'Each one taking heed, lest you also be tempted, bear one another's burdens, and so shall you fulfil the law of Christ.' Likewise, what he sets down in his epistle, rebuking the proud and breaking their arrogance: 'And let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall'; and in another place he says: 'Who are you that judge another's servant? To his own lord he stands or falls. But he shall stand: for God is able to make him stand.' John too proves that Christ our Lord is the advocate and intercessor for our sins, saying: 'My little children, these things I write to you, that you sin not; but if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.'
And Paul the apostle also set down in his epistle: 'If, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, much more now, being justified in his blood, shall we be delivered through him from wrath.' Considering his mercy and clemency, we ought not to be so bitter or harsh or inhuman in cherishing the brethren, but rather to grieve with those who grieve and to weep with those who weep, and to raise them up, as far as we are able, with the help and solace of our love — neither so unrelenting and obstinate as to beat back their penitence, nor again so lax and easy as rashly to loosen them to communion. Behold, a wounded brother lies, struck down by the adversary in the battle-line.
On the one side the devil strives to slay him whom he has wounded; on the other Christ exhorts that he whom he has redeemed perish not utterly. Of the two, by which do we stand, on whose side do we take our place? Do we favour the devil, that he may destroy, and pass by the half-alive brother lying there, as the priest and the Levite did in the Gospel? Or rather, as priests of God and of Christ, imitating what Christ both taught and did, do we snatch the wounded man from the jaws of the adversary, and reserve him, cured, for God the Judge? And do not think, dearest brother, that hereby either the virtue of the brethren is diminished or the martyrdoms fail, because penitence has been relaxed to the lapsed and the hope of peace offered to the penitent.
The strength of the truly faithful abides unmoved, and among those who fear and love God with their whole heart, a steadfast and strong integrity perseveres. For to adulterers also a time of penitence is granted by us and peace is given; yet not on that account does virginity fail in the church, nor does the glorious purpose of continence languish through the sins of others. The church flourishes, crowned with so many virgins, and chastity and modesty keep the tenor of their glory; nor, because penitence and pardon are loosed to the adulterer, is the vigour of continence broken.
It is one thing to stand for pardon, another to attain to glory; one thing, cast into prison, not to go out thence until one pays the last farthing, another at once to receive the reward of faith and virtue; one thing to be tormented for sins by long pain and to be cleansed and purged long by fire, another to have purged all sins by suffering; one thing, in fine, to hang in the day of judgment upon the sentence of the Lord, another to be crowned at once by the Lord. And indeed, among our predecessors, certain of the bishops here in our province did not think that peace should be given to adulterers, and shut up altogether the place of penitence against adulteries.
Yet they did not on that account withdraw from the college of their fellow-bishops, nor break the unity of the catholic church by the obstinacy of their harshness or their censure, so that, because among others peace was given to adulterers, he who did not give it should be separated from the church. While the bond of concord remains and the undivided sacrament of the catholic church endures, each bishop arranges and directs his own act, about to render to the Lord the account of his own purpose. But I wonder that certain men are so obstinate as to think that penitence ought not to be given to the lapsed, or to suppose that pardon should be denied to the penitent, when it is written: 'Remember whence you have fallen, and do penance, and do the former works.'
This indeed is said to him who is agreed to have fallen, and whom the Lord exhorts to rise up again through works, because it is written: 'Almsgiving delivers from death' — and assuredly not from that death which the blood of Christ once extinguished, and from which the water of saving baptism and the grace of our Redeemer delivered us, but from that which afterwards creeps in through sins. In another place likewise a time of penitence is given, and the Lord threatens him who does not do penance: 'I have,' he says, 'many things against you, because you suffer your wife Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants, to commit fornication and to eat of the sacrifice; and I gave her time that she might do penance, and she will not repent of her fornication.
