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Against the Donatists

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

Book 3, Excuse is Made for the Severities Exercised by the Champions of Unity

You say that the makers of unity did evil things.¹ Perhaps this was according to the Will of God, who is sometimes pleased to permit that which He might have prevented. For some evil things are done in an evil way²; some evil things are done in a good way.³ The murderer⁴ does an evil thing in an evil way, the judge does an evil thing in a good way when he punishes the murderer.⁵

For this is the Voice of God:
‘Thou shalt not kill’⁶;
and:
‘If any man shall be found sleeping with a woman who has a husband, you shall kill both,’⁷
is also His Voice.

One God, and two differing Voices. Thus when Phineas, the priest’s son, found an adulterer with an adulteress, he stood with raised sword in his hand and hesitated between the two divine Voices. One sounded in his ears:
‘Thou shalt not kill’⁸;
the other:
You shall kill both.’⁹

Were he to strike, he would act contrary to law.¹⁰ Were he not to strike, he would fail in his duty.¹¹ He chose the offence which was better¹² ----to strike. And perhaps there were not wanting those who would have wished to brand him as a murderer for inflicting this punishment. But God, that He might show that some evil things are done in a good way, spoke thus:
‘Phineas has lessened¹³ My wrath.’

Thus God was pleased with the act of homicide, because thereby adultery was punished. What if God has now been pleased with those things which you say that you have suffered----you who refused to have unity, well pleasing to God, with the whole [Catholic] world, and with the ‘Shrines’ of the Apostles?¹⁴

Notes

malos fuisse.
male.
bene.
latro (cf. i, 19, note 9, p. 166).
St. Optatus evidently had not heard of the distinction drawn by moralists (which, as soon as one has heard it, clears up the whole difficulty) between that which is intrinsically evil or evil in itself, and can therefore never be done lawfully, and that which is in itself ‘indifferent,’ and therefore derives its moral character from circumstances and from the intention of the agent.
Exod. xx, 13; Deut. v, 17; Matt, v, 21.
Deut. xxii, 22; Levit. xx, 10.
non occides.
occidetis utrosque.
peccaret.
delinqueret.
elegit melius peccatum. The word peccatum like peccaret [supra) is not used here in the real sense of sin----a fault against conscience----but of a fault against an apparently unrestricted Law of God, which was seen to be abrogated by another commandment, and is therefore called loosely peccatum. ‘Melius peccatum’ is an oratorical trick----an oxymoron. Cf. ‘tacitus loquitur’ (v, 3); ‘stulta sapientia’ (vi, 1); and (iii, 9): ‘ut sartor peccare potuisset.’ For this use of peccare cf. Cicero (Or. 21): ‘non modo in vita, sed saepissime et in poematis et in oratione, peccatur’; and again: ‘Peccare est tanquam transilire lineas’ (Parad. 3, 1).
mitigavit. Numbers xxv, 11.
qui unitatem cum toto orbe terrarum et cum Memoriis Apostolorum, quae Deo placita est, habere noluistis. Optatus once more urges union with (1) the rest of Catholic Christendom, and (2) with the Apostolic See of Rome, where rest the bodies of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (cf. ii, 4).