Against Novatian

Why then do you exalt yourself in vain things? You reap losses rather than gains. Why do you believe yourself rich from the time you were broken and made poorer? Hear in the Apocalypse the voice of the Lord rebuking you with just reproaches, saying: You say, I am rich, and have grown wealthy, and have need of nothing; and you do not know that you are wretched, and miserable, and blind, and poor, and naked. Let whoever, having abandoned the Church of Christ with blind reasoning, does not tremble to be converted among those reckless leaders of schisms and authors of dissension, believe that he possesses these riches, these treasures of poverty for certain; those whom John calls antichrists, whom the evangelist likens to chaff; whom the Lord Christ designates as thieves and robbers, as he himself declares in the Gospel saying: Because he who does not enter through the door into the sheepfold but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.

Likewise in the same place he also says: All who came are thieves and robbers. Who are these, if not deserters of the faith and transgressors of the Church of God who strive against the ordinance of God? Whom the Holy Spirit rightly rebukes through the prophet, saying: You have made counsel not through me, and a covenant not through my spirit, to add sins upon sins. What answer do these most perverse Novatianists give to these things, or now the most unhappy few, who have burst forth into such madness of frenzy that they have had reverence neither for God nor for man? There the episcopate is sought impudently and without any rule of ordination; here, however, one renounces one's own seat and the chair handed over to him by God.

There Truth says: They despise me, so that they sacrifice to me, and do not offer the holy oblations of the sons of Israel, nor do they draw near to offer the holy of holies; but they shall receive their shame in the error wherein they have erred. Let it suffice to have proved in a few words what they are. Hear therefore, Novatianists, among whom the heavenly Scriptures are read rather than understood, and little short of being interpolated. For your ears are closed and your hearts blinded, you who admit no light from spiritual and salutary admonitions, as Isaiah says: The servants of God are blinded. And rightly blinded, because the will of schismatics is not in the law, which law designates for us one and singular Church; namely that which under Noah before the flood was the ark built by God's providence, in which we find enclosed not only clean animals but also unclean ones, to answer you quickly, Novatianus.

That ark alone was saved with those that were with it; and all the rest that were not found in it perished in the flood. From that ark therefore two birds are sent forth, a raven and a dove. The raven truly bore the figure of unclean men, of those destined to remain in perpetual darkness, going along the broad way of the world, and of apostates feeding on unclean things, and of those who would no longer turn back to the Church; which we find, when we read, was sent out and returned no more. To this bird therefore, that is, to the unclean spirit, and to all who shall be found like it, it will not be possible to return to the Church any more; and even if they should wish to, the Lord will forbid it, who commanded Moses, saying: Every varied and unclean thing cast out beyond the camp.

But the dove sent out is straightway signified to have returned, because it had no rest for its feet, and Noah received it back into the ark, and after the seventh day it was sent out again, and he received it back carrying in its mouth an olive leaf.

And I indeed, dearest brethren, pondering these things not rashly, nor conspiring with human wisdom, but as it is permitted to our minds to conceive necessarily and pertinently by the condescension of the heavenly Lord; I say that that dove, that is, signifies through itself a twofold figure for us. The first and principal one, its own, that is, spiritual one, it has been pursuing from of old, that is, from the beginning of the divine dispensation, and it foreshadowed through its mouth the sacrament of baptism which was provided for the salvation of the human race, and which the heavenly Church alone celebrates by reason. For being sent out three times from the ark, flying through the air over the water, it signified even then the sacraments of our Church. Whence also the Lord Christ commands Peter, and his other disciples, saying: Go, preach the gospel to the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

That is, that the Trinity which under Noah worked figuratively through the dove, may now work spiritually through these in the Church.

Let us now take also the second person of the dove sent out from the ark; namely at the time of the flood, when all the abysses broke forth, when the floodgates of heaven were opened over the earth, on account of the crimes of men which they practiced daily before the Lord, as Moses said: And the Lord God saw the wickedness of men overflow upon the earth, and that all remembered evil from the beginning of their days, and he said: I will destroy man whom I made from the face of the earth, from man even to beast, and from creeping thing even to the birds of heaven. The dove therefore is sent out from the ark at the time of the cataclysm, while the waters violently infested the whole earth.

