(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was 
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves 
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially 
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi = 
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute = 
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe, 
when necessary.


ST. AUGUSTINE

IN ANSWER TO THE LETTERS OF PETILIAN (the Donatist, Bishop of Cirta.)
[Contra litteras Petiliani Donatistae Cortensis, Episcopi]

BOOKS I-II

[Translated by the Rev. J. R. King, M.A., Vicar of St. Peter's in the East, 
Oxford; and late fellow and tutor of Merton College, Oxford; revised by the 
Rev. Chester D. Hartranft, D.D., Professor of Biblical and Ecclesiastical 
History in the Theological Seminary at Hartford, Connecticut.]


BOOK I.

WRITTEN IN THE FORM OF A LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE CATHOLICS, IN WHICH THE 
FIRST PORTION OF THE LETTER WHICH PETILIAN HAD WRITTEN TO HIS ADHERENTS IS 
EXAMINED AND REFUTED.

Augustin, to the well-beloved brethren that belong to the care of our 
charge, greeting in the Lord:

    CHAP. 1.--1. Ye know that we have often wished to bring forward into 
open notoriety, and to confute, not so much from our own arguments as from 
theirs, the sacrilegious error of the Donatist heretics; whence it came to 
pass that we wrote letters even to some of their leaders,--not indeed for 
purposes of communion with them, for of that they had already in times past 
rendered themselves unworthy by dissenting from the Church; nor yet in 
terms of reproach, but of a conciliatory character, with the view that, 
having discussed the question with us which caused them to break off from 
the holy communion of the whole world, they might, on consideration of the 
truth, be willing to be corrected, and might not defend the headstrong 
perversity of their predecessors with a yet more foolish obstinacy, but 
might be reunited to the Catholic stock, so as to bring forth the fruits of 
charity. But as it is written, "With those who have hated peace I am more 
peaceful,"(1) so they rejected my letters, just as they hate the very name 
of peace, in whose interests they were written. Now, however, as I was in 
the church of Constantina, Absentius(2) being present, with my colleague 
Fortunatus, his bishop, the brethren brought before my notice a letter, 
which they said that a bishop of the said schism had addressed to his 
presbyters, as was set forth in the superscription of the letter itself. 
When I had read it, I was so amazed to find that in his very first words he 
cut away the very roots of the whole claims of his party to communion, that 
I was unwilling to believe that it could be the letter of a man who, if 
fame speaks truly, is especially conspicuous among them for learning and 
eloquence. But some of those who were present when I read it, being 
acquainted with the polish and embellishment of his composition, gradually 
persuaded me that it was undoubtedly his address. I thought, however, that 
whoever the author might be, it required refutation, lest the writer should 
seem to himself, in the company of the inexperienced, to have written 
something of weight against the Catholic Church.

    2. The first point, then, that he lays down in his letter is the 
statement, "that we find fault with them for the repetition of baptism, 
while we ourselves pollute our souls with a layer stained with guilt." But 
to what profit is it that I should reproduce all his insulting terms? For, 
since it is one thing to strengthen proofs, another thing to meddle with 
abusive words by way of refutation, let us rather turn our attention to the 
mode in which he has sought to prove that we do not possess baptism, and 
that therefore they do not require the repetition of what was already 
present, but confer what hitherto was wanting. For he says: "What we look 
for is the conscience of the giver to cleanse that of the recipient." But 
supposing the conscience of the giver is concealed from view, and perhaps 
defiled with sin, how will it be able to cleanse the conscience of the 
recipient, if, as he says, "what we look for is the conscience of the giver 
to cleanse that of the recipient?" For if he should say that it makes no 
matter to the recipient what amount of evil may lie concealed from view in 
the conscience of the giver, perhaps that ignorance may have such a degree 
of efficacy as this, that a man cannot be defiled by the guilt of the 
conscience of him from whom he receives baptism, so long as he is unaware 
of it. Let it then be granted that the guilty conscience of his neighbor 
cannot defile a man so long as he is unaware of it, but is it therefore 
clear that it can further cleanse him from his own guilt?

    CHAP. 2.--3. Whence, then, is a man to be cleansed who receives 
baptism, when the conscience of the giver is polluted without the knowledge 
of him who is to receive it? Especially when he goes on to say, "For he who 
receives faith from the faithless receives not faith, but guilt." There 
stands before us one that is faithless ready to baptize, and he who should 
be baptized is ignorant of his faithlessness: what think you that he will 
receive? Faith, or guilt? If you answer faith, then you will grant that it 
is possible that a man should receive not guilt, but faith, from him that 
is faithless; and the former saying will be false, that "he who receives 
faith from the faithless receives not faith, but guilt." For we find that 
it is possible that a man should receive faith even from one that is 
faithless, if he be not aware of the faithlessness of the giver. For he 
does not say, He who receives faith from one that is openly and notoriously 
faithless; but he says, "He who receives faith from the faithless receives 
not faith, but guilt;" which certainly is false when a person is baptized 
by one who hides his faithlessness. But if he shall say, Even when the 
faithlessness of the baptizer is concealed, the recipient receives not 
faith from him, but guilt, then let them rebaptize those who are well known 
to have been baptized by men who in their own body have long concealed a 
life of guilt, but have eventually been detected, convicted, and condemned.

    CHAP. 3.--For, so long as they escaped detection, they could not bestow 
faith on any whom they baptized, but only guilt, if it be true that 
whosoever receives faith from one that is faithless receives not faith, but 
guilt. Let them therefore be baptized by the good, that they may be enabled 
to receive not guilt, but faith.

    4. But how, again, shall they have any certainty about the good who are 
to give them faith, if what we look to is the conscience of the giver, 
which is unseen by the eyes of the proposed recipient? Therefore, according 
to their judgment, the salvation of the spirit is made uncertain, so long 
as in opposition to the holy Scriptures, which say, "It is better to trust 
in the Lord than to put confidence in man,"(1) and, "Cursed be the man that 
trusteth in man,"(2) they remove the hope of those who are to be baptized 
from the Lord their God, and persuade them that it should be placed in man; 
the practical result of which is, that their salvation becomes not merely 
uncertain, but actually null and void. For "salvation belongeth unto the 
Lord,"(3) and "vain is the help of man."(4) Therefore, whosoever places his 
trust in man, even in one whom he knows to be just and innocent, is 
accursed. Whence also the Apostle Paul finds fault with those who said they 
were of Paul saying, "Was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in 
the name of Paul?"(5)

    CHAP. 4.--5. Wherefore, if they were in error, and would have perished 
had they not been corrected, who wished to be of Paul, what must we suppose 
to be the hope of those who wished to be of Donatus? For they use their 
utmost endeavors to prove that the origin, root, and head of the baptized 
person is none other than the individual by whom he is baptized. The result 
is, that since it is very often a matter of uncertainty what kind of man 
the baptizer is, the hope therefore of the baptized being of uncertain 
origin, of uncertain root, of uncertain head, is of itself uncertain 
altogether. And since it is possible that the conscience of the giver may 
be in such a condition as to be accursed and defiled without the knowledge 
of the recipient, it results that, being of an accursed origin, accursed 
root, accursed head, the hope of the baptized may prove to be vain and 
ungrounded. For Petilian expressly states in his epistle, that "everything 
consists of an origin and root; and if it have not something for a head, it 
is nothing." And since by the origin and root and head of the baptized 
person he wishes to be understood the man by whom he is baptized, what good 
does the unhappy recipient derive from the fact that he does not know how 
bad a man his baptizer really is? For he does not know that he himself has 
a bad head, or actually no head at all. And yet what hope can a man have, 
who, whether he is aware of it or not, has either a very bad head or no 
head at all? Can we maintain that his very ignorance forms a head, when his 
baptizer is either a bad head or none at all? Surely any one who thinks 
this is unmistakeably without a head.

    CHAP. 5.--6. We ask, therefore, since he says, "He who receives faith 
from the faithless receives not faith, but guilt," and immediately adds to 
this the further statement, that "everything consists of an origin and 
root; and if it have not something for a head, it is nothing;"--we ask, I 
say, in a case where the faithlessness of the baptizer is undetected: If 
then, the man whom he baptizes receives faith, and not guilt; if, then, the 
baptizer is not his origin and root and head, who is it  from whom he 
receives faith? where is the origin from which he springs? where is the 
root of which he is a shoot? where the head which is his starting-point? 
Can it be, that when he who is baptized is unaware of the faithlessness of 
his baptizer, it is then Christ who gives faith, it is then Christ who is 
the origin and root and head? Alas for human rashness and conceit! Why do 
you not allow that it is always Christ who gives faith, for the purpose of 
making a man a Christian by giving it? Why do you not allow that Christ is 
always the origin of the Christian, that the Christian always plants his 
root in Christ, that Christ is the head of the Christian? Do we then 
maintain that, even when spiritual grace is dispensed to those that believe 
by the hands of a holy and faithful minister, it is still not the minister 
himself who justifies, but that One of whom it is said, that "He justifieth 
the ungodly?"(6) But unless we admit this, either the Apostle Paul was the 
head and origin of those whom he had planted, or Apollos the root of those 
whom he had watered, rather than He who had given them faith in believing; 
whereas the same Paul says, "I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave 
the increase: so then neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that 
watereth, but God that giveth the increase.'(7) Nor was the apostle himself 
their root, but rather He who says, "I am the vine, ye are the 
branches."(8) How, too, could he be their head, when he says, that "we, 
being many, are one body in Christ,"(9) and expressly declares in many 
passages that Christ Himself is the head of the whole body?

    CHAP. 6.--7. Wherefore, whether a man receive the sacrament of baptism 
from a faithful or a faithless minister, his whole hope is in Christ, that 
he fall not under the condemnation that "cursed is he that placeth his hope 
in man." Otherwise, if each man is born again in spiritual grace of the 
same sort as he by whom he is baptized, and if when he who baptizes him is 
manifestly a good man, then he himself gives faith, he is himself the 
origin and root and head of him who is being born; whilst, when the 
baptizer is faithless without its being known, then the baptized person 
receives faith from Christ, then he derives his origin from Christ, then he 
is rooted in Christ, then he boasts in Christ as his head,--in that case 
all who are baptized should wish that they might have faithless baptizers, 
and be ignorant of their faithlessness: for however good their baptizers 
might have been, Christ is certainly beyond comparison better still; and He 
will then be the head of the baptized, if the faithlessness of the baptizer 
shall escape detection.

    CHAP. 7.--8. But if it is perfect madness to hold such a view (for it 
is Christ always that justifieth the ungodly, by changing his ungodliness 
into Christianity; it is from Christ always that faith is received, Christ 
is always the origin of the regenerate and the head of the Church), what 
weight, then, will those words have, which thoughtless readers value  by 
their sound, without inquiring what their inner meaning is? For the man who 
does not content himself with hearing the words with his ear, but considers 
the meaning of the phrase, when he hears, "What we look to is the 
conscience of the giver, that it may cleanse the conscience of the 
recipient," will answer, The conscience of man is often unknown to me, but 
I am certain of the mercy of Christ: when he hears, "He who receives faith 
from the faithless receives not faith, but guilt," will answer, Christ is 
not faithless, from whom I receive not guilt, but faith: when he hears, 
"Everything consists of an origin and root; and if it have not something 
for a head, is nothing," will answer, My origin is Christ, my root is 
Christ, my head is Christ. When he hears, "Nor does anything well receive 
second birth, unless it be born again of good seed," he will answer, The 
seed of which I am born again is the Word of God, which I am warned to hear 
with attention, even though he through whom I hear it does not himself do 
what he preaches; according to the words of the Lord, which make me herein 
safe, "All whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not 
ye after their works: for they say, and do not."(1) When he hears, "What 
perversity must it be, that he who is guilty through his own sins should 
make another free from guilt!" he will answer, No one makes me free from 
guilt but He who died for our sins, and rose again for our justification. 
For I believe, not in the minister by whose hands I am baptized, but in Him 
who justifieth the ungodly, that my faith may be counted unto me for 
righteousness.(2)

    CHAP. 8.--9. When he hears, "Every good tree bringeth good fruit, but a 
corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit: do men gather grapes of thorns?"(3) 
and, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good 
things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil 
things;"(4) he will answer, This therefore is good fruit, that I should be 
a good tree, that is, a good man, that I should show forth good fruit, that 
is, good works. But this will be given to me, not by him that planteth, nor 
by him that watereth, but by God that giveth the increase. For if the good 
tree be the good baptizer, so that his good fruit should be the man whom he 
baptizes, then any one who has been baptized by a bad man, even if his 
wickedness be not manifest, will have no power to be good, for he is sprung 
from an evil tree. For a good tree is one thing; a tree whose quality is 
concealed, but yet bad, is another. Or if, when the tree is bad, but hides 
its badness, then whosoever is baptized by it is born not of it, but of 
Christ; then they are justified with more perfect holiness who are baptized 
by the bad who hide their evil nature, than they who are baptized by the 
manifestly good.(5)

