Three Letters to Sympronian

If it is not a carnal intent, but, as I judge, a spiritual calling, my lord, that you examine our faith as to catholic truth: you especially ought to have indicated which, or how diverse the paths, are those you follow, you who, having begun from a rivulet far off, as it appears, did not hold to the fountain and origin of the principal Church: so that you might disclose what cause chiefly had dissolved the unity of our body; for those parts must be laid bare for which medicine is demanded. Now, with the bosom of your letter closed, so to speak, we do not see what members are especially in need of our care. For so many heresies have arisen from the Christian head that the list of their very names would fill an immense volume.

For to pass over the heretics of the Jews—the Samaritan Dositheus, the Sadducees and Pharisees—how many arose in the times of the apostles it would take very long to enumerate: Simon Magus, and Menander, and Nicolaus, and the rest whom obscure report conceals. What of later times—Ebion, and Apelles, and Marcion, and Valentinus, and Cerdo; and not long after them, the Cataphrygians and the Novatianists, to say nothing of newer swarms? Whom then am I first to refute by letter? Paper itself, should you wish it, could not contain the very names of them all—except that by your writings, which condemn penitence altogether, you declare that you have assented to the Phrygians. Yet, dearest lord, even among these very people error is so manifold and diverse, that it is not this one point alone—their view against penitence—but as it were certain Lernaean heads that must be cut off.

And first, these rely upon very many authors: for I think the Greek Blastus is also one of theirs; Theodotus too and Praxeas once taught among your people; those very Phrygians, more noble still, who falsely claim to have been inspired by Leucius, boast that they were instructed by Proclus: following Montanus and Maximilla and Priscilla, how many manifold controversies have they stirred up—about the Paschal day, about the Paraclete, about the apostles, about the prophets—and many other things, just as this matter too of the catholic name, and of the pardon of penitence. Wherefore if we wished to discuss all these things, a teachable presence would be needed; if I could not sufficiently instruct you in these matters alone which you write of, nevertheless, because those who wonder must in some way be served, for the sake of instructing you, we discourse summarily on those things about which you have deigned to write.

If you wish to know more fully concerning our position, it is fitting that you declare your own more simply; lest, by inquiring too obscurely, you make us unable to know whether you ask or provoke. Meanwhile, as concerns present matters, I want you above all to be asked this: do not, on this very account, borrow authority for error—because, as you say, throughout the whole world there is no one within who could refute you, or could persuade you against what you believe. For even if we are unskilled, the Spirit of God is most skilled; and even if we are unfaithful, God is faithful, who cannot deny Himself. Then further, that by resisting, it was not permitted to the priests of God to contend for long. We, says the Apostle, have no such custom, nor has the Church of God. After one admonition, as you yourself know, the contentious man is to be dismissed. But can anyone persuade one who is unwilling?

Yours, then, brother, not their fault it is, if no one has persuaded you of what was best. For today too it is in your power to despise even our writings, if you prefer to conquer them rather than to test them. But indeed very many resisted even the Lord Himself and His apostles; nor could the truth be persuaded to anyone, unless he consented to it by his own religious will. And so, my lord, we too have not written with that confidence by which we might persuade one who resists, but with that faith by which we do not deny to one who is willing an approach to good peace; which, if it is present in your mind and heart, then concerning the catholic name there is no struggle to be had. For if our people obtain this through God, then it need not be questioned, since divine authority precedes; but if through man, then, whenever it was assumed, it must be exposed.

Then, if it is a good name, it admits no hatred; if bad, it lacks envy.

I hear that the Novatianists are called from Novatus or Novatian: yet it is the sect in these men that I accuse, not the name; nor has anyone objected to Montanus or the Phrygians on account of their name. But under the apostles, you will say, no one was called Catholic. Granted, let it have been so; yet grant this too. When after the apostles heresies arose, and under various names strove to tear apart and rend piecemeal the dove of God and the queen: did not the apostolic people demand for itself a surname, by which it might distinguish the unity of the uncorrupted people, lest the error of some should tear apart, member by member, the undefiled virgin of God? Was it not fitting that the principal head be marked by its own proper appellation? Suppose I, entering some populous city today, upon finding Marcionites, Apollinarians, Cataphrygians, Novatianists, and others of this kind, who call themselves Christians: by what surname should I recognize the congregation of my own people, unless it were called Catholic?

Come now, who has bestowed such names upon the rest of the peoples? Why do so many cities, so many nations, each have its own designation? That very man who questions the catholic name will not know the reason for his own name, if I should ask whence it was handed down to him. Certainly that which has not fallen through so many ages is not borrowed from man. This word "Catholic" savors neither of Marcion, nor of Apelles, nor of Montanus, nor does it take heretics as its authors. The Holy Spirit has taught us many things—He whom God sent from heaven as Paraclete and Teacher to the apostles; reason teaches many things, as Paul says, and propriety, and, as he says, nature itself. What? Does little weight run to us from the apostolic men, little from the first priests, little from the most blessed Cyprian, martyr and teacher? Do we wish to teach the teacher?

Are we wiser than he, and are we inflamed with the spirit of the flesh against him, whom noble blood and the crown of a most glorious passion produced as a witness of the eternal God? What of so many priests of those regions, whom one peace bound together with the same Cyprian throughout the whole world? What of so many aged bishops, so many martyrs, so many confessors? Come now. If they were not fit authors for usurping this name, shall we be fit authors for denying it? And shall the fathers rather follow our authority, and shall the antiquity of the saints yield to be corrected, and shall times now rotting with vices erase the canons of apostolic antiquity?

Yet do not be troubled, brother: Christian is my name, but Catholic is my surname. The one names me; the other shows what I am. By this I am proved; by that I am designated. And if at last an account of the word "Catholic" must be rendered, and expressed by Roman interpretation from the Greek: Catholic means "where one," or, as the more learned think, "the obedience of all"—namely, of the commandments of God. Whence the Apostle says: If in all things you are obedient. And again: For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one, many shall be made righteous. Therefore he who is Catholic is the same as one obedient to righteousness. He who is obedient is the same as a Christian: thus the Catholic is a Christian.

Wherefore our people is divided from the heretical name by this appellation, when it is called Catholic: but also, if Catholic signifies "one everywhere," as those above think, David himself indicates this very thing, saying: The queen stood in a robe of gold and many colors—that is, one in all things. And in the Song of Songs the Bridegroom speaks thus: My dove is one, my perfect one is one, she is the only one of her mother, the chosen one of her that bore her. And again: Virgins shall be brought to the king after her. And further: Maidens without number. Therefore she is one in all things, and one above all things.

If you seek the reason of the name, it is plain. But concerning penitence, may God grant that it be necessary for no faithful; may no one, after the aid of the sacred font, fall into the pit of death; nor may priests be compelled to bring in slow consolations or to teach them, lest they open a way to sinning while they flatter the sinner with remedies. But we announce this indulgence of our God to the wretched, not to the blessed, not before sin, but we disclose sins; nor do we proclaim medicine to the healthy, but to those who are ill.

If spiritual wickedness can do nothing against the baptized, nothing that fraud of the serpent which first overturned man, which stamped upon his posterity so many marks of damnation; if it has withdrawn from the world, if we have already begun to reign, if no crime creeps upon our eyes, our hands, our minds—then let this gift of God be cast away, let aid be repelled, let no confession, no groans be heard; let proud righteousness despise every remedy. But if the Lord has provided this for His own man; if the same one who granted rewards to those who stand has also granted remedies to those who have fallen—cease to accuse the divine mercy, or to erase, by an assertion of rigor, so many titles of heavenly clemency, or to forbid, by inexorable harshness, the gratuitous goods of the Lord.

We do not grant these things of our own. Turn to me, says the Lord, and at the same time with fasting, and weeping, and mourning, rend your hearts. And again: Let the wicked man forsake his ways, and the man of iniquity his thoughts, and let him turn to the Lord, and he shall obtain mercy. And likewise the Prophet cries out in this manner: For God is kind, and gentle, and patient, and turns back the sentence brought against wickedness. Does the serpent have so long-lasting a venom, and does Christ have no medicine? Does the devil kill in the world, and can Christ not bring aid here? Let it indeed shame us to sin, but let it not shame us to repent. Let it be a disgrace to be in peril, but let it not be a disgrace to be set free. Who would snatch away the plank from the shipwrecked man, lest he escape? Who would grudge the healing of wounds?

