Against the Donatists

Notes

1. quae ducit ad se Angelum. St. Optatus, having shown that the Donatists have not the Cathedra, goes on to deny that they have the Angelus either. For it is the Chair of Peter that ‘draws to itself the Bishop.’
2. habetis in loculis clausum. Cf. ii, i: ‘In angustum coartatis Ecclesiam.’
3. ‘ad quorum ecclesias . . . cum quibus ecclesiis.
4. The Donatists knew that they neither sent to these churches, nor received from them, Litterae formatae.
5. qui apud vos possit fontem movere----i.e. ‘A Bishop able to give grace.’ The reference is to John v, 4. It is interesting to see that this text was in the Version used by Parmenian.
6. extra Septem Ecclesias quicquid foris est alienum est. (Cf. vi, 3: ‘Orientalibus . . . ubi est septiformis Ecclesia.’) Here, as elsewhere, St. Optatus supposes St. Cyprian to be familiar to his readers. St. Cyprian teaches that the Seven Macchabees are the type of the several churches, children of one Mother, and that on this account both St. Paul and St. John wrote to seven churches. (See Ad Fortunatum cap. xi. and Testimonies i, 20.) On the one hand St. Optatus never expected the Seven Churches of Asia to be overrun by the Turk, but on the other hand it is not likely that he supposed them to be infallible or indefectible, for the heresies in some had been sufficiently notorious. But he took the seven apostolic churches then existing in Asia as a real proof of Apostolicity, for one reason because Parmenian evidently had referred to them by mentioning the Angel as one of the Endowments. St. Optatus retorts, ‘We are actually in communion with these Seven Churches, but you are not!’ Whatever is without the Seven Churches (not, I think, necessarily these particular seven churches mentioned in the Apocalypse, for if Optatus had wished to say this, he would, as elsewhere, have written ‘extra quas septem Ecclesias,’ (cf. ‘ad quorum Ecclesias,’ ‘cum quibus Ecclesiis,’ etc., supra,) but whatever is without Cyprian’s mystical Seven) is outside (foris), is alien (alienum). In all probability foris and alienum are used as synonyms (see i, 11,’ dum foras exeunt et se separant’; so Cyprian, Ep. ad Anton. i, 8, writes of a schismatic Bishop ‘profanus est, alienus est, foris est’), though Ziwsa says that alienum here = diversum. Optatus has already written (i, 12) that heretics are ‘ab hortulo et a paradiso Dei alieni’; he now writes simply that’ whatever is schismatic’ is ‘alienum’----is alien, is foreign to, is not within ‘God’s garden ‘----the Catholic Church. (We may compare St. Ambrose in Ep. I. Ad Cor. iii, 15, ‘Extra Catholicam quicquid est, contrarium est.’) St. Augustine takes up and several times uses this appeal to the Apostolic churches of the East. It is sometimes compared by non-Catholic controversialists to the patristic appeal to communion with Rome. But the work of St. Optatus is by itself enough to show the lack of parity. … A Catholic in England before the Reformation might have said with perfect truth: ‘Whoever is not in communion with the See of Canterbury is outside the Church ‘; as a Catholic to-day may say with equal truth: ‘Whoever is not in communion with the See of Westminster is outside the Church.’ It in no wise follows that the See of Canterbury has not fallen, nor that the See of Westminster may not (quod avertat Deus) fall into schism. … (cf. note 2, p. 67).
7. et per angelos supra memoratis ecclesiis et per ipsas Ecclesias nobis. As Optatus proceeds immediately to urge, it is an incontrovertible principle of Catholicism that he who is in communion with one member of the Body is thereby ipso facto in communion with the other members, and with the whole Body; whereas he who is out of communion with one member is out of communion with all. The test is of easy application, and is most often made (as Optatus made it) primarily in relation to the See of Peter, but we may apply it with equal certainty to any See which without controversy belongs to the Catholic Church. Thus St. Optatus applied it to the Seven Churches mentioned in the Apocalypse. We can apply it, say, to the Church of Madrid, concerning which there can be no doubt that it is Catholic. So, if any man (or any organised religious body) claims to be Catholic, we may ask at once: ‘Are you in communion with the Bishop of Madrid? If so, through the Bishop of Madrid, you are in communion with the whole Catholic Church, and since we (whom perhaps you call “Roman Catholics ”) are in communion with the Bishop of Madrid, you must also be in communion with us----which is manifestly untrue and----unless you too are in communion with Rome----ridiculous. … This is the argument of St. Optatus, and of Catholics generally in every age. It at once makes the question of the validity of Orders irrelevant to the main issue, and raises the discussion to a higher plane----to the analogy of the mystical Body of Christ with a human body, in which, so long as the eye (or any other member) is in union with the hand (provided only that the hand is in union with the heart), both live; but the moment that separation comes, one, or both, must be out of the body.
8. ‘If you are not in communion with any Catholic Bishops your position is hopeless; but if you are in communion with any Catholic Bishops you must through them be in communion with us, for we are in communion with them.’ (This is, of course; the reductio ad absurdum of which we have spoken in the preceding note.) ‘But if you are in communion with us, you cannot have any longer any case against us. You have lost your case.’ It is possible that by Angelus, St. Optatus does not in this passage understand the Bishop himself, but the Guardian Angel of the Church, who attends upon the Bishop. In this case his argument will be precisely the same: ‘If you have an Angel shut up in a box, send him to Asia, and tell him to treat the Apostolic Churches there as excluded from the true Church, and to cut off their Angels, to whom St. John wrote, from his communion. Your Angel, if you have one, will not do that. So if you are not in communion with those Angels, how can you have an Angel at all? Are not all the Angels in communion with one another? And the Seven Churches are a type of the whole Church. Conversely, if you have an Angel, he must be in communion with the other Angels and therefore with those Apostolic Churches, and (as we are in communion with them) then you must be in communion with us, and so your whole attack upon us breaks down.’ Whether Angelus means Angel or Bishop, the argument is the same, and clear.