    CHAP. 9.--10. Again, when he hears, "He that is washed by one dead, his 
washing profiteth him nought,"(6) he will answer, "Christ, being raised 
from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him:"(7) of 
whom it is said, "The same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost."(8) 
But they are baptized by the dead, who are baptized in the temples of 
idols. For even they themselves do not suppose that they receive the 
sanctification which they look for from their priests, but from their gods; 
and since these were men, and are dead in such sort as to be now neither 
upon earth nor in the rest of heaven,(9) they are truly baptized by the 
dead: and the same answer will hold good if there be any other way in which 
these words of holy Scripture may be examined, and profitably discussed and 
understood. For if in this place I understand a baptizer who is a sinner, 
the same absurdity will follow, that whosoever has been baptized by an 
ungodly man, even though his ungodliness be undiscovered, is yet washed in 
vain, as though baptized by one dead. For he does not say, He that is 
baptized by one manifestly dead, but absolutely, "by one dead." And if they 
consider any man to be dead whom they know to be a sinner, but any one in 
their communion to be alive, even though he manages most adroitly to 
conceal a life of wickedness, in the first place with accursed pride they 
claim more for themselves than they ascribe to God, that when a sinner is 
unveiled to them he should be called dead, but when he is known by God he 
is held to be alive. In the next place, if that sinner is to be called dead 
who is known to be such by men, what answer will they make about Optatus, 
whom they were afraid to condemn though they had long known his wickedness? 
Why are those who were baptized by him not said to have been baptized by 
one dead? Did he live because the Count was his faith?(1)--an elegant and 
well-turned saying of some early colleagues of their own, which they 
themselves are wont to quote with pride, not understanding that at the 
death of the haughty Goliath it was his own sword by which his head was cut 
off.(2)

    CHAP. 10.--11. Lastly, if they are willing to give the name of dead 
neither to the wicked man whose sin is hidden, nor to him whose sin is 
manifest, but who has yet not been condemned by them, but only to him whose 
sin is manifest and condemned, so that whosoever is baptized by him is 
himself baptized by the dead, and his washing profits him nothing; what are 
we to say of those whom their own party have condemned "by the 
unimpeachable voice of a plenary Council,"(3) together with Maximianus and 
the others who ordained him,--I mean Felicianus of Musti, and Praetextatus 
of Assura, of whom I speak in the meantime, who are counted among the 
twelve ordainers of Maximianus, as erecting an altar in opposition to their 
altar at which Primianus stands? They surely are reckoned by them among the 
dead. To this we have the express testimony of the noble decree of that 
Council of theirs which formerly called forth shouts of unreserved(4) 
applause when it was recited among them for the purpose of being decreed, 
but which would now be received in silence if we should chance to recite it 
in their ears; whereas they should rather have been slow at first to 
rejoice in its, eloquence, test they should afterwards come to mourn over 
it when its credit was destroyed. For in it they speak in the following 
terms of the followers of Maximianus, who were shut out from their 
communion: "Seeing that the shipwrecked members of certain men have been 
dashed by the waves of truth upon the sharp rocks, and after the fashion of 
the Egyptians, the shores are covered with the bodies of the dying; whose 
punishment is intensified in death itself, since after their life has been 
wrung from them by the avenging waters, they fail to find so much as 
burial." In such gross terms indeed, do they insult those who were guilty 
of schism from their body, that they call them dead and unburied; but 
certainly they ought to have wished that they might obtain burial, if it 
were only that they might not have seen Optatus Gildonianus advancing with 
a military force, and like a sweeping wave that dashes beyond its fellows, 
sucking back Felicianus and Praetextatus once again within their pale, out 
of the multitude of bodies lying unburied on the shore.

    CHAP. 11.--12. Of these I would ask, whether by coming to their sea 
they were restored to life, or whether they are still dead there? For if 
still they are none the less corpses, then the layer cannot in any way 
profit those who are baptized by such dead men. But if they have been 
restored to life, yet how can the layer profit those whom they baptized 
before outside, while they were lying without life, if the passage, "He who 
is baptized by the dead, of what profit is his baptism to him," is to be 
understood in the way in which they think? For those whom Praetextatus and 
Felicianus baptized while they were yet in communion with Maximianus are 
now retained among them, sharing in their communion, without being again 
baptized, together with the same men who baptized them--I mean Felicianus 
and Praetextatus: taking occasion by which fact, if it were not that they 
cherish the beginning of their own obstinacy, instead of considering the 
certain end of their spiritual salvation, they would certainly be bound to 
vigilance, and ought to recover the soundness of their senses, so as to 
breathe again in Catholic peace; if only, laying aside the swelling of 
their pride, and overcoming the madness of their stubbornness, they would 
take heed and see what monstrous sacrilege it is to curse the baptism of 
the foreign churches, which we have learned from the sacred books were 
planted in primitive times, and to receive the baptism of the followers of 
Maximianus, whom they nave condemned with their own lips.

CHAP. 12.--13. But our brethren themselves, the sons of the aforesaid 
churches, were both ignorant at the time, and still are ignorant, of what 
has been done so many years ago in Africa: wherefore they at any rate 
cannot be defiled by the charges which have been brought, on the part of 
the Donatists, against the Africans, without even knowing whether they were 
true. But the Donatists having openly separated and divided themselves off, 
although they are even said to have taken part in the ordination of 
Primianus, yet condemned the said Primianus, ordained another bishop in 
opposition to Primianus, baptized outside the communion of Primianus, 
rebaptized after Primianus, and returned to Primianus with their disciples 
who had been baptized by themselves outside, and never rebaptized by any 
one inside. If such a union with the party of Maximianus does not pollute 
the Donatists, how can the mere report concerning the Africans pollute the 
foreigners? If the lips meet together without offense in the kiss of peace, 
which reciprocally condemned each other, why is each man that is condemned 
by them in the churches very far removed by the intervening sea from their 
jurisdiction, not saluted with a kiss as a faithful Catholic, but driven 
forth with a blast of indignation as an impious pagan? And if, in receiving 
the followers of Maximianus, they made peace in behalf of their own unity, 
far be it from us to find fault with them, save that they cut their own 
throats by their decision, that whereas, to preserve unity in their schism, 
they collect together again what had been parted from themselves, they yet 
scorn to reunite their schism itself to the true unity of the Church.

    CHAP. 13.--14. If, in the interests of the unity of the party of 
Donatus, no one rebaptizes those who were baptized in a wicked schism, and 
men, who are guilty of a crime of such enormity as to be compared by them 
in their Council to those ancient authors of schism whom the earth 
swallowed up alive,(1) are either unpunished after separation, or restored 
again to their position after condemnation; why is it that, in defence of 
the unity of Christ, which is spread throughout the whole inhabited world, 
of which it has been predicted that it shall have dominion from sea to sea, 
and from the river unto the ends of the, earth,(2)--a prediction which 
seems from actual proof to be in process of fulfillment; why is it that, in 
defence of this unity, they do not acknowledge the true and universal law 
of that inheritance which rings forth from the books that are common to us 
all: "I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the 
uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession?"(3) In behalf of the unity 
of Donatus, they are not compelled to call together again what they have 
scattered abroad, but are warned to hear the cry of the Scriptures: why 
will they not understand that they meet with such treatment through the 
mercy of God, that since they brought false charges against the Catholic 
Church, by contact as it were with which they were unwilling to defile 
their own excessive sanctity, they should be compelled by the sovereign 
authority of Optatus Gildonianus to receive again and associate with 
themselves true offenses of the greatest enormity, condemned by the true 
voice, as they say, of their own plenary Council? Let them at length 
perceive how they are filled with the true crimes of their own party, after 
inventing fictitious crimes wherewith to charge their brethren, when, even 
if the charges had been true, they ought at length to feel how much should 
be endured in the cause of peace, and in behalf of Christ's peace to return 
to a Church which did not condemn crimes undiscovered, if on behalf of the 
peace of Donatus they were ready to pardon such as were condemned.

    CHAP. 14.--15. Therefore, brethren, let it suffice us that they should 
be admonished and corrected on the one point of their conduct in the matter 
of the followers of Maximianus. We do not ransack ancient archives, we do 
not bring to light the contents of time honored libraries, we do not 
publish our proofs to distant lands; but we bring in, as  arbiters betwixt 
us, all the proofs derived from our ancestors, we spread abroad the witness 
that cries aloud throughout the world.

    CHAP. 15.--16. Look at the states of Musti(4) and Assura:(5) there are 
many still remaining in this life and in this province who have severed 
themselves, and many from whom they have severed themselves; many who have 
erected an altar, and many against whom that altar has been erected; many 
who have condemned, and many who have been condemned; who have received, 
and who have been received; who have been baptized outside, and not 
baptized again within: if all these things in the cause of unity defile, 
let the defiled hold their tongues; if these things in the cause of unity 
do not defile, let them submit to correction, and terminate their strife.

    CHAP. 16.--17. As for the words which follow in his letter, the writer 
himself could scarcely fail to laugh at them, when, having made an 
unlearned and lying use of the proof in which he quotes the words of 
Scripture, "He who is washed by the dead, what profiteth him his washing?" 
he endeavors to show to us "how far a traditor being still in life may be 
accounted dead." And then he goes on further to say: "That man is dead who 
has not been worthy to be born again in true baptism; he is likewise dead 
who, although born in genuine baptism, has joined himself to a traditor." 
If, therefore, the followers of Maximianus are not dead, why do the 
Donatists say, in their plenary Council, that "the shores are covered with 
their dying bodies?" But if they are dead, whence is there life in the 
baptism which they gave? Again, if Maximianus is not dead, why is a man 
baptized again who had been baptized by him? But if he is dead why is not 
also Felicianus of Musti dead with him, who ordained him, and might have 
died beyond the sea with some African colleague or another who was a 
traditor? Or, if he also is himself dead, how is there life with him in 
your society in those who, having been baptized outside by him who is dead, 
have never been baptized again within?

    CHAP, 17.--18. Then he further adds: "Both are without the life of 
baptism, both he who never had it at all, and he who had it but has lost 
it." He therefore never had it, whom Felicianus, the follower of Maximianus 
or Praetextatus, baptized outside; and these men themselves have lost what 
once they had When, therefore, these were received with their followers, 
who gave to those whom they baptized what previously they did not have? and 
who restored to themselves what they, had lost? But they took away with 
them the  form of baptism, but lost the veritable excellence of baptism by 
their wicked schism. Why do you repudiate the form itself, which is holy at 
all times and all places, in the Catholics whom you have not heard, whilst 
you are willing to acknowledge it in the followers of Maximianus whom you 
have punished?

    19. But whatever he seemed to himself to say by way of accusation about 
the traitor Judas, I see not how it can concern us, who are not proved by 
them to have betrayed our trust; nor, indeed, if such treason were proved 
on the part of any who before our time have died in our communion, would 
that treason in any way defile us by whom it was disavowed, and to whom it 
was displeasing. For if they themselves are not defiled by offenses 
condemned by themselves, and afterwards condoned, how much less can we be 
defiled by what we have disavowed so soon as we have heard of them! However 
weighty, therefore, his invective against traditors, let him be assured 
that they are condemned by me in precisely the same terms. But yet I make a 
distinction; for he accuses one on my side who has long been dead without 
having been condemned in any investigation made by me. I point to a man 
adhering closely to his side, who had been condemned by him, or at least 
had been separated by a sacrilegious schism, and whom he received again 
with undiminished honor.

    CHAP. 18.--20. He says: "You who are a most abandoned traditor have 
come out in the character of a persecutor and murderer of us who keep the 
law." If the followers of Maximianus kept the law when they separated from 
you, then we may acknowledge you as a keeper of the law, when you are 
separated from the Church spread abroad throughout the world. But if you 
raise the question of persecutions, I at once reply: If you have  suffered 
anything unjustly, this does not concern those who, though they disapprove 
of men who act in such a way,(1) yet endure them for the peace that is in 
unity, in a manner deserving of all praise. Wherefore you have nothing to 
bring up against the Lord's wheat, who endure the chaff that is among them 
till the last winnowing, from whom you never would have separated yourself, 
had you not shown yourself lighter than chaff by flying away under the 
blast of temptation before the coming of the Winnower. But not to leave 
this one example, which the Lord hath thrust back in their teeth, to close 
the mouths of these men, for their correction if they will show themselves 
to be wise, but for their confusion if they remain in their folly: if those 
are more just that suffer persecution than those who inflict it, then those 
same followers of Maximianus are the more just, whose basilica was utterly 
overthrown, and who were grievously maltreated by the military following of 
Optatus, when the mandates of the proconsul, ordering that all of them 
should be shut out of the basilicas, were manifestly procured by the 
followers of Primianus. Wherefore, if, when the emperors hated their 
communion, they ventured on such violent measures for the persecution of 
the followers of Maximianus, what would they do if they were enabled to 
work their will by being in communion with kings? And if they did such 
things as I have mentioned for the correction of the wicked, why are they 
surprised that Catholic emperors should decree with greater power that they 
should be worked upon and corrected who endeavor to rebaptize the whole 
Christian world, when they have no ground for differing from them? seeing 
that they, themselves bear witness that it is right to bear with wicked men 
even where they have true charges to bring against them in the cause of 
peace, since they received those whom they had themselves condemned, 
acknowledging the honors conferred among themselves, and the baptism 
administered in schism. Let them at length consider what treatment they 
deserve at the hands of the Christian powers of the world, who are the 
enemies of Christian unity throughout the world. If, therefore, correction 
be bitter, yet let them not fail to be ashamed; lest when they begin to 
read what they themselves have written, they be overcome with laughter, 
when they do not find in themselves what they wish to find in others, and 
fail to recognize(1) in their own case what they find fault with in their 
neighbors.