Does not David say: Every night I will wash my bed, I will water my couch with my tears. And again: I acknowledge my sin, and my wickedness I have not concealed. And further: I said, I will confess against myself my transgression to my God, and Thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my heart. Did not the Prophet, after the guilt of murder and adultery, answer to him repenting for Bathsheba: The Lord has taken away your sin? Did not confession free the Babylonian king, condemned after so many crimes of idolatry? And what does the Lord mean when He says: Shall not he that falls, rise again? And he that has turned away, shall he not turn back? What do all those proofs of the Lord's parables answer to this?

That the woman found the drachma, and rejoices that it is found; that the shepherd brings back the wandering sheep; that to the son returning, after all his goods had been squandered, and after he had wasted his substance with harlots and fornicators, the father runs to meet him kindly, and rebukes the envious brother by showing him the reason: My son, he says, was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and is found. What of that man wounded on the road, passed by by the Levite and the priest? Is he not healed? Recall what the Spirit says to the churches: He accuses the Ephesians of abandoned love; He charges the Thyatirans with fornication; He rebukes the Sardians for ceasing from work, the Pergamenes for teaching diverse doctrines; He brands the riches of the Laodiceans; and yet He invites all to penitence through satisfaction.

What does the Apostle say to the Corinthians, when he thus speaks: Lest, when I come, I should mourn many of those who have sinned before, and have not done penance for what they formerly committed in fornication and uncleanness? What again, to the Galatians? If any man be overtaken in any fault—that is, of any kind—you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, taking heed lest you also be tempted. But does the father of a household, in a great house, keep only vessels of silver and gold? Does he not also deign to keep vessels of clay and of wood, and some mended and repaired? Now I rejoice, says the Apostle, that you were made sorrowful unto repentance. And again: For sorrow according to God works repentance unto salvation, steadfast.

But it was not permitted to repent. No one commands labor without fruit: for the laborer is worthy of his reward. God would never threaten one who did not repent, unless He forgave the one who did repent. Only God, you will say, can do this. It is true: but what He does through His priests is also His own power. For what is that which He says to the Apostles: Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven? Why this, if it were not permitted to men to bind and to loose? Or is this permitted only to the Apostles alone? Then it is also permitted only to them to baptize, and only to them to give the Holy Spirit, and only to them to purge the sins of the nations: since all this was commanded to none other than the Apostles.

But if in one place both the loosing of bonds and the power of the sacrament are given; either the whole of it has been brought down to us from the form and authority of the Apostles, or that too has not been relaxed from the decrees. I, he says, have laid the foundation; but another builds upon it. Building, then, upon this foundation which the teaching of the Apostles established. Finally, bishops too are named Apostles, as Paul explains concerning Epaphroditus: My brother, he says, and fellow-soldier; but your apostle. If therefore both the power of the laver and of the chrism, of the greater and far higher gifts, has descended from thence to the bishops; the right also of binding and of loosing was present. And even if we rashly claim this on account of our own sins, God nevertheless will not deny it to those who are holy and who hold the seat of the Apostles; He who has granted to bishops even the name of His Only-begotten.

I would write more, brother, were I not pressed by the haste of the returning boy, and did I not wish to reserve fuller matters either for you present in person, or for one confessing his whole purpose. Let no one despise a bishop out of regard for the man. Let us remember that the Apostle Peter named our Lord a Bishop; But now, he says, ye are returned to the bishop and pastor of your souls. What shall be denied to a bishop, in whom the name of God operates? He will indeed render an account, if he does anything wrongly, or if he judges corruptly and impiously. Nor is it prejudged of God, that He should not undo the works of a bad builder: meanwhile, if that administration is pious, it continues as a helper of God's works.

Behold, the Apostle writes to laymen: If ye forgive anything to any one, so do I: for what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I have done it for your sakes in the person of Christ; that we should not be overreached by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices. But if the Apostle says he himself forgave what laymen forgive; how shall what a bishop has done be rejected?

Therefore neither baptism, nor remission of crimes, nor renewal of the body, has been granted to his holy power apart from this; because nothing has been entrusted by his own usurpation, and all of it has flowed down from apostolic right. I know, brother, that this very pardon of penitence is not granted indiscriminately to all, nor relaxed before there has been either an interpretation of the divine will, or perhaps a visitation. With great weight and great deliberation, after many groans and the shedding of tears, after the prayers of the whole church, pardon of true penitence is thus not denied, in such a way that no one prejudges Christ who is to judge. If you write more openly what you yourself think, brother, you will be more fully instructed.

Pacianus the bishop to his brother Sympronianus, greeting.

In a lengthy question, I shall pursue brevity as far as I am able. Nor will I, brother, requite with any return of malice you who, under the appearance of a good question, hurl and cast at me the hidden darts of your words, contriving them yourself. We are bidden to pray for those who persecute us, and to bless those who curse us. For fraud is, as it were, of the little fox, but violence is of the lion: both are most alien to man; but fraud is worthy of greater hatred. For when you believe you can do more harm, you ask as though ignorant; when you think you are teaching, you pretend to be instructed. The ancient Pharisees called the Lord "Rabbi," when they set riddles of the law against Him; they called Him "Master," when they claimed all mastery for themselves. Whatever you do, brother, you will find me altogether simple. I would rather be thought unskilled than malicious: I would rather be judged foolish than cunning.

Wherefore, before I set forth the reasoning of our faith (concerning which you are troubled), receive a few remarks about your letter, which you set before your treatise.

You say you were refreshed by my former letters, and immediately you add that I responded with bitterness in what I wrote. If bitter things refresh, I do not know what sweet things would do; unless it be that, as in medicinal draughts, the bitter is wont to heal more than the sweet. But I beg you, go back over my letter, and see whether it is sprinkled with any gall, what proud or unpleasant thing I said in reply. You say I named more heresies than anyone had asked about. Well, what is that to you, if you were not a heretic? Since you raised a question about our faith, and said you wished to be instructed, I wrote that the causes of ignorance are manifold, which especially concern you, so that you might open up which one held you, lest I should labor in unfolding many. Concerning the Catholic name I answered much, calmly. For I said that it matters nothing to another what he is called by another name.

And if you were to demand the force of the name, whatever it might be, wonderful in all respects, whether one in all things, or one above all things, or, what I had not said before, the son of the king, that is, the Christian people. So surely it was not given to us that it should not fall through so many ages. And indeed I am glad that, although you have set others before us, you still agree with us concerning the name. What if you were to deny it? Nature itself would cry out.

Or if you still doubt, let us be silent. Whatever we shall be called, that we shall be, with the antiquity of the name as witness. But if you demand it more insistently, take care lest that man of power cry out to you: Why do you ask my name? It too is wonderful. Then you added indeed that whence the Catholic name is derived is not to be reckoned; since neither are the Valentinians, if called from Valentinus, nor the Phrygians, if from Phrygia, nor the Novatians, if from Novatian, wont to be charged on that account.

Here you are gravely moved, and rise up as if pierced by a sting; for thus you exclaim in anger: Does it harm holy Cyprian, that his people bear the name apostatic, or Capitoline, or from Syndreum? You hurl insults; and behold, I am not moved. Have we been called by any of these names? Ask the age, brother, and all the years in order; whether this name has clung to us, or whether Cyprian's people have been called anything other than Catholic. I have never heard any of these names. Now see, if anyone could be called by a name he does not know was imposed on him. What then? These are curses, not names; and curses of angry men, curses of the petulant. I too could call you by as many names as you like, if it were permitted to be angry. Do you call Cyprian holy, and his people apostatic? How so? If the beginning is holy, so is the meal; and if the root is holy, so are the branches.

Am I apostolic, or is Novatus? Novatus, I say, who betrayed his father, abandoned the Church, and caused his wife's miscarriage by his own act? Am I apostolic, or Novatian, whom a letter feigned to be bishop in his absence; whom, with no one consecrating him, a linen-clad seat received? But of these things later: meanwhile, tell me yourselves what you are called. Do you deny that Novatians are called from Novatian? Whatever name you impose, this one will always cling. Search through all the annals, if you please, and believe through so many ages: you will answer, Christian. When I inquire the kind of the sect, you will not deny Novatian. Yet I do not accuse you of the name of your Novatian, which, though so often asked for, you enclose with circumlocuting lines and a certain hidden fold. Confess it simply: there is no crime in a name. Why do you hide it, though asked so many times? Why do you blush at the cause of the name?

