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Against the Donatists

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

Book 2, The Peace and Happiness of the Church Before It Was Disturbed by the Donatists

But that I may show that----to quote your words¹ ----it was your party which
‘has battened on bloody morsels, and has been fattened on the blood and flesh of Christians,’
your rabid madness must now be described from its beginning; now the story of your wickedness must be related anew; now your folly must be proved.

First we have to show that the cause of your gladness ought to be your shame, and how wicked is your joy at having received² liberty to return to your original wrongdoing.

Go over again the times that are past, enter into the sequence of events,³ consider how different were the persons concerned, and how different were their aims.⁴

Recall Constantine⁵ the Christian Emperor to your memory. Think of the service which he rendered to God, and remember his ardent desire that schism should be removed, and all dissension die away, so that Holy Mother Church might see, rejoicing, her children throughout the world living in unity. He restored the unity of communion; he gave back wives to husbands, children to parents, brothers to brothers.

These are the things concerning which God bears witness that He is well pleased, when He says in the hundred and thirty-second Psalm:
‘Behold how good and how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.’⁶

For Peace in unity⁷ joined together the peoples of Africa and of the East, and the rest beyond the sea,⁸ and this unity itself,⁹ through the representation of all its members, made the Body of the Church solid. And then over this the Devil, whom it always tortures to see brethren living in peace, was sorely vexed.

At that time, under a Christian Emperor, Satan, as if shut up in the idols, lay abandoned in his temples. Your leaders too and first fathers had been sent, as they deserved; into banishment. In the Church there were no schisms. Pagans were not allowed their sacrilegious rites. Peace, beloved by God, dwelt amongst all Christian peoples. The devil mourned in his temples; you mourned in foreign lands.

Notes

ut dixisti. RBvbd have ut dixi. But for the words of Parmenian, cf. ii, 14; ii, 18.
From Julian the Apostate.
rationem rerum.
The contrast is between the Christian and the heathen ruler.
All the MSS. have Constantinus. But at the beginning of the next chapter we shall read that, ‘as was known to all men,’ this Emperor was succeeded by Julian. Therefore, either we must read Constans against the MSS., or it was a slip of the pen on the part of Optatus.
Ps. cxxxii, 1.
Pax una.
Africanos populos et orientates et ceteros transmarinos (Africa, Asia, Europe).
ipsa unitas.