    CHAP. 19.--21. What, then, does he mean by quoting in his letter the 
words with which our Lord addressed the Jews: "Wherefore, behold, I send 
unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall 
kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge?"(2) For if by the wise 
men and the scribes and the prophets they would have themselves be 
understood, while we were as it were the persecutors of the prophets and 
wise men, why are they unwilling to speak with us, seeing they are sent to 
us? For, indeed, if the man who wrote that epistle which we are at this 
present moment answering, were to be pressed by us to acknowledge it as his 
own, stamping its authenticity with his signature, I question much whether 
he would do it, so thoroughly afraid are they of our possessing any words 
of theirs. For when we were anxious by some means or other to procure the 
latter part of this same letter, because those from whom we obtained it 
were unable to describe the whole of it, no one who was asked for it was 
willing to give it to us, so soon as they knew that we were making a reply 
to the portion which we had. Therefore, when they read how the Lord says to 
the prophet, "Cry aloud, spare not, and write their sins with my pen,"(3) 
these men who are sent to us as prophets have no fears on this score, but 
take every precaution that their crying may not be heard by us: which they 
certainly would not fear if what they spoke of us were true. But their 
apprehension is not groundless, as it is written in the Psalm, "The mouth 
of them that speak lies shall be stopped."(4) For if the reason that they 
do not receive our baptism be that we are a generation of vipers--to use 
the expression in his epistle--why did they receive the baptism of the 
followers of Maximianus, of whom their Council speaks in the following 
terms: "Because the enfolding of a poisoned womb has long concealed the 
baneful offspring of a viper's seed, and the moist concretions of 
[conceived iniquity have by slow heat flowed forth into the members of 
serpents"? Is it hot therefore of themselves also that it is said in the 
same Council, "The poison of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full 
of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction 
and unhappiness is in their ways, and the way of peace have they not 
known"?(5) And yet they now hold these men themselves in undiminished 
honor, and receive within their body those whom these men had baptized 
without.

    CHAP. 20.--22. Wherefore all this about the generation of vipers, and 
the poison of asps under their lips, and all the other things which they 
have said against those which have not known the way of peace, are really, 
if they would but speak the truth, more strictly applicable to themselves, 
since for the sake of the peace of Donatus they received the baptism of 
these men, in respect of which they used the expressions quoted above in 
the wording of the decree of the Council; but the baptism of the Church of 
Christ dispersed throughout the world, from which peace itself came into 
Africa, they repudiate, to the sacrilegious wounding of the peace of 
Christ. Which, therefore, are rather the false prophets, who come in 
sheep's clothing, while inwardly they are ravening wolves,(6)--they who 
either fail to detect the wicked in the Catholic Church, and communicate 
with them in all innocence, or else for the sake of the peace of unity are 
bearing with those whom they cannot separate from the threshing-floor of 
the Lord before the Winnower shall come, or they who do in schism what they 
censure in the Catholic Church, and receive in their own separation, when 
manifest to all and condemned by their own voice, what they profess that 
they shun in the unity of the Church when it calls for toleration, and does 
not even certainly exist?

    CHAP. 21.--23. Lastly, it has been said, as he himself has also quoted, 
"Ye shall know them by their fruits:"(1) let us therefore examine into 
their fruits. You bring up against our predecessors their delivery of the 
sacred books. This very charge we urge with greater probability against 
their accusers themselves. And not to carry our search too far, in the same 
city of Constantina your predecessors ordained Silvanus bishop at the very 
outset of his schism. He, while he was still a subdeacon, was most 
unmistakeably entered as a traditor in the archives of the city.(2) If you 
on your side bring forward documents against our predecessors, all that we 
ask is equal terms, that we should either believe both to be true or both 
to be false. If both are true, you are unquestionably guilty of schism, who 
have pretended that you avoid offenses in the communion of the whole world, 
which you had commonly among you in the small fragment of your own sect. 
But again, if both are false, you are unquestionably guilty of schism, who, 
on account of the false charges of giving up the sacred books, are staining 
yourselves with the heinous offence of severance from the Church. But if we 
have something to urge in accusation while you have nothing, or if our 
charges are true whilst yours are false, it is no longer matter of 
discussion how thoroughly your mouths are closed.

    CHAP. 22.--24. What if the holy and true Church of Christ were to 
convince and overcome you, even if we held no documents in support of our 
cause, or only such as were false, while you had possession of some genuine 
proofs of delivery of the sacred books? what would then remain for you, 
except that, if you would, you should show your love of peace, or otherwise 
should hold your tongues?(3) For whatever, in that case, you might bring 
forward in evidence, I should be able to say with the greatest ease and the 
most perfect truth, that then you are bound to prove as much to the full 
and catholic unity of the Church already spread abroad and established 
throughout so many nations, to the end that you should remain within, and 
that those whom you convict should be expelled. And if you have endeavored 
to do this, certainly you have not been able to make good your proof; and 
being vanquished or enraged, you have separated yourselves, with all the 
heinous guilt of sacrilege, from the guiltless men who could not condemn on 
insufficient proof. But if you have not even endeavored to do this, then 
with most accursed and unnatural blindness you have cut yourselves off from 
the wheat of Christ, which grows throughout His whole fields, that is, 
throughout the whole world, until the end, because you have taken offense 
at a few tares in Africa.

    CHAP. 23.--25. In conclusion, the Testament is said to have been given 
to the flames by certain men in the time of persecution. Now let its 
lessons be read, from whatever source it has been brought to light. 
Certainly in the beginning of the promises of the Testator this is found to 
have been said to Abraham: "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth 
be blessed;"(4) and this saying is truthfully interpreted by the apostle: 
"To thy seed," he says, "which is Christ."(5) No betrayal on the part of 
any man has made the promises of God of none effect. Hold communion with 
all the nations of the earth, and then you may boast that you have 
preserved the Testament from the destruction of the flames. But if you will 
not do so, which party is the rather to be believed to have insisted on the 
burning of the Testament, save that which will not assent to its teaching 
when it is brought to light? For how much more certainly, without any 
sacrilegious rashness, can he be held to have joined the company of 
traditors who now persecutes with his tongue the Testament which they are 
said to have persecuted with the flames! You charge us with the 
persecution: the true wheat of the Lord answers you, "Either it was done 
justly, or it was done by the chaff that was among us." What have you to 
say to this? You object that we have no baptism: the same true wheat of the 
Lord answers you, that the form of the sacrament even within the Church 
fails to profit some, as it did no good to Simon Magus when he was 
baptized, much more it fails to profit those who are without. Yet that 
baptism remains in them when they depart, is proved from this, that it is 
not restored to them when they return. Never, therefore, except by the 
greatest shamelessness, will you be able to cry out against that wheat, or 
to call them false prophets clad in sheep's clothing, whilst inwardly they 
are ravening wolves; since either they do not know the wicked in the unity 
of the Catholic Church, or for the sake of unity bear with those whom they 
know.

    CHAP. 24.--26. But let us turn to the consideration of your fruits. I 
pass over the tyrannous exercise of authority in the cities, and especially 
in the estates of other men; I pass over the madness of the 
Circumcelliones, and the sacrilegious and profane adoration of the bodies 
of those who had thrown themselves of their own accord over precipices, the 
revellings of drunkenness, and the ten years' groaning of the whole of 
Africa under the cruelty of the one man Optatus Gildonanius: all this I 
pass over, because there are certain among you who cry out that these 
things are, and have ever been displeasing to them. But they say that they 
bore with them in the cause of peace, because they could not put them down; 
wherein they condemn themselves by their own judgment: for if indeed they 
felt such love for peace, they never would have rent in twain the bond of 
unity. For what madness can be greater, than to be willing to abandon peace 
in the midst of peace itself, and to be anxious to retain it in the midst 
of discord? Therefore, for the sake of those who pretend that they do not 
see the evils of this same faction of Donatus, which all men see and blame, 
ignoring them even to the extent of saying of Optatus himself, "What did he 
do?" "Who accused him?" "Who convicted him?" "I know nothing," "I saw 
nothings" "I heard nothing,"--for the sake of these, I say, who pretend 
that they are ignorant of what is generally notorious, the party of 
Maximianus has arisen, through whom their eyes are opened, and their mouths 
are closed: for they openly sever themselves; they openly erect altar 
against altar; they are openly in a Council(1) called sacrilegious and 
vipers, and swift to shed blood, to be compared with Dathan and Abiram and 
Korah, and are condemned in cutting terms of abhorrence; and are as openly 
received again with undiminished honors in company with those whom they 
have baptized. Such are the fruits of these men, who do all this for the 
peace of Donatus, that they may clothe themselves in sheep's clothing, and 
reject the peace of Christ throughout the world that they may be ravening 
wolves within the fold.

    CHAP. 25.--27. I think that I have left unanswered none of the 
statements in the letter of Donatus, so far at least as relates to what I 
have been able to find in that part of which we are in possession. I should 
be glad if they would produce the other part as well, in case there should 
be anything in it which does not admit of refutation. But as for these 
answers which we have made to him, with the help of God, I admonish your 
Christian love, that ye not only communicate them to those who seek for 
them, but also force them on those who show no longing for them. Let them 
answer anything they will; and if they shrink from sending a reply to us, 
let them at any rate send letters to their own party, only not forbidding 
that the contents should be shown to us. For if they do this, they show 
their fruits most openly, by which they are proved to demonstration to be 
ravening wolves disguised in sheep's clothing, in that they secretly lay 
snares for our sheep, and openly shrink from giving any answer to the 
shepherds. We only lay to their charge the sin of schism, in which they are 
all most thoroughly involved,--not the offenses of certain of their party, 
which some of them declare to be displeasing to themselves. If they, on the 
other hand, abstain from charging us with the sins of other men, they have 
nothing they can lay to our charge, and therefore they are wholly unable to 
defend themselves from the charge of schism; because it is by a wicked 
severance that they have separated themselves from the threshing-floor of 
the Lord, and from the innocent company of the corn that is growing 
throughout the world, on account of charges which either are false, and 
invented by themselves, or even if true, involve the chaff alone.

    CHAP 26.--28. But it is possible that you may expect of me that I 
should go on to refute what he has introduced about Manichaeus. Now, in 
respect of this, the only thing that offends me is that he has censured a 
most pestilent and pernicious error--I mean the heresy of the Manichaeans--
in terms of wholly inadequate severity, if indeed they amount to censure at 
all, though the Catholic Church has broken down his defenses by the 
strongest evidence of truth.(2) For the inheritance of Christ, established 
in all nations, is secure against heresies which have been shut out from 
the inheritance; but, as the Lord says, "How can Satan cast out Satan?"(3) 
so how can the error of the Donatists have power to overthrow the error of 
the Manichaeans?(4)

    CHAP. 27.--29. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, though that error is 
exposed and overcome in many ways, and dare not oppose the truth on any 
show of reason whatsoever, but only with the unblushing obstinacy of 
impudence; yet, not to load your memory with a multitude of proofs, I would 
have you bear in mind this one action of the followers of Maximianus, 
confront them with this one fact, thrust this in their teeth, to make them 
their treacherous tongues, destroy their calumny with this, as it were a 
three-pronged dart destroying a three-headed monster. They charge us with 
betrayal of the sacred books; they charge us with persecution; they charge 
us with false baptism: to all their charges make the same answer about the 
followers of Maximianus. For they think that the proofs are lost which show 
that their predecessors gave the sacred volumes to the flames; but this at 
least they cannot hide, that they have received with unimpaired honors 
those who were stained with the sacrilege of schism. Also they think that 
those most violent persecutions are hidden, which they direct against any 
who oppose them whenever they are able; but whilst spiritual persecution 
surpasses bodily persecution, they received with undiminished honors the 
followers of Maximianus, whom they themselves persecuted in the body, and 
of whom they themselves said, "Their feet are swift to shed blood;"(1) and 
this at any rate they cannot hide.