When you first wrote, I thought you a Cataphrygian. Then in your second letter do you indeed confess it? Do you envy my name, and avoid your own? See where the shame lies in the cause, which shrinks from what it is called.

What is it that you censure and do? As though we had come to a rhetorician, or as though art were to be treated, or as though I were expounding verses from Virgil's verses? When I had named several heretics, I added: And those whom obscure fame conceals. And whence do you suppose this to be drawn from a verse of Virgil, if you had not known Virgil at all? But I deny that I set the verse in its order. For I said: Whom obscure fame conceals; but it is the custom of speakers, out of the abundance of human speech, to say something that has been said before. But you repeated the verse in its own order, in its own arrangement. Did you love Virgil so much, that you thought it would be wrong to break up his verse? And yet I had learned it from a small boy. What wonder if I fell upon what I knew?

Is there in you, brother, such labor, that you now at last read what once, read by others, you used to blush at? One trained in Latin ought to accuse a Latin speaker as much as a Greek should accuse a Greek speaking Greek, as a Parthian should accuse a Parthian, as a Carthaginian should accuse a Carthaginian speaking Punic: the Medes, the Egyptians, the Hebrews have their own tongue, according to the abundance of the Lord, who tuned it in a hundred and twenty mouths. A bishop has spoken a poetic verse. What of Paul the Apostle? Does he blush, when he both quotes and approves that Athenian verse? For in the Acts of the Apostles he puts it thus: Certain also of your own poets have said: For we are also his offspring: since then we are the offspring of God. And again he said to Titus: One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. And he adds: This testimony is true.

Thus we sin by example: nor are we rhetoricians, but whatever voice there is, we believe it to be the abundance of God. Latium, Egypt, Athens, the Thracians, the Arabs, the Spaniards confess God; the Holy Spirit understands all tongues. Why do you yourself say, I will anoint your letters with living cedar-oil against the moth-eaten enemies of the Muses? Of which Muses, I ask? Or those who invented letters and wrote the papers that the moths pursue? Tell me, I ask, brother, did the Muses discover letters? Is it not through the Lord that all things are, and from God all things? Besides those hundred and twenty tongues, was there yet another of the Muses? Hesiod invented that fiction on Helicon, but by the zeal of the Athenians, to whom, as the Apostle says, nothing was free but to talk. We, on the Apostle's testimony, hold all the modes of every voice, all the kinds of tongues, inspired by God.

Yet I forgive you, brother, if you too presume something from your own author, and join the philosophy of Novatian, through which he ran into shipwreck of religion, with the authority of Hesiod. Yet you ought to have remembered the Apostle, who says: Beware lest anyone deceive you through philosophy and vain seduction.

Now what sort of thing is that which you think should be charged against the Catholics, if ever kings or empires persecuted you? Then, on the contrary, it ought to be charged against you, as often as Catholics endured persecution from kings; and pagan princes persecuted our people too. Did you endure the hatreds of Christians? But our people complained more. Let him see who did this, with what mind, with what spirit; whether he procured peace or discord. But even if some of them offended, he says, do they thereby destroy the faith of God? Yet do not suppose this to have been a complaint of ours.

But when, through our faith, Christian princes began to exist; the princes themselves, favoring the Catholic, that is, their own side, were moved by their own private grief; unless perhaps it will be charged to Daniel that he was vindicated by Darius; or to Esther, that most holy woman, when the king's officer was slain for her sake; or to the three boys, that on their account, after the trial of the flames, the Babylonian king threatens the profane and unbelieving. Did not Peter confound Simon, with the judge assenting? Did not Paul blind Elymas, with Sergius favoring? He would have been vindicated even at Jerusalem, had he had anything bound in the faith. Do you not know that the powers themselves serve the innocent, and minister for good to holy fathers? As the Apostle says: Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you wish not to fear the power? Do good, and you shall have praise from it through the Lord: for he is a minister to you for good.

And yet I have complained of no one, have been vindicated by no one. Nor do I think the Novatians hinder me, in whose smallness and defect, if I wished, I could glory. Behold, no one accuses your people to the emperor, and you alone are singled out. Yet we must all stand before the tribunal of God. This one thing I know: the Novatians would complain, if their cause were pleasing to any princes.

It would be more useful, you say, to conquer than to please. But those who are driven by an ardor for conquering make progress through contention. But the Apostle says: But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor does the Church of God. Against this, concerning the zeal for pleasing, he says: I please all men in all things, not seeking what is profitable for myself, but what is profitable for many, that they may be saved. But you, while you consider your own advantage and not that of your brothers, prefer to crush by conquering rather than to refresh by pleasing. To have overcome evil with good belongs to reason; but in any case whatsoever, to wish to prevail is the mark of insane presumption. This is not from apostolic law, but from Greek custom, among whom it is thought to be written that the entire manner of the Lacedaemonians was inflamed with the desire to conquer.

That muddy swine also, and the mad tigress—what else do they want but to conquer rather than to please? You write that you have leisure; and therefore contentious things delight you. But to me, occupied with catholic affairs, your letter was delivered after nearly thirty days, and repeated after another forty.

You say I am angry; far from it. I am stung, as a bee is, which sometimes defends its honey with its sting. But go back over the letters on both sides; you will then see whether we weave the page with darts or with flowers. Of such the Apostle indeed speaks, of those who ought to be gnashed at. But attend. We contend with you as doves, rather with mouth than with tooth. Would that what you say—that you wish to be taught—were true! I myself would already, with my own hands, be offering you the ointments of the Holy Spirit. Do you love me? I have not wounded you, I know. But you would then truly love, if you did not hold different views, and approached my work with kindness. Are you amazed that Cyprian's letters please me? Why should they not, being those of a blessed martyr and catholic priest? Do you thrust Novatian upon me?

I hear that he was a philosopher of the world; nor do I wonder much that he degenerated from the Church of the living God. I know that he abandoned the root of the ancient law, the fountain of the old people, envying Cornelius, given over to the madness of Novatus, made a bishop without lawful consecration, and therefore not truly made, through a letter of those who pretended to be Confessors, who tore apart the members of the one mother. I will prove these things to you, brother, from the confession of your own party, by their letters. Thus this philosopher of yours, seeking to establish his own wisdom, as the Apostle says, is not subject to the wisdom of God; since through his own wisdom the world did not recognize the wisdom of God. For as to what you add, that you think Novatian suffered before Cyprian said "my adversary went before me," see how plainly I answer. Novatian never underwent martyrdom, nor has this been heard or read from the words of the most blessed Cyprian.

You have his letters in which he relates that Cornelius, bishop of the City, whom Novatian then envied, resisted hostile rulers, was often a confessor, often harassed; became the leader of very many Confessors, and of very many Martyrs also, and was most gloriously crowned along with very many, while Novatian was then still alive and indeed secure. For he had withdrawn from the church of Christ precisely so that the labor of confession would not press upon him. He, first stung by envy, could not bear Cornelius's episcopate; thence, mocked by the letters of a few, he gave himself over to Novatus. All these things concerning Novatian the letters of Cyprian will fully teach you. Furthermore, even if Novatian suffered something, he was nevertheless not killed; even if he was killed, he was nevertheless not crowned. Why not? Because he was outside the peace of the Church, outside concord, outside that mother of whom a martyr ought to be a portion.

Hear the Apostle: And if I have all faith, so that I could move mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing. But Cyprian suffered in the concord of all, in common peace, in the flock of the Confessors, and confessed often through repeated persecutions, and was harassed with much laceration, and was finally given the saving cup to drink. This was to be crowned. Let Novatian therefore keep his own letters to himself; let him keep his swelling, his pride, by which, while being lifted on high, he was cast down; while sparing no one, he was poured out. Behold one who would close off the way of salvation to the brothers with inexorable religion! Behold one who is confident that he alone bears it openly, and purges the Lord's threshing floor!

Have pity on yourself, brother Sympronian, and do not let Novatian deceive you under this facade; and let him not therefore be thought more just, because he has despised others by comparison with himself. Audacity often feigns confidence falsely; and for desperate sinners of every kind, a false image of good conscience flatters. On the contrary, however, all humility is innocence—even that which is indebted, even that which is sinful, even that which pleads for its own soul along with the sinner. Blot me, said Moses, out of the book which thou hast written, lest the sinners perish. I could have wished, says the Apostle, to be myself anathema in Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Certainly both were interceding for sinners; and on this account, neither Moses nor Paul offended God. Is Novatian better than these? An improver of the Prophets? A teacher of the Apostles? Does he now seem, like Moses, to be with Christ? Is he now lifted up to the third heaven like Paul?