Behold, I cast her into a bed, and those who commit fornication with her into very great tribulation, unless they do penance for their works.' This certainly the Lord would not exhort to penitence, were it not that he promises indulgence to the penitent. And in the Gospel: 'I say to you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance, more than over ninety-nine just persons who need no penance.' For since it is written, 'God made not death, nor does he rejoice in the perdition of the living,' assuredly he who wills that none perish desires that sinners do penance, and through penitence return again to life. Therefore also through the prophet Joel he cries and says: 'And now thus says the Lord your God:
Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and gracious, patient and of great compassion, and one who turns aside the sentence pronounced against the malice inflicted.' In the Psalms also we read the censure and at the same time the clemency of God, who threatens and at the same time spares, who punishes that he may correct, and when he has corrected, preserves: 'I will visit,' he says, 'their iniquities with the rod, and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter away from them.' The Lord too in the Gospel, showing the tenderness of God the Father, says:
'What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he reach him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he reach him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?' Here the Lord compares the carnal father and the eternal and bounteous tenderness of God the Father. For if this evil father on earth, gravely offended by his sinful and wicked son, yet, if afterwards he sees that same son reformed, and, having laid aside the sins of his former life, corrected by the pain of penitence unto sober and good morals and to the discipline of innocence, rejoices and gives thanks, and embraces with the vow of fatherly exultation the son whom he had before cast off:
how much more does that one and true Father, good, merciful, and tender — nay, himself goodness and mercy and tenderness — rejoice in the penitence of his sons, and threaten not wrath or the punishment of penalty to the penitent or to those who mourn and lament, but rather promises pardon and indulgence! Whence the Lord in the Gospel calls those who mourn blessed, because he who mourns provokes mercy: he who is stubborn and proud heaps up for himself wrath and the punishment of the coming judgment.
And therefore, dearest brother, we have decided that those who do not do penance, nor testify with their whole heart and with the open profession of their lamentation to the grief for their sins, are altogether to be prohibited from the hope of communion and of peace, if in infirmity and in peril they begin to entreat; because it is not penitence for sin but the warning of pressing death that compels them to ask, nor is he worthy to receive solace in death who has not considered that he was going to die. But as for what concerns the person of Novatian, dearest brother — about whom you desired me to write to you what heresy he had introduced — know that we ought in the first place not even to be curious as to what he teaches, since he teaches outside.
Let him boast, and proclaim his philosophy or his eloquence with proud words — he who has held neither fraternal charity nor ecclesiastical unity has lost even that which he was before. Unless indeed he seems to you a bishop, who, when a bishop had been made in the church by sixteen fellow-bishops, strives to be made an adulterous and alien bishop by deserters through canvassing; and, whereas there is from Christ one church throughout the whole world, divided into many members, and likewise one episcopate diffused in the harmonious multitude of many bishops — he, after God's tradition, after the connected and everywhere conjoined unity of the catholic church, attempts to make a human church, and sends his new apostles through very many cities, that he may set up certain recent foundations of his own institution; and whereas long since throughout all the provinces and through the several cities bishops have been ordained, aged in years, sound in faith, proved in tribulation, proscribed in persecution, he dares to create others, false bishops, over them:
as though he could either traverse the whole world by the obstinacy of his new attempt, or rend the framework of the ecclesiastical body by the sowing of his discord — not knowing that schismatics always seethe at their beginnings, but cannot have increase, nor augment what they have unlawfully begun, but at once fail together with their perverse rivalry. But he could not hold the episcopate, even if he had been made a bishop first and then departed from the body of his fellow-bishops and from the unity of the church, since the Apostle admonishes that we sustain one another in turn, lest we recede from the unity which God has established, and says: 'Sustaining one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.'
