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Against the Donatists

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

Book 1, 9. Mention of Heretics Made by Parmenian to No Good Purpose

Moreover, I cannot pass over a matter in which I think you have acted craftily. In order that you might lead the minds of your readers off the point, or deceive them, after you had described Circumcision and the Flood, and after you had praised Baptism, you thought fit to raise, as it were from the dead, heretics who were already dead and, together with their heresies, buried in oblivion----and this although not only their errors, but even their names, were unknown throughout Africa----Marcion, Praxeas, Sabellius, Valentinus, and the rest up to the Cataphrygae, all of whom were confuted in their time by Victorinus of Pettau,¹ by Zephyrinus of Rome,² by Tertullian of Carthage, and by other champions of the Catholic Church.³ Why, then, do you wage a war with the dead, who have nothing to do with the affairs of our time? For no reason, excepting that you, who are a schismatic of to-day, having nothing that you can prove against Catholics, have been pleased to enumerate so many heretics and their heresies, to spin out your somewhat wordy treatise.

Notes

St. Jerome tells us that Victorinus, Bishop of Pettau, (who was martyred under Diocletian,) published many writings. His notes on the Apocalypse and a fragment on the Creation are extant.
urbico. Cf. ‘urbica commoratio’ (ii, 4), ‘in Urbe’ (i, 27). Zephyrinus was Pope cir. 201-218.
et aliis adsertoribus Ecclesiae Catholicae. It may, perhaps, at first sight seem somewhat strange that St. Optatus should mention Tertullian amongst ‘the champions of the Catholic Church’; yet, before his apostasy to Montanism, no one ever defended the Catholic Faith with more zeal, energy and ability than the great Tertullian.