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Against the Donatists

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

Book 7, That Good and Evil Will Be Found in the Church of God, and Must Be Borne with to…

So it is that for long past we have desired to receive you into our Communion, because it was not you that sinned at that time, but your fathers.¹

Nor ought any man to judge concerning another man, as though he were himself wholly without sin, since it has been written in the Gospel that Christ says:
‘Judge not, that you be not judged.’²

And this above all, because it will not be possible to find one who is absolutely holy. For should any such there be, who are unable to sin, they are guilty of lying in the Lord’s Prayer, if without reason they beg for pardon and say to God the Father:
‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’

So the Apostle John both shows the consciences of all men and discloses³ his own with these words:
‘If we shall say that we have not sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,’⁴ ----
a saying the reason of which we have explained more clearly in our Fourth Book. But grant that there are some who have been made perfect with complete sanctity, it is not lawful for them to be without brethren, whom they are taught not to repel by the precepts of the Gospel, wherein we find described a field----that is the whole world, in which is the Church⁵ and Christ the Sower, who gives wholesome precepts.⁶ On the other hand there is an evil man----that is the Devil,⁷ who sows cruel⁸ sins not in the light, but in the darkness.⁹ Different kinds of seeds come to birth¹⁰ in one field. Similarly, in the Church there is not a mass of souls all alike.¹¹ The field receives good seeds or bad----the seeds are different. But there is One Creator of all souls----one Lord of the field. There are Two who sow seeds where the tares are born, but the field has one Lord, the Lord God Himself. His is the earth; His are the good seeds; His is also the rain. Accordingly, we have consented to receive in unity you, who have been drawn¹² [to the Catholic Church], for we are not free either to separate or to reject even sinners who have been born with us in one field [and] have received nourishment¹³ from one water¹⁴----that is from the one Baptism; even as the Apostles were not free to separate the tares from the wheat (since separation is impossible without destruction¹⁵), lest, whilst pulling up what ought to be pulled up, that which ought not to be, should be, trodden down. In like manner Christ has commanded that both His own seeds, and those which belong to the other,¹⁶ should grow in His field throughout the entire world, in which there is the One Church.¹⁷

After all have ripened¹⁸ together, shall come the Day of Judgement, which is the harvest of souls. Then there shall sit the Judge, the Son of God, who recognises what is His own and what is the other’s.¹⁹ His it shall be to choose what He may gather in His barn,²⁰ and what deliver over to the burning----whom He shall condemn²¹ to torments that know no end,²² and upon whom He may bestow²³ the rewards which He has promised.

Let us recognise that we all are men; let no one usurp to himself the power of Judgement that belongs to God. For if any Bishop were to claim it all for himself,²⁴ pray, what will there be for Christ to do in Judgement? It should be enough for a man not to be guilty of sins of his own, without wishing to be judge of the sins of another.

So it is our declaration²⁵ [not only] that we do not reject you, [but even that for the sake of Peace we would not have rejected your fathers, if it had come to pass in their day that unity was accomplished].²⁶ For it would be a sin for us Bishops to do now, that which was not done by the Apostles, who were not permitted either to separate seeds or to pluck up the tares from the wheat.

Notes

And here C; it may be found on page 310.
Matt. vii, 1; Luke vi, 37.
resignet. CGv designet.
I John i, 8.
ager, qui est totus orbis, in quo est Ecclesia. If St. Augustine at the Conference at Carthage had remembered and employed these careful words of St. Optatus----‘the field in which is the Church,’ he would have been saved a tiresome discussion with his Donatist adversaries. The Donatists naturally and triumphantly replied to the argument of the Catholics that the tares had to grow up with the wheat in the Field, and that the Field is the Church: ‘Oh no, on the contrary, the Maker of the world Himself has said that the Field is the world. Now “the world has not known the Father.” But if (as you say) the Church is the Field, it is also the world, for “the Field is the world.” Therefore the Church has not known the Father! Which is absurd.’ To this ingenious syllogism St. Augustine had to rely upon a long explanation as to the different meaning of the word ‘world’ in Holy Scripture (Gesta Coll. Carthag. Diei iii, cclxv-cclxxxi; Brev. Coll. iii, 10). No exception could have been taken to the statement of Optatus ‘the Church is in the world.’ Had it been used, the Donatists would have been deprived of one of their many opportunities of wasting time.
praecepta salutaria.
homo est malus, id est diabolus.
inportuna peccata. In contrast with the wholesome precepts (‘praecepta salutaria’) of Christ, concerning which Optatus has just written. (Christ’s precepts save us; sins harm us cruelly.) Inportunitas has been used in the sense of inmanitas in ii, 18 (cf. however iii, 7, where inportune is used for unseasonably, which may perhaps be the meaning here----‘unseasonable sins’).
per tenebras.
nascuntur diversa semina.
in Ecclesia non est similis turba animarum.
adductos, sc. ad Ecclesiam Catholicam (cf. last chapter: ‘ad Ecclesiam Catholicam . . . non sine voluntate Dei adductos’).
nutritos.
una pluvia nutritos. Thus Du Pin. Ziwsa places a comma after pluvia, making una pluvia depend not upon nutritos, but upon preceding natos = ‘born with us from one water----that is to say, nourished from the one Baptism.’ It must be admitted that, strictly speaking, not nourishment but birth comes from Baptism, but on the other hand seeds are not born from rain. For this reason I prefer on the whole Du Pin’s punctuation, and have translated accordingly.
sine exterminio.
aliena.
in agro Suo per totum orbem terrarum, in quo est Una Ecclesia.
post crementa communia. Crementum (literally increase) is an unusual Low Latin variant of incrementum.
quid est Suum et quid alienum.
in horreo.
destinet.
interminata.
repraesentet.
si sibi totum vindicet. The context tells us that the totum here refers to the power of judgement and especially of separation. If any Bishop were now to separate all sinners from the Visible Church, there could not be that separation by Christ, on the Day of Judgement, of the tares from the wheat, and of the goats from the sheep, of which we read in the Gospels. It is hardly necessary to say that the Church has never at any time claimed to judge in foro interno, that is, concerning the conscience or interior state and future lot of any man.
professio.
The words in square brackets are only to be found in C and Codex Tilianus.