He therefore who observes neither the unity of the spirit nor the conjunction of peace, and separates himself from the bond of the church and from the college of priests, can have neither the power nor the honour of a bishop, who has willed to hold neither the unity nor the peace of the episcopate. Then further, how great is the swelling of arrogance, how great the forgetfulness of humility and gentleness, how great the boasting of his own arrogance, that one should either dare, or believe himself able to do, what the Lord did not grant even to the apostles — that he should think he is able to separate the tares from the wheat; or, as if it were granted to himself to carry the fan openly and to purge the threshing-floor, should attempt to separate the chaff from the wheat; and whereas the Apostle says:
'But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earthenware' — let him seem to choose the golden and silver vessels, but to despise, cast away, and condemn the wooden and earthen ones; whereas it is not until the day of the Lord that the wooden vessels are burned up in the fire of the divine blaze, and the earthen are broken by him to whom an iron rod has been given. Or if he sets himself up as a searcher and judge of heart and reins, let him judge in all things equally; and since he knows it is written:
'Behold, you are made whole; sin no more, lest something worse befall you' — let him separate from his side and from his company defrauders and adulterers, since the cause of the adulterer is much graver and worse than that of the certificate-holder, seeing that the latter sinned through necessity, the former by his own will; the latter, deceived by error, thinking it enough for himself that he did not sacrifice, the former a stormer of another's marriage, or one who, entering a brothel, has violated his sanctified body and God's temple in detestable filth, plunging it into the sewer and the miry pit of the common rabble — as the Apostle says: 'Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he who commits adultery sins against his own body.'
To these too, nevertheless, penitence is granted, and the hope of lamenting and making satisfaction is left, according to the same Apostle who says: 'I fear lest, when I come to you, I should mourn many of those who have sinned before and have not done penance for the uncleannesses which they have committed, and the fornications and lusts.' Nor let the new heretics flatter themselves in this, that they say they do not communicate with idolaters, when among them there are both adulterers and defrauders, who are held by the charge of idolatry, according to the Apostle who says: 'For know this, understanding, that every fornicator, or unclean person, or defrauder, which is idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.' And again:
'Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, putting away fornication, uncleanness, and evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which are the service of idols, on account of which the wrath of God comes.' For since our bodies are members of Christ, and each of us is a temple of God, whoever by adultery violates the temple of God violates God; and he who in committing sins does the will of the devil serves demons and idols. For evil deeds come not from the Holy Spirit, but the lusts born of the prompting of the adversary and of the unclean spirit compel a man to act against God and to serve the devil. Thus it comes about that, if they say that one is defiled by another's sin and that the idolatry of the offender passes over to him who does not offend,
by their own utterance they cannot be excused from the charge of idolatry, since it is established by apostolic proof that the adulterers and defrauders with whom they communicate are idolaters. But to us, according to our faith and the form given by divine preaching, the reckoning of truth befits: that each one is held bound in his own sin, and that one cannot be made guilty for another, since the Lord forewarns and says: 'The justice of the just shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.' And again: 'The fathers shall not die for the sons, and the sons shall not die for the fathers; each one shall die in his own sin.'
Reading and holding this, we think that no one should be barred from the fruit of satisfaction and the hope of peace, since we know, according to the faith of the divine Scriptures, with God himself as author and exhorter, that sinners are brought to do penance, and that pardon and indulgence are not denied to the penitent. And oh, the mockery that frustrates the brotherhood! Oh, the very deception of the wretched as they lament! Oh, the ineffectual and empty tradition of heretical instruction — to exhort to the penitence of satisfaction and to withdraw the medicine of satisfaction, to say to our brethren: 'Mourn and pour out tears, and groan by day and by night, and for the washing and purging of your sin labour abundantly and frequently; but outside the church, after all these things, you shall die;
whatever pertains to peace you shall do, but no peace which you seek shall you receive.' Who would not at once perish, who would not fail through that very despair, who would not turn his mind away from the purpose of lamentation? Do you think a countryman can work, if you say to him: 'Till your field with all the skill of husbandry, attend diligently to its cultivation, but you shall reap no harvest, [press no vintage,] gather no fruits of your olive-grove, pluck no apples from the trees'? Or if to one whom you would persuade to the ownership and use of ships you should say:
'Buy timber from the choicest forests, brother, weave the keel with strong and select oak, labour that a ship be built and equipped with helm, ropes, and sails; but when you have done these things, you shall not see the fruit of its workings and voyages.' To cut off and sever the way of grief and the path of penitence is — when in the Scriptures the Lord God blandishes those who return to him and do penance — by our hardness and cruelty, while the fruit of penitence is intercepted, to take away penitence itself.