That ark bore the figure of the Church, as we said above, which was beaten on this side and that only by the rising waters. The cataclysm therefore which occurred under Noah shows the figure of the persecution which has now recently been poured out over the whole world. By the waters, moreover, with the floodgates burst open, converging and rising on all sides, were signified the nations which grew up to lay waste the Church. As the Apocalypse teaches, saying: The waters which you saw are peoples, and nations, and kingdoms. The dove, however, which could not find rest for its feet, bore the image of the lapsed; who, unmindful of the divine predictions, or simply ignorant, or boldly dissembling, fell: whose ruin the Lord had foretold in the Gospel with these words, saying: He who hears my words and does not do them, I will liken him to a foolish man who built his house upon sand; the storms came, and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was its ruin.

And lest we seem to have compared rashly, that that dove bears the image of the lapsed; the prophet rebukes the city as a dove, that is, in the person of the lapsed, saying: The dove does not hear the voice, that is, the illustrious and redeemed city does not receive doctrine, and was not trusting in the Lord.

That the dove could not find rest for its feet, as we said above, signified the footsteps of those who denied, that is, of those who sacrificed, wounded by the venom of the slippery serpent, turned to a fall: who can no longer climb upon the asp and the basilisk, and tread upon the dragon and the lion. Which power the Lord handed over to his disciples as he says in the Gospel: Behold, I give you power to tread upon all the power of the enemy, and upon serpents and scorpions, and they shall not harm you. For these therefore, beset by so many and such great malignant spirits, and rising up for the destruction of the lapsed, a way of salvation was provided for the wounded: that with whatever strength they could, they might drag themselves wholly to their camp and be received there; being received, they might be able to cure their wounds with spiritual remedies.

The dove therefore, having been received back, after a few days had also passed, is sent out again from the ark, and returning, showed not only firm footsteps, but also the tokens of its peace and victory, through those olive leaves which it carried in its mouth. That twofold sending out therefore shows us a twofold trial of persecution: the first in which those who lapsed were overcome and fell; the second in which those who had fallen stood forth as victors. For to none of us is it doubtful or uncertain, dearest brethren, that those who were wounded in the first battle, that is, in the Decian persecution, afterwards, that is, in the second conflict, persevered so bravely that, despising the edicts of the secular princes, they held this unconquered, that they both did not fear, after the example of the good shepherd, to give their life and shed their blood, and refused no fury of the raging tyrant.

Behold, how glorious, how dear to the Lord are those whom these schismatics do not hesitate to call wood, hay, stubble. Those like them, that is, those still established in the same crime of their own lapse, they presume ought not even to be admitted to penitence; on the basis of that pronouncement of the Lord in which he says: He who shall deny me before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven. O grief! Why do they contend against the Lord's precepts, so that what Christ is to do at the time of his judgment, this the offspring of Novatianus, following the example of their father the devil, should attempt to carry out now? While Scripture says: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.

We shall answer them concerning that pronouncement of the Lord, how badly they understand it and how badly they interpret it for themselves. For what he says: He who shall deny me before men, I also will deny him before my Father who is in heaven, is assuredly a signification of future time; at which time the Lord will begin to judge the secrets of men: at which time we must all stand before the tribunal of Christ; at which time many will begin to say: Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works? And yet they will hear the voice of the Lord saying: Depart from me, all you who have worked iniquity: I know you not. There will be fulfilled what he says: I also will deny them. But whom above all will the Lord Christ deny, if not all of you heretics, and schismatics, and strangers to his name?

For you who were once Christians, now Novatianists, and no longer Christians, have changed your former faith by your later perfidy through the appellation of a name; I would wish you to answer your own proposition. Read and show whom the Lord denied, of those who had abandoned or denied him, while he himself was still present. And yet to the others who had remained with him among his disciples he says: Do you also wish to go away? Peter also, whom he had foretold would deny him, when he had denied him, he himself did not deny, but bore with him; and he himself afterwards soothes that denial of his flowing bitterly.

What madness is yours, Novatian, that you read only those things which pertain to the destruction of salvation, and pass over those which pertain to mercy?—while Scripture cries out and says: Do penance, you who err, be converted in heart. And the same prophet likewise exhorting and saying: Be converted to me with your whole heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning: and rend your hearts, and not your garments: be converted to the Lord your God, for he is merciful, and full of great compassion.