Is he now heard alone, all others neglected? Let this suffice as my response to your letter. But because you argued at greater length concerning penance not to be done, or to be done before baptism, and filled the page of your treatise with many chapters of examples, I will answer each point out of abundance: I will not remain silent as to which faith holds the truer position. As you have deigned largely to command our hearing, offer in turn a kindly hearing to my discourse. Perhaps the Lord will grant that we, who have patiently offered ourselves to you, may reap some fruit also from your patience. May the Lord deign to guard and protect you forever, and grant that you live as a Christian and Catholic, and be in concord with us. Amen.

Pacian, bishop, to brother Sympronian, greeting.

The whole treatise of the Novatians, which you sent to me arranged with propositions gathered from every side, brother Sympronian, contains this: that it is not permitted to do penance after baptism; that the Church cannot forgive mortal sin, indeed that she herself perishes by receiving sinners. A splendid honor, a singular authority, a great constancy: to reject the guilty, to flee the touch of sinners, to trust wickedly in one's own innocence. Who claims this, brother—Moses, or Paul, or Christ? Yet Moses wishes to be blotted out of the book for the blasphemers; and Paul to be anathema for his brethren; and the Lord himself prefers to suffer for the unjust. None of these, you will say. Who then? Novatian taught this. Someone spotless and pure, who has never heard Novatus.

Ah, one who never deserted the Church, who was made a bishop by bishops, who was consecrated by ordinary right, who obtained a vacant see in the Church? What is that to you, you will say; Novatian taught this. But when, brother, or in what times? Immediately after the Lord's passion? After the principate of Decius, that is, after nearly three hundred years from the Lord's passion. What then? Did he follow prophets, as the Cataphrygians do, or some Philomena, as Apelles did; or did he receive authority all on his own? Did he speak in tongues? Did he prophesy? Was he able to raise the dead? For he ought to have had some one of these things, in order to introduce a gospel of new law. And yet the Apostle cries out against this: Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. Novatian understood it this way, you will say: but Christ taught this.

Then from Christ down to the principate of Decius, did no one understand it? Was every bishop after Decius, then, at last, impatient of it; were all others slack, who preferred to mingle themselves with the lost, to perish with the wretched, to be wounded by another's wound? With Novatian as vindicator, justice is set free; with him as author, whatever has erred is corrected.

Come, you will say, let us contend with examples and fight with reason. But I, up to this point, have been at ease: content with the very sequence of the Church, with the peace of ancient assembly: I have learned no zeal for discord, I have sought no arguments for contention. You, ever since you were separated from the rest of the body and divided from the mother, in order to give a reason for your deed, search restlessly through the whole recesses of books: you stir up whatever hidden things there are: you disturb whatever thereafter is secure. Our forebears disputed nothing on their own initiative: with us, security itself is naked: what have you brought fortified from your own side? I do not know what Novatian did, what Novatus committed, why Evaristus swelled with pride, what Nicostratus proclaimed: while I despise your weapons, I do not know them; see whether you contend with unarmed truth. Let us wait, however, to see what you object, what you say. Could not even naked truth, unskilled in innocence, stand its ground?

You propose, and rightly indeed, that the Church is a people renewed from water and the Holy Spirit, without denial of the name of Christ, the temple and house of God, the pillar and ground of truth, a holy virgin of most chaste feelings, the bride of Christ from his bones and flesh, not having spot or wrinkle, keeping intact the laws of the gospels. Who among us denies this? Nay, we add further, that the Church is a queen in gilded and varied garment, a fruitful vine in the sides of the house of the Lord; a Mother of young maidens without number; the one beautiful dove of her mother, and perfect: herself the mother of all, built upon the foundations of the Prophets and Apostles, and upon the cornerstone itself, Jesus Christ: a great house enriched with vessels of every kind.

But let us see these things of ours later; meanwhile let us look at those of yours. The Church is a people reborn of water and the Holy Spirit. Come then. Who has closed the fountain of God? Who has snatched away the Spirit? Nay rather, with us the water is living, that very water which leaps up from Christ: you, separated from the perpetual fountain, from where are you begotten? The Holy Spirit also has not departed from the principal mother: whence has it reached you? Unless perchance it followed one at variance with the Church, and, though so many priests were forsaken, not content with an unconsecrated see, it fell in love with the trodden-out pool of an adulterous fountain. Whence has your people the Spirit, whom no anointed priest seals? Whence the water, which has departed from the womb? Whence the renewal, which has lost the cradle of the bride's peace?

The Church is a people without denial of the name of Christ: are there no confessors among us, whom chains, whom fires, whom swords have tested? There were, you say, but they perished by receiving back the deniers. I say nothing of this—not even of the fact that your own Novatian, while he still lived in the Church, wrote, urged, and read a booklet on the reception back of deniers or the lapsed? Meanwhile, to whom will you be able to persuade that, by receiving back the lapsed, the whole Church collapsed? That, by admitting the penitents, the people who admitted them became themselves deniers? But if some more lenient people also existed, while others, who did not approve his deed but followed custom and peace, did they lose the Christian name? Hear the voice of Jeremiah: In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge: but every one shall die for his own sin.

Nor is the Lord silent in Ezekiel: As the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son, are mine. Every one shall die for his own sin. Likewise below: The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him. You yourself set forth that example: And if these three were in the midst, Noah, Job, and Daniel, they shall not deliver sons nor daughters: they alone shall be saved. Behold, they themselves are saved who were placed in the midst of sinners, who cannot deliver others. You bind the whole world in the chains of a few: you condemn the whole Church by the weakness of a tiny portion. What of all your saints, whom Novatus instructed, whom Evaristus chose, whom Nicostratus taught, whom Novatian trained?

You have fled thorns and thistles: you have no tares in your grain: your grains are already purged: to you that purifier will come without a winnowing fan: will you alone, of all, have no chaff?

Come, say the rest: The Church is the body of Christ. A body certainly, not a member: a body gathered into one out of many parts and members, as the Apostle says: For the body also is not one member, but many. Therefore the Church is a full body, and a solid body, and one now spread through the whole world. Like a city, I say, whose parts come together into one; not as you Novatianists are, a certain insolent little portion and a swelling gathered apart, and cut off from the rest of the body. The Church is the temple of God: a temple indeed spacious, a great house, having indeed vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor, but many magnificent ones destined for the manifold uses of various works. The Church is a holy virgin, of most chaste feelings, the bride of Christ. Virgin; that is true: but also mother.

Bride; that is manifest: but also wife and spouse taken from her husband: and therefore bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh. For of her David said: Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine on the sides of thy house: thy children as olive plants round about thy table. Great, then, is the offspring of this virgin, and countless her progeny, with which the whole world is filled, with which the populous swarm ever seethes in overflowing hives. Great is the care of this mother for her children, and tender her affection: the good are honored, the proud are chastised, the sick are tended: none perishes, no one is despised: the offspring are kept secure under the indulgence of their mother. The Church is one not having spot nor wrinkle: that is, not having heresies, not the Valentinians, not the Cataphrygians, not the Novatianists. For among these there are certain spotted and wrinkled folds, envious of the adornments of precious garments.

But a sinner and a penitent is not a stain upon the Church; because as long as he sins, and does not repent, he stands outside the Church. Where he ceases to sin, he is already whole. But the heretic tears, cuts off, corrupts, and wrinkles the garment of the Lord, the Church of Christ. For, he says, since there are schisms and contentions among you, are you not carnal, and do you not walk according to man? And also: their word creeps like a canker: this is the stain of unity, this the wrinkle. Finally, where the Apostle speaks concerning these things, he sets forth the love and charity of Christ. As Christ, he says, loved the Church, and gave himself for it; so as to remove heretics, because they have not known how to love. But why say these things to a wretched penitent? Because he desires both to love and to be loved.

The Church is that which keeps the whole rights of the Gospels intact. Intact indeed because whole, because full. Where reward is given to the faithful, where tears are not denied to the wretched, where the sick are tended, where insolent health and proud righteousness claim nothing for themselves, where anxious charity perseveres in all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. Whence that saying of the Apostle: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I do not burn? Where the whole brotherhood bears its burdens together, grieving in common, secure in mutual piety. All bearing with one another in love, striving to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. This will be the Church, brother Sympronian; this will be the people reborn in Christ of water and the Holy Spirit. I do not know, you say, whether sin can be remitted by bishops, since the Lord said: Whoever shall deny me before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.

