; and they said that, if the Catholics chose the testimonies of the divine law, they would make forfeit of all the public laws and proceedings, but if they preferred rather to proceed by the public laws and proceedings, they would give up the divine documents.
And yet, if the Catholics chose this — to proceed rather by the documents of the public proceedings — the Donatists said that they would not permit even this, that the proceedings which were offered by the Catholics be read, on the ground that they had a valid prescription of time — that one, namely, concerning which they had been sufficiently answered both by the Catholics and by the judge himself — because they said that the very cause had lapsed and could no longer be pleaded, since the day had passed on which the four months would be completed.
For it plainly appeared that they vehemently feared lest the proceedings be read by which it might be shown that Caecilian had first been accused before the emperor by their own elders, and then, by both ecclesiastical and imperial judgments, acquitted and cleared — that is, lest the very cause for which they had come be pleaded at all, wherein they perceived that they could most evidently be overcome. And so unwilling and afraid were they that they were even compelled to confess it, saying that little by little — that is, gradually — they were being led into the cause and being brought to the inner matters of the cause; which surely they ought to have desired, if they trusted not in empty and dilatory prescriptions but in the truth of the cause itself.
On the contrary, therefore, the Catholics, while they vehemently strove that the cause be reached — to which they perceived these men were utterly unwilling to come — nevertheless answered again and again to those very same things which those men so often kept repeating, though already settled.
And since there were two matters that had been brought forward — one concerning the production of the mandate that had been enjoined upon the delegates, the other, whether the Catholics preferred to proceed by divine testimonies or by public records — regarding the production of that mandate the Catholics too replied that it did not pertain to them at all, nor to the present cause; and the presiding judge himself, repeating what he had already pronounced more than once, pronounced again that he could by no means examine the persons of the delegates or the mandate they had received, and that he ought not to depart from what had been enjoined upon him, since it was sufficiently apparent from the imperial letters — by which he had been appointed judge of this cause — that the conference had been granted by the emperor.
But concerning that other matter, in which they were asking what the Catholics would choose — whether divine documents or public records — the Catholics repeatedly answered that, if the Donatists did not bring against them the crimes of individual men, such as they were accustomed to allege against 「traditores」, but only inquired what the Church was, or where it was, they would do nothing by public records, but by the testimonies of the divine Scriptures alone; if, however, they persisted in that accusation and incrimination of men — since even they themselves could not demonstrate such things except by such records — then without doubt the Catholics too would defend themselves against crimes of this kind by public records; for otherwise such things could neither be alleged nor answered.
These things were repeatedly urged upon them and pressed home both by the Catholics and by the presiding judge, while, in many and various ways of prolonged proceedings, they kept returning to the same points and repeating the same things, so that the cause might not be tried and the records might not be read, which they saw were already in hand. But at length the judge overcame such lengthy obstinacy and ordered to be read aloud the documents which the Catholics had presented, and the cause at last began to be tried, on account of which so many bishops of both sides had assembled. And this happened in a wonderful way: that whereas the Donatists were demanding the identity of the petitioner precisely so that the cause might not be reached, the very inquiry into the petitioner suddenly brought the cause itself into the open. In the third place, therefore, these things were transacted.
The report of the proconsul Anullinus to the emperor Constantine was read. When the Donatists asked whence it had been produced, the Catholics answered that, if they doubted, it was to be sought in the proconsul's archive. In that report it is most evidently contained that they themselves were the first to send to the emperor Constantine, through the aforesaid proconsul, an accusation setting forth the crimes they charged against Caecilian. When this had been read through, the Donatists began to ask whom the Catholics called their father. And when they were answered, according to the Gospel, where it is written: 「Call no man your father upon earth; for one is your Father, even God」 — even after hearing this, they nonetheless began to ask whether Caecilian was their father or their mother.
When the Catholics had already said that he was neither their father nor their mother, but a brother — a good one, if he were good; an evil one, if he were evil, since even an evil man, on account of the sacraments held in common, would be a brother — from this point they contended somewhat longer, the Donatists repeating the same things and the Catholics answering the same. For the Donatists also objected: how was it that the Apostle said, 「For though you have many pedagogues in Christ, yet not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel」? And the Catholics answered that this was said for the sake of honor, on account of the evangelical mystery which the Apostle dispensed; for as to faith and eternal salvation, there is no father but God.
