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Against the Donatists

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

Book 4, That the Donatists are Slanderers and Have Propagated Scandals

You have been chosen to sit and teach the people,¹ and you slander us who are your brethren. As I have said above, one Mother Church has given us birth, one God the Father has received us, and yet you ‘lay scandals against’² us by forbidding each of your followers to salute us, or receive from us the customary signs of courtesy.³

Consider your haughty words, consider your discourses,⁴ consider the commands that you have given, turn over your actions in your minds, and you will then find out why the man who formerly asked you for the Sacraments, has feared to receive them at your hands.⁵

There is not one of you who does not mingle abuse of us with his discourses;⁴ not one of you who does not begin in one manner and continue in another.⁶ You begin the sacred readings on the Lord’s Day,⁷ and unfold your comments in such a way as to do us wrong; you bring forth the Gospel, and heap abuse upon your brother in his absence; you pour hatred into the minds of those who listen to you, and by your teaching persuade men to live at enmity with one another. By all your discourses you ‘lay scandals against’ us. Therefore, to each one of you has it been said:
‘Sitting thou didst speak against thy brother, and didst lay a scandal against thy mother’s son.’⁸

When God reproves the sinner and chides him that sits, it is clear that His words are addressed specially to you, not to the people who have no permission to sit in the church.⁹ You see therefore that without a doubt to you should be referred the Divine Words:
‘Sitting thou didst lay a scandal against thy mother’s son.’

I have so many times proved that we have one mother, nor can you deny this----you who ‘lay scandals against’ us----though some of your party allege texts which they have not understood, in order to take away from us even what is usually shared by all men----the courtesy of salutation. For some of you refuse us the embraces that are customary in everyday life,¹⁰ and many are taught not to say ‘God speed you’¹¹ to any one of us, and think that this is commanded by what they have read without understanding it, through not knowing of whom it was that an Apostle¹² has said:
‘With such as these not even to take food,’ nor ‘say “God speed you”’ to him, ‘for their speech creepeth on like a spreading sore.’¹³

This was said of heretics, whose teaching at that time began to be full of errors, for through the subtle seductiveness of their speech, they introduced diseases, creeping along in the darkness, to corrupt the soundness of the Faith.¹⁴ Such a one was Marcion, who from a Bishop became an Apostate, and. brought in two Gods and two Christs; such was Ebion,¹⁵ who argued that not the Son but the Father had suffered; such Valentinus, who strove to take away from Christ His Flesh.

This is that speech which had a cancer¹⁶ to torment the members of the Faith. This has been said also of the heretic Scorpian,¹⁷ who maintained that there ought to be no martyrdom.

But let them keep their poisons for themselves, and let no discourse¹⁸ with them be allowed, lest by listening to them simple minds be troubled, however slightly.

Wherefore these are they whose speech has to be avoided, lest it creep in, like a spreading sore.

This was said too of Arius, who endeavoured to teach that the Son of God was made out of non-existing substances,¹⁹ and not born of God----whose teaching, had it not been driven away by three hundred and eighteen Bishops in the Nicene Council, would, like a cancer, have entered the breasts of many.

This was said also of Photinus, a heretic of the present time, who has dared to say that the Son of God was merely a man, not God.

It may have been said of you as well, since your word has introduced no small cancer into the ears and minds of some. This is your word, which you address to the sons of Peace, when you say:
‘You have perished. Look behind you. Your soul will be lost. How long do you hang back?²⁰ ‘
In this way have you made Penitents of the Faithful; thus have you destroyed the honours due to Priests.²¹ Behold! It is your word also, which to-day creeps on as a spreading sore, so that you forbid us the greetings and ordinary intercourse of life.

But how could our teaching have produced any such result? We guard the sons of Peace with pure²² teaching; we lead no strangers astray; we ruin no man. It is therefore clear that you daily ‘lay scandals against’ us, and it would be a long matter to go through all the ways in which you slander us, and all the kinds of scandal which you ‘lay against’ us.