Why then did your Novatian, not even yet a priest by a false episcopacy, long before Cornelius became bishop of Rome, before he envied his priesthood, urge this? You have the testimony of Cyprian; of Cyprian, whom even you have never been able to defame. For in a certain place, he wrote thus to Antonianus: It was added, too, while Novatian himself was then writing it, and reciting with his own voice what he had written; and while Moses, then a confessor, now already a martyr, subscribed it; that peace should be given to the lapsed who were weak and at the point of death: which letter was sent through the whole world, and brought to the notice of all the churches. What do you say, brother Sympronian? Novatian wrote these things, and to add the compliance of his sincere will, even read aloud what was written. His right hand is witness, the hand that wrote is witness: his tongue is witness, which read it.

At that time Cornelius, on whose account all this envy of yours has broken out, was not yet bishop. Long afterward, with very many fellow-bishops, with very many confessors and soon-to-be martyrs, as the same Cyprian writes, he agreed, by the counsel of the elders, that it was lawful to grant peace. If access to penitence must be denied, Novatian is in the crime, who wrote, urged, and read these things. Where then was that impatient rigor? Where that fierce censure? If no one had preferred Cornelius to you, that authority of the writer would remain. Now the whole judgment displeases, now darts are hurled at us, by the very ones who supplied the cause of the darts by their own authority.

But when did the Novatianists begin this very heresy? Hear, I ask, and take note of the whole order of your error. Cornelius, already made bishop of Rome by sixteen bishops, had received the place of the vacant see, and in that virginal chastity with which he was endowed, was enduring frequent persecutions from an angry emperor. Then it happened that a certain presbyter Novatus, from Africa, having defrauded widows in the church of Carthage, despoiled orphans, denied money to the church, cast his father out of the house—who died of hunger, unburied—and having struck with his heel the womb of his pregnant wife and caused her to miscarry, came to Rome. And when, at Carthage, with the brethren pressing in the church, the day of his trial was drawing near, he went into hiding here as well.

Not long after, he set upon this Novatian, who was anxious over the episcopacy of Cornelius (for he had hoped it for himself), together with some supporters on his side, as usually happens in such a matter, urging him wavering, fostering him doubting; exhorting him to hope for something great. He found some among the number of those who had escaped the storm of that persecution; with whom he stirred up this very ill-will against Cornelius concerning the reception of the lapsed. He gives their letters to Novatian. He, on the authority of these letters, while the bishop was already seated at Rome, contrary to the right of the single priesthood, assumes to himself the name of another bishop: he accuses Cornelius of having communicated with the lapsed: he vindicates himself as innocent. Against this man an account must be rendered by me, against this man modesty must be asserted, against this man life must be cleared.

But you also, bishops, you will say, why do you approve such things? Let another say this: you defend Novatian. This cause may seem inexcusable to others, though it be pleasing to you. Let him be innocent to you, whoever is guilty for your sake. Do not accuse another of that crime from which you yourself cannot be freed. Come then, let us bishops owe the whole shame, because we have received the name of apostles, because we are marked with the appellation of Christ. Him who denies, you say, the Lord denies: I do not wish you to admit that we deny. Who confesses one denying him? He who compels to penitence, rebukes, shows the crime, opens the wounds, recalls eternal punishments, corrects by the death of the flesh? This is to chastise, not to confess. The Lord says to us: You are the salt of the earth. Rightly then do we salt by saying these things, and no one who hears will be worthless.

You see that the sentence of the Lord is not trampled upon by us, but is approved; that severity is not cast aside, but his will is disclosed. But to the penitent, you will say, you remit sins; whereas it is granted to you to release sin only in baptism. Not to me at all, but to God alone, who both grants forgiveness in baptism, and does not repel the tears of the penitent. But what I do, I do not by my own right, but by the Lord's: We are God's helpers, he says, it is God's building. And again: I planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase: Therefore neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters; but God who gives the increase. Wherefore whether we baptize, or compel to penitence, or release pardon to the penitent; we do this with Christ as author. You must consider whether Christ can do this, whether Christ has done this.

If remission of sins could be given to the penitent, you say, baptism was not necessary. A most foolish comparison! For baptism is the sacrament of the Lord's passion: the pardon of the penitent, the merit of the one confessing. The former all can obtain, because it is a gift of God's grace; that is, a free gift; but this labor is for the few, who rise again after a fall, who grow strong again after wounds, who are aided by tearful voices, who revive by the death of the flesh. You assert that I vainly set forth that example, that God said: I prefer the repentance of the sinner rather than his death. What if I had added that of Isaiah: When, being converted, you shall have groaned, then you shall be saved and shall know where you have been? What if that of the Apocalypse: Remember from whence you have fallen, and do penance, and do the first works? These, you say, were said to the Gentiles before baptism.

Hear the Apostle: Now we know that whatever the law says, it says and speaks to those who are under the law. Therefore those who lived without the law will not be bound by the condition of repentance. And even if they had repented, they had done so by free faith, not under a bond of repentance imposed by the law. Therefore even the Jews, you say, who repented before baptism, cannot repent after baptism. Who taught you this, brother Sympronian? Who persuaded you that one who has repented before should not repent afterward? But we shall see this later. Meanwhile, if repentance is closed to the Jews after baptism, since they had already discharged it before; grant at least that the Gentiles, who did not know the law of repentance beforehand, ought to repent afterward. But concerning the Jews, I do not wish you to be deceived. For they repented beforehand for this reason, because they had corrupted the old baptism, and repented, as it were, after faith, having betrayed the faith.

Hear the Apostle: For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized unto Moses, in the cloud and in the sea: and did all eat the same spiritual food, and did all drink the same spiritual drink. And they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ. By this, then, they had violated their baptism, and therefore they repented.

Let us next see what you say: If God commands man to repent more often, you say, he permits him to sin more often. What do you say? Does he then, who shows more often the remedy for a crime, show the crime? And does that physician, when he treats continually, teach how to be wounded? God does not wish man to sin even once, and yet he frees him from sin. Nor indeed, when he frees, does he teach sin; just as he who frees from a fire does not point out the fire; nor does he who snatches a shipwrecked man from the rocks drive him onto the stones. It is one thing to be freed from danger, another to be driven into danger. And perhaps I would allow this to be believed, if penitence were thought a delight; on which so great a labor is imposed, on which the death of the flesh is enjoined, on which continual tears, on which everlasting groans.

Would then he who has been healed wish to be cut again, to be burned again? Will he wish to sin again, and again repent, since it is written: Do not add sin to sin, lest something worse befall you? And further: I do not pity one who sins continually. But if, as you say, he who is shown the medicine of repentance is thereby compelled toward sin; what then will he do, to whom repentance itself is closed off; for whom, the remedy despaired of, the whole wound is covered over; to whom, altogether and entirely, the entrance to life is denied? In baptism, you say, we die once, as the Apostle says: Know you not that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in his death? For we are buried together with him by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead, so we also may walk in newness of life. What wonder?

It was fitting for the Apostle that we should be new; but that no one might sin: yet it followed that he who had sinned should repent. Let this one live whole, that one healed: let the innocent receive the crown, the penitent pardon: let the one receive the reward, the other the medicine.

Finally the same Apostle says: For if, when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us; much more, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. From wrath, certainly, which was owed to sinners. But if he did not suffer the Gentile people to die; much more will he not allow the redeemed to be extinguished. Nor will he cast away those whom he redeemed at a great price; for the loss of his servants is no light matter to him. He who rises again shall die no more, as it is written. But he himself is the advocate with the Father; he himself intercedes for our sins, no contemptible patron of the wretched, nor an unworthy intercessor.

Answer, brother, whether the devil can oppress the servants of God, or whether Christ cannot absolve them? Do you say that Peter's repentance took place before the Lord's passion? No one has proposed this to you. And yet Peter had already been baptized: for to him the Lord had said: He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again. Nevertheless he afterwards received the remedy of Christ, but he repented before; and he was accounted holy before he came to the remedy. Nor would his repentance have been recorded, if it had not profited the penitent in some way. He wept, it says, most bitterly. Do you not wish the faithful to do what Peter did? Do you not wish that to profit us which profited Peter? Come now, did not my Thomas, after the Lord's resurrection, doubt concerning the resurrection?

