BOOK II.]

THE MODE OF DISCUSSION.

255

BOOK SECOND.1

IN WHICH AUGUSTINE REPLIES TO ALL THE SEVERAL STATEMENTS IN THE LETTER OF PETILIANUS, AS THOUGH DISPUTING WITH AN ADVERSARY FACE TO FACE.

CHAP

HAP. I-1. That we made a full and sufficient answer to the first part of the letter of Petilianus, which was all that we had been able to find, will be remembered by all who were able to read or hear what we replied. But since the whole of it was afterwards found and copied by our brethren, and sent to us with the view that we should answer it as a whole, this task was one which our pen could not escape, not that he says anything new in it, to which answer has not been already made in many ways and at various times; but still, on account of the brethren of slower comprehension, who, when they read a matter in any place, cannot always refer to everything that has been said upon the same subject, I will comply with those who urge me by all means to reply to every point, and that as though we were carrying on the discussion face to face in the form of a dialogue. I will set down the words of his epistle under his name, and I will give the answer under my own name, as though it had all been taken down by reporters while we were debating. And so there will be no one who can complain either that I have passed anything over, or that they have been unable to understand it for want of disinction between the parties to the discussion; at the same. time that the Donatists themselves, who are unwilling to argue the question in our presence, as is shown by the letters which they have circulated among their party, may thus not fail to find the truth answering them point by point, just as though they were discussing the matter with us face to face.

1 Written about the beginning of 402 A.D.

2. In the very beginning of the letter PETILIANUS said: "Petilianus, a bishop, to his well-beloved brethren, fellowpriests, and deacons, appointed ministers with us throughout our diocese in the gospel, grace be to you and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ."

3. AUGUSTINE answered: I acknowledge the apostolic greeting. You see who you are that employ it, but see from what source you have learned what you say. For in these terms Paul salutes the Romans, and in the same terms the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Philippians, the Thessalonians. What madness is it, therefore, to be unwilling to share the salvation of peace with those very Churches in whose epistles you learned its form of salutation?

CHAP. II.-4. PETILIANUS said: "Those who have polluted their souls with a guilty laver, under the name of baptism, reproach us with baptizing twice, than whose obscenity, indeed, any kind of filth is more cleanly, seeing that through a perversion of cleanliness they have come to be made fouler by their washing."

5. AUGUSTINE answered: We are neither made fouler by our washing, nor cleaner by yours. But when the water of baptism is given to any one in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, it is neither ours nor yours, but His of whom it was said to John, "Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost."

CHAP. III. 6. PETILIANUS said: "For what we look to is the conscience of the giver, to cleanse that of the recipient."

7. AUGUSTINE answered: We therefore need have no anxiety about the conscience of Christ. But if you assert any man to be the giver, be he who he may, there will be no certainty about the cleansing of the recipient, because there is no certainty about the conscience of the giver.

1 John i. 33.

CHAP. V.]

BAPTISM RESTS ON CHRIST.

257

CHAP. IV.-8. PETILIANUS said: "For he who receives faith from the faithless, receives not faith but guilt."

9. AUGUSTINE answered: Christ is not faithless, from whom the faithful man receives not guilt but faith. For he believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, that his faith may be counted for righteousness.1

CHAP. V.-10. PETILIANUS said: "For everything consists of an origin and root; and if it have not something for a head, it is nothing nor does anything well receive second birth, unless it be born again of good seed."

2

11. AUGUSTINE answered: Why will you put yourself forward in the room of Christ, when you will not place yourself under Him? He is the origin, and root, and head of him who is being born, and in Him we feel no fear, as we must in any man, whoever he may be, lest he should prove to be false and of abandoned character, and we should be found to be sprung from an abandoned source, growing from an abandoned root, united to an abandoned head. For what man can feel secure about a man, when it is written, "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man ?" But the seed of which we are born again is the word of God, that is, the gospel. Whence the apostle says, "For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." " And yet he allows even those to preach the gospel who were preaching it not in purity, and rejoices in their preaching; because, although they were preaching it not in purity, but seeking their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's, yet the gospel which they preached was pure. And the Lord had said of certain of like character, "Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.' If, therefore, what is in itself pure is preached in purity, then the preacher himself also, in that he is a partner with the word, has his share in begetting the believer; but if he himself be not regenerate, and yet what he preaches be pure, then the believer is born not from the barrenness of the minister, but from the fruitfulness of the word.