    CHAP. 28. Finally, they think that the question of baptism is hidden, 
with which they deceive wretched souls. But whilst they say that none have 
baptism who were baptized outside the communion of the one Church, they 
received with undiminished honors the followers of Maximianus, with those 
whom they baptized in schism outside the Donatist communion, and this at 
least they cannot hide.

    30. "But these things," they say, "bring no pollution in the cause of 
peace; and it is well to bend to mercy the rigor of extreme severity, that 
broken branches may be grafted in anew." Accordingly, in this way the whole 
question is settled, by defeat in them, by the impossibility of defeat for 
us; for if the name of peace be assumed for even the faintest shadow of 
defense to justify the bearing with wicked men in schism, then beyond all 
doubt the violation of true peace itself involves detestable guilt, with 
nothing to be said in its defence throughout the unity of the world.

    CHAP. 29.--31. These things, brethren, I would have you retain as the 
basis of your action and preaching with untiring gentleness: love men, 
while you destroy errors; take of the truth without pride; strive for the 
truth without cruelty. Pray for those whom you refute and convince of 
error. For the prophet prays to God for mercy upon such as these, saying, 
"Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Thy name, O Lord."(2) And 
this, indeed, the Lord has done already, so as to fill the faces of the 
followers of Maximianus with shame in the sight of all mankind: it only 
remains that they should learn how to blush to their soul's health. For so 
they will be able to seek the name of the Lord, from which they are turned 
away to their utter destruction, whilst they exalt their own name in the 
place of that of Christ. May ye live and persevere in Christ, and be 
multiplied, and abound in the love of God, and in love towards one another, 
and towards all men, brethren well beloved.

BOOK II.(1)

IN WHICH AUGUSTIN REPLIES TO ALL THE SEVERAL STATEMENTS IN THE LETTER OF 
PETILIANUS, AS THOUGH DISPUTING WITH AN ADVERSARY FACE TO FACE,

    CHAP. 1.--1. That we made a full and sufficient answer to the first 
part of the letter of Petilianus, which was all that we had been able to 
find, will be remembered by all who were able to read or hear what we 
replied. But since the whole of it was afterwards found and copied by our 
brethren, and sent to us with the view that we should answer it as a whole, 
this task was one which our pen could not escape,--not that he says 
anything new in it, to which answer has not been already made in many ways 
and at various times; but still, on account of the brethren of slower 
comprehension, who, when they read a matter in any place, cannot always 
refer to everything that has been said upon the same subject, I will comply 
with those who urge me by all means to reply to every point, and that as 
though we were carrying on the discussion face to face in the form of a 
dialogue. I will set down the words of his epistle under his name, and I 
will give the answer under my own name, as though it had all been taken 
down by reporters while we were debating. And so there will be no one who 
can complain either that I have passed anything over, or that they have 
been unable to understand it for want of distinction between the parties to 
the discussion; at the same time that the Donatists themselves, who are 
unwilling to argue the question in our presence, as is shown by the letters 
which they have circulated among their party, may thus not fail to find the 
truth answering them point by point, just as though they were discussing 
the matter with us face to face.

    2. In the very beginning of the letter PETILIANUS said: "Petilianus, a 
bishop, to his well-beloved brethren, fellow-priests, and deacons, 
appointed ministers with us throughout our diocese in the gospel, grace be 
to you and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ."

    3. AUGUSTIN answered: I acknowledge the apostolic greeting. You see who 
you are that employ it, but see from what source you have learned what you 
say. For in these terms Paul salutes the Romans, and in the same terms the 
Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Philippians, 
the Thessalonians. What madness is it, therefore, to be unwilling to share 
the salvation of peace with those very Churches in whose epistles you 
learned its form of salutation?

    CHAP. 2.--4. PETILIANUS said: "Those who have polluted their souls with 
a guilty laver, under the name of baptism, reproach us with baptizing 
twice,--than whose obscenity, indeed, any kind of filth is more cleanly, 
seeing that through a perversion of cleanliness they have come to be made 
fouler by their washing."

    5. AUGUSTIN answered: We are neither made fouler by our washing, nor 
cleaner by yours. But when the water of baptism is given to any one in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, it is neither 
ours nor yours, but His of whom it was said to John, "Upon whom thou shalt 
see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which 
baptizeth with the Holy Ghost."(2)

    CHAP. 3.--6. PETILIANUS said: "For what we look to is the conscience of 
the giver, to cleanse that of the recipient."

    7. AUGUSTIN answered: We therefore need have no anxiety about the 
conscience of Christ, But if you assert any man to be the giver, be he who 
he may, there will be no certainty about the cleansing of the recipient, 
because there is no certainty about the conscience of the giver.

    CHAP. 4.--8. PETILIANUS said: "For he who receives faith from the 
faithless, receives not faith but guilt."

    9. AUGUSTIN answered: Christ is not faithless, from whom the faithful 
man receives not guilt but faith. For he believeth on Him that justifieth 
the ungodly, that his faith may be counted for righteousness.(1)

    CHAP.5.--10. PETILIANUS said: "For everything consists of an origin and 
root; and if it have not something for a head, it is nothing: nor does 
anything well receive second birth, unless it be born again of good seed."

    11. AUGUSTIN answered: Why will you put yourself forward in the room of 
Christ, when you will not place yourself under Him? He is the origin, and 
root, and head of him who is being born, and in Him we feel no fear, as we 
must in any man, whoever he may be, lest he should prove to be false and of 
abandoned character, and we should be found to be sprung from an abandoned 
source, growing from an abandoned root, united to an abandoned head. For 
what man can feel secure about a man, when it is written, "Cursed be the 
man that trusteth in man?" But the seed of which we are born again is the 
word of God, that is, the gospel. Whence the apostle says, "For in Christ 
Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel."(3) And yet he allows even 
those to preach the gospel who were preaching it not in purity, and 
rejoices in their preaching;(4) because, although they were preaching it 
not in purity, but seeking their own, not the things which are Jesus 
Christ's,(5) yet the gospel which they preached was pure. And the Lord had 
said of certain of like character, "Whatsoever they bid you observe, that 
observe and do; but do not yet after their works: for they say, and do not. 
If, therefore, what is in itself pure is preached in purity, then the 
preacher himself also, in that he is a partner with the word, has his share 
in begetting the believer; but if he himself be not regenerate, and yet 
what he preaches be pure, then the believer is born not from the barrenness 
of the minister but from the fruitfulness of the word.

    CHAP. 6.--12. PETILIANUS said: "This being the case, brethren, what 
perversity must it be, that he who is guilty through his own sins should 
make another free from guilt, when the Lord Jesus Christ says, 'Every good 
tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil 
fruit: do men gather grapes of thorns?'(7) And again: 'A good man, out of 
the good treasure of the heart, bringeth forth good things: and an evil 
man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things.'"(8)

    13. AUGUSTIN answered: No man, even though he be not guilty through his 
own sins, can make his neighbor free from sin, because he is not God. 
Otherwise, if we were to expect that out of the innocence of the baptizer 
should be produced the innocence of the baptized, then each will be the 
more innocent in proportion as he may have found a more innocent person by 
whom to be baptized; and will himself be the less innocent in proportion as 
he by whom he is baptized is less innocent. And if the man who baptizes 
happens to entertain hatred against another man, this will also be imputed 
to him who is baptized. Why, therefore, does the wretched man hasten to be 
baptized,--that  his own sins may be forgiven him, or that those of others 
may be reckoned against him? Is he like a merchant ship, to discharge one 
burden, and to take on him another? But by the good tree and its good 
fruit, and the corrupt tree and its evil fruit, we are wont to understand 
men and their works, as is consequently shown in those other words which 
you also quoted: "A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, 
bringeth forth good things: and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, 
bringeth forth evil things." But when a man preaches the word of God, or 
administers the sacraments of God, he does not, if he is a bad man, preach 
or minister out of his own treasure; but he will be counted among those of 
whom it is said, "Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but 
do not ye after their works:" for they bid you observe what is God's, but 
their works are their own. For if it is as you say, that is, if the fruit 
of those who baptize consist in the baptized persons themselves, you 
declare a great woe against Africa, if a young Optatus has sprung up for 
every one that Optatus baptized.

    CHAP. 7.--4. PETILIANUS said: "And again, 'He who is baptized by one 
that is dead, his washing profiteth him nothing.'(9) He did not mean that 
the baptizer was a corpse, a lifeless body, the remains of a man ready for 
burial, but one lacking the Spirit of God, who is compared to a dead body, 
as He declares to a disciple in another place, according to the witness of 
the gospel. For His disciple says, 'Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my 
father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me, and let the dead bury their 
dead.'(1) The father of the disciple was not baptized. He declared him as a 
pagan to belong to the company of pagans; unless he said this of the 
unbelieving, The dead cannot bury the dead. He was dead, therefore, not as 
smitten by some death, but as smitten even during life. For he who so lives 
as to be doomed to eternal death is tortured by a death in life. To be 
baptized, therefore, by the dead, is to have received not life but death. 
We must therefore consider and declare how far the traditor is to be 
accounted dead while yet alive. He is dead who has not deserved to be born 
again with a true baptism; he is ikewise dead who, having been born again 
with a true baptism, has become involved with a traditor. Both are wanting 
in the life of baptism,--both he who never had it at all, and he who had it 
and has lost it. For the Lord Jesus Christ says, 'There shall come to that 
man seven spirits more wicked than the former one, and the last state of 
that man shall be worse than the first.'"(2)

    15. AUGUSTIN answered: Seek with greater care to know in what sense the 
words which you have quoted from Scripture in proof of your position were 
really uttered, and how they should be understood. For that all unrighteous 
persons are wont to be called dead in a mystical sense is clear enough; but 
Christ, to whom true baptism belongs, which you say is false because of the 
faults of men, is alive, sitting at the right hand of the Father, and He 
will not die any more through any infirmity of the flesh: death will no 
more have dominion over Him.(3) And they who are baptized with His baptism 
are not baptized by one who is dead. And if it so happen that certain 
ministers, being deceitful workers, seeking their own, not the things which 
are Jesus Christ's, proclaiming the gospel not in purity, and preaching 
Christ of contention and envy, are to be called dead because of their 
unrighteousness, yet the sacrament of the living God does not die even in 
one that is dead. For that Simon was dead who was baptized by Philip in 
Samaria, who wished to purchase the gift of God for money; but the baptism 
which he had lived in him still to work his punishment.

    16. But how false the statement is which you make, that "both are 
wanting in the life of baptism, both he who never had it at all, and he who 
had it and has lost it," you may see from this, that in the case of those 
who apostatize after having been baptized, and who return through 
penitence, baptism is not restored to them, as it would be restored if it 
were lost. In what manner, indeed, do your dead men baptize according to 
your interpretation? Must we not reckon the drunken among the dead (to say 
nothing of the rest, and to mention only what is well known and of daily 
experience among all), seeing that the apostle says of the widow, "But she 
that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth?"(5) In the next place, in 
that Council of yours, in which you condemned Maximianus with his advisers 
or his ministers, have you forgotten with what eloquence you said, "Even 
after the manner of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the bodies of the 
dying, on whom the weightier punishment falls in death itself, in that, 
after their life has been wrung from them by the avenging waters, they have 
not found so much as burial?" And yet you yourselves may see whether or no 
one of them, Felicianus, has been brought to life again; yet he has with 
him within the communion of your body those whom he baptized outside. As 
therefore he is baptized by One that is alive, who is clothed with the 
baptism of the living Christ, so he is baptized by the dead who is wrapped 
in the baptism of the dead Saturn, or any one like him; that we may set 
forth in the meanwhile, with what brevity we may, in what sense the words 
which you have quoted may be understood without any cavilling on the part 
of any one of us. For, in the sense in which they are received by you, you 
make no effort to explain them, but only strive to entangle us together 
with yourselves.