Is he not marked by the Lord as guilty of faithlessness, when the marks of the nails are shown him, when the pierced hands, when the wound of the side is shown, when the Lord says to him thus: Be not unbelieving, but believing? What then? Did he blush to repent? Was he not humbled? Does he not at once confess Him as God and his Lord? Does not that confession commend him?

Now how cleverly you resolve that chapter which I set forth: that power was given to bishops, so that whatever they had bound on earth should be bound also in heaven. You say that this pertains not to the faithful but to catechumens; that is, that for peoples still to be baptized it is permitted that crimes be either loosed or held.

You then join together the chapters of two Evangelists, so that they may seem to be one; and you add that what Matthew related less fully, John completed: so that, because in Matthew the Lord had said, Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, He fulfilled this in John, saying, Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; whose you shall retain, they are retained: so that this forgiving or binding may seem to pertain to the nations who were to be baptized, since the earlier Evangelist had spoken beforehand of the nations, while the later one completed the matter of loosing and binding. What are you saying? Did the two Evangelists relate mutually halved and semi-complete meanings? Were words or reason lacking to them mutually; or did not the Holy Spirit fulfill the whole in all things, carrying through the intended meanings, and defining what was said to its full extent?

No one supersedes a man's confirmed testament: shall a different tablet alter God's tablet? What is this desire in you to overcome, that you dare something of this sort? What of the fact that in Matthew himself, before His passion, the Lord had said: Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven? In Matthew the Lord had foretold this, and there He made no mention of the nations: why then do you join to it the chapter of John, where He placed His own statement, and placed it in such a way as to separate it from the nations? For if He had wished it to pertain to the nations, He himself could have joined what He himself was setting forth. So the whole of what you seek, you have in Matthew. Why have you not read the whole, you who teach a bishop? Go back to the first part of this precept.

As Matthew himself relates, a little earlier the Lord spoke to Peter; to one, in order that He might found unity from one; then straightway commanding the same thing in common, yet in such a way that it begins with Peter: And I say to you, He says, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven. Tell me, brother; did He speak this of the nations alone? Upon this rock, He says, I will build my Church? Does He call the Church, unbaptized nations? Is a man not yet reborn the body of Christ? What do I loose to the nations, that is not bound? For if it was not reckoned, neither was it bound. What do I bind, that I constrain by no law?

A gentile man is free from the Law. See now on the other hand, whether both apply to the baptized. Pardon is loosed, because he was held by sin; he is bound by anathema, because he had been loosed by faith and freed through grace. But if I should grant that this license of loosing or binding regarded the nations; much more shall I prove that it pertained to the baptized. For if he could be loosed or bound who had no bond, how much more he whom the laws of faith held?

You say that Matthew set down: If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him alone with him alone; and that the Lord immediately added: Whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven; so that it may seem to pertain to the offense of a brother. Come, do you not see that above He says: If your brother sins against you: but here He adds, Amen I say to you. Whatsoever you shall loose on earth. The former He commanded to one; the latter He released to many: the former he himself looses against whom it is admitted; the latter, the Church: the former, without a priest, without brethren; the latter is obtained from all. Whatsoever you shall loose, He says; He excepts nothing at all. Whatsoever, He says: whether great or small. Notice that He says further on to Peter that what is sinned against a man is to be forgiven seventy times seven times; so as to show that in other cases it can be forgiven even once.

Yet he who sins against Peter wounds the Lord: as He signifies to Samuel: They have not rejected you, but me. It is granted, therefore, to the Church even once, what is commanded to us ourselves so many times.

Now let us return to the straying sheep, that drachma, and the younger son: which examples, when I had touched upon them briefly in my earlier letter, you have repeated at length, teaching and showing that the drachma and the sheep and the younger son pertain to publicans and sinners; that is, to the humble people, not to the image of the Christian people, nor to the form of the faithful. I am grateful to be taught; but I am troubled that the meaning is not understood. For what shall I assert? Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law; certainly I agree that this too was principally said to those of former times, but in the form of the faithful, in the image of things to come, as the Apostle says: Now these things happened to them in figure: but they were written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. And again: All these things were shadows of things to come.

Certainly you yourself grant that these things were dictated to publicans and sinners, that is, to the humble people, and therefore to the younger. Say then: is the Christian people itself the younger? Or has it clung to the root? Or has it been fitted into those members? Built, as it is written, upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone. Is God the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Indeed, also of the Gentiles. Since there is one God, who justifies the impious out of faith, and through faith. Certainly that humble people, to whom God likened the drachma, the younger son, and the little sheep, was the Church: whence comes the whole crowd of believers, whence the Christian people.

To this body our members also have been joined, and the whole portions of believers, so that they might come together into the good olive tree out of the wild olive of the nations, as the Apostle says: Made partakers of its fatness; and thus we should all be one in Christ, Jew and Greek, slave and free. If, then, we are one body with those humble ones, the things which the humble of old heard were said also to us: and thus whatever has been proclaimed concerning a part of the body has been announced to the whole body.

Let me say it more plainly: that later people, that poor one, that lowly one, was the image of the Church, the humble and modest soul, the soul freed through Christ. This the Lord came to save, this He did not leave among the dead: this is that sheep which is carried back on His shoulders: that is, by the effort and strength of patience. This is the drachma which is sought, and, being found, is shown to the neighbors. Do you see that its form fits the likeness of penitents? Do you see that mercy is extended even to this present time? Do you see that whatever was said to the Church at her birth pertains to the fullness of the Church? Hence the Lord added there: So there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance, more than over ninety-nine just persons who need no penance. For if all these things were written to admonish us equally, then to whom, pray, shall that humble sinning people be compared, if not to a penitent people?

As if, by figures returning in order, the ninety-nine sound ones are the whole Church; but the one straying one is the little portion of those who transgress: and the drachma which was lost is that wretched sinner: the son returning after his evils is reckoned like one redeemed. Now you see that I rightly said, when I was treating of the healing of penitents, that the Lord said: They that are well have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. Rightly also that: Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Whatever is said of publicans and sinners will pertain to all the sick and all the wretched.

You say that it was written of martyrs alone: Blessed are they that mourn. Does no one, then, besides them, bewail his sins? Does not David cry out: Every night I will wash my bed? And again: For I did eat ashes as bread, and mingled my drink with weeping. Does not Jacob say: The days of my life have been hard? Does not the Apostle say to Timothy: Desiring to see you, mindful of your tears? Yet he was not speaking of a martyr. What then? Do wretched penitents have dry eyes? And do those who grieve that they have sinned not know how to weep? Do we ourselves, those in communion, the faithful, have no tears? Does it please any of us to rejoice while the world rejoices? You Novatians, are you now sated, have you become rich, have you begun to reign without us? So then, one is not so wretched, that he begins to be pitiable in this way.

After this you propose, and say that it is written by the Lord: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men; but he who shall have sinned against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come. Either I am mistaken, or this example works against you. For if every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, you see that pardon is not denied to the penitent. Therefore every sin, therefore blasphemy itself too. You have it added according to Luke: And whosoever shall speak against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him. What more is this concerning the mercy of God, concerning the clemency of the Judge? Is not your eye envious, because he is a good householder? Is it not permitted to him to do what he wills? Nay rather, who are you that judge a servant? To his own Lord he stands or falls. And God is able to make him stand.

But he who shall have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, you say, shall not be forgiven. You are accustomed to run through whole readings: why did you not read here what this "in the Spirit" means? You have it written above, when the Lord was driving out demons by His word, and accomplishing many mighty works by a special power, that the Pharisees said: This man casts not out devils but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils: that is, they had sinned against the Holy Spirit, blaspheming in those things which were done through the Holy Spirit. For in other sins, we either fall through error, or are broken by fear, or overcome by the weakness of the flesh. This is blindness—not to see what you see, and to attribute the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil, and to call the glory of the Lord, by which the devil himself is overcome, the power of the devil. This, then, is what shall not be forgiven: the rest is granted to good penitents, brother Sympronian.

After this, concerning the branches and the vine, you propose thus: The Lord says in John: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he will take it away; and every one that beareth fruit, he will purge it. You see, then, that in the branches fruit is required, that is, the good works of penitence, as John says: Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penitence. You see the branches purged, which are the losses of the flesh, losses of gladness, losses of patrimony, the labors of life; which acts are properly those of penitents. You see also the husbandry of the Lord, who does not even destroy the branches themselves, but purges and gathers them, some indeed for the fire, some for the renewing and replanting of vineyards. Eli the priest, you say, speaks and says: If a man shall sin against a man, they will pray for him; but if he shall sin against God, who shall pray for him?