Since the Lord is of great compassion, we have heard: let us hear what the Holy Spirit attests through David: If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my commandments; and if they profane my justifications, and keep not my precepts: I will visit their iniquities with a rod, and their sins with stripes: but my mercy I will not take away from them. Similar things we read that the Lord said also through Ezekiel: Son of man, the house of Israel dwelt upon their land, and they defiled it with their ways. Their uncleanness was before my face like the uncleanness of a menstruous woman. And I poured out my indignation upon them, and I scattered them among the nations, and I judged them according to their sins: because they defiled my holy name. And because it was said of them: This is the people of the Lord; I spared them for the sake of my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations.

And joining this he says: Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord: I do not spare you, O house of Israel, but I will spare you for the sake of my holy name, which you have defiled among the nations; and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall be sanctified in you. Likewise the Lord to the same prophet: Son of man, say to the house of Israel: Why do you speak, saying: Our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them, and how shall we be able to live? Say to them: As I live, says the Lord: I desire not the death of the sinner; but I desire that the sinner turn from his evil way and live. Turn ye therefore from your evil way. Why will you die, O house of Israel? So also through the prophet Isaiah: I will not be angry with you for ever, neither will I always withhold my defence from you.

And since the prophet Jeremiah intercedes with the Lord in the person of the sinful people, saying: Correct us, O Lord, but in judgment and not in anger, lest you make us few; Isaiah added and said: For the iniquity of his covetousness I was angry, and I struck him, and I hid my face from him; and he was troubled, and went on sorrowfully in his own ways. And because he works, he added and said: I have seen his ways, and I have healed him, and I have given him true consolation, peace upon peace: that those who repent, who pray, and who do works, can have restored what they have lost through evil, and what they have turned away from in Christ.

This is finally confirmed in the Gospel, where that sinful woman is described, who came to the house of a certain Pharisee, where the Lord had been invited with his disciples, carrying a vessel of ointment: who stood at the feet of the Lord, and washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair, and pressed kisses upon them, so that that Pharisee was stirred to say: This man, if he were a Prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is that touches him, for she is a sinner. Whereupon immediately the Lord, the forgiver of sins and receiver of the penitent, says: Simon, I have something to say to you. And he answered saying: Master, say it. And the Lord: There were two debtors to a certain creditor, one who owed five hundred denarii, and another fifty: when they had nothing to pay, he forgave them both. And he asked: Which of them loves him more? And Simon answered: He to whom he forgave more, I suppose.

And he added saying: Do you see this woman? I entered into your house, you gave me no kiss; but she has not ceased kissing my feet: you did not wash my feet; but she has washed them with her tears, and wiped them with her hair: you did not anoint my feet with oil; but she has anointed them. Therefore I say to you, Simon, her sins are forgiven her. Behold, the Lord with his abundant goodness forgives the debt to both debtors. Behold him forgiving offences. Behold the sinful woman, penitent, weeping, praying, and receiving the remission of sins.

Be ashamed now, if it can be, Novatian: cease to deceive the unwary with your impious arguments: cease to terrify with the prescription of a single passage. We read and we revere, nor do we pass over, the heavenly sentence of the Lord, in which he says that he will deny the one who denies him; but does he deny also the one who repents? And why should I be so long eager to prove individual instances of his mercies? Since indeed mercy is not denied to the Ninevites, foreigners, and those established far from the law of the Lord, when they pray on account of the announced destruction of their city? To that very Pharaoh, resisting with sacrilegious rashness, when he was once being struck with heavenly plagues, and turning said to Moses and his brother: Pray for me to the Lord, for I have sinned, immediately the wrath of God was suspended from him.

And you now, Novatian, judge and proclaim that the lapsed have no hope of peace and mercy; nor do you lend an ear to the Apostle rebuking you and saying: Who are you, that you judge another man's servant? He stands or falls to his own master. But he shall stand: for God is able to make him stand. Wherefore fittingly and necessarily the Holy Spirit rebukes you in the person of those same lapsed ones, saying: Rejoice not against me, O my enemy: because if I have fallen, I shall arise; and if I sit in darkness, the Lord is my light. I will bear the wrath of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he judge my cause, and execute judgment and justice for me, and bring me forth to the light. I shall behold his justice: and my enemy shall see it and shall be covered with shame.