    CHAP. 8.--17. PETILIANUS said: "We must consider, I say, and declare 
how far the treacherous traditor is to be accounted dead while yet in life. 
Judas was an apostle when he betrayed Christ; and the same man was already 
dead, having spiritually lost the office of an apostle, being destined 
afterwards to die by hanging himself, as it is written: 'I have sinned,' 
says he, 'in that I have betrayed the innocent blood; and he departed, and 
went and hanged himself.'(6) The traitor perished by the rope: he left the 
rope for others like himself, of whom the Lord Christ cried aloud to the 
Father, 'Father, those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is 
lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.'(7) 
For David of old had passed this sentence on him who was to betray Christ 
to the unbelievers: 'Let another take his office. Let his children be 
fatherless, and his wife a widow.'(1) See how mighty is the spirit of the 
prophets, that it was able to see all future things as though they were 
present, so that a traitor who was to be born hereafter should be condemned 
many centuries before. Finally, that the said sentence should be completed, 
the holy Matthias received the bishopric of that lost apostle. Let no one 
be so dull, no one so faithless, as to dispute this: Matthias won for 
himself a victory, not a wrong, in that he carried off the spoils of the 
traitor from the victory of the Lord Christ. Why then, after this, do you 
claim to yourself a bishopric as the heir of a worse traitor? Judas 
betrayed Christ in the flesh to the unbelievers; you in the spirit madly 
betrayed the holy gospel to the flames of sacrilege. Judas betrayed the 
Lawgiver to the unbelievers; you, as it were, betraying all that he had 
left, gave up the law of God to be destroyed by men. Whilst, had you loved 
the law, like the youthful Maccabees, you would have welcomed death for the 
sake of the laws of God (if indeed that can be said to be death to men 
which makes them immortal because they died for the Lord); for of those 
brethren we learn that one replied to the sacrilegious tyrant with these 
words of faith 'Thou like a fury takest us out of this present life; but 
the King of the world (who reigns for ever, and of His kingdom there shall 
be no end) shall raise us up who have died for His laws, unto everlasting 
life.'(2) If you were to burn with fire the testament of a dead man, would 
you not be punished as the falsifier of a will? What therefore is likely to 
become of you who have burned the most holy law of our God and Judge? Judas 
repented of his deed even in death; you not only do not repent, but stand 
forth as a persecutor and butcher of us who keep the law, whilst you are 
the most wicked of traditors."

    18. AUGUSTIN answered: See what a difference there is between your 
calumnious words and our truthful assertions. Listen for a little while. 
See how you have exaggerated the sin of delivering up the sacred books, 
comparing us in most odious terms, like some sophistical inventor of 
charges, with the traitor Judas. But when I shall have answered you on this 
point with the utmost brevity,--I did not do what you assert; I did not 
deliver up the sacred books; your charge is false; you will never be able 
to prove it,--will not all that smoke of mighty words presently vanish 
away? Or will you perchance endeavor to prove the truth of what you say? 
This, then, you should do first; and then you might rise against us, as 
against men who were already convicted, with whatever mass of invective you 
might choose. Here is one absurdity: behold again a second.

    19. You yourself, when speaking of the foretelling of the condemnation 
of Judas, used these expressions: "See how mighty is the spirit of the 
prophets, that it was able to see all future things as though they were 
present, so that a traitor who was to be born hereafter should be condemned 
many centuries before;" and yet you did not see that in the same sure 
prophecy, and certain and unshaken truth, in which it was foretold that one 
of the disciples should hereafter betray the Christ; it was also foretold 
that the whole world should hereafter believe in Christ. Why did you pay 
attention in the prophecy to the man who betrayed Christ, and in the same 
place give no heed to the world for which Christ was betrayed? Who betrayed 
Christ? Judas. To whom did he betray Him? To the Jews. What did the Jews do 
to Him? "They pierced my hands and my feet," says the Psalmist. "I may tell 
all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among 
them, and cast tots upon my vesture."(3) Of what importance, then, that is 
which is bought at such a price, I would have you read a little later in 
the psalm itself: "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto 
the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. 
For the kingdom is the Lord's; and He is the governor among the 
nations."(4) But who is able to suffice for the quotation of all the other 
innumerable prophetic passages which bear witness to the world that is 
destined to believe? Yet you quote a prophecy because you see in it the man 
who sold Christ: you do not see in it the possession which Christ bought by 
being sold. Here is the second absurdity: behold again the third.

    20. Among the many other expressions in your invective, you said: "If 
you were to burn with fire the testament of a dead man, would you not be 
punished as the falsifier of a will? What therefore is likely to become of 
you who have burned the most holy law of our God and Judge?" In these words 
you have paid no attention to what certainly  ought to have moved you, to 
the question of how it might be that we should burn the testament, and yet 
stand fast in the inheritance which was described in that testament; but it 
is marvellous that you have preserved the testament and lost the 
inheritance. Is it not written in that testament, "Ask of me, and I shall 
give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 
earth for thy possession"?(1) Take part in this inheritance, and you may 
bring what charges you will against me about the testament. For what 
madness is it, that while you shrank from committing the testament to the 
flames, you should yet strive against the words of the testator! We, on the 
other hand, though we hold in our hands the records of the Church and of 
the State, in which we read that those who ordained a rival bishop(2) in 
opposition to Caecilianus were rather the betrayers of the sacred books, 
yet do not on this account insult you, or pursue you with invectives, or 
mourn over the ashes of the sacred pages in your hands, or contrast the 
burning torments of the Maccabees with the sacrilege of your fear, saying, 
"You should deliver your own limbs to the flames rather than the utterances 
of God." For we are unwilling to be so absurd as to excite an empty uproar 
against you on account of the deeds of others, which you either know 
nothing of, or else repudiate. But in that we see you separated from the 
communion of the whole world (a sin both of the greatest magnitude, and 
manifest to all mankind, and common to you all), if I were desirous of 
exaggerating, I should find time failing me sooner than words. And if you 
should seek to defend yourself on this charge, it could only be by bringing 
accusations against the whole world, of such a kind that, if they could be 
maintained, you would simply be furnishing matter for further accusation 
against yourself; if they could not be maintained, there is in them no 
defence for you. Why therefore do you puff yourself up against me about the 
betrayal of the sacred books, which concerns neither you nor me if we abide 
by the agreement not to charge each other with the sins of other men: and 
which, if that agreement does not stand, affects you rather than me? And, 
yet, even without any violation of that agreement, I think I may say with 
perfect justice that he should be deemed a partner with him who delivered 
up Christ who has not delivered himself up to Christ in company with the 
whole world. "Then," says the apostle, "then are ye Abraham's seed, and 
heirs according to the promise."(3) And again he says, "Heirs of God, and 
joint-heirs with Christ."(4) And the same apostle shows that the seed of 
Abraham belongs to all nations from the promise which was given to Abraham, 
"In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."(5) Wherefore I 
consider that I am only making a fair demand in asking that we should for a 
moment consider the testament of God, which has already long been opened, 
and that we should consider every one to be himself an heir of the traitor 
whom we do not find to be a joint-heir with Him whom he betrayed; that 
every one should belong to him who sold Christ who denies that Christ has 
bought the whole world. For when He showed Himself after His resurrection 
to His disciples, and gave His limbs to those who doubted, that they should 
handle them, He says this to them, "For thus it is written, and thus it 
behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead the third day: 
and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name 
among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."(6) See from what an inheritance 
you estrange yourselves! see what an Heir you resist! Can it really be that 
a man would spare Christ if He were walking here on earth who speaks 
against Him while He sits in heaven? Do you not yet understand that 
whatever you allege against us you allege against His words? A Christian 
world is promised and believed in: the promise is fulfilled, and it is 
denied. Consider, I entreat of you, what you ought to suffer for such 
impiety. And yet, if I know not what you have suffered,--if I have not seen 
it, have not wrought it,--then do you to-day, who do not suffer the 
violence of my persecution, render to me an account of your separation. But 
you are likely to say over and over again what, unless you prove it, can 
affect no one, and if you prove it, has no bearing upon me.

    CHAP. 9.--21. PETILIANUS said: "Hemmed in, therefore, by these 
offenses, you cannot be a true bishop."

    22. AUGUSTIN answered: By what offenses? What have you shown? What have 
you proved? And if you have proved charges on the part of I know not whom, 
what has that to do with the seed of Abraham, in which all the nations of 
the earth are blessed?

    CHAP. 10.--23. PETILIANUS said: "Did the apostle persecute any one? or 
did Christ betray any one?"

    24. AUGUSTIN answered: I might indeed say that Satan himself was worse 
than all wicked men; and yet the apostle delivered a man over to him for 
the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of 
the Lord Jesus.(1) And in the same way he delivered over others, of whom he 
says, "Whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to 
blaspheme."(2) And the Lord Christ drove out the impious merchants from the 
temple with scourges; in which connection we also find advanced the 
testimony of Scripture, where it says, 'The zeal of Thine house hath eaten 
me up."(3) So that we do find the apostle delivering over to condemnation, 
and Christ a persecutor. All this I might say, and put you into no small 
heat and perturbation, so that you would be compelled to inquire, not into 
the complaints of those who suffer, but into the intention of those who 
cause the suffering. But do not trouble yourself about this; I do not say 
this. But I do say that it has nothing to do with the seed of, Abraham, 
which is in all nations, if anything has been done to you which ought not 
to have been done, perhaps by the chaff among the harvest of the Lord, 
which in spite of this is  found among all nations. Do you therefore  
render an account of your separation. But first, consider what kind of men 
you have among you, with whom you would not wish to be reproached; and see 
how unjustly you act, when you cast in our teeth the acts of other men, 
even if you proved what you assert. Therefore it will be found that there 
is no ground for your separation.

    CHAP. 11.--25. PETILIANUS said: "Yet some will be found to say, We are 
not the sons of a traditor. Any one is the son of that man whose deeds he 
imitates. For those are most assuredly sons, and at the same time bear a 
strong resemblance to their parents, who are born in the likeness of their 
parents, not only as being of their flesh and blood, but in respect of 
their characters and deeds."

    26. AUGUSTIN answered: A little while ago you were saying nothing 
contrary to us, now you even begin to say something in our favor. For this 
proposition of yours binds you to as much as this, that if you shall fail 
to-day to convict us, with whom you are arguing, of being traditors and 
murderers, and anything else with which you charge us, you will then be 
wholly powerless to hurt us by any charge of the kind which you may prove 
against those who have gone before us. For we cannot be the sons of those 
to whose deeds our actions bear no resemblance. And see to what you have 
committed yourself. If you should be so successful as to convict some man, 
even of our own times, and living with us, of any guilt of the kind, that 
is in no way to the prejudice of all the nations of the earth who are 
blessed in the seed of Abraham, by separating yourself from whom you are 
found to be guilty of sacrilege. Accordingly, unless (as is altogether 
impossible) you are acquainted with all men that exist throughout the 
world, and have not only made yourself familiar with all their characters 
and deeds, but have also proved that they are as bad as you describe, you 
have no ground for reproaching all the world, which is among the saints, 
with parentage of I know not what description, to whom you prove that they 
are like. Nor will it help you at all, even if you are able to show that 
those who are not of the same character take the holy sacraments in common 
with those who are. In the first place, because you ought yourselves to 
look at those with whom you celebrate those sacraments, to whom you give 
them, from whom you receive them, and whom you would be unwilling to have 
cast up against you as a reproach. And again, if all those are the sons of 
Judas, who was the devil among the apostles, who imitate his deeds, why do 
we not call those of the sons of the apostles who make such men partakers, 
not in their own deeds, but in the sacraments of the Lord, as the apostles 
partook of the supper of the Lord in company with that traitor? and in this 
way they are very different from you, who cast in the teeth of men who are 
striving for the preservation of unity the very thing that you do to the 
rending asunder of unity.

    CHAP. 12.--27. PETILIANUS said: "The Lord Jesus said to the Jews 
concerning Himself, 'If I do not the works of my Father, believe me 
not.'"(4)

    28. AUGUSTIN answered: I have already answered above, This is both 
true, and makes for us against you.

    CHAP. 13.--29. PETILIANUS said: Over and over again He reproaches the 
false speakers and liars in such terms as these: 'Ye are the children of 
the devil, for he also was a slanderer from the beginning, and abode not in 
the truth.'"

    30. AUGUSTIN answered: We are not wont to say, "He was a slanderer," 
but "He was a murderer."(5) But we ask how it was that the devil was a 
murderer from the beginning; and we find that he slew the first man, not by 
drawing a sword, nor by applying to him any bodily violence, but by 
persuading him to sin, and thus driving him from the happiness of Paradise. 
What, then, was Paradise is now represented by the Church. Therefore those 
are the sons of the devil who slay men by withdrawing them from the Church. 
But as by the words of God we know what was the situation of Paradise, so 
now by the words of Christ we have learned where the Church is to be found: 
"Throughout all nations," He says, "beginning at Jerusalem." Whosoever, 
therefore, separates a man from that complete whole to place him in any 
single part, is proved to be a son of the devil and a murderer. But see, 
further, what is the application of the expression which you yourself 
employed in saying of the devil, "He was a slanderer, and abode not in the 
truth." For you bring an accusation against the whole world on account of 
the sins of others, though even those others themselves you were more able 
to accuse than to convict; and you abode not in the truth of Christ. For He 
says that the Church is "throughout all nations, beginning at Jerusalem;" 
but ye say that it is in the party of Donatus.

    CHAP. 14.--31. PETILIANUS said: "In the third place, also, He calls the 
madness of persecutors in like manner by this name, 'Ye generation of 
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send 
unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall 
kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and 
persecute them from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous 
blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood 
of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the 
altar.'(1) Are they then really the sons of vipers according to the flesh, 
and not rather serpents in mind, and three-tongued malice, and deadliness 
of touch, and burning with the spirit of poison? They have truly become 
vipers, who by their bites have vomited forth death against the innocent 
people."

