The Catholic bishops' letter to Marcellinus

Alypius, bishop of the Catholic Church, read aloud a letter: "To our honorable and most beloved son, the most distinguished and eminent man, tribune and notary Marcellinus: Aurelius, Silvanus, and all the Catholic bishops. By these letters we make known that we agree in everything with your eminence's edict, by which provision was made for preserving the tranquility and quiet of our conference and for making the truth clear and secure, as you were kind enough to advise. Trusting in that truth, we also bind ourselves by the bond of a condition: if those with whom we are dealing can demonstrate to us that, when the Christian people had already grown everywhere according to God's promises and filled a great part of the world and were spreading out to fill the rest, the Church of Christ suddenly perished by the contagion of the sins of certain men whom they accuse, and remained only in the Donatist party—if, as I said, they can demonstrate this, we will seek no honors of a bishopric among them, but we will follow their counsel for salvation alone, since we will owe them the grace of so great a benefit for the truth we have recognized. But if we are able to show instead that the Church of Christ, already holding the most fertile expanses of many nations with a multitude of peoples, not only in the African provinces but also in those across the sea, and, as it is written, bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, as it is written, could not have perished through the sins of any men mixed in with it; if, finally, the question of those very men whom they wanted to accuse rather than were able to convict has been settled—although the Church does not consist in them—and Caecilian was judged innocent, while those men were judged violent and slanderous by that emperor to whose examination they sent their accusations by their own choice; and if, after all this, whatever they say about the sins of any men, we prove either by human documents or by divine ones that their innocence was attacked with false charges, or that the Church of Christ, to whose communion we cling, has not been destroyed by any of their offenses—then let them hold unity with us in such a way that they not only find the way of salvation but do not lose the honor of a bishopric. For we do not detest in them the sacraments of divine truth, but the fabrications of human error. When those are removed, we will embrace a brotherly breast joined to us by Christian love, which we now grieve is separated by diabolical dissension. Each one of us, joined with a colleague in honor, will be able to sit in turn in the more prominent seat, as when a foreign bishop sits beside a colleague. This is granted to both sides in alternating basilicas, each one anticipating the other with mutual honor, because where the command of love has enlarged hearts, the possession of peace does not become narrow. Then, when one of the two dies, from then on single bishops succeed single bishops according to the ancient custom. Nor will anything new happen; for from the very beginning of the separation, Catholic love has preserved this among those who, having condemned the error of wicked dissension, came to appreciate the sweetness of unity, even if late. Or if perhaps the Christian people delight in single bishops and cannot tolerate the partnership of two because of the unfamiliar appearance of things, let both of us withdraw from the middle, and let single bishops be appointed in the necessary places for single churches, once the cause of schism has been condemned and the churches established in peaceful unity, with single bishops in single churches consenting to unity."