Books 1 and 2 date to 400–401, while Book 3 dates sometime between 403 and 405. (continued)
in flames the last will and testament of someone who had died, would you not be punished for fraud, for falsifying [a legal will]? So what will come of you who burned up the most holy Law of our God and Judge? Judas repented of his deed by his death. You not only do not repent, but you, murderous traditor, have shown yourself as our persecutor and a butcher of those of us who keep the Law. (9.21) Locked in by these crimes, you, thus, cannot be a true bishop. . . .
(25.28) You the guilty engage in a fiction [of baptism]. I do not do baptism twice— what you have never done once. . . . (27.62) The Apostle Paul said: "One God, one faith, one baptism" (Eph 4:5). We profess there is only one. For this much is certain: those who judge there to be two are mad. . . . (32.72) But, you, O persecutor, do not even have the baptism of repentance; you hold on to the power not of the murdered John [the Baptist], but of the murderer Herod. Therefore, you, O traditor, do not have the Holy Spirit of Christ, for Christ did not betray or hand over others to death, but was himself betrayed and handed over. For you, the spirit's fire is lively and hot—in hell. In its hunger, its dry tongues will lick your limbs forever without ever consuming them. For it is written of those condemned to hell: "Its fire shall not be extinguished" (Is 66:24).
(33.77) . . . How then can you baptize in the name of the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit came only on apostles who had not committed betrayal? Seeing that God is not your Father and that you are not born of the true water of baptism, no one among you is born inwardly; you, the impious, have neither father nor mother. Shouldn't I therefore baptize people like you, even after a thousand of your baptisms, which resemble the purely physical baths that Jews do? (34.79) If the apostles were allowed to baptize those whom John [the Baptist] had washed with his baptism of repentance, shall I not be allowed to baptize you, the sacrilegious? (35.81) The Holy Spirit will not be able to descend upon a person by the bishop's imposing hands if the water which produces the pure conscience has not given birth to him first. (36.83) In any case, the Holy Spirit would not be able to descend upon you, whom not even a baptism of repentance has purified; and the truth is this: what needs repenting of is the water of the traditor which dirtied you. . . .
(108.246) Come, therefore, to Church, all you people, and flee the traditores if you do not wish to perish along with them. For you easily recognize that, while they themselves are guilty, they have judged and hold the highest view of our faith: I baptize the stained, the undone, among them; yet they receive my baptized, which they would not in any way do if they recognized any faults in our baptism. See, therefore, how holy what we give is, when even our sacrilegious enemy fears to destroy it.20
20. Petilian's Latin text was reconstructed by Monceaux, Histoire littéraire, 5:311–28; my trans. The numbering here follows that of Augustine's Contra litteras Petiliani (BA 30:222–560).