It is now time to condemn, as is only right, your falsehood, with which each day you season your Sacrifices. For who can doubt that you dare not pass over what is prescribed in the Mystery of the Sacraments? You say that you offer the Sacrifice to God on behalf of the Church, which is One. This |91 in itself is part of your falsehood, to call that One, of which you have made Two. You proclaim that you sacrifice to God on behalf of the One Church, which has been spread throughout the whole world.
But what reply would you make were God to say to any one of you:
'Why dost thou offer sacrifice for the Whole----thou who art not in the Whole? '
If we are displeasing to you, what wrong has the City of Antioch done you, or the Province of Arabia ?
Yet we are able to prove that those who come from Antioch and Arabia have been rebaptised by you.
XIII. The praise bestowed upon the Church by Parmenian belongs to Catholics.
In one thing alone we cannot be ungrateful to you, my brother Parmenian. You have praised our Church (that is the Catholic, which is contained throughout the entire world)----although you do not belong to her ----by enumerating her Endowments (mistaken though you are as to their number) and by teaching that she is a garden enclosed and a fountain sealed up, and the only Bride. |92
This we say of that which is our own; you have said, it of that which does not belong to you. Whatever you have been able to say in praise of the Church, we, before you, have said the same. We too, with you, condemn the Betrayers----those men whom, if you remember, we have shown up in our first Book.
And although we are in communion with the whole [Catholic] world, and all the Provinces are in communion with us, you for some time past have thought well to provide two churches, as if Africa alone had Christian people----that Africa in which, through your fault, two parties have been made! And you----not remembering Christ, who says that His Spouse is One----have said, not that there are two parties in Africa, but two Churches. Without doubt that Church is One, to which it has been granted to be pointed out by the Word of Christ, who says:
'One is My dove; My spouse is One.'
XIV. The Catholics have done nothing with cruelty.
But you, having forgotten this, have used these words in order to stir up hatred against Catholics:
'That,' you have said, 'cannot rightly be called a Church which battens on bloody morsels, and is fattened on the blood and the flesh of the Saints.'
The Church has her own determinate members----Bishops, priests, deacons, clerics, and the mass of |93 the faithful. Tell us against which class of men in our Church the charge that you have thought well to bring can be proved. Name some cleric individually, point out some deacon by his name; show that this evil thing has been done by some priest; prove the guilt of Bishops. Make us see that any one of our people has plotted against any man. Who of us has persecuted any one? Who is there on your side, of whom you can either say or prove that he has been persecuted by us?
Unity displeases you.
So----if you deem it to be a crime, convict us of being in communion with Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians and the Seven Churches which are in Asia.
If it seems to you wicked or a proof of guilt to communicate with the 'shrines' of the Apostles and of all the Saints, far from denying this, we make it our boast.
XV. The Peace and Happiness of the Church before it was disturbed by the Donatists.
But that I may show that----to quote your words ----it was your party which
'has battened on bloody morsels, and has been fattened on the blood and flesh of Christians,'
your rabid madness must now be described from its beginning; now the story of your wickedness must be related anew; now your folly must be proved.
First we have to show that the cause of your gladness ought to be your shame, and how wicked is |94 your joy at having received liberty to return to your original wrongdoing.
Go over again the times that are past, enter into the sequence of events, consider how different were the persons concerned, and how different were their aims.
Recall Constantine the Christian Emperor to your memory. Think of the service which he rendered to God, and remember his ardent desire that schism should be removed, and all dissension die away, so that Holy Mother Church might see, rejoicing, her children throughout the world living in unity. He restored the unity of communion; he gave back wives to husbands, children to parents, brothers to brothers.
These are the things concerning which God bears witness that He is well pleased, when He says in the hundred and thirty-second Psalm: