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Against the Donatists

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

Book 3, It is Shown from Ezekiel that the Severity Employed Against the Donatists Was by…

How will it be if the severities (great though they may have been) were nevertheless inflicted----as we have said----by the Will of God? For we read in the Prophet Ezekiel of a whitened wall, against which God threatened storm, rain, thunderbolts1 and accusations:
‘There shall be false prophets to build up a wall which is ready to fall,2 crying “Peace, peace”----and where is peace?’3

Call to mind how of old you tore away one from another the members of Mother Church.4 For you were not able to seduce any one family at once. Either the wife departed and the husband stayed behind, or the parents were seduced and the children refused to follow them, or the brother stood firm, when his sister wandered off. At your instigation divisions were made between man and wife----between parents and their children----and you could not even leave in peace that which natural law permits.5

No doubt, you have said:
‘Peace be with you’;
but God on the other hand asks:
‘Peace, and where is peace?’
that is to say:
‘Why do you give a salutation concerning that which you have not? Why do you name that which you have destroyed? Peace you love not, yet do you give a salutation concerning peace.’

‘They,’ He says, ‘built a wall which is ready to fall.’6

The House of God is one.7

They who have gone out and wished to make a party,8 have built a wall, not a house, for there is no second God, to dwell in a second house.9

On this account false prophets are said to have made a wall, and if a door be placed10 in this wall, anyone who enters through that door is [still] outside.11 Nor can a single wall have the Corner Stone----the Stone which is Christ, who, receiving into Himself two peoples----Gentiles and Jews----joins both walls with the bond of peace.12

For a wall has as many disadvantages as a house has advantages. The house protects all that is shut within it, turns the edge13 of the storm, throws off14 the rain, keeps out murderer15 and thief16 and beast. Thus also the Catholic Church embraces all the sons of peace in her bosom and breast. On the other hand the wall, which has been built in a ruinous state,17 supports no corner stone18; it has a purposeless door19; it keeps nothing inside it20; but is soaked with the rain,21 is struck by the storm, and is able neither to keep off the murderer, nor to stop the thief when he approaches.

The wall belongs to the house, but is not the house.

So your party is a quasi-church, but is not the Catholic Church.22

‘And,’ He says, ‘they whiten it.’ That is to say that you judge yourselves alone to be saints. You complain that you have had some sufferings (though we had nothing to do with them). Therefore it is certain that these were sufferings which you endured alone, for the time of peace is different from the time of persecution.

If you consider that it was a persecution, tell us, what had all the Provinces, of which the Catholic Church is composed,23 to suffer together with you?

Since it was ‘punishment,’ not persecution, the wall suffered alone, against which God threatened storm, rain, thunderbolts and accusations, for thus did He speak:
‘Why have you built up a ruin? Why have you made it white? Why have you painted24 it? This is against My Will, saith the Lord.’25

You are displeased with the days of a Leontius, of an Ursacius, of a Macarius and the rest. Put right26 the Will of God, if you can, who has said:
‘I will rise against the wall in My wrath, and will send upon it much storm and rain, floods and thunderbolts,27 and I will strike the wall that is ready to fall, and its joints shall be loosened.’28

And do not let any of your party object with the question:
‘If unity is a good thing, how is it that, after having been so often brought about, it has not been able to last?’

For this reason, that the matter has been arranged thus by God, who threatened storm, rain, stones and accusations.29 Now these four things could not happen at the same time. First there was a storm under Ursacius.30 The wall31 was then shaken, but did not fall, so that rain might have an opportunity to work.32 Rain then followed under Gregory.33 The wall was made wet, but was not swamped,34 so that the stones might have their opportunity. Under the makers of unity the stones followed after the rain. The wall was scattered about,35 but built itself up again from its foundations. Three things have already been accomplished. Accusations are still due to you, but how they are to come and when, is known to Him, who has been pleased to make these declarations concerning you.