    32. AUGUSTIN answered: If I were to say that this is said of men of 
character like unto ourselves, you would reply, "Prove it." at then, have 
you proved it? Or if you think that it is proved by the mere fact of its 
being uttered, there is no need to repeat the same words. Pronounce the 
same judgment against yourselves as coming from us to you. See you not that 
I too have proved it, if this amounts to proof? And yet I would have you 
learn what is really meant by proof. For indeed I do not even seek for 
evidence from without to enable me to prove you vipers. For be well assured 
that this very fact marks in you the nature of vipers, that you have not in 
your mouth the foundation of truth, but the poison of slanderous abuse, as 
it is written, "The poison of asps is under their lips."(2) And because 
this might be said indiscriminately by any one against any one, as though 
it were asked, Under whose lips? he immediately adds, "Their mouth is full 
of cursing and bitterness."(3) When, therefore, you say such things as this 
against men dispersed throughout the whole world, of whom you know nothing 
whatsoever, and many of whom have never heard the name either of 
Caecilianus or of Donatus, and when you do not hear them answering amid 
silence, Nothing of what you say has reference to us; we never saw it; we 
never did it; we are totally at a loss to understand what you are saying,--
seeing that you desire nothing else than to say what you are entirely 
powerless to prove, how can you help allowing that your mouth is full of 
cursing and bitterness? See, therefore, whether you can possibly show that 
you are not vipers,(4) unless you show that all Christians throughout all 
nations of the world are traditors, and murderers, and anything but 
Christians. Nay, in very truth, even though you should be able to know and 
set before us the lives and deeds of every individual man throughout the 
world, yet before you can do that, seeing that you act as you do without 
any consideration, your mouth is that of a viper, your mouth is full of 
cursing and bitterness. Show to us now, if you can, what prophet, what wise 
man, what scribe we have slain, or crucified, or scourged in our 
synagogues. Look how much labor you have expended without in any way being 
able to prove that Donatus and Marculus(5) were prophets, or wise men, or 
scribes, because, in fact, they were nothing of the sort. But even if you 
could prove as much as this, what progress would you have made towards 
proving that they had been killed by us, when even we ourselves did not so 
much as know them? and how much less the whole world, whom you calumniate 
with poisonous mouth?(6) Or whence will you be able to prove that we have a 
spirit like that of those who murdered them, when you actually cannot show 
that they were murdered by any one at all? Look carefully to all these 
points, see whether you can prove any single one of them either about the 
whole world, or to the satisfaction of the whole world,--in your 
persevering calumnies against which you show that the charges are true in 
you, which you falsely propagate against the world.

    33. Further, even if we should desire to prove you to be slayers of the 
prophets, it would be too long a task to collect the evidence through all 
the several instances of the slaughter which your infuriated leaders of the 
Circumcelliones, and the actual crowd of men inflamed by wine and madness, 
not only have committed since the beginning of your schism, but even 
continue to commit at the present time. To take the case nearest at hand. 
Let the divine utterances be produced, which are commonly in the hands of 
both of us. Let us consider those to be murderers of the prophets whom we 
find contradicting the words of the prophets. What more learned definition 
could be given? What could admit of speedier proof? You would be acting 
less, cruelly in piercing the bodies of the prophets, with a sword, than in 
endeavoring to destroy the words of the prophets with your tongue.  The 
prophet says, "All the ends of the world l shall remember and turn unto the 
Lord."(1) Behold and see how this is being done, how it is being fulfilled. 
But you not only close your ears in disbelief against what is said, but you 
even thrust out your tongues in madness to speak against what is already 
being done. Abraham heard the promise, "In thy seed shall all the nations 
of the earth be blessed,"(2) and "he believed, and it was counted unto him 
for righteousness."(3) You see the fact accomplished, and you cry out 
against it; and you will not that it should be counted unto you for 
unrighteousness, as it fairly would be counted, even if your refusal to 
believe was not on the accomplishment, but only on the utterance of the 
prophecy. Nay, not only are you not willing that it should be counted unto 
you for unrighteousness, but even what you suffer as the punishment of this 
impiety you would fain have counted unto you for righteousness. Or if your 
conduct is not a persecution of the prophets, because your instrument is 
not the sword but the tongue, what was the reason of its being said trader 
divine inspiration, "The sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, 
and their tongue a sharp sword"?(4) But what time would suffice me to 
collect from all the prophets all the testimonies to the Church dispersed 
throughout the world, all of which you endeavor to destroy and render 
nought by contradicting them? But you are caught; for "their sound is gone 
out into all lands, and their words to the end of the world."(5) I will, 
however, advance this one saying from the mouth of the Lord, who is the 
Witness of witnesses. "All things must be fulfilled," He says, "which were 
written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, 
concerning me." And what these were let us hear from Himself: "Then opened 
He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said 
unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to 
rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins 
should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at 
Jerusalem."(6) See what it is that is written in the law of Moses, and in 
the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning the Lord. See what the Lord 
Himself revealed about Himself and about the Church, making Himself 
manifest, uttering promises about the Church. But for you, see that you 
resist such manifest proofs as these, and as you cannot destroy them, 
endeavor to pervert them, what would you do, if you were to come across the 
bodies of the prophets, when you rage so madly against the utterances of 
the prophets, as not even to hearken to the Lord when He is fulfilling, and 
making manifest, and expounding the prophets? For do you not, to the utmost 
of  your power, strive to slay the Lord Himself, since even to Himself you 
will not yield?

    CHAP. 15.--34. PETILIANUS said: "David also spoke of you as persecutors 
in the following terms: 'Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their 
tongues have they deceived; the poison of asps is under their lips. Their 
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed 
blood. Destruction and unhappiness is in their ways, and the way of peace 
have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Have all 
the workers of wickedness no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat 
bread?'"(7)

    35. AUGUSTIN answered: Their throat is an open sepulchre, whence they 
breathe out death by lies. For "the mouth that belieth slayeth the 
soul."(8) But if nothing is more true than that which Christ said, that His 
Church should be throughout all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, then there 
is nothing more false than that which you say, that it is in the party of 
Donatus. But the tongues which have deceived are the tongues of those who, 
whilst they are acquainted with their own deeds, not only say that they are 
just men, but that they are justifiers of men, which is said of One only 
"that justifieth the ungodly,"(1) and that because "He is just and the 
justifier."(2) As regards the poison of asps, and the mouth full of cursing 
and bitterness, we have said enough already. But you have yourselves said 
that the followers of Maximianus had feet swift to shed blood, as is 
testified by the sentence of your plenary Council, so often quoted in the 
records of the proconsular province and of the state. But they, so far as 
we hear, never killed any one in the body. You evidently, therefore, 
understood that the blood of the soul was shed in spiritual murder by the 
sword of schism, which you condemned in Maximianus. See then if your feet 
are not swift to shed blood, when you cut off men from the unity of the 
whole world, if you were right in saying it of the followers of Maximianus, 
because they cut off some from the party of Donatus. Are we again without 
the knowledge of the way of peace, who study to preserve the unity of the 
Spirit in the bond of peace? and yet do you possess that knowledge, who 
resist the discourse which Christ held with His disciples after His 
resurrection, of so peaceful a nature that He began it with the greeting, 
"Peace be unto you;"(3) and that so strenuously that you are proved to be 
saying nothing less to Him than this, "What Thou saidst of the unity of all 
nations is false; what we say of the offense of all nations is true"? Who 
would say such things as this if they had the fear of God before their 
eyes? See, therefore, if in daily saying things like this you are not 
trying to destroy the people of God dispersed throughout the world, eating 
them up as it were bread.

    CHAP. 16.--36. PETILIANUS said: "The Lord Christ also warns us, saying, 
'Beware of false prophets, which come unto you in sheep's clothing, but 
inwardly they are ravening wolves; and ye shall not know them by their 
fruits.'"(4)

    37. AUGUSTIN answered: If I were to inquire of you by what fruits you 
know us to be ravening wolves, you are sure to answer by charging us with 
the sins of other men, and these such as were never proved against those 
who are said to have been guilty of them. But if you should ask of me by 
what fruits we know you rather to be ravening wolves, I bring against you 
the charge of schism, which you will deny, but which I will straightway go 
on to prove; for, as a matter of fact, you do not communicate with all the 
nations of the earth, nor with those Churches which were founded by the 
labor of the apostles. Hereupon you will say, "I do not communicate with 
traditors and murderers." The seed of Abraham answers you, "These are those 
charges which you made, which are either not true, or have no reference to 
me." But these I set aside for the present; do you meanwhile show me the 
Church. Now that voice will sound in my ears which the Lord showed was to 
be avoided in the false prophets who made a show of their several parties, 
and strove to estrange men from the Catholic Church, "Lo, here is Christ, 
or there." But do you think that the true sheep of Christ are so utterly 
destitute of sense, who are told, "Believe it not,"(5) that they will 
hearken to the wolf when he says, "Lo, here is Christ," and will not 
hearken to the Shepherd when He says, "Throughout all nations, beginning at 
Jerusalem?"

    CHAP. 17.--38., PETILIANUS said: "Thus, thus, thou wicked persecutor, 
under whatsoever cloak of righteousness thou hast concealed thyself, under 
whatsoever name of peace thou wagest war with kisses, under whatsoever 
title of unity thou endeavorest to ensnare the race of men--thou, who up to 
this time art cheating and deceiving, thou art the true son of the devil, 
showing thy parentage by thy character."

    39. AUGUSTIN answered: Consider in reply that these things have been 
said by us against you; and that you may know to which of us they are more 
appropriate, call to mind what I have said before.

    CHAP. 18.--40. PETILIANUS said: "Nor is it, after all, so strange that 
you assume to yourself the name of bishop without authority. This is the 
true custom of the devil, to choose in preference a mode of deceiving by 
which he usurps to himself a word of holy meaning, as the apostle declares 
to us: 'And no marvel,' he says: 'for Satan himself is transformed into an 
angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be 
transformed as the ministers of righteousness.'(6) Nor is it therefore a 
marvel if you falsely call yourself a bishop. For even those fallen angels, 
lovers of the maidens of the world, who were corrupted by the corruption of 
their flesh, though, from having stripped themselves of divine excellence, 
they have ceased to be angels, yet retain the name of angels, and always 
esteem themselves as angels, though, being released from the service of 
God, they have passed from the likeness of their character into the army of 
the devil, as the great God declares, 'My spirit shall not always strive 
with man, for that he also is flesh.'(1) To those guilty ones and to you 
the Lord Christ will say, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting 
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.'(2) If there were no evil 
angels, the devil would have no angels; of whom the apostle says, that in 
the judgment of the resurrection they shall be condemned by the saints: 
'Know ye not,' says he, 'that we shall judge angels?'(3) If they were true 
angels, men would not have authority to judge the angels of God. So too 
those sixty apostles, who, when the twelve were left alone with the Lord 
Christ, departed in apostasy from the faith, are so far yet considered 
among wretched men to be apostles, that from them Manichaeus and the rest 
entangle many souls in many devilish sects which they destroyed(4) that 
they might take them in their snares. For indeed the fallen Manichaeus, if 
fallen he was, is not to be reckoned among those sixty, if it be that we 
can find his name as an apostle among the twelve, or if he was ordained by 
the voice of Christ when Matthias was elected into the place of the traitor 
Judas, or another thirteenth like Paul, who calls himself the last(5) of 
the apostles, expressly that any one who was later than himself might not 
be held to be an apostle. For these are his words: 'For I am the last of 
the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I 
persecuted the Church of God.'(6) And do not flatter yourselves in this: he 
was a Jew that had done this. You too, as Gentiles, may work destruction 
upon us. For you carry on war without license, against whom we may not 
fight in turn. For you desire to live when you have murdered us; but our 
victory is either to escape or to be slain."

    41. AUGUSTIN answered: See how you have quoted the testimony of holy 
Scripture, or how you have understood it, when it has no bearing at all 
upon the present point at issue. For all that you have brought forward was 
simply said to prove that there are false bishops, just as there are false 
angels and false apostles. Now we too know quite well that there are false 
angels and false apostles, and false bishops, and, as the true apostle 
says, false brethren also;(7) but, seeing that charges such as yours may be 
brought by either side against the other, what is required is a certain 
degree of proof, and not mere empty words. But if you would see to which of 
us the charge of falseness more truly applies, recall to mind what we have 
said before, land you will see it there set forth, that we may not become 
tedious to our readers by repeating the same thing over and over again. And 
yet how is the Church dispersed throughout the world affected either by 
what you may have found to say about its chaff, which is mixed with it 
throughout the whole world; or by what you said of Manichaeus and the other 
devilish sects? For if the wheat is not affected by anything which is said 
even about the chaff which is still mingled with it, how much less are the 
members of Christ dispersed throughout the whole world affected by 
monstrosities (8) which have been so long and so openly separated from 
it?(9)

    CHAP. 19.--42. PETILIANUS said: "The Lord Jesus Christ commands us, 
saying, 'When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another; and if 
they persecute you in that, flee yet into a third; for verily I say unto 
you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man 
be come.'(10) If He gives us this warning in the case of Jews and pagans, 
you who call yourself a Christian ought not to imitate the dreadful deeds 
of the Gentiles. Or do you serve God in such wise that we should be 
murdered at your hands? You do err, you do err, if you are wretched enough 
to entertain such a belief as this. For God does not have butchers for His 
priests."