Notes

electi estis, qui sedentes populum doceatis. To sit, i.e. when teaching the people. We learn from St. Augustine (Hom. xxvi; Tract. xix and cxii in S. Ioan.; in Expos. Ps. cxlvii etc.) that in the Churches of Africa the Bishops only were allowed to sit (though an exception was made in favour of those who were ill or tired, at least when the reading was long). He tells us, however, that a far better custom prevailed in some European Churches: ‘longe consultius in quibusdam ecclesiis transmarinis, non solum antistites sedentes loquuntur ad populum, sed ipsi etiam populo sedilia subiacent’ (de Catech. rudibus, c. xiii).
Ps. xlix, 20.
ne nos salutent, ne a nobis dignationem accipiant. In the early days of Christianity, Christians were accustomed to salute one
another with the kiss of peace, not only at a stated time in the church during divine service, but also when meeting in the street. Casaubon points out that in Low Latin dignatio was used for facilitas or humanitas and quotes from Sidonius Apollinaris the phrase ‘dignitate clarus, dignatione communis.’ (For legitimum, cf. note 5, p. 164.)
tractatus----i.e. ad populum = sermons. Ziwsa, however, gives libellus as its equivalent.
et invenietis oleum vestrum timuisse, qui rogabat. Du Pin rejects this sentence, as not being consistent with the context; but it is found in all the MSS.
qui non aut aliud initiet aut aliud explicet.
lectiones dominicas.
Ps. xlix, 20.
non ad populum qui in Ecclesia non habent sedendi licentiam. Cf. supra: ‘Electi estis, qui sedentes populum doceatis,’ where see note.
in perfunctoria salutatione oscula denegatis solita.
Ave.
Apostolus.
We have here three passages joined together in one sentence----1 Cor. v, 11; 2 John 10; 2 Tim. ii, 17. Parmenian (or possibly some other Donatist) had quoted all the three texts. St. Optatus supposes the context known, and cites a portion of each, without continuing them.
quorum caeperat illis temporibus vitiosa esse doctrina, qui subtili seductione verborum morbis obscure serpentibus corrumperent fidei sanitatem.
The MSS. have Ebion. Du Pin substituted Praxeas who was accused by Tertullian. ‘Patrem cruci fixit.’ St. Optatus probably wrote Ebion by a slip of the pen.
qui habuit cancer. St. Augustine (De Bapt. con. Donat. iv, 12) writes that he would have understood the words in 2 Tim. ii, 17 (quoted above by St. Optatus), ‘serpit eorum sermo velut cancer,’ of wicked men within the Church, but that the authority of St. Cyprian will not admit of this interpretation. He proceeds, however, to argue against St. Cyprian, who had written (Ep. ad Iubaianum): ‘Nam cum dicant [Apostoli] sermonem eorum [haereticorum] ut cancer serpere, quomodo is sermo dare remissam peccatorum qui ut cancer serpit ad aures audientium?’ To this Augustine makes answer: ‘Nec foris, sicut nec intus, quisquam qui ex parte diaboli est, potest vel in se vel in quoquam maculare Sacramentum quod Christi est . . . cum Baptisma verbis evangelicis datur ... si quis per hominem perversum id accipiens . . . remissionem accipit peccatorum non per verba sicut cancer serpentia, sed per Evangelica Sacramenta de caelesti fonte manantia.’
St. Optatus seems to have been led astray here by the fact that Tertullian gave the inscription of Scorpiace to the book which he wrote against the heretics, who had attacked the martyrs. Hence apparently he thought that there had been a heretic called Scorpian. But at the commencement of this book Tertullian attacks no individual, but terms Gnostics, Valentinians and other heretics in general Scorpios.
relatio. Relatio = recounting, i.e. narrative or teaching (from referre, to relate). Ziwsa says = sermo.
ex nullis substantiis ( = ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων) factum esse.
quamdiu vos tenetis? = quamdiu apud Catholicos manetis? Ziwsa says that se tenere here = zögern, sich aufrecht erhalten.
Cf. i, 2; ii, 24 supra etc.
simplici. Simplex = unadulterated, unmixed by any new teaching or heresy.