I ask, have you not read: Glory not, and speak not high things, and let not arrogancy come out of your mouth; for he raises up the poor from the earth, and lifts up the needy from the dunghill, and makes him sit with the princes of the people? Have you not read: That God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble? Have you not read: He that exalts himself shall be humbled? Have you not read: That God destroys the memory of the proud, and has not left the memory of the humble? Have you not read: That with what judgment a man judges, he must needs be judged? Have you not read: That he who hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness; and knows not where he goes, because the darkness has blinded his eyes?

Whence therefore so wicked, so abandoned, so frenzied with the fury of discord this Novatian has shown himself to be, I cannot discover; he who always in one house, that is the Church of Christ, wept over the sins of his neighbours as his own; bore the burdens of his brethren, as the Apostle exhorts; strengthened the wavering in faith with heavenly exhortation. But now, from the time he began to practise that heresy of Cain, which desires only to kill, he does not even spare himself in the end.

For the rest, if he had read that the justice of the just man shall not deliver him in the day that he errs, and the iniquity of the wicked shall not harm him from the day that he is converted, he would long since have repented in ashes, he who always opposes the penitent: who works more easily in the ruin of those who were standing and building, than in the rebuilding of the ruins of those who have fallen; who has made many of our most wretched brethren, terrified by his false oppositions, pagans once again, by saying that the penance of the lapsed is vain, and cannot profit them unto salvation; while Scripture cries out and says: Remember from where you have fallen and do penance; otherwise I will come to you, unless you do penance. And indeed writing to the seven Churches, pressing upon each their own particular crimes and offences, he said: Do penance. To whom, if not to those whom he had redeemed at the great price of his own blood?

O you impious and wicked man, heretic Novatian, who after so many and so great crimes voluntarily committed in the Church by certain persons in times past, which you yourself had known in the house of God before you were known as an apostate; and had taught that these could be blotted out from memory by the succeeding of good, according to the faith of Scripture saying: That if the wicked man be converted from all his sins which he has committed, and do justice, he shall live with eternal life, and shall not die in his iniquity. (For the sins which he has committed shall be blotted out from memory by succeeding good deeds.) You today reconsider whether the wounds of the lapsed ought to be healed, those who were stripped by the devil and fell, by the violence of the water which the serpent sent forth from his mouth after the woman. But what shall I say? Says the Apostle: Do I praise you?

In this I praise you not: because you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For where there are among you emulations and dissensions, are you not carnal, and walk according to man? Nor indeed ought we to wonder why this Novatian now dares to practise such abominable and grievous things against the person of the lapsed: since we have preceding examples of this transgression. That good Saul, among other things, was afterwards overthrown by envy, and strove to do all things adverse and hostile against David. That Judas, chosen among the apostles, who was always of one mind and faithful in the house of God, himself afterwards betrayed God. The Lord had indeed foretold that many would come in sheep's clothing, ravening wolves. Who are these ravening wolves, but those who conspire with subtle cunning to harass the flock of Christ?

As we read set down in Zacharias: Behold I will raise up a shepherd in the land, who shall not visit what is cast away, and shall eat the flesh of the fat ones, and shall wring off their hoofs. Likewise also through Ezekiel he rebukes shepherds of this kind, namely plunderers and butchers (I will speak as he estimated it) saying: O shepherds, you that drink the milk, and clothe yourselves with the wool, and have utterly destroyed them, and have not visited the sick, have not healed the lame, and have not recalled the straying, and have suffered my people to wander among thorns and briers?

Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold I will come against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hands, and I will drive them away that they feed my sheep no more, and my sheep shall be no more to them for a prey: and I will seek them out as a shepherd seeks his flock in the day when there is a cloud and darkness: so will I seek out my sheep, and will seek them in every place wheresoever they have been scattered: and that which was lost I will seek; and that which had strayed I will bring back; and that which was lame I will heal: and that which was weak I will keep: and I will feed my sheep with judgment.

Who speaks these things? Surely he who, leaving behind the ninety-nine sheep, sought the one that had strayed from his flock, as David says: I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost: which sheep, when found, Christ returns bearing upon his shoulder the sinful and tender one: who, rejoicing and exulting, having called together his friends and household, says: Rejoice with me, for my sheep which was lost is found. I say, he says, unto you, that such joy shall be in heaven over one sinner doing penance. And adding he says: Or what woman having ten pieces of silver, and having lost one of them, doth not light a candle, and cleanse her house all day, seeking until she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth together her friends and neighbours, saying: Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece of silver which I had lost. I say unto you, that such joy shall be in the sight of the angels of God over one sinner doing penance.

On the other hand, let those who do not do penance for their crimes learn from the very responses of the Lord what awaits them. For we read in the Gospel: that certain men came from Galilee to the Lord, telling him of those whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices; to whom the Lord answered saying: Think ye that those Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? No. For I say unto you: unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower fell in Siloam, think ye that they were debtors to death above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem? No, I say unto you, he said, for unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish.

Let us therefore rouse ourselves as much as we can, most beloved brethren, and having broken off the sleep of sloth and security, let us be watchful to observe the precepts of the Lord. Let us seek with our whole mind what we have lost, that we may be able to find it; because, To him that seeketh, says the Scripture, it shall be given, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Let us cleanse our house with spiritual cleanness, so that all the secret and hidden things of our breast, illumined by the true light of the Gospel, may say: Against thee only have I sinned, and have done most wickedly in thy sight; Because the death of sinners is evil and among the dead there is no penance: having before our eyes especially the day of judgment and retribution: and what must be believed by all of us and firmly held, that there is no respect of persons with God; since he commanded in Deuteronomy that persons should not be accepted in judgment: Thou shalt not, he says, accept a person, neither shalt thou judge according to the least nor according to the greatest. Similar things he also said through Ezekiel: All souls, he says, are mine, as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son: the soul that sinneth, the same shall die.

He therefore is to be venerated by us, he is to be held fast, he is to be propitiated through our full and worthy confession, who has the power to cast soul and body into the gehenna of fire, as it is written: behold he cometh with many thousands of his ministers to execute judgment upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly, and to convict all flesh of all the deeds of the ungodly which they have done ungodly, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against God.

Similar things also Daniel: I saw, he says, a throne set, and the Ancient of days sat upon it, and his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like clean wool, his throne was a flame of fire, the wheels thereof burning fire. A stream of fire issued forth from before him: thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him. The judgment sat, and the books were opened.

But John declares more plainly both concerning the day of judgment and the consummation of the age, saying: And when he had opened, he says, the sixth seal, behold there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood: and the stars fell upon the earth, as a fig tree shaken by a great wind casteth its green figs: and the heaven departed as a book when it is rolled up: and every mountain and the islands were moved out of their places; and the kings of the earth, and the great men and the tribunes and the rich and the strong, and every bondman and free man hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, saying to the mountains and to the rocks: Fall upon us, and hide us from the face of the Father sitting upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of destruction is come: and who shall be able to stand?

Likewise in the same Apocalypse John also says this was revealed to him: I saw, he says, a great throne; and one sitting upon it white, from whose face heaven and earth fled away, and there was no place found for them, and I saw the dead great and small standing before the sight of the throne of the Lord; and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged every one according to those things which were written in the book according to their works.

But also the Apostle, counselling what is good, thus exhorts us, saying: Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the anger of God upon the children of disobedience. Be ye not therefore partakers with them.

Let us therefore give praise to God with all the strength of our faith, let us give full confession: since over our penance the powers of the heavens rejoice, all the angels rejoice, and Christ rejoices; who, when we are again laden with sins and overwhelmed with offences, with full and merciful moderation exhorts us to cease from wickedness, saying: Be converted, and return from your iniquities; and your iniquities shall not be unto you for punishment. Cast away from you all your iniquities which you have committed against me: and make to yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. And why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I desire not the death of the sinner. I am, I am he that blotteth out thy iniquities; and I will not remember them: but do thou remember, and let us plead together. Declare thou thy iniquities first, that thou mayest be justified. While, brethren, the entrance of indulgence lies open, let us beseech God with full satisfactions.

Let us humble ourselves, that we may be able to be exalted. Let us yield to the divine exhortation, by which it is permitted to escape the day of the Lord and his wrath. For he says thus: Consider, O son, the generations of men, and know. Who hath hoped in the Lord, and hath been confounded; or who hath continued in his commandments, and hath been forsaken; or who hath called upon him, and he despised him? For the Lord is compassionate and merciful, and forgiveth sins in the time of tribulation to all that seek him in truth. He says therefore: Declare thou thy iniquities first, that thou mayest be justified. Let that prayer full of confession be ready at hand for you.