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Against the Donatists

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

Book 6, 6. The Folly of the Donatists in Washing the Walls

Now, what kind of thing have you done when you determined in many places to have even the walls washed,¹ and ordered the whole interior² to be sprinkled with salt water?³

O Water, which by God wert created sweet, over which the Holy Spirit was borne before the very birth of the world!⁴ O Water, which, that thou mightest make the land pure, hast washed the earth! O Water, which, in the days of Moses, after thou hadst been sweetened by wood,⁵ so that thou mightest lose the bitterness that is natural to thee, didst satiate by thy most sweet draughts the hearts of so many people⁶! It has remained for thee, after so high an office, to receive no slight degradation!⁷ In the presence of Moses bitterness dies in thee, and to-day thy sweetness, together with the Catholic people, is harassed by schismatics.⁸ Together we suffer the conflict, together we look for the vengeance of God.⁹

Tell us, my brother Parmenian, what injury the place had done you, what injury the very walls that they should suffer such things as these at your hands? Is it because within them God was entreated? Or, that there Christ was praised? Or, that there was invoked the Holy Ghost? Or, that there, though you were absent, the books of the Prophets and the Holy Gospels were read aloud? Or, that there the minds of brethren, who had once been at strife, had been brought into harmony? Or, that unity, well pleasing to God, had found there a house, wherein to dwell? Point out to us what it is that you have found to wash. If it be the footsteps of Catholics----we have trodden both street and square¹⁰ ----why do you not cleanse them all?¹¹ For you and we, in order to care for our bodies, have cleansed them in the same baths, and many of ours have often used them before you. If you think that everything should be purified after us----wash the water also, if you can. Or, if, as we have just said, our footsteps seem to you to be defiled, it might be enough to wash the earth. Why, then, have you thought fit to wash the walls also, on which the footsteps of men cannot be placed? We could not tread the walls, but have only been able to see them. But if you think that what has been touched even by our looks should be washed, why have you left other things unwashed? We see the roof; we also see the heavens. They cannot be washed by you! Have you deserved well of God by washing the one? In that case you would seem to have committed a sin, for which there is no expiation, in not washing the other. As, then, you wish to appear full of a sort of diligence in one quarter, you have been found to have been negligent in another. Your diligence, however, should be termed folly, or----to call it by its true name----vanity----unless, indeed, in thus acting you have perhaps inspired the uneducated populace with terror, making them think that, since the pillar in the church has been washed, so also should be their bodies.¹² If you have had this cunning design, you have craftily deceived the wretched people; if you have acted as you have done without thought, then your dulness¹³ has been exposed. Those whom you have led astray know that your conduct in these matters has been stupid,¹⁴ and this you will not yourselves be able to deny.

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