For the Apostle could not speak contrary to Christ — that, whereas Christ said, 「Call no man your father upon earth; for one is your Father, even God」, the Apostle, as though resisting Christ's words, should on the contrary call himself the father of those to whom he had announced the Gospel — unless a distinction were surely to be made as to what was said for the sake of divine grace and what for the sake of human honor. They also asked who had ordained Augustine, preparing (as was boasted) I know not what slanders.
When Augustine fearlessly answered them that he had been ordained by Megalius, who was then primate of the bishops of the Catholic Church in Numidia, and when he pressed them insistently to bring forth at once what they had prepared, so that there too they might be shown to be slanderers, they twisted their aim to something else, returning to the person of Caecilian — who, the Catholics said, was no hindrance to the Church even if his true crimes were shown, and yet those crimes could not even be shown to be true.
Then, accordingly, the Donatists produced a letter which they said they had received from their whole council, by which a reply was to be made to the mandate of the Catholics — that mandate which had been put forward on the first day of proceedings; and on the following day, before they came to the second session on the third day, the Donatists, upon a formal notice being given, had demanded that it be produced to them, so that being instructed they might come to the hearing. And perhaps it was on account of this letter, which had to be carefully composed, that at the second session itself they sought a delay, which was granted them for six days. In the fourth place, therefore, these things were transacted: the aforesaid letter of the Donatists was read, by which they attempted to reply to the mandate of the Catholics, which had been inserted into the records of the first session.
First, because the testimonies drawn from the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms and the apostolic and evangelical writings — by which it is shown that the Catholic Church, beginning from Jerusalem, is spread throughout the whole world, whence, growing into places near and far, it came even into Africa and into other places and cities through which it was first extended, in which many churches belonging to that one Church were founded by apostolic labor, with which it is manifest that the Donatists do not hold communion — these testimonies they not only refused to discuss, but refused even to touch at all; nor did they dare to bring forward in their so lengthy letter any testimony from the Holy Scriptures whereby they might assert that the Church of Donatus' party had been foretold and pre-announced, as the Catholics brought forward so many on behalf of the Church with which they hold communion, which, beginning from Jerusalem, is spread throughout the whole world.
These portions, then, of such weighty testimonies, since they did not touch them at all, but passed them over as though what had been said in that mandate of the Catholics — to which they seemed to be replying — had not been said, they attempted to demonstrate this: by bringing forward many testimonies of the divine Scriptures, that the Church of God had been foretold as one that would not exist with a mingling of evil men.
And yet afterward, when they came to the evangelical parable which the Catholics had set forth in their mandate — concerning the nets cast into the sea, in which the Lord said that all kinds of fish are gathered together, and the good separated from the bad on the shore, that is, at the end of the age — even they themselves confessed that in the Church there are mingled at least hidden evil men; but the tares among the wheat, they said, are mingled not in the Church but in the world itself, since the Lord says: 「The field is this world.」
As for the threshing-floor, on which the Catholics had said the chaff is mingled with the wheat until the time of winnowing, they did not even attempt to expound that similitude — as though nothing of the sort were written in the Gospel at all — but, as if the Catholics had said this on their own account, they merely reproached it, as if from the testimony of the prophet Jeremiah, who says: 「What has the chaff to do with the wheat?」 — not attending to the occasion on which he had said this. For he was not speaking of the Church, but of the divine visions of the prophets and human dreams, that they should by no means be compared. That other similitude too, of the sheep and the goats, which are pastured together and will be separated at the end of the age — which the Catholics had set forth among others from the Gospel — they were entirely unwilling to touch.
For they could not there say that even the goats are unrecognized by the shepherds in the common pastures, as they had said that the bad fish among the nets are not seen by the fishermen in the sea.
Likewise, when the Catholics in their mandate — wishing to show that the evil are tolerated by the good in the Church, and that the good are not defiled by contact with the evil — had recalled examples of the prophets, and of the Lord Christ himself, and of the apostles, and after these also of good bishops, and even the judgment of the Donatists themselves, who denied that certain of their own number, placed within the schism of Maximian, had been defiled by contact with Maximian: they, attempting in their letter to respond to these things, said whatever they said concerning the prophets and concerning the Lord Christ and the apostles, but concerning the bishops and the Maximianists they kept silent.
For in the matter of the bishops they were hard pressed by the authority of Cyprian, whose words, produced from his epistle, the Catholics had set in their mandate — words by which it was most manifestly shown both that he had prescribed that for the sake of unity the evil should be tolerated in the Church and that the Church should not be forsaken on their account, and that he himself had tolerated in the Church certain of his colleagues, from whose evil morals he shrank far off and whose most wicked deeds he did not pass over in silence. Oppressed, therefore, by his authority, the Donatists, although they had said something concerning the prophets and the Lord Christ and the apostles to the effect that the evil ought not to be tolerated mingled in the Church, were entirely unwilling to say anything concerning the bishops.
