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Against the Donatists

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

Book 4, That a Certain Passage in Jeremiah is to Be Understood of the Idolatrous Jews

Now with regard to what you mention that you have read in the Prophet Jeremiah that the people of God have done two evil things in that
‘they forsook the Fountain of living water, and digged to themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water’¹;
you have indeed read this, but have been unwilling to understand the real state of the case.

In your love for bringing charges, you have twisted round everything so as to abuse Catholics, and, to suit your own purposes, you have attempted to digress a great deal according to your own whims.² For if you imagine that everything which has been written by the Prophets belongs to our own times, you are making excuses for the Jews, concerning whom it is certain that it was written, that they forsook the Living God, the True God, the God who had bestowed His Blessings upon them, and made for themselves idols----that is to say, broken cisterns, which can hold no water.

In God the Everlasting Majesty flows over,³ even as, in a fountain, water freely gushes forth from its channels. But idols, unless they be made, have no being, and wells, unless they be dug, hold no water in their depth.⁴ Cisterns cannot be hollowed out without skill and tools, nor can idols be made without a craftsman. In idols there is no virtue that belongs to them,⁵ but it is given and applied to them through the mistake of man. Virtue is believed to be in an idol, which is not there of its own nature. A cistern, the making of which is a weary work,⁶ is broken with deliberation, so that neither has it water of itself, nor of itself can it hold the water that it has received. Similarly an idol is not anything of itself, and, whilst it is being worshipped, is nothing.

This is the meaning of the Word of God, that His people did two evil things, in that they abandoned the fountain of living water and made for themselves broken cisterns which they had themselves dug out. For the people of Israel had forsaken the true water, had not recognised the Divine Majesty, and had followed the evil worship of idols.

This it is over which God grieves, this it is at which He says that the Heaven has shuddered.

For God grieves over the same thing through the Prophet Isaiah, when in this matter He calls to witness two elements with these words:
‘Hear, O Heaven, and perceive with thine ears, O Earth. I have brought up and have exalted children. But they have forsaken Me.’⁷

How is it, my brother Parmenian, that you have had nothing to say concerning this passage? Or why is it that there is here no mention of water? It will be seen that, through your love of fault-finding, you have done such violence to the Law, that, whenever you read anything of water, you have, by some conjuring tricks, twisted it round for your purposes of hatred, and have made a sort of drag-net out of malicious arguments, and have thus drawn to yourself all things which in themselves are good.

For what intelligence have you shown⁸ with regard to this passage in Jeremy, since God cries out that He has been forsaken, and that cisterns have thus been made? His wrath is concerning Himself, not concerning something which is His, for the Baptismal Water belongs to God, but is not God Himself.⁹ And if you think that you [and your baptism] have been deserted, pray when were any of you baptised¹⁰ among us, so that it should be true that they who deserted your [baptism] came to us?¹¹

So we have shown that what you have said about the Sacraments and sacrifice of a sinner tells not against us, but against yourselves.

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