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Against the Donatists

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

Book 2, Which and Where is the Catholic Church? It is Spread All Over the World

We have shown who were the Betrayers, and have pointed out the origin of the Schism in such a manner that we have almost seen it take place before our eyes.1 The difference between heresy and schism has also been explained. It is now our business to show (as we promised that we would do in the second place) which is the One Church, called by Christ His Dove and His Bride.2

The Church, then, is One, and her holiness is not measured by the pride of individuals,3 but is derived from the Sacraments. It is for this reason that she alone is called by Christ His Dove and His own beloved Bride.

The Church cannot be amongst all the heretics and schismatics.4 It follows that [according to you] she must be in one place only.5

You, my brother Parmenian, have said that she is with you alone. This, I suppose, can only be because, in your pride, you strive to claim some special holiness for yourselves, so that the Church may be where it pleases you, and may not be where it pleases you not. And so, in order that she may be with you in a little piece of Africa, in a corner of one small region, is she not to be with us in another part of Africa? Is she not to be in Spain, in Gaul, in Italy, where you are not? If you maintain that she is with you only, is she not to be in Pannonia, in Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Achaia, Macedonia and in all Greece, where you are not? In order that you may be able to argue that she is with you, is she not to be in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cilicia and in the three Syrias, and in the two Armenias, and in all Egypt and in Mesopotamia, where you are not? And is she not to be throughout innumerable islands and so many other provinces which can hardly be counted, where you are not?6

Where in that case will be the application of the Catholic Name,7 since on this very account was the Church called Catholic, because she is in accordance with reason, and is scattered all over the world?8

For if you limit the Church just as it may please you, into a narrow corner, if you withdraw whole peoples from her communion, where will that be which the Son of God has merited, where will that be which the Father has freely granted Him, saying, in the second Psalm:
‘I will give to Thee the nations for Thine inheritance; and the ends of the earth for Thy possession’?9

To what purpose do you break so mighty a promise, so that the breadth of all the kingdoms is compressed by you into a sort of narrow prison? Why do you strive to stand in the way of so great a largesse? Why do you fight against the Saviour’s Merits? Permit the Son to possess that which has been granted to Him; permit the Father to fulfil that which He has promised.

Why do you put bounds, why set limits? There is nothing in any part of the earth which has been withheld from His dominion, since the whole earth has been promised by God the Father to the Saviour. The whole earth has been granted to Him together with its nations. The whole world is Christ’s as His undivided possession.10 God proves this when he says:
‘I will give unto Thee the nations for Thine inheritance, and for Thy possession the bounds of the earth.’11

And in the seventy-first Psalm, it has been written of the Saviour Himself,
‘He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the waters to the bounds of the world.’12

When the Father gives, He makes no exception; you, that you may give Him one fraction, endeavour to take away the whole measure. And, still, you endeavour to persuade men that the Church is amongst you alone, taking away from Christ that which He has won----denying that God has performed His promises. What ingratitude! What folly! What presumption is yours! Christ invites you, with all others, into the company of the Heavenly Kingdom and exhorts you to be co-heirs with Him; and you strive to rob Him of the inheritance given Him by the Father, allowing Him a part of Africa and refusing Him the whole world, which the Father has bestowed upon Him.

Why do you desire to make the Holy Ghost appear a liar, who in the forty-ninth Psalm tells of the goodness of Almighty God, saying:
‘The Lord, the God of Gods has spoken and has called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof’?13

Therefore the earth has been called to become flesh.14 And, as it has been written, so has it been done, and the earth owes praises to its Creator.

Once more this is mentioned, where the Holy Spirit exhorts us in the hundred and twelfth Psalm with the words:
‘The Name of the Lord must be praised from the rising of the sun even to its going down.’15

And again, in the ninety-fifth Psalm:
‘Sing ye to the Lord a new song.’16

If this were the only verse, you might say that the Holy Ghost had exhorted you alone. But that He might show that this has been said not to you alone, but to the Church which is everywhere, He continued:
‘Sing to the Lord, all the earth; declare amongst the nations His glory, His wonderful works amongst all peoples.’17

He said:
‘Declare amongst the nations.’18

He did not say, ‘in a small part of Africa, where you are’; He did say ‘Declare amongst all peoples.’19

He who said ‘all peoples’ excepted no man. Yet you are proud to be alone and separated from ‘all peoples,’ though to them this command was given; and you maintain that you, who are not in any part of the whole,20 are yet yourselves alone the whole.

He has said:
‘The name of the Lord must be praised,’ and ‘by all the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.’21

Can then the Pagans, who are outside the covenant of Christ,22 either sing to God or praise the name of the Lord? Is it not His Church alone, which is within the covenant,23 that may praise Him?24 Therefore, if you say that the Church is with you only, you are defrauding God’s ear of its due. If you alone are praising Him, ‘the whole world,’25 which is from the rising of the sun to its going down, will be keeping silence. You have shut the mouths of all the Christian nations. You have imposed silence on all the peoples who desire to praise God from moment to moment. If then God waits for the praise which is His due, and if the Holy Spirit exhorts men to sound His praises,26 if ‘the whole world’ is prepared to render to God His due, lest God be robbed----then should you also praise Him, together with all, or, (since you have refused to be with all,) in your isolation, hold your tongues.

