'Woe to you, hypocrites, who compass seas and lands to make one proselyte, and when you have found him, make him a son of Hell twofold worse than yourselves.' |83
If this accusation----unjust and groundless though it be----had to be made at all, would that it had been made by any other of your party than yourself. Indeed I am lost in wonder that you, of all men, should have dared falsely to bring against another a charge, the very thought of which might well make you blush, were you but to consider your own Consecration. For you have reminded us that we read in the Gospel:
'Woe to you, hypocrites, who compass seas and lands to make one proselyte '----
that is, to change his sect. As for you personally, I have no idea to what sect you previously belonged. But your quotation was unfortunate. I think that perhaps you are already sorry that you made it. Is it we who have travelled through any lands? Is it we who have compassed any seas? Is it we who have set sail to foreign ports? Is it we who have brought in a Spaniard or a Gaul? Have we consecrated a foreigner, not known to our people? |84
VIII. Concerning the Fons, the Sigillum and the Umbilicus.
It is certain that the FOUNTAIN also is one of the Endowments, from which heretics can neither drink themselves, nor give others to drink. For, as they alone do not possess the SEAL, that is to say the Catholic Creed, in its integrity, they cannot open the true Fountain.
* * * * *
For since it has been written in the Canticle of Canticles:
'Thy Navel is as a round goblet,'
you have tried to say that the Navel is the Altar. If the Navel be a member of the body, from the fact that it is a member, it cannot be amongst the Endowments. To be an Ornament, it must not be part of the body. |85
IX. The Endowments of the Church are with Catholics; not with Donatists .
The Endowments then are seen to be Five. Since these Endowments belong to the Catholic Church (which is in so many countries already mentioned by us), they cannot be wanting to us here in Africa.
Understand, however late, that you are disobedient sons, that you are boughs broken off from the tree, that you are branches cut off from the vine, that you are a river separated from its source. For that stream which is small and which is derived from another cannot be the source. Nor can the tree be cut off from the branch, since the tree, which has been planted and is alive, has its own roots; whereas the branch, which has been cut off, withers and dies.
Now do you see, my brother Parmenian, now |86 do you recognise, now do you understand, that by your arguments you have fought against yourself?
For it has been proved that we are in the Holy Catholic Church, who have too the Creed of the Trinity ; and it has been shown that, through the Chair of Peter which is ours----through it ----the other Endowments also belong to us.
Again, ours is the Sacerdotium, which you have affected to regard as in our case of no account ----by way of some excuse for your error and hatred in re-baptising after us----though this you do not after your own people, even when they have been proved guilty of sin; for you have maintained that, if the priest be in sin, the Endowments are able to work alone.
So----to answer you----we have shown what is heresy, and what is schism, and which is the Holy Church, and that of this Holy Church there has been constituted a Representative, and that the Catholic |87 Church is the Church which is scattered over the whole world (of which we amongst others are members), and that her Endowments are with her everywhere. We have also shown in our first Book that we cannot justly be reproached with the crime of Betrayal, |88 and that this crime has been condemned not only by you, but by us also.
X. Catholics possess the Sacraments.
Now I should like you to tell me this. Why have you thought well to speak only of the Endowments of the Church, and have said nothing about her holy members and her inward organs, which without doubt are in the Sacraments and in the Names of the Trinity ? These Names are met by Faith and its profession, recorded upon the Acts of the Angels ; here are sown heavenly and spiritual seeds, so that, for those who are born again, a new nature may be procreated from a holy germ, and he who had once been born to the world may, where the Trinity meets Faith, be spiritually new-born to God. |89
In this way does God become the Father of men, thus does the Holy Church become their Mother.
I perceive that all these things have been left unmentioned by you, on purpose, lest in them all, the true principles of Baptism might be recognised, in which there is nothing that the human minister may, after your fashion, claim for himself.
For this reason you determined to occupy yourself with the Endowments alone, which you have denied to Catholics, vainly striving to claim them for yourselves exclusively, having clutched them, as it were in your hand, or shut them up in a box. Although the question is about regeneration, and man's renovation, you have made no mention either of Faith or of its profession by the Faithful. You determined rather to speak of the Endowments alone, and have passed over in silence all these things without which spiritual faith and reparation cannot exist. And although the Endowments belong to the Spouse, not the Spouse to the Endowments, you dealt with the Endowments as if life were given by them, not by the inward organs, which we understand to be rather in the Sacraments than in the Ornaments.
XI. The Church is rightly called Paradise, but it belongs to the wide world.
Nor do I pass over the fact that you have said openly that the Church is (as we believe) a Paradise----a thing which without doubt is true----a garden in which God sets His little trees. And yet you have denied to God His rich possessions by compressing His garden |90 into a narrow corner, claiming without reason everything for yourselves alone. Surely the plantations of God, through different precepts, have different seeds. The just, the continent, the merciful, the virgins are spiritual seeds. Of these seeds God raises little plants in His Paradise. Grant to God that His garden be spread far and wide. Why do you deny to Him the Christian peoples of East and North, also those of all the provinces of the West and of innumerable islands ----with whom you share no fellowship of communion----against whom you----few in number and rebels----are ranged, in isolation?
XII. From the prayer of Oblation we gather that the One Church is Everywhere.