Notes

  1. lapides petrobolos.
  2. ruinosam (cf. iii, 2).
  3. Cf. Ez. xiii, 10. There is, however, nothing to be found here, in any extant version, of ‘accusations,’ unless they be found in the words ‘Ubi est litura quam linistis?’ (Ez. xiii, 12). (Cf. note 3, p. 168.)
  4. Matris Ecclesiae.
  5. persuasionibus vestris divisa sunt corpora et nomina pietatis, et non potuistis praetcr miller e quod legitimum est. In this very obscure passage, at first reading, it will probably seem that pietatis refers to corpora as well as to nomina. But this can hardly be the case. I think that it is clear that corpora refers to the relationship between husband and wife, nomina pietatis to that between parents and their children. The chief difficulty is as to the meaning of quod legitimum est. The context shows that St. Optatus is referring to the division between brother and sister. He has to bring in an idea to correspond to corpora and nomina pietatis. An unmarried man and woman under ordinary circumstances ought not to live alone in the same house, but natural law makes an exception for brother and sister. ‘You,’ he says, ‘do not spare that affectionate union which natural law approves’ (quod legitimum est). Albaspinaeus, however, refers quod legitimum est not to the institution of the family, to which Optatus has just been alluding, but to that which is coming, and understands it thus: ‘And yet you have not been able to omit the customary salutations.’ But this involves a full stop after pietatis, which is awkward; besides it is exceedingly doubtful whether quod legitimum est can bear this meaning. Still it may be noted that in ii, 12, St. Optatus uses the phrase praeterire illud legitimum for passing over that ‘which is prescribed’ at Mass. In his references to the sad divisions in families caused by Donatism, St. Optatus shows a strange forgetfulness of the fact that such divisions were foretold by its divine Founder as an inevitable consequence of the spread of Christianity itself (Matt. x, 34; Luke xii, 51). Moreover, they must necessarily have followed upon that conversion of individual Donatists to the Catholic Church which throughout his work Optatus so urgently advocates.
  6. Cf. Ez. xiii, 10.
  7. Domus Dei una est. (Cf. iii, 2: Fecistis quasi alteros muros.)
  8. partem.
  9. quia non est alter Deus, qui alter am domum inhabitet.
  10. conlocata. (Cf. ii, 2, Cathedram conlocaret.)
  11. foris (sc. outside the One Church, which is the One House of God, of which St. Optatus has just written: ‘The House of God is one’).
  12. nodo pacis. The metaphor seems to require cement rather than knot. The two walls abut upon the Corner Stone, which makes them into one wall (cf. Eph. ii, 20-21).
  13. retundit.
  14. diffundit.
  15. latronem.
  16. furem. The difference between latro and fur is that the former word carries with it the idea of violence----in Optatus even of murder (cf. i, 19 etc.).
  17. aedificatus ruinosus.
  18. nec lapidem angularem sustinet (for one wall has no corner).
  19. ianuam sine caussa habet (cf. supra: ‘quicunque intraverit foris est’----for when you enter the door you are still out of doors).
  20. nec inclusa custodit (for it is a straight line, and one straight line cannot enclose a space).
  21. pluvia udatur (for it has no roof).
  22. pars vestra quasi ecclesia est, sed Catholica non est. (Cf. ‘quasi necessaria,’ v, 4.)
  23. est constituta.
  24. linistis.
  25. Cf. Ez. xiii, 12-14.
  26. emendate.
  27. lapides petrobolos.
  28. Ez. xiii, 13, 14.
  29. Cf. Ez. xiii, 13, 14. In the Vulgate we read ‘Et erumpere faciam (a) spiritum tempestatum in indignatione Mea et (b) imber inundans in furore Meo erit, et (c) lapides grandes in ira in consumptionem. Et destruam parietem, quem linistis, et cadet.’ From St. Jerome’s commentary we find that the LXX had ‘Et disrumpam spiritum auferentem in furore Meo, et pluvia inundans in ira Mea erit; et lapides magnos (περιβόλους) in furore inducam in consummationem. Et suffodiam parietem, quem linistis, et cadet, et ponam earn super terrain et revelabuntur fundamenta eius, et cadet et consummemini cum increpationibus; et cognoscetis quia ego Dominus.’ St. Optatus’ African version gives us (a) tempestatem nimiam (b) et pluviam, diluvia (c) et lapides petrobolos, et (d) accusationes. Where are these last accusaiiones? Probably they are the equivalent of the increpationes of St. Jerome. The Greek of the LXX has καὶ συντελεσθήσεσθε μετ̕ ἐλέγχων (μετ̕ ἐλέγχων = cum accusationibus.) The accusationes were to be the last calamity that should beset the Donatists. Then they were to fall. One wonders whether perhaps St. Optatus thought, though he did not like to say so expressly, that his book contained these destined ‘accusations ‘!
  30. Cf. iii, 4.
  31. The Donatist schism.
  32. That something might be left for the rain to do.
  33. Cf. iii, 3.
  34. udatus est, sed non maduit.
  35. dispersus.

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