And yet even concerning Judas the traitor, and concerning those whom Paul tolerated preaching Christ out of envy, Cyprian himself so understood and so wrote just as the Catholics set these things in their mandate: that the Lord bore with Judas as an example of the evil to be tolerated in the Church, and that Paul endured those of whom he said such things not outside but within the Church. But concerning the Maximianists, what could they reply, when men were still alive concerning whom they could be most openly and most easily convicted?
Accordingly, to that which the Catholics had said in their mandate — that these same Maximianists had been driven from their basilicas by the Donatists through public judgments — they attempted somehow to reply that they had not brought criminal accusations, nor coerced anyone unwilling into their communion, but had civilly reclaimed their own property or that of their people; forgetting that Primian had once given as a directive to be entered into the records: 「They take away what belongs to others; we take back what has been carried off.」
But to those things which were said concerning the Maximianists in the mandate of the Catholics — that they received back in undiminished honor men condemned by themselves; that they denied the associates of Maximian to have been defiled by him; that they chose rather to approve the baptism given by them in schism than to rescind it and repeat it — to these they did not even lightly attempt to reply, but passed over all those things with a certain wondrous silence, as though they had not been said. Concerning baptism itself also, since it was said by the Catholics in that mandate that the Apostle had said of certain persons:
「They hold the truth in unrighteousness」 — so that it might be shown that it can happen that the truth, not to be destroyed, is held in the unrighteousness that is to be destroyed — they either did not understand this, or, that others might not understand what they themselves had understood, they wished to obscure it with their own words, saying that the Apostle had said this concerning the error of the Gentiles; as though it mattered concerning whose error he had spoken, when nevertheless he had shown that truth can be held in unrighteousness, so that, when these two are found in one man, both the truth may be approved and the unrighteousness corrected — just as the Catholic Church does, when it recognizes in the Donatists and embraces the truth of the sacrament, but detests in them and corrects the heretical unrighteousness.
And that which was said by the Catholics in the mandate — that the baptism of Christ is not therefore to be destroyed because even heretics administer it, just as Christ is not therefore to be denied because even demons confess him — this likewise they either did not understand or wished to obscure, saying that the Catholics had spoken against the martyrs (yet without specifying which martyrs they meant), and saying also that the Catholics wished to hold communion with demons — that communion may be held with heretics when their unrighteousness is anathematized, although the baptism found in their consecration is not destroyed; just as the unrighteousness of demons is anathematized, although the name of the Lord heard in their confession is not denied.
Concerning the persecutions also, which they complain of suffering, they set down much in their letters; yet they did not dare to reply to that which was said in the mandate of the Catholics — that they themselves were the first, before the emperor Constantine, to accuse Caecilian — they who complain of the laws of the emperors, magnifying, to bring odium upon the Catholics, either the deaths which their Circumcellions inflict upon themselves, or all the things which they suffer through the public laws and disciplines, not for the communion of Donatus, but for the crimes by which they violently rage and wickedly live; just as they even dared to make mention of the town of Bagai, where it was made manifest how great were the evils they committed and how much less they suffered.
To that also in the mandate of the Catholics which was said concerning the clearing and acquittal of Caecilian and Felix of Aptunga — from whose alleged crimes they were accustomed to stir up great odium against the Catholics among the unlearned, seeing that the whole cause for which they had come turned upon that very matter — in so lengthy a letter they were entirely unwilling to make any reply; because even in that which they said, and as it were established by divine testimonies — that the evil are not to be tolerated in the Church, but that one must withdraw from them on account of the contagion of sins — they showed that they said it in such a way that nevertheless they confessed that no one can be defiled by the sins of others while those sins remain unknown.
For this they had said also concerning the bad fish: that, just as the fishermen do not see those hidden in the waves although already within the nets, so the priests do not know the evil hidden in the Church, and are therefore in no way defiled by them. And yet not even lightly or thinly, in letters composed with so long a delay granted them, did they attempt to prove what was chiefly recalled in the mandate of the Catholics — namely, to prove not only that the crimes of Caecilian were true (for that is a small thing), but also that they could have been proved and made known to the Church, which is spread through all nations even to the ends of the earth, so that consequently — at least according to their own reasoning — it could be defiled by the contagion of known sins.