John likewise: If any man know his brother to sin a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God shall give him life. But there is a sin unto death; I do not say that for that one should pray. You see that this whole passage pertains to sins that remain, not to those who have at some time sinned, and have begun to repent, before anyone prays for them. It would be long to repeat all the examples. Consider all the sins with which the Lord threatens: you will see at once that they are present sins. But if past justice shall not profit the just man in the time of his iniquity, neither shall forsaken iniquity harm the wicked man in the time of his righteousness, since it is written: Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the wicked man his thoughts; and let him return to God, and he shall obtain mercy.

But if God has even punished past sins, and has established penalty and punishment for things done and passed by; come now, does he not have it in his power to change his sentence? Did he not free Rahab, Nabuchodonosor the king, the Gabaonites, the Ninevites, Segor, from the foretold destruction? Did not Joel the prophet bring forth these words through him: Turn to the Lord your God, together with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; for he is merciful, patient, and long-suffering, and of much compassion, and repenting of evils. And who knows if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him? Wherefore, wherever you shall prove a penalty established for sinners, you will hold this: either it was established for sins persevering, or the freedom was left to God of changing, if you repent, to a better sentence.

You still say it is written: But if thy hand or thy foot scandalize thee, cast it from thee. What this means, Moses, in Deuteronomy, foretold: But if thy brother entreat thee (for these are our eyes and hands), or thy daughter, or thy wife who is in thy bosom, or one equal to thy soul, saying: Let us go and serve gods whom thou hast not known. Then he added below: Thou shalt denounce him, and thy hand shall be upon him to kill him. You see, then, that this was said not of the penitent, but of those who not only themselves persevere in wickedness, but also do not cease to scandalize us. These, however dear they may be, must be left; however useful, must be forsaken. You further propose that the Apostle Paul said: Put away the evil from among yourselves: evil, of course, that perseveres. But repentance is not an evil, since David says: It is good to make confession to God.

And yet he who repents is not with me, nor joined in the portion of the saints, nor in peace. But the Apostle says: If any man that is called a brother be either a fornicator, or a server of idols, or covetous, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such a one not so much as to eat. You see it is not without cause that it is put, "and be," that is, one who has not yet repented, who has not yet ceased to be wicked. And certainly it is said together of the covetous, and drunkards, and railers. Answer, brother, whether none such is held among you, saving your peace. Hence it is also that God cries out through Isaiah: Together the wicked and sinners shall perish; not the repentant, not those pursuing works of mercy, to whom, again through the same Isaiah, God says: And though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow: and though they be red as crimson, I will make them white as wool.

Yet, as you say, the Apostle condemned the erring one. For to the Corinthians in the first epistle he says thus: I indeed, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him that hath so done: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of the Lord, to deliver such a one to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Notice, brother, first, that he does not condemn those with whom this man communicated: he alone, who had committed such a deed, is delivered to Satan, he alone is excluded, the peace of the saints being preserved. Do you condemn all the churches for the sake of one sinner? Then you see that this incestuous sinner himself is not delivered to death, but to Satan, for correction, for buffeting, for repentance.

Finally he says, "for the destruction of the flesh," yet not of the soul, not even of the spirit: but for the destruction of the flesh alone, namely temptations, the straits of the flesh, the losses of the members, just as elsewhere he says of the intemperate: But such shall have tribulation of the flesh. Would you know this? In the second epistle to the Corinthians, this same Paul absolves this same wicked man. For of him he says: Sufficient to him who is such is this rebuke, which is inflicted by many; so that, on the contrary, you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps he who is such be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow: Wherefore I beseech you, that you would confirm your charity toward him. And again below: And to whom you have pardoned anything, I also; for what I have pardoned, if I have pardoned anything, for your sakes have I done it in the person of Christ, that he be not overcome by Satan.

Do you see the Apostle's indulgence, tempering even his own sentences? Do you see the gentlest lenity, far removed from your haughtiness? Far different from the brow of Novatian, but taking counsel for the common life and salvation of all?

But you also, a severe censor, inveigh against us. You say that from the heavenly law it is not lawful to loosen one of the commandments, nor to associate lambs with wolves, and that every consent in crime is itself crime; and therefore whoever touches pitch shall be defiled; nor is there any fellowship of light with darkness, or of the temple of God with idols, or agreement of Christ with Belial. Wherefore David says: When thou sawest a thief, thou didst run with him: and with adulterers thou hast been a partaker. You say finally that we rescind the commandments of the Lord. Do we bend one point of the Law, or rather the Novatians, who have violated the whole rights of the Church, the whole rights of concord, who, after so many years of peace, so many covenants of holiness, have brought forth for themselves new laws, new institutions, new rites, feigning with inexorable brow the secret of righteousness?

Do we receive wolves into the Church, we who avoid the mouths of heretics; or rather the Novatians, who, though they themselves are ravening wolves, dread the somewhat more wretched little sheep? Do we consent with the wicked, do we touch pitch, do we cleave to darkness, are we joined to idol and Belial; or rather they who received Evaristus, who received Nicostratus, and others departing from the Church, defiled in tongue, in hand, in morals? Do we associate with adulterers and thieves; or rather they who preferred Novatus to their own life and head; after the intercepted money of orphans and widows; the parricide of his wretched father and of his wife's offspring, not only not repenting, but even glorying? But the Apostle Paul said: Lay hands suddenly on no man. He teaches the same thing; that they are not to be denied, whether slowly, or after repentance.

But when Jericho perished, Achar the son of Charmi was slain on account of the theft of a garment. Come now; kill all the thieves of our money and our books; and rage against the bones of Novatus. Take up again that yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. Why do you delay, Novatians, to demand eye for eye, tooth for tooth, to require a life, to renew the commerce of Circumcision and the Sabbath? Kill the thieves, stone the wanton. Refuse to read in the Gospel that the Lord spared even the adulteress confessing, whom no one had condemned: that he absolved the sinner who washed his feet with her tears: that he freed Rahab in that very city of Jericho of the Phoenicians: that he absolved Thamar from the sentence of the patriarch: that when Sodom too was perishing, he did not destroy the daughters of Lot; being ready to free the sons-in-law too, if they had believed the coming destruction.

Come now; can you not say that the Lord says by David: With those who hated peace, I was peaceable? Nor be silent on the saying of Solomon; a brother helping a brother shall be exalted? What of the Apostle? Brethren, and if a man be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourselves lest you also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ. And that which I have already related before: For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. And again: I am made all things to all men, that I might gain all: that is, to share groaning with the wounded; labor with the sick; to share death with the dying, to be able to mingle the fall of brothers with one's own condition, to give up something of one's own health, and to apply medicine to those who are failing.

What does it profit you to harden yourselves with proud and rough brow, to rule with stiff necks, to twist your faces away from misery, to close off your hearing and your eyes? Have you never (I ask you) fallen? Is there no stain in your minds? Is there no mote (I ask) in your eyes? Who will boast that he has a chaste heart, or that he is clean from sins? I believe it; you are just, kindly, temperate, all of whose members are sound, whose whole body is untouched, for whom no physician is necessary, nor medicine for weaknesses. Enter now heaven; penetrate the entrance of paradise, though the sword yield; close your gifts to so many peoples of ours confessing the one God.

But if these things stand far otherwise than the implacable harshness and rigor of your affairs, and your savagery lies; then you Novatians understand that God can have mercy; that even now, for our wretched brethren confessing their past, a late medicine may lie open; that that man wounded, passed by by the Levite and the priest, can be healed through Christ: that the prayers of the Church are not to be denied to the humble; that the hands of priests are to be extended to pitiable brethren. But we understand, as you reproach us, that the Church of God is a dove, not bitter with gall, not violent with the tearing of claws, gentle even in her small feathers. We know too that the well of living water and the sealed fountain is stained by no filth of a heretical whirlpool, and the enclosed garden full of herbs, both great and small, common and precious alike.

We think also of the eight souls out of the ark, but among whom was also Cham: and those thousands of birds and beasts, two by two and seven by seven, clean and unclean alike: but dry fountains, and mists stirred up by whirlwinds, we deem to be the barrenness of heretics and the assaults of insane voices. Nor do we promise freedom, since we ourselves are servants of punishment; but having confessed our own crimes, we exhort the rest also to confess, and to believe in him who justifies the ungodly by faith, who turns back the sentence inflicted against wickedness. We take heed too against false prophets and ravening wolves, when we are wary of you, and we think that Jannes and Mambres so resisted Moses, just as you resist the Catholics.

