Books 1 and 2 date to 400–401, while Book 3 dates sometime between 403 and 405.
(3) . . . If one [outside] could baptize, he could also give the Holy Spirit. But if he cannot give the Holy Spirit because, established outside, he is not with the Holy Spirit, he cannot baptize the one who comes since baptism is also one, and the Holy Spirit is one, and the Church founded by Christ upon Peter in the order and established plan of unity is also one. Thus it happens that, since all things are useless and false among those men, none of those things which they have done ought to be approved by us.16
Donatists in Their Own Voice
Petilian of Constantine (d. ca. 419) was a Donatist contemporary of Augustine and an articulate exponent of Donatist views. He had been raised by Catholic parents, and while still a Catholic catechumen, was forcibly baptized into the Donatist church. Around 393, he was forcibly ordained as bishop of Constantine/Cirta (now Ksantina, Algeria). Around 399 or 400, Augustine stumbled across an excerpt of a pastoral letter by Petilian and dashed off a response. This became Book 1 of his treatise Against the Letters of Petilian.17 Later Augustine got hold of the entire letter and, for Book 2, composed a lineby-line rebuttal. These piecemeal quotations allow us to reconstruct Petilian's original letter. Petilian's text gives one a good taste of the mud-slinging and inflammatory language some Donatists favored. From his Letter to the Presbyters and Deacons, reconstructed from Augustine, Against the Letters of Petilian, Book 2:
(1.2) Bishop Petilian, to his most beloved brethren, fellow presbyters and deacons, who are ministers with us, appointed in the holy Gospel throughout the diocese: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
(2.4) We are criticized for baptizing a second time by people who have polluted their souls with an unlawful washing, a baptism in name only. They are people who, because of their perverse cleansing, emerge defiled by the water they dipped in, people so loathsome that the lowest filth is cleaner. (3.6) Now what we look to is for the conscience of the giver, in holiness, to cleanse that of the receiver.18 (4.8) For the one who knowingly embraces faith from the faithless receives not faith but guilt. (5.10) For everything gets its existence from its origin and its roots; and if it does not have something as its head, it is nothing; nor does something regenerate well unless regenerated from a good seed. (6.10) Since this is so, brethren, what kind of perversity must it be to think that one guilty of crimes can make someone else innocent? For
16. Cyprian, ep. 70.1–3 (CCL 3: 501–13); trans. Donna, FOTC 51:259–61. See also Cyprian, ep. 69 and 71– 73. See Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, esp. 100–150. 17. This work has traditionally been dated to 400. Hombert, Nouvelles recherches, 189–93, argues that Books 1 and 2 date to 400–401, while Book 3 dates sometime between 403 and 405.
18. "In holiness" (sancte): In his citation of Petilian's letter, Augustine had dropped this phrase, as well as "knowingly" (sciens) from the next sentence. Petilian later chided Augustine for dropping both words: see Contra litteras Petiliani 3.23.27 (BA 30:638–40).
Against the Donatists 241 the Lord Jesus Christ says: "A good tree produces good fruit; an evil tree produces evil fruit; how does one harvest grapes from thorns?" (Mt 7:17, 16) And again: "A good person brings good things out of the treasury of his heart; an evil person brings evil things out of the treasury of his heart" (Mt 12:35).
(7.14) And again: "As for the one baptized by the dead, his washing is of no benefit to him" (Sir 34:40). By "dead," He does not mean a corpse, a lifeless body, a person's remains ready for burial. He means one who does not have the Spirit of God; this [not having the Spirit of God] He compares to being dead, as He shows to His disciple in another place, according the Gospel's witness. The disciple said: "Lord, permit me to bury my father." Jesus said to him: "Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead" (Mt 8:21–22). The disciple's father was not baptized; so he left a pagan to the pagans. Jesus was [obviously] speaking about unbelievers since dead cannot bury dead. The disciple was dead, therefore, not by a literal sort of death, but by a beaten-down life. Now one who lives in such guilt is tortured by a death-in-life. To be baptized, therefore, by the dead is to take up death, not life. But we must consider and discuss to what extent a traditor must be considered the living dead. Dead is the one who does not deserve the rebirth of true baptism. Similarly dead is the one who, though born of a legitimate baptism, has entered into communion with a traditor. Neither of these has the life of baptism, neither the one who never had it nor the one who had it and lost it. The Lord Jesus Christ said: "Then there shall come into that man seven spirits more wicked than the earlier one, and the last state of that person shall be worse than the first" (Mt 12:45).
(8.17) We must consider this, as I said, and discuss to what extent the treacherous traditor is to be considered the living dead. Judas was an apostle when he handed over Christ. That same one lost the honor of being an apostle, dying spiritually before he died by hanging himself, as it is written: " 'I repent for having handed over the blood of the Righteous One,' he said, and he went off and hanged himself" (Mt 27:4– 5). The traitor perished by rope, a rope he left for others like himself, of which the Lord Christ cried out to the Father: "Father, all those that you gave me, I have guarded them, and not one of them has perished except the son of perdition in order that Scripture be fulfilled" (Jn 17:12). . . . How do you,19 as heir of an even worse traditor, lay claim to a bishopric for yourself? Judas handed over Christ, betraying him in the flesh; you in your mad rage handed over the holy Gospel to sacrilegious flames, betraying it in spirit. Judas betrayed the Lawgiver to unbelievers; you, in a sense, handed over to men for destruction what He left behind, the Law of God. If you had loved the Law, like the young Maccabees, you would have perished for the Law of God—if one can call it "death," this dying for a Lord who gives immortality. . . . If you were to burn
19. "You": Petilian is engaged in a diatribe here against Catholic clergy; the "you" refers not to his original audience of Donatist clergy, but to Catholics (or "Caecilianists," as a Donatist would say).