    43. AUGUSTIN answered: To flee from one state to another from the face 
of persecution has not been enjoined as precept or permission on heretics 
or schismatics, such as you are; but it was enjoined on the preachers of 
the gospel, whom you resist. And this we may easily prove in this wise: you 
are now in your own cities, and no man persecutes you. You must therefore 
come forth, and give an account of your separation. For it cannot be 
maintained that, as the weakness of the flesh is excused when it yields 
before the violence of persecution, so truth also ought to yield to 
falsehood. Furthermore, if you are suffering persecution, why do you i not 
retire from the cities in which you are, that you may fulfill the 
instructions which you quote out of the gospel? But if you are not 
suffering persecution, why are you unwilling to reply to us? Or if the fact 
be that you are afraid lest, when you should have made reply, you then 
should suffer persecution, in that ease how are you following the example 
of those preachers to whom it was said, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep 
in the midst of wolves?" To whom it was also further said "Fear not them 
which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul."(1) And how do you 
escape the charge of acting contrary to the injunction of the Apostle 
Peter, who says, "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that 
asketh you a reason of the faith and hope that is in you?"(2) And, lastly, 
wherefore are you ever eager to annoy thee Catholic Churches by the most 
violent disturbances, whenever it is in your power, as is proved by 
innumerable instances of simple fact? But you say that you must defend your 
places, and that you resist with cudgels and massacres and with whatever 
else you can. Wherefore in such a case did you not hearken to the voice of 
the Lord, when He says, "But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil"?(3) 
Or, allowing that it is possible that in some cases it should be right for 
violent men to be resisted by bodily force, and that it does not violate 
the precept which we receive from the Lord, "But I say unto you, that ye 
resist not evil," why may it not also be that a pious man should eject an 
impious man, or a just man him that is unjust, in the exercise of duly and 
lawfully constituted authority, from seats which are unlawfully usurped, or 
retained to the despite of God? For you would not say that the false 
prophets suffered persecution at the hands of Elijah, in the same sense 
that Elijah suffered persecution from the wickedest of kings?(4) Or that 
because the Lord was scourged by His persecutors, therefore those whom He 
Himself drove out of the temple with scourges are to be put in comparison 
with His sufferings? It remains, therefore, that we should acknowledge that 
there is no other question requiring solution, except whether you have been 
pious or impious in separating yourselves from the communion of the whole 
world. For if it shall be found that you have acted impiously, you would 
not be surprised if there should be no lack of ministers of God by whom you 
might be scourged, seeing that you suffer persecution not from us, but as 
it is written, from their own abominations.(5)

    CHAP. 20.--44. PETILIANUS said: "The Lord Christ cries again from 
heaven to Paul, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee 
to kick against the pricks.'(6) He was then called Saul, that he might 
afterwards receive his true name in baptism. But for you it is not hard so 
often to persecute Christ in the persons of His priests, though the Lord 
Himself cries out, 'Touch not mine anointed.'(7) Reckon up all the deaths 
of the saints, and so often have you murdered Christ, who lives in each of 
them.(8) Lastly, if you are not guilty of sacrilege, then a saint cannot be 
a murderer."

    45. AUGUSTIN answered: Defend yourselves from the charge of the 
persecution which those men suffered at the hands of your party who 
separated themselves from you with the followers of Maximianus, and therein 
you will find our defence. For if you say that you committed no such deeds, 
we simply read to you the records of the pro-consular province and the 
state. If you say that you were right in persecuting them, why are you 
unwilling to suffer the like yourselves? If you say, "But we caused no 
schism," then let this be inquired into, and, till it is decided whether it 
be so or not, let no one make accusation against persecutors. If you say 
that even schismatics ought not to have suffered persecution, I ask whether 
it is also the case that they ought not to have been driven out of the 
basilicas, in which they lay snares for the leading astray of the weak, 
even though it were done by duly constituted authorities? If you say that 
this also should not have been done, first restore the basilicas to the 
followers of Maximianus, and then discuss the point with us. If you say 
that it was right, then see what they ought to suffer at the hands of duly 
constituted authority, who, in resisting it, "resist the ordinance of God." 
Wherefore the apostle expressly says, "For he beareth not the sword in 
vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath on him 
that doeth evil."(9) But even if this had been discovered after the truth 
had been searched out with all diligence, that not even after public trial 
ought schismatics to undergo any punishment, or be driven from the 
positions which they have occupied, for their treachery and deceit; and if 
you should say that you are vexed that the followers of Maximianus should 
have suffered such conduct at the hands of some of you,--why does not the 
wheat of the Lord cry out with the more freedom from the whole field of the 
Lord, that is, from the world, and say, Neither are we at all affected by 
what the tares and the chaff amongst us do, seeing that it is contrary to 
our wish? If you confess that it is sufficient to clear you of 
responsibility, that all the evil that is done by men of your party is done 
in opposition to your wishes, why then have you separated yourselves? For 
if your reason for not separating from the unrighteous among the party of 
Donatus is that each man bears his own burden, why have you separated 
yourselves from those throughout the world whom you think, or profess to 
think, to be unrighteous? Is it that you might all share equally in bearing 
the burden of schism?

    46. And when we ask of you which of your party you can prove to have 
been slain by us, I indeed can remember no law issued by the emperors to 
the effect that you should be put to death. Those indeed whose deaths you 
quote most frequently to bring us into odium, Marculus and Donatus, present 
a great question,--whether they threw themselves down a precipice, as your 
teaching does not hesitate to encourage by examples of daily occurrence, or 
whether they were thrown down by the true command of some authority. For if 
it is a thing incredible that the leaders of the Circumcelliones should 
have wrought upon themselves a death in accordance with their custom, how 
much more incredible it is that the Roman authorities should have been able 
to condemn them to a punishment at variance with custom! Accordingly, in 
considering this matter, which you think excessive in its hatefulness, 
supposing what you say is true, what is there in it which bears upon the 
Lord's wheat? Let the chaff which flew away outside accuse the chaff which 
yet remained within for it is not possible that it should all be separated 
till the winnowing at the last day. But if what you say is false, what 
wonder is it if, when the chaff is carried away as it were by a light blast 
of dissension, it even attacks the wheat of the Lord with false 
accusations? Wherefore, on the consideration of all such odious 
accusations, the wheat of Christ, which is ordered to grow together with 
the tares throughout the field, that is, throughout the whole world, makes 
this answer to you with a free and fearless voice: If you cannot prove what 
you say, it has no application to any one; and if you prove it, it yet does 
not apply to me. The result of which is, that whosoever has separated 
himself from the unity of the wheat on account of the offenses chargeable 
against the tares, or against the chaff, is unable to defend himself from 
the charge of murder which is involved in the mere offense of dissension 
and schism, as the Scripture says, "Whoso hateth his brother is a 
murderer."(1)

    CHAP. 21.--47. PETILIANUS said: "Accordingly, as we have said, the Lord 
Christ cried, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to 
kick against the pricks. And he said, Who art Thou, Lord? And the Lord 
said, I am Christ of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest. And he, trembling and 
astonished, said, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? And the Lord said 
unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou 
must do.' And so presently it goes on, 'But Saul arose from the earth; and 
when his eyes were opened, he saw no man,' See here how blindness, coming 
in punishment of madness, obscures the light in the eyes of the persecutor, 
not to be again expelled except by baptism! Let us see, therefore, what he 
did in the city. 'Ananias,' it is said, 'entered into the house to Saul, 
and putting his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, 
that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou 
mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And 
immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales; and he received 
sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.'(2) Seeing therefore that 
Paul, being freed by baptism from the offense of persecution, received 
again his eyesight freed from guilt, why will not you, a persecutor and 
traditor, blinded by false baptism be baptized by those whom you 
persecute?"

    48. AUGUSTIN answered: You do not prove that I, whom you wish to 
baptize afresh, am either a persecutor or a traditor. And if you prove this 
charge against any one, yet the persecutor and traditor is not to be 
baptized afresh., if he had been baptized already with the baptism of 
Christ. For the reason why it was necessary that Paul should be baptized 
was that he had never been washed in any baptism of the kind. Therefore 
what you have chosen to insert about Paul has no point of resemblance with 
the case which you are arguing with us. But if you had not inserted this, 
you would have found no place for your childish declamation, "See how 
blindness comes in punishment of madness, not to be again expelled except 
by baptism!" For with how much more force might one exclaim against you, 
See how blindness comes in punishment of madness, which, finding its 
similitude in Simon, not in Paul, is not expelled from you even when you 
have received baptism? For if persecutors ought to be batpized by those 
whom they persecute, then let Primianus be baptized by the followers of 
Maximianus, whom he persecuted with the utmost eagerness.

    CHAP. 22.--49. PETILIANUS said: "It may be urged that Christ said to 
His apostles, as you are constantly quoting against us, 'He that is washed 
needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.' Now if you 
discuss those words in all their fullness, you are bound by what 
immediately follows. For this is what He said, in His very words: 'He that 
is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whir: and 
ye are clean, but not all. But this he said on account of Judas, who should 
betray Him; therefore said He, Ye are not all clean.'(1) Whosoever, 
therefore, has incurred the guilt of treason, has forfeited, like you, his 
baptism. Again, after that the betrayer of Christ had himself been 
condemned, He thus more fully confirmed His words to the eleven apostles: 
'Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in 
me, and I in you.'(2) And again He said to these same eleven, 'Peace I 
leave with you, my peace I give unto you.'(3) Seeing, then, that these 
things were said to the eleven apostles, when the traitor, as we have seen, 
had been condemned, you likewise, being traditors, are similarly without 
both peace and baptism."

    50. AUGUSTIN answered: If therefore every traditor has forfeited his 
baptism, it will follow that every one who, having been baptized by you, 
has afterwards become a traditor, ought to be baptized afresh. And if you 
do not do this, you yourselves sufficiently prove the falseness of the 
saying, "Whosoever therefore has incurred the guilt of treason, has 
forfeited, like you, his baptism." For if he has forfeited it, let him 
return and receive it again; but if he returns and does not receive it, it 
is clear that he had not forfeited it. Again, if the reason why it was said 
to the apostles, "Now are ye clean," and "My peace I give unto you," was 
that the traitor had already left the room, then was not that supper of so 
great a sacrament clean and able to give peace, which He distributed to all 
before his going out? And if you venture to say this with your eyes closed 
against the truth, what can we do save exclaim the more, See how blindness 
comes in punishment of the madness of those who wish to be, as the apostle 
says, "teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say, nor 
whereof they affirm?"(4) And yet, unless blindness came in the way of their 
pertinacity, it was not a very difficult matter that you should understand 
and see that the Lord did not say in the presence of Judas, Ye are not yet 
clean, but "Now are ye clean." He added, however, "But not all," because 
there was one there who was not clean; yet if he had been polluting the 
others by his presence, it would not have been declared to them, "Now are 
ye clean," but, as I said before, Ye are not yet clean. But, after Judas 
had gone out, He said to them, "Now are ye clean," and did not add the 
words, But not all, because he had now departed in whose presence indeed, 
as had been said to them, they were already clean, but not all, because 
there was one there unclean. Wherefore in these words the Lord rather 
declared that in the one company of men receiving the same sacraments, the 
uncleanness of some members cannot hurt the clean. Certainly, if you think 
that there are among us men like Judas, you might apply to us the words, 
"Ye are clean, but not all." But this is not what you say; but you say that 
because of the presence of some who are unclean, therefore we are all 
unclean. This the Lord did not say to the disciples in the presence of 
Judas, and therefore whoever says this has not learned from the good Master 
what He says.

