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Against the Donatists

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

Book 2, 10. Catholics Possess the Sacraments

Now I should like you to tell me this. Why have you thought well to speak only of the Endowments of the Church, and have said nothing about her holy members and her inward organs,¹ which without doubt are in the Sacraments and in the Names of the Trinity²? These Names are met by Faith and its profession, recorded upon the Acts of the Angels³; here are sown heavenly and spiritual seeds, so that, for those who are born again, a new nature⁴ may be procreated from a holy germ, and he who had once been born to the world may, where the Trinity meets Faith, be spiritually new-born⁵ to God.

In this way does God become the Father of men, thus does the Holy Church become their Mother.

I perceive that all these things have been left unmentioned by you, on purpose, lest in them all, the true principles of Baptism⁶ might be recognised, in which there is nothing that the human minister may, after your fashion, claim for himself.

For this reason you determined to occupy yourself with the Endowments alone, which you have denied to Catholics, vainly striving to claim them for yourselves exclusively, having clutched them, as it were in your hand, or shut them up in a box.⁷ Although the question is about regeneration, and man’s renovation, you have made no mention either of Faith or of its profession by the Faithful. You determined rather to speak of the Endowments alone, and have passed over in silence all these things without which spiritual faith and reparation cannot exist. And although the Endowments belong to the Spouse, not the Spouse to the Endowments, you dealt with the Endowments as if life were given by them, not by the inward organs, which we understand to be rather in the Sacraments than in the Ornaments.

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