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Against the Donatists
St Optatus of Milevis, tr. Vassall-Phillips, 1917
Book 2, From the Prayer of Oblation We Gather that the One Church is Everywhere
It is now time to condemn, as is only right, your falsehood, with which each day you season your Sacrifices.1 For who can doubt that you dare not pass over what is prescribed in the Mystery of the Sacraments?2 You say that you offer the Sacrifice to God on behalf of the Church, which is One. This in itself is part of your falsehood, to call that One, of which you have made Two. You proclaim that you sacrifice to God on behalf of the One Church, which has been spread throughout the whole world.
But what reply would you make were God to say to any one of you:
‘Why dost thou offer sacrifice for the Whole----thou who art not in the Whole? ‘
If we are displeasing to you, what wrong has the City of Antioch done you, or the Province of Arabia3?
Yet we are able to prove that those who come from Antioch and Arabia have been rebaptised by you.
Notes
- mendacium . . . quo cotidie a vobis sacrificia condiuntur.
- nam quis dubitet vos illud legitimum in sacramentorum mysterio praeterire non posse? The word legitimum is a reference to the prescribed words of the Liturgy. St. Optatus tells us (iv, 6) that the Donatists used the Baptismal Exorcism ‘Maledicte, exi foras.’ So St. Augustine (De pecc. origin. ii, 40; cf. con. Iul. Pelag. iii, 5) observes that in the Baptism of children the Pelagians replied to the question, ‘abrenuntias Satanae?’, though they denied that these children were subject to original sin. Similarly, St. Cyprian (Ep. ad Magnum 7) tells us that the Novatians did not venture to pass over in Baptism the solemn words, ‘credis remissionem peccatorum?’, and continued thus, ‘et vitam aeternam per Sanctam Ecclesiam?’; yet they believed not in the Forgiveness of Sins and did not belong to the Holy Church. Throughout history we find heretics employing venerable creeds and solemn prayers, the sense of which they have, often long since, abjured. Thus St. Augustine (De dono Persev. xiii, 33) turned their use of the Preface in the Mass against the Pelagians in these words: ‘Quod ergo in Sacramentis Fidelium dicitur, ut sursum habeamus corda ad Dominum, munus est Domini; de quo munere ipsi Domino Deo nostro gratias agere a sacerdote post hanc vocem, quibus hoc dicitur, admonentur, et dignum ac iustum esse respondent.’
- With whom you are out of communion, just as much as you are out of communion with us.