Since it is certain that all these things are so, understand that you have been cut off from the holy Church, and that we are not defiled. What ground, therefore, have you for thinking that the prophet Haggai can be of any help to you?
The altars, then, and the sacred vessels, which we have mentioned above, were formerly in both your hands and ours. If you slander our hands, why at those altars condemn your own hands as well?
But you say that you have read:
'That, which one, who is defiled, has touched, is defiled.'
Suppose that anyone has been defiled, so that |256 the things which he has touched appear to be defiled----let it be granted, if there has only been the touch, that the things which the defiled has touched, without any invocation of the Name of God, may be contaminated----provided that silence has been kept about God. For if there be invocation of the Name of God, the invocation itself sanctifies even that which appeared to have been defiled. Thus when two hundred and fifty censers, which had been carried in the hands of sinners, remained cast away (after those sinners were swallowed up by the earth), as the Holy priest Aaron hesitated what to do about them, he heard the Voice of God, saying:
'Take up, O Aaron, these censers, and make plates of them and fasten them in the corners of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, because, though those who carried them have sinned, nevertheless these vessels are holy, for My Name has been invoked with them, saith God.'
And surely to carry is more than to touch. Therefore it is quite clear that a thing can be made holy by the invocation of the Name of God, even though it be a sinner who invokes God. For the touch cannot have as much efficacy, as has the invocation of God's Name. And do you too, who count on your own sanctity, tell us whether the touch makes holy or the invocation. Surely it is the invocation not the touch. Otherwise if you rely upon the touch alone, touch a board, a stone, a garment----and let us see whether (if silence be kept about God) they can be sanctified. |257
IV. That virgins consecrated to God were wrongfully stripped by the Donatists of the ornaments proper to their state.
Now consider what a foolish----what an empty thing it is for you to have exercised your will and your sham authority by making God's virgins learn to do Penance, so that they who had already made their Profession had afterwards by your orders to change the signs of their choice upon their heads, and were compelled to cast away their veils, and to receive others in their place. First tell us where there is any commandment that has been given concerning veils. For virginity is a matter of choice, not of necessity.
So Paul the Apostle, that famous innkeeper, to whose care was entrusted a people wounded with the wounds of their sins, had received two pence to lay out----that is, the two Testaments. These he, as it were, expended by his teaching, and taught how Christian husbands and wives ought to live; but, when he was asked what command he would give concerning virgins, he answered that nothing about |258 virginity had been commanded. He acknowledged that he had laid out the two Testaments, that is the two pence. In a certain way the commission was exhausted, but, inasmuch as Christ, who had entrusted the wounded man to his keeping, had promised that He would repay whatsoever over and above might be expended upon his care, Paul, after having laid out the two pence, gives not commandments, but a counsel with regard to virginity. He does not stand in the way of those who desire it, but neither does he drive or force those who desire it not.
'He who has given his virgin, does well, and he who has not given her, does better.'
These are words of counsel, nor are any precepts joined to them, neither as to the kind of wool from which the veil should be made, nor with what sort of purple dye it should be stained. For virginity cannot be aided with this kind of garment, nor with it are quenched the heats of the soul, which sometimes are enkindled by the summer, nor by it is the mind |259 relieved, which from time to time is pressed down by the burdens of desires. For if it were otherwise, not one veil, but very many, would be placed on the virgin's head, that, whensoever the desires of the flesh should trouble the soul, the number of veils might fight against the stings of the mind. The veil was thought of as a sign for the head, not as a remedy on behalf of chastity. So a garment of this kind may get old, and be gnawed through and worn out; and yet virginity, as long as it has suffered no damage, can be safe without a veil.
This kind of life is a kind of spiritual marriage. They had already come to the nuptials of their Spouse by their choice and Profession; and had already loosed their hair, thus to show that they had given up worldly nuptials, and were joined to their spiritual Spouse. They had already celebrated heavenly nuptials. For what reason have you forced them to loose their hair a second time? For what reason is it, I say, that you have exacted of them a second Profession? Who is the second spiritual spouse whom they may wed a second time? When did He die, to whom they had been wedded, that they may marry again? You have laid heads once more bare, which had already received the veil. You have stripped them of the marks of their Profession, which seem to have been introduced, as a protection |260 against abductors or suitors. The veil is a sign of their free choice ---- not an aid to chastity ----lest the suitor should either continue to sue for, or the abductor dare to violate, that which had already been consecrated to God.
The veil, accordingly, is a sign, not a sacrament. You have then found virgins of this kind, who had already been wedded spiritually----these you forced to second nuptials, and ordered once more to loose their hair.
This is not suffered even by those women who enter upon a natural marriage. For if it should have chanced to any one of them to change her husband, after widowhood has befallen her, the great secular festivity is not repeated; she is not puffed up to the skies; there is no great assemblage of people provided. Therefore, you have not taken away ornaments from their heads, but (as we have said above) the proofs of the choice of the better part. You have sprinkled the hair, which had been already consecrated to God, with unclean ashes. You even gave orders that they should be washed with salt water.