    CHAP. 23.--51. PETILIANUS said: "But if you say that we give baptism 
twice over, truly it is rather you who do this, who slay men who have been 
baptized; and this we do not say because you baptize them, but because you 
cause each one of them, by the act of slaying him, to be baptized in his 
own blood. For the baptism of water or of the Spirit is as it were doubled 
when the blood of the martyr is wrung from him. And so our Saviour also 
Himself, after being baptized in the first instance by John, declared that 
He must be baptized again, not this time with water nor with the Spirit, 
but with the baptism of blood, the cross of suffering, as it is written, 
'Two disciples, the sons of Zebedee, came unto Him, saying, Lord, when thou 
comest into thy kingdom grant that we may sit, one on Thy right hand, and 
the other on Thy left hand. But Jesus said unto them, Ye ask a difficult 
thing: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the 
baptism that I am baptized with? They said unto Him, We are able. And He 
said unto them, Ye can indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with 
the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized,'(5) and so 
forth. If these are two baptisms, you commend us by your malice, we must 
needs confess. For when you kill our bodies, then we do celebrate a second 
baptism; but it is that we are baptized with our baptism and with blood, 
like Christ. Blush, blush, ye persecutors. Ye make martyrs like unto 
Christ, who are sprinkled with the baptism of blood after the water of the 
genuine baptism."

    52. AUGUSTIN answered: In the first place, we reply without delay that 
we do not kill you, I but you kill yourselves by a true death, when you cut 
yourselves off from the living root of unity. In the next place, if all who 
are killed are baptized in their own blood, then all robbers, all 
unrighteous, impious, accursed men, who are put to death by the sentence of 
the law, are to be considered martyrs, because they are baptized in their 
own blood. But if only those are baptized in their own blood who are put to 
death for righteousness' sake, since theirs is the kingdom of heaven,(1) 
you have already seen that the first question is why you suffer, and only 
afterwards should we ask what you suffer. Why therefore do you puff out 
your cheeks before you have shown the righteousness of your deeds? Why, 
does your tongue resound before your character is approved? If you have 
made a schism, you are impious; if you are impious, you die as one guilty 
of sacrilege, when you are punished for impiety; if you die as one guilty 
of sacrilege, how are you baptized in your blood? Or do you say, I have not 
made a schism? Let us then inquire into this. Why do you make an outcry 
before you prove your case?

    53. Or do you say, Even if I am guilty of sacrilege, I ought not to be 
slain by you? It is one question as to the enormity of my action, which you 
never prove with any truth, another as to the baptism of your blood, from 
whence you derive your boast. For I never killed you, nor do you prove that 
you are killed by any one. Nor even if you were to prove it would it in any 
way affect me, whoever it was that killed you, whether he did it justly in 
virtue of power lawfully given by the Lord, or committed the crime of 
murder, like the chaff of the Lord's harvest, through some evil desire; 
just as you are in no way concerned with him who in recent times, with an 
intolerable tyranny, attended even by a company of soldiers, not because he 
feared any one, but that he might be feared by all, oppressed widows, 
destroyed pupils, betrayed the patrimonies of other men, annulled the 
marriages of other men, contrived the sale of the property of the innocent, 
divided the price of the property when sold with its mourning owners. I 
should seem to be saying all this out of the invention of my own head, if 
it were not sufficiently obvious of whom I speak without the mention of his 
name.(2) And if all this is undoubtedly true, then just as you are not 
concerned with this, so neither are we concerned with anything you say, 
even though it were true. But if that colleague of yours, being really a 
just and innocent man, is maligned by a lying tale, then should we also 
learn in no way to give credit to reports, which have been spread abroad of 
innocent men, as though they had delivered up the sacred books, or murdered 
any of their fellow-men. To this we may add, that I refer to a man who 
lived with you, whose birthday you were wont to celebrate with such large 
assemblies, with whom you joined in the kiss of peace in the sacraments, in 
whose hands you placed the Eucharist, to whom in turn you extended your 
hands to receive it from his ministering, whose ears, when they were deaf 
amid the groanings of all Africa, you durst not offend by free speech; for 
paying to whom, even indirectly, a most witty compliment, by saying that in 
the Count(3) he had a god for his companion, some one of your party was 
extolled to the skies. But you reproach us with the deeds of men with whom 
we never lived, whose faces we never saw, in whose lifetime we were either 
boys, or perhaps as yet not even born. What is the meaning, then, of your 
great unfairness and perversity, that you should wish to impose on us the 
burdens of those whom we never knew, whilst you will not bear the burdens 
of your friends? The divine Scriptures exclaim: "When thou sawest a thief, 
then thou consentedst with him." If he whom you saw did not pollute you, 
why do you reproach me with one whom I could not have seen? Or do you say, 
I did not consent with him, because his deeds were displeasing to me? But, 
at any rate, you went up to the altar of God with him. Come now, if you 
would defend yourself, make a distinction between your two positions, and 
say that it is one thing to consent together for sin, as the two elders 
consented together when they laid a plot against the chastity of Susannah, 
and another thing to receive the sacrament of the Lord in company with a 
thief, as the apostles received even that first supper in company with 
Judas. I am all in favor of your defense. But why do you not consider how 
much more easily, in the course of your defense, you have acquitted all the 
nations and boundaries of the earth, throughout which the inheritance of 
Christ is dispersed? For if it was possible for you to see a thief, and to 
share the sacraments with the thief whom you saw, and yet not to share his 
sin, how much less was it possible for the remotest nations of the earth to 
have anything in common with the sins of African traditors and persecutors, 
supposing your charges and assertions to be true, even though they held the 
sacraments in common with them? Or do you say, I saw in him the bishop, I 
did not see in him the thief? Say what you will. I allow this defense also, 
and in this the world is acquitted of the charges which you brought against 
it. For if it was permitted you to ignore the character of a man whom you 
knew, why is the whole world not allowed to be ignorant of those it never 
knew, unless, indeed, the Donatists are allowed to be ignorant of what they 
do not wish to know, while the nations of the earth may not be ignorant of 
what they cannot know?

    54. Or do you say, Theft is one thing, delivery of the sacred books or 
persecution is another? I grant there is a difference, nor is it worth 
while now to show wherein that difference consists. But listen to the 
summary of the argument. If he could not make you a thief, because his 
thieving was displeasing in your sight, who can make men traditors or 
murderers to whom such treachery or murder is abhorrent? First, then, 
confess that you share in all the evil of Optatus, whom you knew, and even 
so reproach me with any evil which was found in those whom I knew not. And 
do not say to me, But my charges are serious, yours but trifling. You must 
first acknowledge them, however trifling they may be in your case, not 
before I on my side confess the charges against me, but before I can allow 
you to say these serious things about me at all. Did Optatus, whom you knew 
make you a thief by being your colleague, or not? Answer me one or the 
other. If you say he did not, I ask why he did not,--because he was not a 
thief himself? or because you do not know it? or because you disapprove of 
it? If you say, Because he himself was not a thief, much more ought we not 
to believe that those with whom you reproach us were of such a character as 
you assert. For if we must not believe of Optatus what both Christians and 
pagans and Jews, ay, and what both our party and yours assert, how much 
less should we believe what you assert of any one? But if you say, Because 
you do not know it, all the nations of the earth answer you, Much more do 
we not know of all that you reproach us with in these men. But if you say, 
Because you disapproved of it, they answer you with the same voice, 
Although you have never proved the truth of what you say, yet acts like 
these are viewed by us with disapproval. But if you say, Lo, Optatus, whom 
I knew, made me a thief because he was my colleague, and I was in the habit 
of going to the altar with him when he committed those deeds; but I do not 
greatly heed it, because the fault was trivial, but your party made you a 
traditor and a murderer,--I answer that I do not allow that I too am made a 
traditor and a murderer by the sins of other men, just because you confess 
that you are made a thief by the sin of another man; for it must be 
remembered that you are proved a thief, not by our judgment, but by your 
own confession. For we say that every man must bear his own burden, as the 
apostle is our witness.(1) But you, of your own accord, have taken the 
burden of Optatus on your own shoulders, not because you committed the 
theft, or consented to it, but because you declared your conviction that 
what another did applied to you. For, as the apostle says, when speaking of 
food, "I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing 
unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him 
it is unclean;"(2) by the same rule, it may be said that the sins of others 
cannot implicate those who disapprove of them; but if any one thinks that 
they affect him, then he is affected by them. Wherefore you do not convict 
us of being traditors or murderers, even though you were to prove something 
of the sort against those who share the sacraments with us; but the guilt 
of theft is fastened on you, even if you disapprove of everything that 
Optatus did, not in virtue of our accusation, but by your own decision. And 
that you may not think this a trivial fault, read what the apostle says, 
"Nor shall thieves inherit the kingdom of God."(3) But those who shall not 
inherit the kingdom of God will certainly not be on His right hand among 
those whom it shall be said, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' If they are not 
there, where will they be except on the left hand? Therefore among those to 
whom it shall be said, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, 
prepared for the devil and his angels."(4) In vain, therefore, do you 
indulge in your security, thinking it a trivial fault which separates you 
from the kingdom of God, and sends you into everlasting fire. How much 
better will you do to betake yourself to true confusion, saying, Every one 
of us shall bear his own burden, and the winnowing fan at the last day 
shall separate the chaff from the wheat!

    55. But it is evident that you are afraid of its being forthwith said 
to you, "Why then, whilst you attempt to place on some men's backs the 
burdens of their neighbors, have you dared to separate yourselves from the 
Lord's corn, dispersed throughout the world, before the winnowing at the 
last day?" Accordingly, you who disapprove of the deeds of your party, 
whilst you are taking precautions against being charged with the schism 
which you all have made, are involving yourselves also in their sins which 
you did not commit; and while the shrewd Petilianus is afraid of my being 
able to say that am I not such as he thinks Caecilianus was, he is obliged 
to confess that he himself is such as he knows Optatus to have been. Or are 
you not such as the common voice of Africa proclaims him to have been? Then 
neither are we such as those with whom you reproach us are either suspected 
to have been by your mistake, or calumniously asserted to have been by your 
madness, or proved to have been by the truth. Much less is the wheat of the 
Lord in all the nations of the earth of such a character, seeing that it 
never heard the names of those of whom you speak. There is therefore no 
reason why you should perish in such sin of separation and such sacrilege 
of schism. And yet, if you are made to suffer for this great impiety by the 
judgment of God, you say that you are even baptized in your blood; so that 
you are not content with feeling no remorse for your division, but you must 
even glory. in your punishment.

    CHAP. 24.--56. PETILIANUS said: "But you will answer that you abide by 
the same declaration, 'He that is once washed needeth not save to wash his 
feet.'(1) Now the 'once' is once that has authority, once that is confirmed 
by the truth."

    57. AUGUSTIN answered: Baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son 
and of the Holy Ghost(2) has Christ for its authority, not any man, whoever 
he may be; and Christ is the truth, not any man.

    CHAP. 25.--58. PETILIANUS said: "For when you in your guilt perform 
what is false, I do not celebrate baptism twice, which you have never 
celebrated once."

    59. AUGUSTIN answered: In the first place, you do not convict us of 
guilt. And if a guilty man baptizes with a false baptism, then none of 
those have true baptism who are baptized by men in your party, that are, I 
do not say openly, but even secretly guilty. For if he who gives baptism 
gives something that is God's, if he is already guilty in the sight of God, 
how can he be giving something that is God's if a guilty man cannot give 
true baptism? But in reality you wait till he is guilty in your sight as 
well, as though what he proposes to confer were something that belonged to 
you.

    CHAP. 26.--60. PETILIANUS said: "For if you mix what is false with what 
is true, falsehood often imitates the truth by treading in its steps. Just 
in the same way a picture imitates the true man of nature, depicting with 
its colors the false resemblance of truth. And in the same way, too, the 
brilliancy of a mirror catches the countenance, so as to represent the eyes 
of him who gazes on it. In this way it presents to each comer his own 
countenance, so that the very features of the comer meet themselves in 
turn; and of such virtue is the falsehood of a clear mirror, that the very 
eyes which see themselves recognize themselves as though in some one else. 
And even when a shadow stands before it, it doubles the reflection, 
dividing its unity in great part through a falsehood. Must we then hold 
that anything is true, because a lying representation is given of it? But 
it is one thing to paint a man, another to give birth to one. For does any 
one represent fictitious children to a man who wishes for an heir? or would 
any one look for true heirs in the falsehood of a picture? Truly it is a 
proof of madness to fall in love with a picture, letting go one's hold of 
what is true."

    61. AUGUSTIN answered: Are you then really not ashamed to call the 
baptism of Christ a lie, even when it is found in the most false of men? 
Far be it from any one to suppose that the wheat of the Lord, which has 
been commanded to grow among the tares throughout the whole field, that is, 
throughout the whole of this world, until the harvest, that is, until the 
end of the world,(3) can have perished in consequence of your evil words. 
Nay, even among the very tares themselves, which are commanded not to be 
gathered, but to be tolerated even to the end, and among the very chaff, 
which shall only be separated from the wheat by the winnowing at the last 
day,(4) does any one dare to say that any baptism is false which is given 
and received in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost? Would you say that those whom you depose from their office, whether 
as your colleagues or your fellow-priests, on the testimony of women whom 
they have seduced (since examples of this kind are not wanting a