§1
“Peace has not been established by so many conversations,” you will say. “Why, therefore, do you summon us to disputations? What else will follow from them than exacerbations and the proclamation of itself as victor by each party?” I am not ignorant that many disputations have been causes of greater discords, that fire has been stirred with a sword, and that hornets have been exasperated by mutual agitation. Indeed, in the book On the Synod and Union of the Evangelicals I demonstrated by evident arguments that they cannot return to concord through mutual colloquies. Now I shall show only this: that colloquies instituted between the orthodox and those who err make some progress toward peace. For I do not affirm that they suffice; rather, I seek all supports for peace, not only those by which we may possess it but also those by which I trust that we may approach peace.
First, in Acts 6:9 the Libertines, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and Asians disputed with Stephen and could not resist the wisdom and spirit which spoke. There were, therefore, continual disputations with unbelievers by which the Church grew and error diminished.
Next, in chapter 9:22, Paul grew much stronger and confounded the Jews who dwelt at Damascus, affirming that this is the Christ. We are taught in Acts 17:2 and 17:18 that this was the custom. For at Thessalonica and Athens, and indeed in the very assembly of the Areopagus, Paul disputes. Likewise at Corinth, after entering the synagogue, he spoke with confidence for three months, disputing and persuading concerning the kingdom of God.
Acts 19:8–9: he disputes daily in the school of a certain Tyrannus, not only with the disciples but with those who came to be taught. Indeed, Paul as a prisoner disputes before Felix and Drusilla concerning justice, chastity, and the future judgment, so that he beholds Felix, his judge, trembling. At Rome too, in his own hired lodging, he disputes for the whole two years and, though himself a prisoner, sets the multitudes free into the liberty of faith; for the word of God is not bound.
§2
Nor did the Church abandon its custom afterward. To omit ancient matters, how many colloquies were held in Africa in Augustine’s time? Augustine himself disputed against heretics not only in writings but in collated discourses. “At the same time,” he says in Retractions, book 1, “during my presbyterate I disputed against a certain Fortunatus, a presbyter of the Manichaeans, who had lived at Hippo for a very long time and had seduced so many that on their account he was pleased to dwell there. This disputation, while we argued, was taken down by notaries as though acts were being drawn up, for it possesses both a day and a consul.” The outcome was that which Augustine himself relates: “On the following day Fortunatus finally conceded that he found nothing to say against us. He certainly did not become a Catholic, but nevertheless departed from Hippo.”
He also conferred with the Donatists for three days; he reduced their long disputation into narrow compass and called it the Breviculus of the Conference. He not only advised a conference with Fortunius, bishop of the Donatists, but even prescribed its manner and method in Letter 163 to Eleutherius and Glorius.
He also consented to institute a colloquy with Pascentius, a count of the Arian heresy, but on the condition that the words of the disputants be taken down by notaries. After the count rejected the condition, Augustine deservedly refused the colloquy at first: for the count wished his words to be spoken, but did not wish them to be held against him. Nevertheless, overcome by charity, Augustine undertook it.
Concerning the most renowned disputation, Possidius writes thus in chapter 13 of the Life of Augustine: “And concerning all these things done for the peace of the Church, the Lord both gave Augustine the palm here and reserved with Himself the crown of righteousness; and, with Christ aiding, from day to day the unity of peace and the brotherhood of the Church of God were more and more increased and multiplied. This was accomplished especially through the conference which was afterward held at Carthage by all the Catholic bishops with those same bishops of the Donatists, with the most glorious and religious Emperor Honorius assisting. To accomplish it, he had also sent from his own side to Africa the tribune and notary Marcellinus as judge. In that controversy they were refuted in every way and convicted of error by the Catholics; they were marked by the sentence of the cognitor and, after their appeal, were justly condemned among heretics by the response of the most pious king. For this reason more than the customary number of their bishops, together with their clerics and peoples, entered into communion; and, holding Catholic peace, they endured many persecutions from them, even to the amputation of limbs and death.”
§3
Then, after that most celebrated conference, some did not cease to say that those bishops had not been permitted to say before the authority which heard the cause everything on behalf of their own parties. Augustine afterward imposed silence upon Emeritus, the principal defender of the sect, at Caesarea, a city of Mauretania. He also confuted Maximinus when he came into Africa with the Goths, and he disputed with the Pelagians very frequently, so that a conjecture concerning the other ages may be formed even from that one age. Nor does it belong to my undertaking to demonstrate by examples a practice now employed for so many ages in the Church, but to show how greatly those men err who condemn conferences of this kind universally because the inquiry into truth is often impeded more by clamors and quarrels than it is advanced. This generally happens when victory is sought by shameless ambition, not an understanding of things—when the interlocutors wish to seem learned, not to learn.
The reason why exact disputations, perfected according to the dialectical norm, are necessary is that many stubbornly resist acknowledged truth and yield only when manifestly convicted. Rightly did the most holy prelate Augustine, most practiced in eristic writings and conferences, say in The City of God, book 2, chapter 1: “If the weak perception of human custom did not dare to resist the reasoning of perspicuous truth, but subjected its infirmity to salutary doctrine as to medicine until it was healed by divine aid when the faith of piety obtained it, there would be no need of lengthy discourse for convicting anyone’s error of empty opinion by those who think rightly and explain what they think in sufficient words. But now, since that disease of foolish spirits is greater and fouler, by which they defend their irrational movements as though they were reason and truth—even after all the reason which is owed by man to man has been fully rendered, whether through excessive blindness, by which even manifest things are not discerned, or through most obstinate perversity, by which even those things which are discerned are not endured—it generally becomes necessary to speak more copiously. We must offer clear things to be seen, as though to those not looking at them; but, in a certain manner, to be touched by those groping and to be encountered by those struggling.”
For this reason the adversaries must be convicted seriously and ἀναντιρρήτως, irrefragably, so that they themselves may be compelled to behold their own effrontery and shamelessness.
Next, although sectaries who hunt for glory from colloquies are rarely converted, nevertheless they defend less spiritedly those things concerning which they begin to doubt. Third, by the agitation itself the innermost elements of their errors, the discords and conflicts of the sects, and especially the calumnies which they customarily fabricate against absent Catholics, are thoroughly known. Fourth, their contumacy is uncovered. For who among them, from the first disputant down to Plessis in the royal court and Heilbronner at Neuburg, so yielded his hands to truth and glory to God that he was not ashamed to be convicted while disputing, but rather rejoiced to have been better instructed by truth? Did not an unformed clamor of perversity explode a matter well introduced for discussion? Or, if the prerogative against truth was denied to clamor, did not the pretense of illness abandon the disputation? A plainly childish thing: to feign so sudden and so savage an illness that you cannot point out ten or twenty passages in another’s book which you had previously copied out and weighed! Yet in this manner they concluded two of the most noble colloquies of our time: Plessis in Gaul, leader of the cuirassiers, and Jacob Heilbronner in Germany, pope of the Lutherans. For each preferred to cut short public disgrace by feigning illness rather than hear his own faults and learn truth.