But if we find that no one ought to be barred from doing penance, and that to those who entreat and implore the mercy of the Lord peace may be granted through His priests, according as He is merciful and tender, then the groaning of those who mourn must be admitted, and the fruit of penance must not be denied to those who grieve. And since among the dead there is no confession, nor can the open acknowledgment of sin be made there, those who have repented with their whole heart and have made their plea ought meanwhile to be received into the Church and there reserved for the Lord, who, when He comes to His Church, will surely judge concerning those whom He shall find within it.
But apostates and deserters, or adversaries and enemies who scatter the Church of Christ, cannot, according to the Apostle, be admitted to the peace of the Church even if they have been slain outside for the Name, since they have kept neither the unity of the Spirit nor of the Church. These few things, dearest brother, out of many, I have run through briefly as best I could, that I might both satisfy your desire and bind you more and more in the fellowship of our college and body. But if you have the opportunity and means of coming to us, we shall be able to confer more fully together in common, and to treat more richly and completely of the things that make for saving concord. I pray, dearest brother, that you may ever fare well.
You wrote to me, dearest brethren, that while you were in the city of Capsa for the ordination of a bishop, our brother and colleague Superius reported to you concerning our brothers Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus, who, having earlier been seized in the persecution and having confessed the Name of the Lord, had overcome the violence of the magistrate and the onset of the raging people; but afterwards, when they were tortured with grievous punishments before the proconsul, they were overborne by the force of the torments and fell from the rank of glory toward which they were striving with the full virtue of faith, being broken by prolonged tortures; yet even after this grievous fall, undertaken not by will but by necessity, they did not cease for these three years from doing penance.
And indeed, as far as concerns the judgment of my own mind, I think that the indulgence of the Lord will not be lacking to those who, it is agreed, stood in the battle-line, confessed the Name of the Lord, with the steadfastness of unshaken faith overcame the violence of the magistrates and the assault of the raging people, endured prison, and for a long time, amid the threats of the proconsul and the roaring of the crowd standing about, resisted the torments that tore them and tortured them with long repetition; so that, although in the end they appear to have been overcome by the weakness of the flesh, they may be relieved by the defense of their preceding merits, and it may be enough for such men to have lost their glory, yet we ought not to close to them the place of pardon as well, nor to deprive them of the Father's tender love and of our communion:
For whom we judge that, to obtain the clemency of the Lord, it may suffice that for three years continuously and sorrowfully, as you write, they have wept with the utmost lamentation of penance. Certainly I do not think that peace is entrusted to them rashly or carelessly, since we see that, by the courage of their warfare, they were not wanting to the battle before, and, even if the conflict should come again, they are able to repair their glory.
For since it has been resolved in council that those who do penance are to be aided in the peril of weakness and given peace, surely those ought to take precedence in receiving peace whom we see to have fallen not through weakness of soul, but who, having engaged in battle and been wounded, could not, through the frailty of the flesh, carry through the crown of their confession; especially since, when they desired to die, they were not permitted to be killed, but the torments tore them, worn out as long as they did not overcome the faith, which is unconquered, but only wearied the flesh, which is weak.
Yet since you have written that I should treat of this very matter most fully together with several colleagues, and a thing so great requires a greater and weightier deliberation from the conference of many, and now nearly all are tarrying among themselves with the brethren during the first solemnities of Easter—when they have satisfied the celebration of the solemnity among their own people and have begun to come to me, I will treat with each one more fully, so that on the matter about which you have consulted a firm sentence, weighed by the counsel of many priests, may be fixed among us and written back to you. I pray, dearest brethren, that we may ever fare well.
We had indeed determined long ago, dearest brother, by counsel shared mutually among us, that those who in the assault of persecution had been tripped up by the adversary and had fallen, and had defiled themselves with unlawful sacrifices, should do full penance for a long time, and, if the peril of weakness pressed upon them, should receive peace under the very stroke of death. For it was not...
...lawful, nor did the Father's tender love and divine clemency permit, that the Church should be closed to those knocking, and that the help of saving hope should be denied to those grieving and imploring, so that, departing from the world, they should be sent to the Lord without communion and peace—seeing that He Himself has permitted and given the law, that whatever should be bound on earth should be bound also in heaven, but that those things might be loosed there which had first been loosed here in the Church.
