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Against the Donatists

St Optatus of Milevis, tr. Vassall-Phillips, 1917

Book 2, The Sin of the Donatists in Stripping Bishops of Their Dignity and Submitting…

Now that we have proved that you ought to blush with shame for those things at which you rejoice, and have shown with what mad rage you conducted yourselves in so many places, something should be said about the depth of your impiety. For who ever will be able to explain the crimes that have been done, or those that are being actually done, by you? It is clear that, with a certain wicked ingenuity, you arranged all your plans in such a way as by one bad action to accomplish different results. For example, when a priest or a Bishop was removed by you from his post,¹ you saw to it that you might capture all his flock. How could a mass of men stand firm when they saw you tear their ruler from them? In this manner is it always that, after the shepherd has by some misfortune been killed, wolves set upon the sheep. You exorcised the Faithful, and without reason washed the walls of the churches, that by wickedness of this kind you might undermine the minds of very simple people.² By such evil designs as these you throttled the intelligence of not a few,³ and having disguised the light of your cunning by covering it all under a cloud⁴ of feigned simplicity, you shot arrows from your quiver, to lay low the miserable by the seductions that your hearts contrived. Even as the Holy Ghost foretold of you, through David the Prophet, in the Psalm:
‘For lo the wicked have bent their bow, they have prepared the arrows in their quiver to shoot the upright of heart when the moon is dark.’⁵

In what way have your deeds fallen short of your plans? You have shot the innocent, you have disarmed the faithful. Bishops have been stripped of the office belonging to their title. O unheard-of impiety, upon whom have you laid your cut-throat hands, to keep them amongst the torments of Penance⁶?

The savagery of highway robbers is seen to be a thing of less account, when compared with the deeds that you have done. The robber gives those whom he murders a quick death; you slay your victim, yet leave him amongst the living.⁷ Those whom you have succeeded in deceiving have been entrapped through the weakness of their understanding,⁸ for they⁹ who had been ordained in the Name of God had, by God’s own work, been made perfect [in their office]. And you fight fiercely against the work of God, destroying His work by the engines of your wickedness.¹⁰

It is clear, therefore, that of you it has been written in the tenth Psalm:
‘That which Thou hast made perfect they have destroyed.’¹¹

Your impiety has filled you with pride, but
‘Justice looking down from heaven’¹²
accuses you; whilst on earth men praise you with mistaken praise for doing wickedness, so that of you the Holy Ghost has said in the ninth Psalm:
‘Whilst the wicked man is proud, the poor man is set on fire; they are caught in the counsels which they devise. The sinner is praised in the desires of his soul and he who does iniquity shall be blessed.’¹³

What greater iniquity than yours can there be found to be praised? What is there more iniquitous than to exorcise the Holy Ghost, to break down altars, to cast the Eucharist to animals? Yet your people praise you and----thus do they plunge you into folly----call you fortunate, and name you for good luck,¹⁴ and swear by your name, and so are seen already to treat your persons as though you were God.

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