Chapter 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,"1942
| 1942 That of Bagai. See on de Bapt. I. 5, 7.
|
together with Maximianus and the others who
ordained him,—I mean Felicianus of Musti, and Prætextatus 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
1943
| 1943 Ore latissimo acclamaverunt. The Louvain edition has"lætissimo," both here and Contra Crescon. IV. 41, 48.
|
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, lest 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 Prætextatus once again within their pale, out of the multitude of bodies lying unburied on the shore.
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