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Against the Donatists

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

Book 5, That the Example of Naaman the Syrian Was Brought by Parmenian Without Relevance

In order to add to the bulk of your treatise, you have thought well, my brother Parmenian, to describe Naaman the Syrian at length as some kind of unripe mass of hardest wounds just coming to their birth.¹ What has this to do with our present business? You might bring it forward relevantly, and might well have employed a long discourse about it, had you come across some catechumen of rudest morals² and hardest heart, who should refuse to receive the most gentle grace of the saving Water.³ With relevance in that case would your words have shown how man may be renewed⁴; with relevance might you then have pointed out that an inveterate⁵ hardness of nature may be changed and softened into the flesh of an infant. But, with regard to this business, which we are at present discussing together, to what purpose have you recalled such a history as this⁶? For we do not read here⁷ that anyone had washed that leprous Syrian before the word or at the command⁸ of Elisha, in such a way that he might be duly washed again to his greater advantage.⁹ But even if it were so, still, it would not serve your purpose,¹⁰ as something which you might lawfully imitate. For we do not read that he had first washed in the waters of Syria, or that he had been washed by anyone, without gaining thereby any advantage. But if it had been so, this would not appertain to the praise of Elisha (who did not wash him, but gave him advice); rather would it redound to the glory of the Jordan that the first¹¹ grace came to the Syrian¹² ----in that river wherein afterwards, in the time of John, through confession unto repentance, the sins of a multitude¹³ were to die.

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