Prayers, Not Threats

And what am I to say about the men who have now sailed to you along with Felicissimus — men guilty of every crime — sent as envoys by Fortunatus, the false overseer, carrying you letters as false as the man is whose letters they carry? His conscience is loaded with sins, his life is detestable, and it is a disgrace. Men like that ought to be thrown out of the church even if they were inside it. On top of that, since they know their own conscience, they do not dare come to us or even set foot at the church door. They wander about the province outside her, cheating our brothers and defrauding them; and now, well enough known to everyone and shut out everywhere for their crimes, they sail off to you as well. They cannot face coming to us or standing in front of us, because the charges our brothers bring against them are extremely serious and grave. [a]

If they want to undergo our judgment, let them come. In the end, if they can find any excuse or defense, let us see what they have in mind by way of making amends, and what fruit of repentance they bring forward. The church here is closed to no one; the overseer is refused to no one. Our patience, our readiness and our kindness stand waiting for anyone who comes. I beg them all to come back into the church. I plead with all my fellow soldiers to be gathered inside the camp of Christ and the dwelling place of God the Father. I let everything go. I shut my eyes to a great deal, because I want and long to gather the brotherhood together again. Even the things done against God I do not probe with all the strictness that religion allows. I very nearly sin myself, forgiving sins more than I ought. Those who come back repentant, confessing their sin humbly and with plain, unpretended amends, I take in my arms at once and with all my love.

But some think they can return to the church not by asking but by threatening, and suppose they can force a way in for themselves not by mourning and making amends but by frightening people. Let them take it as certain that against men like that the church of the Lord stands shut. The camp of Christ is unconquered, and firm under the Lord’s protection; it does not give way to threats. A priest of God who holds fast to the good news and keeps the commands of Christ can be killed; he cannot be beaten. Zechariah, God’s priest, puts before us and supplies us with examples of courage and faith. Threats and stoning could not frighten him, and he was killed inside the temple of God, crying out as he died the very thing we cry out against the heretics: “Thus says the Lord: you have abandoned the ways of the Lord, and the Lord will abandon you.” A few reckless and wicked men abandon the heavenly, health-giving ways of the Lord, and because they do not do holy things the Holy Spirit deserts them. That is no reason for the rest of us to forget what God handed down to us — as though the crimes of madmen counted for more than the judgments of priests, or as though human effort could do more in the attack than God’s protection can do in the defense. [e]

Is the dignity of the universal church to be laid aside, dearest brother? Is the faithful, uncorrupted majesty of the people inside her to be laid aside, and the priestly authority and power along with it — all so that men who stand outside the church may say they wish to pass judgment on the man set over the church? Heretics judging a Christian? Wounded men judging a man who is unhurt? Crippled men judging a man in health? The fallen judging one who is still standing? The guilty judging their judge? Men guilty of sacrilege judging a priest? What is left, then, except that the church should surrender to the Capitol; that the priests should walk out and carry off the Lord’s altar; that the images and the idols should move in, altars and all, to the sacred and honored gathering of our clergy; and that Novatian should be handed still more and richer material for making speeches against us and abusing us? For that is what follows if men who sacrificed and publicly denied Christ may begin not only to be pleaded with and taken back without repenting, but on top of that to throw their weight around by the power of their threats. [g]

If they want peace, let them put down their weapons. If they are making amends, why the threats? And if they are threatening, let them understand that God’s priests are not afraid of them. Even Antichrist, when he begins to come, will not get into the church by threatening; nor will we give way to his weapons and his violence because he announces that he will destroy us if we resist. Heretics arm us when they suppose their threats have frightened us. They do not knock us on our faces; they lift us up and set us on fire, since they make peace itself worse for our brothers than persecution was. What we want, of course, is that they should not fill up in crime what they say in madness, and that men who sin with treacherous and cruel words should not go on to sin in deeds as well. We pray and beg God — the God they never stop provoking and exasperating — to soften their hearts, so that they may lay their madness aside and come back to their right minds; so that hearts covered over with the darkness of their sins may recognize the light of repentance; so that they may want the prayers and pleading of the priest poured out on their behalf, rather than pour out the priest’s blood themselves. But if they keep on in their madness, and cruelly persist in these deceits and threats — the crime of men murdering their own family — then no priest of God is so weak, so beaten down, so worthless, so useless in the frailty of a mere man, that he is not roused against the enemies and attackers of God by strength from above, and does not find his own humility and weakness brought to life by the force and strength of the Lord who guards him. It makes no difference to us who kills us, or when, since we will receive from the Lord the reward of our death and of our blood. What must be mourned and wept over is their being cut off — men so blinded by the devil that they give no thought to the everlasting punishments of Gehenna and try instead to act out the coming of Antichrist, who is drawing near now. [l]

Dearest brother, I know from the mutual love we owe one another and show one another that you always read my letters out to the most distinguished clergy who preside there with you, and to your congregation, that holy and numerous body. Even so, I now both urge and ask you to do at my request what at other times you do of your own good will and courtesy: to read this letter of mine out, so that if any infection of poisoned talk, any pestilent spreading of it, has crept in among you, it may all be purged out of our brothers’ ears and hearts, and the sound, sincere affection of good people may be cleansed again of every filthy slander of the heretics. [o]

For the rest, our dearly loved brothers should firmly refuse and avoid the words and the conversation of men whose talk creeps on like a cancer. As the apostle says, “Bad conversation corrupts good character.” And again: “A heretic, after one warning, reject — knowing that a man like that is twisted, and sins, and stands condemned by himself.” And the Holy Spirit says through Solomon: “A crooked man carries ruin in his mouth, and in his lips he hides a fire.” And again he warns us: “Fence your ears about with thorns, and do not listen to a wicked tongue.” And again: “An evildoer pays attention to the tongue of the unjust; but a righteous man does not listen to lying lips.” [p]

I know that our brotherhood over there is well fortified by your foresight, and cautious enough besides on its own watch, so that it cannot be caught or deceived by the poisons of the heretics; and that the teachings and commands of God carry weight with them exactly as far as the fear of God is in them. Still, needlessly perhaps, either my anxiety or my love has persuaded me to write this to you: that no dealings should be entered into with such men; that there should be no shared meals with the wicked and no conversations; but that we should be as far separated from them as they are deserters from the church. For it is written, “If he refuses to listen to the church, let him be to you as a pagan and a tax collector.” And the blessed apostle does not only warn us to withdraw from such men; he commands it. “We command you,” he says, “in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, that you keep away from every brother who lives out of order and not by the tradition he received from us.”

There can be no partnership between faith and faithlessness. A man who is not with Christ, who is Christ’s opponent, who is hostile to his unity and his peace, cannot be joined with us. If they come with prayers and amends, let them be heard; if they pile up curses and threats, let them be turned away. Dearest brother, I wish you well always and from my heart.