And would that you had quickly restored that which you had taken away. You lengthened out delays, so that some who were dragged back to [the world] remained a long time in their original dress, after you had removed the outward signs, with which they had fortified themselves against suitors and |261 abductors. For when men saw that you had removed the barrier which formerly stood in their way, instead of suitors they became abductors. Nor did anyone seem to himself to have sinned, in carrying off one who was such as he had seen her to be, at the time when he was looking for a wife.
V. That the sacred books and vessels were taken away forcibly from the Catholics by the Donatists.
In this business how great were the injuries that you did to God, how great were the gains that you won for the Devil. You impiously melted down Chalices, you savagely broke and foolishly scraped altars, you forced wretched maidens (not without disgrace) to take a second veil, although nothing can be read in Scripture about the first. And I cannot pass over a thing, which neither is pleasing to God, nor can be excused by your adherents, nor be defended by any man. You judged that by civil courts and public laws the books of the Divine Law should, through the action of officials, be torn away from very many, wishing to have for themselves alone that which before the schism the Church had held for all in common. I do not fear, as a Christian, to state a fact of which, through your accusations, the pagan officers could not be unaware. You seized with |262 violence the altar cloths and books belonging to the Lord, which formerly had been possessed in common. You also seized the palls and the manuscripts. In your proud judgement you thought that in each case they had been defiled. If I mistake not, you made haste to purify all these things. Without doubt you washed the palls. Tell us what you did with the manuscripts. If you are to act wisely you must pass the same judgement in all things. Either wash both, or leave both alone. If you act differently, you will have tainted your own efforts. The pall you wash; the manuscript you wash not. If you do well on one side, you do evil on the other. You are unable to deny that you give scandal on the one hand, if you do well on the other; and if you rejoice to seem full of respect for religion in one matter, you ought also to bewail that you are held to be guilty of sacrilege in the other.
VI. The folly of the Donatists in washing the walls.
Now, what kind of thing have you done when you determined in many places to have even the walls washed, and ordered the whole interior to be sprinkled with salt water? |263
O Water, which by God wert created sweet, over which the Holy Spirit was borne before the very birth of the world! O Water, which, that thou mightest make the land pure, hast washed the earth! O Water, which, in the days of Moses, after thou hadst been sweetened by wood, so that thou mightest lose the bitterness that is natural to thee, didst satiate by thy most sweet draughts the hearts of so many people ! It has remained for thee, after so high an office, to receive no slight degradation! In the presence of Moses bitterness dies in thee, and to-day thy sweetness, together with the Catholic people, is harassed by schismatics. Together we suffer the conflict, together we look for the vengeance of God.
Tell us, my brother Parmenian, what injury the place had done you, what injury the very walls that they should suffer such things as these at your hands? Is it because within them God was entreated? Or, that there Christ was praised? Or, that there was invoked the Holy Ghost? Or, that there, though you were absent, the books of the Prophets and the Holy Gospels were read aloud? Or, that there the minds of brethren, who had once been at strife, had been brought into harmony? Or, that unity, well pleasing to God, had found there a house, wherein to dwell? |264 Point out to us what it is that you have found to wash. If it be the footsteps of Catholics----we have trodden both street and square ----why do you not cleanse them all? For you and we, in order to care for our bodies, have cleansed them in the same baths, and many of ours have often used them before you. If you think that everything should be purified after us----wash the water also, if you can. Or, if, as we have just said, our footsteps seem to you to be defiled, it might be enough to wash the earth. Why, then, have you thought fit to wash the walls also, on which the footsteps of men cannot be placed? We could not tread the walls, but have only been able to see them. But if you think that what has been touched even by our looks should be washed, why have you left other things unwashed? We see the roof; we also see the heavens. They cannot be washed by you! Have you deserved well of God by washing the one? In that case you would seem to have committed a sin, for which there is no expiation, in not washing the other. As, then, you wish to appear full of a sort of diligence in one quarter, you have been found to have been negligent in another. Your diligence, however, should be termed folly, or----to call it by its true name----vanity----unless, indeed, in thus acting you have perhaps inspired the uneducated populace with terror, making them think that, since the pillar in the church has been washed, so also should be their bodies. If you have had this cunning design, |265 you have craftily deceived the wretched people; if you have acted as you have done without thought, then your dulness has been exposed. Those whom you have led astray know that your conduct in these matters has been stupid, and this you will not yourselves be able to deny.
VII. That the Donatists raged even against the dead.
Why should I also mention that great act of irreverence which arose from your conspiracy to seize the temples for this purpose, that you might claim the cemeteries for yourselves alone, and not permit the bodies of Catholics to be buried? To terrify the living, you do wrong even to the dead and refuse them a place for their funeral rites. If you had been at war with them whilst they were living, at least the death of your foe might appease your hatreds. Now that man is silent, with whom a moment ago you were in conflict, why insult his obsequies? Why interfere with his burial? To what purpose do you enter into strife with the dead? You have lost the fruit of your malice. And if you are not willing that bodies should rest together, you will not be able to separate their souls, set together before God.
VIII. The Donatists compared to bird-catchers.