Chapter 54.—66. Finally, again, a little afterwards, when he resolved and was firmly purposed, as it were, to reconsider once more the words of the apostle which he had brought up against him, he was unwilling to set down this that I had said, preferring something else in which by some means or other the swelling of human pride might find means to breathe. "For to reconsider," he says, "those words of the apostle, on which you founded
an argument against us; he said, ‘What is Apollos, what is Paul, save only ministers of Him in whom ye have believed?’2448
What else for example, does he say to all of us than this, What is Donatus of Carthage, what is Januarius, what is Petilianus,
save only
ministers of Him in whom ye have believed?" I did not bring forward this passage of the
apostle, but I did bring forward that which he has been
unwilling to quote, "Neither he that planteth is anything, neither he that watereth; but
God that giveth the increase." But Petilianus was willing to insert those words of the
apostle, in which
he asks what is
Paul, and what is
Apollos, and answers that "They are
ministers of Him in whom ye have believed." This the muscles of the heretic’s
neck could bear; but he was wholly unable to
endure the other, in which the
apostle did not ask and answer what he was, but said that he was nothing. But now I am willing to ask whether it be true that the
minister of
Christ is nothing. Who will say so much as this? In what sense, therefore, is it true that "Neither is he that planteth anything,
neither he that watereth, but
God that giveth the increase," except that he who is something in one point of view may be nothing in another? For ministering and dispensing the word and sacrament he is something, but for purifying and justifying he is nothing, seeing that this is not accomplished in the inner man, except by Him by whom the whole man was
created, and who while He remained
God was made man,—by Him, that is, of whom it was said, "Purifying their hearts by faith;"
2449
and "To him that believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly."
2450
And this testimony Petilianus has been willing to set forth in my words, whilst in his own he has neither handled it nor even touched it.
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