But indeed, since we see that the day of another assault has begun to draw near, and we are admonished by frequent and continual revelations to be armed and prepared for the battle which the enemy proclaims against us, and to prepare also by our exhortations the people committed to us by the divine condescension—let us by all means prepare the soldiers of Christ who desire arms and demand battle, and gather them within the camp of the Lord: under the compulsion of necessity we have resolved that to those who have not departed from the Church of the Lord, and who have not ceased from the very first day of their fall to do penance, and to lament, and to implore the Lord, peace is to be given, and that they ought to be armed and equipped for the battle which threatens.
For we must obey just revelations and admonitions, that the sheep be not abandoned to peril by the shepherds, but that the whole flock be gathered into one, and the army of the Lord armed for the contest of the heavenly warfare. For with reason was the penance of the grieving prolonged for a longer time, that the weak might be aided at their departure, so long as quiet and tranquillity were present, which could allow the tears of the long-mourning to be deferred and aid to be given late to those dying in weakness.
But now peace is necessary not for the weak but for the strong, and communion is to be given by us not to the dying but to the living, that those whom we rouse and exhort to the battle we may not leave unarmed and naked, but may fortify with the protection of the blood and body of Christ; and since the Eucharist is appointed for this end, that it may be a safeguard to those who receive it, let us arm with the protection of the Lord's fullness those whom we wish to be safe against the adversary. For how do we teach or provoke them to shed their blood in the confession of the Name, if we deny to them, about to do battle, the blood of Christ? Or how do we make them fit for the cup of martyrdom, if we do not first admit them, by the right of communion, to drink in the Church the cup of the Lord?
There ought to be a difference, dearest brother, between those who either have apostatized and, having returned to the world which they had renounced, live like the heathen, or have become deserters to the heretics and daily take up parricidal arms against the Church, and those who, not withdrawing from the threshold of the Church and continually and sorrowfully imploring the divine and fatherly comfort, now profess themselves ready for the fight and to stand firm and contend for the Name of their Lord and for their own salvation. In this time we give peace not to the sleeping but to the watchful; we give peace not for delights but for arms; we give peace not for rest but for the battle-line.
If, according as we hear and desire and believe of them, they stand firm and, together with us, lay low the adversary in the encounter, we shall not repent of having granted peace to men so brave; nay, it is the great honor and glory of our episcopate to have given peace to martyrs, that we priests, who daily celebrate the sacrifices of God, may prepare for God victims and oblations. But if—which may the Lord avert from our brethren—any of the lapsed should deceive, so as craftily to seek peace and, at the time of the impending battle, to receive communion with no intent to fight, he deceives and beguiles himself, who hides one thing in his heart and proclaims another with his voice.
As far as it is granted to us to see and to judge, we see the face of each, but we cannot search the heart and discern the mind. Concerning these the Searcher and Knower of hidden things judges, who is soon to come and to judge concerning the secret and hidden things of the heart. But the evil ought not to harm the good; rather the evil should be aided by the good. Nor on that account is peace to be denied to those about to suffer martyrdom, because there are some who will deny, since on this account peace is to be given to all who are about to do battle, lest through our ignorance he begin to be passed over who is destined to be crowned in the fight. And let no one say:
'He who attains martyrdom is baptized in his own blood, nor is peace from the bishop necessary to one who is destined to have the peace of his glory and to receive a greater reward from the Lord's condescension.' First, he cannot be fit for martyrdom who is not armed by the Church for the battle, and the mind fails which the unreceived Eucharist does not raise up and kindle. For the Lord says in His Gospel: 'But when they deliver you up, take no thought what you shall speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what you shall speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you.'
But when He says that in those handed over and set in the confession of the Name the Spirit of the Father speaks, how can he be found ready or fit for confession who has not first, peace being received, received the Spirit of the Father, who, strengthening His servants, Himself speaks and confesses in us? Then further, if, having left all his goods, he flee and, set in hiding-places and in solitude, should chance to fall among robbers, or perish in fever and sickness, shall it not be imputed to us that so good a soldier—who forsook all his possessions and, despising home and parents or children, chose rather to follow his Lord—departs without peace and without communion?