Hence the Apostle thus sets it down: For as Jannes and Mambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith; but they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest to all, as theirs also was. Which is manifestly said of you, who have been able neither to proceed further, nor to conceal your folly.

He who is baptized by one dead profits nothing; assuredly so also he who is washed in the heretical font, and likewise he who is anointed with the oil of the sinner, that is, who is filled with an unclean spirit. Therefore you also shall be men of blood. For it is not the peace of your brothers, but their blood, that you desire. Your credulity is a false faith. The adulterous woman is the heretical congregation: for the Catholic Church, from the beginning, has not departed from the couch and bridal chamber of her husband, nor has she desired other lovers or strangers. You have painted an exiled shape with new color; you have separated your couch from the ancient marriage; you have withdrawn from the body of the one mother, decked out with a new manner of pleasing, with new allurements of corruption.

As for your alleging most blessed Cyprian to me as a witness against my position, on the ground that in the Epistle which is On the Lapsed he says that Moses and Daniel and Job prayed for sinners and did not obtain their prayer, the Lord saying: “And if these three men were in the midst of them, Noah, Job, and Daniel, they shall not deliver sons nor daughters, but they alone shall be saved”—would that, would that you relied on Cyprian as a witness, would that you acquiesced in such wholesome sentences! For he, when compelling the lapsed to penance who were unwilling to repent, saying that they had received peace from confessors or martyrs, taught and showed that not even those patriarchs would obtain anything for those who did not repent. For who could set free one unwilling? Who be humbled on behalf of the proud? Who obtain anything for those not repenting? And indeed when he said this, he was compelling them to the remedies of penance.

Nor did that man of such gravity and merit say anything against himself, but taught that prayers should be poured out by sinners, and that exomologesis (confession) should be cherished. Yet the very examples of Cyprian move you, in which he recalls that Moses and the other saints, who were pleading for sinners, did not obtain their prayer.

Do you say so? Do you not see for whom Moses did not obtain his petition? Returning to the people, what does he hear in the camp? The voices of the drunken and the songs of those feasting on idol-offerings resounded. Still the people persevered in wickedness, still they remained in the very crime, and knew not how to repent. Yet who among us has told you that Moses did not obtain his petition? God indeed had said to him: “He has sinned against me, I will blot him out of the book.” He had said this, indeed, with the authority of a judge and the power of the Lord; but see how quickly he turned back the sentence pronounced against the wickedness of the people. Listen. The Prophet, immediately, in the same place: “And Moses besought,” he says, “in the sight of the Lord his God: Why, O Lord, are you so angry against your people?” and so on.

Again below: “And the Lord relented from the evil which he had said he would do to his people.” Do you see that the wrath of God is turned to gentleness? Do you see that the offense was appeased? Yet he did not pray for the people, nor for one who was repenting of what he had done.

But Noah, you say, and Daniel, and Job, could not deliver their sons and daughters. And this is the case: if they pray for those who do not ask; if they intercede for one persisting in crime; if they are defending not individuals, not a few, but many thousands. Yet Noah delivered his own household from the public ruin; and Job received back all that he had lost; and Daniel by his prayer turned aside that sword then hanging over the wise men of Babylon. Lot certainly prayed for the safety of the town, Paul for the passengers of the ship. Thus those are absolved by the just who have learned to repent. Finally, I note also this, that Scripture says: “They alone shall be saved.” Who are they? Surely those very ones who intercede for sinners shall unpunished ask on behalf of such as these. Why then do you condemn the Church? Why do you forbid intercession for the penitent, if it is even lawful to ask for those for whom it is unlawful to obtain?

Read then more diligently my Cyprian: read the whole letter On the Lapsed: read the other which he addressed to Antonianus; where by every example Novatian is refuted: then you will know what he pronounces concerning the treatment of penitents. I speak of Cyprian, who assails your positions and upholds Catholic rights. Tertullian too, after his heresy (for you have taken much from him), you will hear confessing in his own letter—and that very one which he published as a Catholic—that the Church can forgive sins.

You see, then, that the Church is a queen in gilded and variegated garment; composed, indeed, of the variety of many bodies and many peoples. This embroidery is not of one color, nor does such diversity shine forth in one single garb. One part of the garment covers, another adorns. Some clings to the breast, some trails from the outer fold, and grows soiled at the very footsteps. Some part is likened to the purple of the martyrs; some, to the virginal silk; some is stitched at the folding hem, or mended by the inserting needle. For one is thus, another thus; and yet in all, one queen is arrayed. So too the same fruitful and rich vine, having many branches, more abundantly spread with the growth of its tendrils; has none of these labored under the winter cold? Has none endured the harsh hailstorms? Has none reproached the scorching summers? This tendril's gem is harsher, that one stronger, another purer; this one pours itself out into fruit, this one abounds only in leaves.

Yet the vine everywhere is beautiful. This is the mother of young maidens, whose number is beyond counting. Try, then, if you can, to reckon the Catholic flocks, and count on your fingers the swarms of our people. Not only those which are spread throughout the whole world and fill every region; but these, brother Sympronianus, which stand with you in the nearest borders and in the neighboring city. Consider how many of our people you alone behold, how many multitudes of mine you alone encounter. Are they not like drops beside great fountains? Are they not like some drop swallowed up by the ocean? Tell me, tell me, whether these young maidens are born of your people, or whether you alone bring forth these. Ours, I say, is that queen, chosen and made perfect by her mother. For nothing can be chosen, unless it is better and greater than another; nothing can be perfect, unless it is full.

Now consider also this, whether she above all has been built: “Upon the foundations of the prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.” If she began before you, if she believed before you, if she has not departed from the earlier foundations, if she has not migrated, if she has not, separated from the rest of the body, established for herself her own teachers and her own instruments, if she has argued anything unusual, if she has found any new law, if she has proclaimed a divorce of peace to her own body: then indeed she might seem to have departed from Christ, then to have stood outside the prophets and apostles. This, then, shall be the great house, rich in the diversity of all its vessels, in which pure gold shines, in which wrought silver gleams; but which also, as it is written, deigns to have wooden and earthen vessels. For a great house calls for many uses, and requires diverse works.

It does not seek only silver, nor is it delighted only with golden ornament. Sometimes, indeed, contempt of show becomes greatness the more; and among noble display, small things too are pleasing. No craftsman despises his own works, nor thinks those things he has made to be worthless. And for what reason do you think Christ suffered for sinners, except that he was unwilling to lose whatever he himself had formed? For what reason do you think he intercedes today for the wretched, except that he does not reject even what is small and most despised; being about to lose none of those he has received, though they be compared to wood or clay, and thus he arranges all vessels in his house?

At last, brother Sympronianus, let it not irk you to be with the many; at last, be willing to despise the parings and clippings of the Novatians, which are yours; at last, look upon the Catholic flocks and the peoples of the Church spread so widely abroad. “Where one is,” you will say, “there am I also; and where two are, there is the Church”: yes, where one is of one accord; where two are, at peace.

Where one is, there too is the Church; how much more where there are many? “Better,” it is said, “are two than one”: and “a threefold cord is not broken.” Hear David: “I will sing to your name in the great Church.” And again: “In the weighty people I will praise you.” And: “The God of gods has spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” What of the seed of Abraham, according to the number of the stars and the count of the sands of the sea, is your poverty content with? “In you,” he says, “shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed.” Tell me: does Novatian fulfill these? God did not redeem so small a thing with his own blood, nor is Christ so poor. Know now, brother, the Church of God spreading out her tabernacles, and fixing the pegs of her curtains to the right and to the left: understand the name of the Lord to be praiseworthy from the rising of the sun to its setting.

See, see, I beg you, while the Novatians struggle over words, the Catholic riches being carried through the whole world. On all matters concerning which I was consulted by you, I have instructed you. I have passed over no proposed heading or point. I have answered even to the very letters and words. If you sought this with the mind of one consulting, it has been shown lovingly; if with the mind of one provoking, it has been disputed not slothfully. I will add, when I have leisure, another letter also, in which I shall not refute your positions, but set forth our own; which, if you read it kindly and without disdain, will perhaps not offend you. Meanwhile, in this one, I ask that you review each point carefully. All things read hastily pass away: if you desire the better gifts, and bear a soul of good learning, you will not easily despise things so true. May the Lord deign to keep and protect you forever, and make you live as a Christian unto spiritual concord. Amen.