Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
150 ST. AUGUSTINE
Would that you suffered them for Christ and not for your own honors. Hear what follows. For they sometimes boast because they give many alms, they give to the poor, because they suffer vexations, but for Donatus, not for Christ! Look at how you suffer. For if you suffer for Donatus, you suffer for a proud man; you are not in the dove, if you suffer for Donatus. He was not a friend of the bridegroom; for if he were a friend of the bridegroom, he would seek the bridegroom's glory, not his own. Look at the friend of the bridegroom saying, "He it is who baptizes." That man for whom you suffer was not a friend of the bridegroom. You do not have your wedding garment; and if you have come to the feast, you will have to be sent outside.^^ (2) Rather, because you have been sent outside, therefore you are unhappy; return at last, and do not boast. Hear what the Apostle says: "If I distribute all my goods to the poor, and deliver my body that I may be burnt, yet do not have love."^^ Look what you do not have. "If I deliver," he says, "my body that I may be burnt," and, indeed, in the name of Christ — but because there are many who do that with a boast and not with love — "If I deliver my body that I may be burnt, yet do not have love, it profits me nothing."
(3) Those martyrs who suffered in the time of persecution acted out of love; they acted out of love. But these men act out of ostentation and out of pride. For since there is no persecutor, they hurl themselves down [to a violent death].
69. Cf. Mt 22.11-14. 70. Cf. 1 Cor 13.3. 71. Cf. Willis, 15-16: ".. . the dominating Donatist passion for pseudomartyrdom by suicide, if it was impossible to seek death by legal process." This was especially characteristic of the radical Circumcellions who went so far as to celebrate the anniversaries of such "martyrs" with drunkenness and immorahty. Theodoretus even relates that when such a voluntary martyrdom was imminent, invitations were sent to friends to bring food to fatten the future martyr as if a victim for an impending sacrifice. Cf. Augustine, Contra Epistulam Parmeniani 3.29 and, perhaps, 18 (PL 43. 105108 and 96; and CSEL
51.136-141 and 122—123), Epistula ad Catholicos contra Donatistas 19.50 (PL 43.429-430; and CSEL 52.296-298); Optatus of Milevis, 3.4 (CSEL 26.8185); Theodoretus, Haereticarum Fabularuvi Compendium 4.6 (PC 83.423-424); Frend, Donatist Church, 54-55, 174—176; R. Knox, Enthusiasm (Oxford, 1950), 60— 61 ; and E. Tengstrom, Donatisten und Katholiken (Goeteburg, 1964), 57-58-