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Against the Donatists

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

Book 1, How Grave is the Evil of Schism, of Which the Donatists are Guilty

Therefore, my brother Parmenian, you see these two accusations----so evil, so terrible----of Betrayal and Schism proved against your chiefs. Acknowledge, though late, that you, in attacking others, have fallen upon your own people. And whilst it is certain that those who went before you worked this second abomination, you too strive to follow them in their sin-stained footsteps, so that you also have been doing for long, and are even now doing, that of which your Fathers were guilty in the beginning of the Schism.¹ They in their day broke peace; you now banish unity.² It can be said with reason of your Fathers as well as of yourselves, that, if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch.³ A raging malice blinded your Fathers’ eyes; envy has robbed yours of sight. Even you will not by any means be able to deny that schism is the supreme evil.⁴

Yet, without fear, you have imitated Dathan, Abiram and Koran, your shameless teachers,⁵ and you have been unwilling to keep before your eyes the fact that God has both forbidden this wickedness, and gravely punished it when it has been committed. Moreover, remember that the way in which sins are either forgiven or punished shows that there are degrees of guilt.

Now, by the Commandments of God, three things are, amongst others, forbidden by Him. Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not go after⁶ strange gods, and summing up the commands,⁷ thou shalt not commit schism.

Let us see concerning these three, what should be punished, and what it may be lawful to pardon.

Murder of kith is the chief sin.⁸ Nevertheless, God did not strike Cain dead in his guilt, but declared that He would punish any man who might be his murderer. In the city of Nineve one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants sacrilegiously followed after strange gods, but when, by the preaching of Jonah the prophet, God had declared His anger, a short period of fasting, together with prayer, obtained their pardon. Let us see whether any such forgiveness was granted to those who first of all ventured to divide the people of God.⁹

God had placed over so many thousands of children of Israel, from whose necks His Divine Providence had cast away the yoke of servitude, one Priest, holy Aaron. But his ministers, coveting and lawlessly usurping a priesthood to which they had no right, and leading astray a part of the people, imitated the sacred rites, and placed more than two hundred of their followers (who were to perish with them)----censers in their hands----before the people whom they had led astray. God, to whom schism is displeasing, could not see this and let it pass; they had, after a certain fashion, declared war against God, as if there were a second God,¹⁰ who would accept a second sacrifice. Therefore God was wrathful with a mighty wrath, on account of the schism which had been made, and what He had not done in punishment of the sacrilegious and the fratricide,¹¹ that He did do in punishment of schismatics. The army of ministers stood in array, and the sacrilegious host that (together with its forbidden sacrifices) was to perish in an instant. The opportunity for penance was denied them and withdrawn, for this was not the kind of sin that should deserve pardon. The earth was commanded to hunger after its food. Forthwith it opened its jaws for those who had divided the people, and with eager mouth swallowed them up that had despised the commandments of God. Within the space of one moment the earth opened to devour them, seized her victims, was shut once again, and, so that they might not appear to reap any benefit from the suddenness of their death, it was not allowed these men who were unworthy to live even to die. Of a sudden they were shut in the prison of Hell, and were buried there before they died.

And yet you wonder that something of similar severity has been done against you----you who either cause or approve schism, although you see here what they, who compassed the first schism, deserved to suffer! Or is it because punishment of this kind has now ceased, that on this account you claim innocence for yourself and for your party? In each of these occurrences, God has set forth a model by examples¹² of the punishment that will come to their imitators. The first sins He has put an end to with punishment, as an example for all time. The sins that come after He will reserve for His Judgement. What have you to say to this, you, who having usurped the name of the Church, both secretly foster and without shame defend the schism?

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