You have been unwilling to live in the school of John, for, when you lead some astray, you promise them that you will grant them forgiveness of their sins; and, when you are pleased to forgive sins, you |104 profess your own innocence and bestow forgiveness of sins, in such a manner as though you had no sin yourselves. This in you is not presumption [merely]; it is deception. This is not truth; it is a falsehood. For it is only a moment after you have laid your hands upon the heads of others and pardoned their crimes, that you turn to the altar, and are unable to pass over the Lord's Prayer. Then no doubt you say:
'Our Father who art in Heaven, forgive us our debts and sins.'
What ought you to be called when you confess your own sins, if you are holy when you forgive the sins of others? In this way do you deceive yourselves, and the truth is not in you.
But it is clear that this is dictated to you by your nursing mother Pride, as Christ bears witness in the Gospel. Although He did not mention your names, still He pointed out your character by a parable. For thus has it been written:
'Jesus spoke this parable on account of those who consider themselves holy and despise others.'
The evidence itself clearly shows that, when you puff yourselves up as holy, and plainly and openly despise us, this has been said of you. Two men, He |105 said, went up into the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a Publican. The Pharisee swollen out, proud, puffed up, such as we see you too to be, his body not humbled, his neck not bent, but with raised countenance and swelling breast----cried aloud:
'I give Thee thanks, my God, because in nothing have I sinned.'
This is to say to God:
'I have nothing for Thee to pardon.'
O wildness of a madman! O pride that must be punished and condemned! God is prepared to pardon and the guilty one hastens to reject forgiveness. The Publican in his humility, recognising that he was a man, besought in this manner:
'Have mercy, O Lord, on me a sinner.'
Thus did he deserve to be justified; thus did pride go down from the Temple, condemned in the Pharisee ----your teacher.
More tolerable is it to find sins where there is humility, than innocence where there is pride.
But you, though you are burdened with the heavy sins of Betrayal and Schism, take credit to yourselves that you are proud as well!
XXI. The sin of the Donatists in stripping Bishops of their dignity and submitting them to Penance.
Now that we have proved that you ought to blush with shame for those things at which you rejoice, and have shown with what mad rage you conducted yourselves in so many places, something should be said about the depth of your impiety. For who |106 ever will be able to explain the crimes that have been done, or those that are being actually done, by you? It is clear that, with a certain wicked ingenuity, you arranged all your plans in such a way as by one bad action to accomplish different results. For example, when a priest or a Bishop was removed by you from his post, you saw to it that you might capture all his flock. How could a mass of men stand firm when they saw you tear their ruler from them? In this manner is it always that, after the shepherd has by some misfortune been killed, wolves set upon the sheep. You exorcised the Faithful, and without reason washed the walls of the churches, that by wickedness of this kind you might undermine the minds of very simple people. By such evil designs as these you throttled the intelligence of not a few, and having disguised the light of your cunning by covering it all under a cloud of feigned simplicity, you shot arrows from your quiver, to lay low the miserable by the seductions that your hearts contrived. Even as the Holy Ghost foretold of you, through David the Prophet, in the Psalm:
'For lo the wicked have bent their bow, they have prepared the arrows in their quiver to shoot the upright of heart when the moon is dark.' |107
In what way have your deeds fallen short of your plans? You have shot the innocent, you have disarmed the faithful. Bishops have been stripped of the office belonging to their title. O unheard-of impiety, upon whom have you laid your cut-throat hands, to keep them amongst the torments of Penance ?
The savagery of highway robbers is seen to be a thing of less account, when compared with the deeds that you have done. The robber gives those whom he murders a quick death; you slay your victim, yet leave him amongst the living. Those whom you have succeeded in deceiving have been entrapped through the weakness of their understanding, for they who had been ordained in the Name of God had, by God's own work, been made perfect [in their office]. And you fight fiercely against the work of God, destroying His work by the engines of your wickedness.
It is clear, therefore, that of you it has been written in the tenth Psalm:
'That which Thou hast made perfect they have destroyed.'
Your impiety has filled you with pride, but
'Justice looking down from heaven'
accuses you; whilst on earth men praise you with |108 mistaken praise for doing wickedness, so that of you the Holy Ghost has said in the ninth Psalm:
'Whilst the wicked man is proud, the poor man is set on fire; they are caught in the counsels which they devise. The sinner is praised in the desires of his soul and he who does iniquity shall be blessed.'