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Letter LIII.
(a.d. 400.)
To Generosus, Our Most Loved and
Honourable Brother, Fortunatus, Alypius, and Augustin Send Greeting
in the Lord.
Chap. I.
1. Since you were pleased to acquaint us with
the letter sent to you by a Donatist presbyter, although, with the
spirit of a true Catholic, you regarded it with contempt,
nevertheless, to aid you in seeking his welfare if his folly be not
incurable, we beg you to forward to him the following reply. He
wrote that an angel had enjoined him to declare to you the
episcopal succession1706
| 1706 “Ordo.” The phrase is afterwards given (sec.
2) more fully, “ordo episcoporum sibi succcdentium.” | of the Christianity of your town;
to you, forsooth, who hold the Christianity not of your own town
only, nor of Africa only, but of the whole world, the Christianity
which has been published, and is now published to all nations. This
proves that they think it a small matter that they themselves are
not ashamed of being cut off, and are taking no measures, while
they may, to be engrafted anew; they are not content unless they do
their utmost to cut others off, and bring them to share their own
fate, as withered branches fit for the flames. Wherefore, even if
you had yourself been visited by that angel whom he affirms to have
appeared to him,—a statement which we regard as a cunning
fiction; and if the angel had said to you the very words which he,
on the warrant of the alleged command, repeated to you,—even in
that case it would have been your duty to remember the words of the
apostle: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other
gospel unto you than that we have preached unto you, let him be
accursed.”1707
For to you
it was proclaimed by the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
that His “gospel shall be preached unto all nations, and then
shall the end come.”1708
To you it has moreover been
proclaimed by the writings of the prophets and of the apostles,
that the promises were given to Abraham and to his seed, which is
Christ,1709
when God
said unto him: “In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be
blessed.” Having then such promises, if an angel from heaven were
to say to thee, “Let go the Christianity of the whole earth, and
cling to the faction of Donatus, the episcopal succession of which
is set forth in a letter of their bishop in your town,” he ought
to be accursed in your estimation; because he would be endeavouring
to cut you off from the whole Church, and thrust you into a small
party, and make you forfeit your interest in the promises of
God.
2. For if the lineal succession of bishops is
to be taken into account, with how much more certainty and benefit
to the Church do we reckon back till we reach Peter himself, to
whom, as bearing in a figure the whole Church,1710
| 1710 Totius Ecclesiæ figuram gerenti. | the Lord said: “Upon this rock
will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it!”1711
The
successor of Peter was Linus, and his successors in unbroken
continuity were these:—Clement, Anacletus, Evaristus, Alexander,
Sixtus, Telesphorus, Iginus, Anicetus, Pius, Soter, Eleutherius,
Victor, Zephirinus, Calixtus, Urbanus, Pontianus, Antherus,
Fabianus, Cornelius, Lucius, Stephanus, Xystus, Dionysius, Felix,
Eutychianus, Gaius, Marcellinus, Marcellus, Eusebius, Miltiades,
Sylvester, Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, and Siricius, whose
successor is the present Bishop Anastasius. In this order of
succession no Donatist bishop is found. But, reversing the natural
course of things, the Donatists sent to Rome from Africa an
ordained bishop, who, putting himself at the head of a few Africans
in the great metropolis, gave some notoriety to the name of
“mountain men,” or Cutzupits, by which they were
known.
3. Now, even although some traditor had in the
course of these centuries, through inadvertence, obtained a place
in that order of bishops, reaching from Peter himself to
Anastasius, who now occupies that see,—this fact would do no harm
to the Church and to Christians having no share in the guilt of
another; for the Lord, providing against such a case, says,
concerning officers in the Church who are wicked: “All whatsoever
they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after
their works: for they say, and do not.”1712
Thus the stability of the hope of
the faithful is secured, inasmuch as being fixed, not in man, but
in the Lord, it never can be swept away by the raging of impious
schism; whereas they themselves are swept away who read in the Holy
Scriptures the names of churches to which the apostles wrote, and
in which they have no bishop. For what could more clearly prove
their perversity and their folly, than their saying to their
clergy, when they read these letters, “Peace be with thee,”1713
| 1713 Compare the allusion to the same custom in Letter
XLIII. sec. 21, p. 155. | at the
very time that they are themselves disjoined from the peace of
those churches to which the letters were originally
written?
Chap. II.
4. Lest, however, he should congratulate
himself too much on the succession of bishops in Constantina, your
own city, read to him the records of proceedings before Munatius
Felix, the resident Flamen [heathen priest], who was governor of
your city in the consulship of Diocletian for the eighth time, and
Maximian for the seventh, on the eleventh day before the calends of
June. By these records it is proved that the bishop Paulus was a
traditor; the fact being that Sylvanus was then one of his
sub-deacons, and, along with him, produced and surrendered certain
things belonging to the Lord’s house, which had been most
carefully concealed, namely a box1714
and a lamp of silver, upon seeing
which a certain Victor is reported to have said, “You would have
been put to death if you had not found these.” Your Donatist
priest makes great account of this Sylvanus, this clearly convicted
traditor, in the letter which he writes you, mentioning him as then
ordained to the office of bishop by the Primate Secundus of
Tigisis. Let them keep their proud tongues silent, let them admit
the charges which may truly be brought against themselves, and not
utter foolish calumnies against others. Read to him also, if he
permits it, the ecclesiastical records of the proceedings of this
same Secundus of Tigisis in the house of Urbanus Donatus, in which
he remitted to God, as judge, men who confessed themselves to have
been traditors—Donatus of Masculi, Marinns of Aquæ Tibilitanæ,
Donatus of Calama, with whom as his colleagues, though they were
confessed traditors, he ordained their bishop Sylvanus, of whose
guilt in the same matter I have given the history above. Read to
him also the proceedings before Zenophilus, a man of consular rank,
in the course of which a certain deacon of theirs, Nundinarius,
being angry with Sylvanus for having excommunicated him, brought
all these facts into court, proving them incontestably by authentic
documents, and the questioning of witnesses, and the reading of
public records and many letters.
5. There are many other things which you might read
in his hearing, if he is disposed not to dispute angrily, but to
listen prudently, such as: the petition of the Donatists to
Constantine, begging him to send from Gaul bishops who should
settle this controversy which divided the African bishops; the Acts
recording what took place in Rome, when the case was taken up and
decided by the bishops whom he sent thither: also you might read in
other letters how the Emperor aforesaid states that they had made a
complaint to him against the decision of their peers—the bishops,
namely, whom he had sent to Rome; how he appointed other bishops to
try the case over again at Arles; how they appealed from that
tribunal also to the Emperor again; how at last he himself
investigated the matter; and how he most emphatically declares that
they were vanquished by the innocence of Cæcilianus. Let him
listen to these things if he be willing, and he will be silent and
desist from plotting against the truth.
Chap. III.
6. We rely, however, not so much on these
documents as on the Holy Scriptures, wherein a dominion extending
to the ends of the earth among all nations is promised as the
heritage of Christ, separated from which by their sinful schism
they reproach us with the crimes which belong to the chaff in the
Lord’s threshing-floor, which must be permitted to remain mixed
with the good grain until the end come, until the whole be winnowed
in the final judgment. From which it is manifest that, whether
these charges be true or false, they do not belong to the Lord’s
wheat,1715
which must
grow until the end of the world throughout the whole field,
i.e. the whole earth; as we know, not by the testimony of a
false angel such as confirmed your correspondent in his error, but
from the words of the Lord in the Gospel. And because these unhappy
Donatists have brought the reproach of many false and empty
accusations against Christians who were blameless, but who are
throughout the world mingled with the chaff or tares, i.e.
with Christians unworthy of the name, therefore God has, in
righteous retribution, appointed that they should, by their
universal Council, condemn as schismatics the Maximianists, because
they had condemned Primianus, and baptized while not in communion
with Primianus, and rebaptized those whom he had baptized, and then
after a short interval should, under the coercion of Optatus the
minion of Gildo, reinstate in the honours of their office two of
these, the bishops Felicianus of Musti and Prætextatus of Assuri,
and acknowledge the baptism of all whom they, while under sentence
and excommunicated, had baptized. If, therefore, they are not
defiled by communion with the men thus restored again to their
office,—men whom with their own mouth they had condemned as
wicked and impious, and whom they compared to those first heretics
whom the earth swallowed up alive,1716
—let them at last awake and
consider how great is their blindness and folly in pronouncing the
whole world defiled by unknown crimes of Africans, and the heritage
of Christ (which according to the promise has been shown unto all
nations) destroyed through the sins of these Africans by the
maintenance of communion with them; while they refuse to
acknowledge themselves to be destroyed and defiled by communicating with men
whose crimes they had both known and condemned.
7. Wherefore, since the Apostle Paul says in
another place, that even Satan transforms himself into an angel of
light, and that therefore it is not strange that his servants
should assume the guise of ministers of righteousness:1717
if your
correspondent did indeed see an angel teaching him error, and
desiring to separate Christians from the Catholic unity, he has met
with an angel of Satan transforming himself into an angel of light.
If, however, he has lied to you, and has seen no such vision, he is
himself a servant of Satan, assuming the guise of a minister of
righteousness. And yet, if he be not incorrigibly obstinate and
perverse, he may, by considering all the things now stated, be
delivered both from misleading others, and from being himself
misled. For, embracing the opportunity which you have given, we
have met him without any rancour, remembering in regard to him the
words of the apostle: “The servant of the Lord must not strive;
but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient; in meekness
instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will
give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that
they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are
taken captive by him at his will.”1718
If, therefore, we have said
anything severe, let him know that it arises not from the
bitterness of controversy, but from love vehemently desiring his
return to the right path. May you live safe in Christ, most beloved
and honourable brother!
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