WHEN he was made bishop of Barcelona, in 373, there lived in the
neighborhood of that city one Sympronian, a man of distinction, whom the
bishop calls brother and lord, who was a Donatist, and also engaged in
the heresy of the Novatians, who, following the severity of the
Montanists, denied penance and pardon for certain sins. He sent St.
Pacian a letter by a servant, in which he censured the church for
allowing repentance to all crimes, and for taking the title of Catholic.
St. Pacian answers him in three learned letters.
In the first he sums up the principal heresies from Simon Magus to the
Novatians and asks Sympronian, which he will choose to stand by:
entreats him to examine the true church with docility and candor, laying
aside all obstinacy, the enemy to truth. He says {558} the name Catholic
comes from God, and is necessary to distinguish the dove, the undivided
virgin church, from all sects which are called from their particular
founders. This name we learned from the holy doctors, confessors, and
martyrs. "My name," says he, "is Christian, my surname Catholic: the one
distinguishes me, the other points me out to others." "Christianus mihi
nomen est; Catholicus veto cognomen: illud me nuncupat, istud ostendit;
hoc probor, inde significor." He says that no name can be more proper to
express the church, which is all obedient to Christ, and one and the
same through the whole world. "As to penance," says he, "God grant it be
necessary to none of the faithful; that none after baptism fall into the
pit of death--but accuse not God's mercy, who has provided a remedy even
for those that are sick. Does the infernal serpent continually carry
poison, and has not Christ a remedy? Does the devil kill, and cannot
Christ relieve? Fear sin, but not repentance. Be ashamed to be in
danger, not to be delivered out of it. Who will snatch a plank from one
lost by shipwreck? Who will envy the healing of wounds?" He mentions the
parables of the lost drachma, the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the
Samaritan, and God's threats, adding: "God would never threaten the
impenitent, if he refused pardon. But you'll say, only God can do this.
It is true; but what he does by his priests, is his power. What is that
he says to his apostles? Whatsoever you shall bind, &c., Mat. xvi. Why
this, if it was not given to men to bind and to loosen? Is this given
only to the apostles? Then it is only given to them to baptize, to give
the Holy Ghost, (in confirmation,) to cleanse the sins of infidels,
because all this was commanded to no other than to the apostles. If
therefore the power of baptism and of chrism, (confirmation,) which are
far greater gifts, descended from the apostles to bishops; the power of
binding and loosing also came to them." He concludes with these words:
"I know, brother, this pardon of repentance is not promiscuously to be
given to all, nor to be granted before the signs of the divine will, or
perchance the last sickness; with great severity and strict scrutiny,
after many groans, and shedding of tears; after the prayers of the whole
church. But pardon is not denied to true repentance, that no one prevent
or put by the judgment of Christ." St. Pacian answers his reply by a
second letter, that remedies seem often bitter, and says, "How can you
be offended at my catalogue of heresies, unless you was a heretic? I
congratulate with you for agreeing upon our name Catholic, which if you
denied, the thing itself would cry out against you." St. Pacian denies
that St. Cyprian's people were ever called Apostatics or Capitoline, or
by any name but that of Catholics, which the Novatians, with all their
ambition for it, could never obtain, nor ever be known but by the name
of Novatians. He says, the emperors persecuted the Novatians of their
own authority, not at the instigation of the church. "You say I am
angry," says he, "God forbid. I am like the bee which sometimes defends
its honey with its sting." He vindicates the martyr St. Cyprian, and
denies that Novatian ever suffered for the faith; adding, that "if he
had, he could not have been crowned, because he was out of the church,
out of which, no one can be a martyr. Etsi occisus, non tamen coronatus:
quidni? Extra Ecclesiae pacem, extra concordiam, extra eam matrem cujus
portio debet esse, qui martyr est. Si charitatem non habeam, nihil sum.
1 Cor. xiii." In his third letter he confutes the Novatian error: that
the church could not forgive mortal sin after baptism. "Moses, St. Paul,
Christ, express tender charity for sinners; who then broached this
doctrine? Novatian. But when? Immediately from Christ? No; almost three
hundred years after him: since Decius's reign. Had he any prophets to
learn it from? any proof of his revelation? had he the gift of tongues?
did he prophesy? could he raise the dead? for he ought to have some of
these to introduce a new gospel. Nay, St. Paul (Gal. i.) forbids a
novelty in faith to be received from an angel. You will say, Let us
dispute our point. But I am secure; content with the succession and
tradition of the church, with the communion of the ancient body. I have
sought no arguments." He assents that the church is holy, and more than
Sympronian had given it: but says it cannot perish by receiving sinners.
The good have always lived amidst the wicked. It is the heretic who
divides it, and tears it, which is Christ's garment, asunder. The church
is diffused over the whole world, and cannot be reduced to one little
portion, or as it were chained to a part, as the Novatians, whose
history he touches upon. Sympronian objected, that Catholic bishops
remitted sin. St. Pacian answers, "Not I, but only God, who both blots
out sin in baptism, and does not reject the tears of penitents. What I
do is not in my own name, but in the Lord's. Wherefore, whether we
baptize, or draw to penance, or give pardon to penitents, we do it by
Christ's authority. You must see whether Christ can do it, and did
it--Baptism is the sacrament of our Lord's passion; the pardon of
penitents is the merit of confession. All can obtain that, because it is
the gratuitous gift of God, but this labor is but of a small number who
rise after a fall, and recover by tears, and by destroying the flesh."