" 6

4

2 Jer. xvii. 5.

1 Rom. iv. 5.

4 Phil. i. 17, 18.

* Phil. ii. 21.

3 1 Cor. iv. 15.

6 Matt. xxiii. 3.

CHAP. VI.-12. PETILIANUS said: "This being the case, brethren, what perversity must it be, that he who is guilty through his own sins should make another free from guilt, when the Lord Jesus Christ says, 'Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit: do men gather grapes of thorns ?'1 And again: A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart, bringeth forth good things and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things.'"

:

"2

13. AUGUSTINE answered: No man, even though he be not guilty through his own sins, can make his neighbour free from sin, because he is not God. Otherwise, if we were to expect that out of the innocence of the baptizer should be produced the innocence of the baptized, then each will be the more innocent in proportion as he may have found a more innocent person by whom to be baptized; and will himself be the less innocent in proportion as he by whom he is baptized is less innocent. And if the man who baptizes happens to entertain hatred against another man, this will also be imputed to him who is baptized. Why, therefore, does the wretched man hasten to be baptized, that his own sins. may be forgiven him, or that those of others may be reckoned against him? Is he like a merchant ship, to discharge one burden, and to take on him another? But by the good tree and its good fruit, and the corrupt tree and its evil fruit, we are wont to understand men and their works, as is consequently shown in those other words which you also quoted:

A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things: and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things." But when a man preaches the word of God, or administers the sacraments of God, he does not, if he is a bad man, preach or minister out of his own treasure; but he will be counted among those of whom it is said, "Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works :" for they bid you observe what is God's, but their works are their own. For if it is as you say, that is, if the fruit of those who baptize consist in the baptized persons themselves, you declare a great woe

1 Matt. vii. 17, 16.

2 Matt. xii. 35.

CHAP. VII.]

NO DEGREES IN BAPTISM.

259

against Africa, if a young Optatus has sprung up for every one that Optatus baptized.

CHAP. VII.-14. PETILIANUS said: "And again, 'He who is baptized by one that is dead, his washing profiteth him nothing.' He did not mean that the baptizer was a corpse, a lifeless body, the remains of a man ready for burial, but one lacking the Spirit of God, who is compared to a dead body, as He declares to a disciple in another place, according to the witness of the gospel. For His disciple says, 'Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead." The father of the disciple was not baptized. He declared him as a pagan to belong to the company of pagans; unless he said this of the unbelieving, The dead cannot bury the dead. He was dead, therefore, not as smitten by some death, but as smitten even during life. For he who so lives as to be doomed to eternal death is tortured by a death in life. To be baptized, therefore, by the dead, is to have received not life but death. We must therefore consider and declare how far the traditor is to be accounted dead while yet alive. He is dead who has not deserved to be born again with a true baptism; he is likewise dead who, having been born again with a true baptism, has become involved with a traditor. Both are wanting in the life of baptism,-both he who never had it at all, and he who had it and has lost it. For the Lord Jesus Christ says, 'There shall come to that man seven spirits more wicked than the former one, and the last state of that man shall be worse than the first.'

15. AUGUSTINE answered: Seek with greater care to know in what sense the words which you have quoted from Scripture in proof of your position were really uttered, and how they should be understood. For that all unrighteous persons are wont to be called dead in a mystical sense is clear enough; but Christ, to whom true baptism belongs, which you say is false because of the faults of men, is alive, sitting at the right hand of the Father, and He will not die any more 2 Matt. viii. 21, 22.

1 Ecclus. xxxiv. 25; see on 1. ix. 10.

3 See Matt. xii. 45.