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Against the Donatists
St Optatus of Milevis, tr. Vassall-Phillips, 1917
Book 1, 28. The End of This First Book
You see, my brother Parmenian, that you have assaulted Catholics to no purpose----falsely nicknaming them Betrayers, changing the names of those who were concerned, and transferring their deeds. You have shut your eyes, that you might not recognise the guilt of your fathers; you have opened them to cast accusations upon the innocent and blameless.1 You have stated everything according to what is opportune, nothing according to what is true; so that it was of you that the most Blessed Apostle Paul said:
‘Some have turned aside to vain-speaking, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor of whom they say it.’2
We have just now proved that your fathers3 were Betrayers and schismatics; yet you, who are their heir, have not wished to spare either schismatics or Betrayers, so that by the proofs which we have alleged, all the darts which you mistakenly wished to hurl against others have glanced back----warded off by the shield of truth----to strike your fathers. Everything, then, which you have been able to say against Betrayers and schismatics, belongs to yourselves, for we have nothing to do with any of it,----we who both remain in the Root, and are joined, with all, in the whole [Catholic]4 world.
Notes
- innocentes et indignos criminose pulsares P (so Ziwsa). RBvb read indignos crimini copulares = ‘to link with crime those who deserve it not.’
- 1 Tim. i, 5, 6.
- parentes.
- Cf. illam esse Catholicam, quae esset in toto orbe terrarum diffusa (i, 26).