The saint shows the Novatians encourage sin by throwing men into
despair; whereas repentance heals and stops it. Christ does not die a
second time indeed for the pardon of sinners, but he is a powerful
Advocate interceding still to his Father for sinners. Can he forsake
those he redeemed at so dear a rate? Can the devil enslave, and Christ
not absolve his servants? He alleges St. Peter denying Christ after he
had been baptized, St. {559} Thomas incredulous, even after the
resurrection; yet pardoned by repentance. He answers his objections from
scripture, and exhorts him to embrace the Catholic faith; for the true
church cannot be confined to a few, nor be new. "If she began before
you, if she believed before you, if she never left her foundation, and
was never divorced from her body, she must be the spouse; it is the
great and rich house of all. God did not purchase with his blood so
small a portion, nor is Christ so poor. The church of God dilates its
tabernacles from the rising to the setting of the sun."
Next to these three letters we have his excellent Paraenesis, or
exhortation to penance. In the first part he reduces the sins subjected
to courses of severe public penance by the canons to three, idolatry,
murder, and impurity; and shows the enormity of each. In the second he
addresses himself to those sinners, who out of shame, or for fear of the
penances to be enjoined, did not confess their crimes. He calls them
shamefully timorous and bashful to do good, after having been bold and
impudent to sin, and says, "And you do not tremble to touch the holy
mysteries, and to thrust your defiled soul into the holy place, in the
sight of the angels, and before God himself, as if you were innocent."
He mentions Oza lain for touching the ark, (2 Kings vi.,) and the words
of the apostle, (1 Cor. xi.,) adding, "Do not you tremble when you hear,
he shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord? One guilty of the
blood of a man would not rest, and can he escape who has profaned the
body of the Lord? What do you do by deceiving the priest, or hiding part
of your load? I beseech you no longer to cover your wounded conscience.
Rogo vos etiam pro periculo men, per illum Dominum quem occulta non
fallunt, desinite vulneratam tegere conscientiam. Men sick are not
backward to show their sores to physicians, and shall the sinner be
afraid or ashamed to purchase eternal life by a momentary confusion?
Will he draw back his wounds from the Lord, who is offering his hand to
heal them? Peccator timebit? peccator erubeseet perpetuam vitam praesenti
pudore mercari? et offerenti manus Domino vulnera male tecta subducet?"
In his third part he speaks to those who confessed their sins entirely,
but feared the severity of the penance. He compares these to dying men
who should not have the courage to take a dose which would restore their
health, and says, "This is to cry out, behold I am sick, I am wounded;
but I will not he cured." He deplores their delicacy, and proposes to
them king David's austere penance. He describes thus the life of a
penitent. "He is to weep in the sight of the church, to go meanly clad,
to mourn, to fast, to prostrate himself, to renounce the bath, and such
delights. If invited to a banquet, he is to say, such things are for
those who have not had the misfortune to have sinned; I have offended
the Lord, and am in danger of perishing forever: what have I to do with
feasts? Ista felicibus: ego deliqui in Dominum, et periclitor in aeternum
perire: quo mihi epulas qui Dominum laesi? You must moreover sue for the
prayers of the poor, of the widows, of the priest, prostrating yourself
before them, and of the whole church; to do every thing rather than to
perish. Omnia prius tentare ne pereas." He presses sinners to severe
penance, for fear of hell, and paints a frightful image of it from the
fires of Vesuvius and aetna. His treatise or Sermon On Baptism, is an
instruction on original sin, and the effects of this sacrament, by which
we are reborn, as by chrism or confirmation we receive the Holy Ghost by
the hands of the bishop. He adds a moving exhortation that, being
delivered from sin, and having renounced the devil, we no more return to
sin; such a relapse after baptism being much worse. "Hold, therefore,
strenuously," says he, "what you have received, preserve it faithfully;
sin no more; keep yourselves pure and spotless for the day of out Lord."
Besides these three books, he wrote one against the play of the stag,
commended by St. Jerom, but now lost. The heathens had certain infamous
diversions with a little stag at the beginning of every year, mentioned
by St. Ambrose, (in Ps. 141,) and by Nilus, (ep. 81.) It seems from the
sermons, 129, 130, in the appendix to St. Augustine's, (t. 5,) that it
consisted of masquerades, dressed in the figures of wild beasts. Some
Christians probably joined in them. St. Pacian's zeal dictated that book
against it, but the effect it produced at that time, seemed chiefly to
make many more curious and more eager to see that wicked play, as St.
Pacian himself says in the beginning of his exhortation to penance. The
beauty of this holy doctor's writings can only be dis covered by reading
them. His diction is elegant, his reasoning just and close, and his
thoughts beautiful: he is full of unction when he exhorts to virtue, and
of strength when he attacks vice.