Notes

  1. ut paene oculis perspecta videatur. St. Augustine may have had these words before his mind, when he wrote of the martyrdom of St. Stephen: ‘Hanc passionem modo de libro Actuum Apostolorum cum legitur, non solum audivimus sed etiam oculis spectavimus’ (Sermo ii de Sancto Stephano)
  2. In the Canticle of Canticles.
  3. The Donatists, like the Cathari, the Puritans and many other sectaries, prided themselves (without the slightest justification in fact) upon their sanctity. According to their teaching, the true Church was to be exclusively the Church of ‘the Saints.’ There were to be no unclean beasts in the Ark of Noah. The tares were not to be allowed to grow up with the wheat unto the harvest; nor were the bad fish to remain with the good in Peter’s net. Furthermore, they made the validity of the sacraments depend upon the supposed holiness of the minister, not upon the operation of the Holy Ghost.
  4. Evidently the idea of Comprehensiveness----that the One Church could be Catholic (Universal)----in the sense of comprehending various kinds of religious bodies, varying in belief and without any external bond of union (cf. ii, 3)----never occurred to St. Optatus even as a possibility. Any ‘branch’ theory in which the branches were separated from the trunk or from one another (cf. ii, 9 etc.) would have seemed to him unthinkable. He agrees with Parmenian in ruling it out ab initio.
  5. Because no heretics or schismatics were to be found as an organised body in more than one territory.
  6. In some of the countries mentioned by Optatus as belonging to the Catholic Unity, Christianity has almost disappeared as an energising force. … Still, his argument has been enormously strengthened by the lapse of centuries. The Catholic of to-day is in full communion not only, as was St. Optatus, with the See of Rome where Peter sat, with the See of Lyons where Irenaeus sat, with the See of Barcelona where Pacian sat, with the See of Tours where Martin sat, with the See of Verona where Zeno sat, with the See of Milan where Ambrose was soon to sit, with the direct successors of ‘Maternus from the city of Cologne, of Reticius from the city of Autun, of Marinus of Arles, of Felix from Florence of the Tuscans, of Gaudentius of Pisa, of Proterius of Capua,’ and of every other of the nineteen Bishops who sat in the Synod of the Lateran with Miltiades the Pope (i, 23)----this is surely a great and striking thing----but also with Churches of which Optatus never dreamed, in islands and continents of which he had never heard.
  7. ubi ergo erit proprietas Catholici Nominis?
  8. rationabilis et ubique diffusa. Thus in all the MSS. Two emendations have been suggested, Non nationalis et &c, and Rationabiliter ubique diffusa. Probably, however, St. Optatus wrote it as we find it in the MSS., Rationabilis et ubique diffusa. If so, through his ignorance of Greek, he is linking together two different derivations of the word καθολικός. From κατὰ and ὅλον, = ‘throughout the whole’ (i.e. scattered throughout the world), and from κατὰ and λόγον = ‘in accordance with reason.’ We know that, in consequence of this last meaning of the word, Procurators fiscal in Roman law were often called Rationales or καθολικοί. St. Optatus was probably in his first derivation thinking of heretics, in his second of schismatics. The Church is Catholic or rationabilis (according to right reason) in contradistinction to heretics, who have strayed from the truth (against the due exercise of their reason); she is Catholic or ubique diffusa (spread everywhere) in contradistinction to schismatics, who are confined within clearly defined, very often within national, bounds and limits. Cf. St. Augustine, Gesta Collationis Carthagiensis diei iii, ci: ‘Christiani Afri, et appellantur et merito sunt Catholici, ipsa sua communione nomen testantes. Catholon enim secundum totum dicitur. Qui autem a toto separatus est, partemque defendit ab universo praecisam, non sibi usurpet hoc nomen, sed nobiscum teneat veritatem.’
  9. Ps. ii, 8.
  10. Christo una possessio est.
  11. Ps. ii, 8.
  12. Ps. lxxi, 8.
  13. Ps. xlix, 1.
  14. Vocata est ergo terra ut caro fieret. Cf. ‘I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh’ (Ez. xxxvi, 26).
  15. Ps. cxii, 3.
  16. Ps. xcv, 1.
  17. Ps. xcv, 1-3: ‘Cantate Domino omnis terra, pronuntiate in gentibus gloriam Ipsius, in omnibus populis mirabilia Eius.’
  18. ‘pronuntiate,’ inquit, ‘inter gentes.’
  19. ‘pronuntiate,’ inquit, ‘in omnibus populis.’
  20. qui in omni toto non estis. … But St. Optatus teaches that only those constitute ‘the whole,’ who are visibly united ‘in the whole,’ that is who are ‘everywhere’ (ubique).
  21. Ps. cxii, 3.
  22. Pagani extralegales.
  23. sola Ecclesia, quae in lege est, as opposed to the ‘Pagani extralegales,’ of whom he has just written. Lex, as so often elsewhere in Optatus, means ‘Lex Christi,’ ‘Lex Catholica’ (cf. v, 5 etc.).
  24. St. Optatus gives us no hint of the great teaching about the Soul (or Heart) of the Church, which is clearly expressed by St. Augustine.
  25. Totus orbis. By this phrase St. Optatus and St. Augustine always mean the whole Catholic world. Cf. the saying of St. Augustine: ‘Securus iudicat orbis terrarum’ (see note i, p. 52)----by which he means, of course, not the world separated from the Catholic Church ----even less the non-Christian world----but the Catholic world. The Catholic world is the Judge, and judges free from anxiety, for this very reason that it is, and knows itself to be, the Catholic world.
  26. ut sonent. Cf. vii, 1: ‘per loca singula divinum sonat ubique praeconium.’

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