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Against the Donatists

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

Book 3, That Even If Macarius Was Guilty, He Ought Not to Have Been Repelled from…

But were we to keep silence concerning these examples and admit with you that Macarius was guilty----even so, he ought not to have been repelled by us in the absence of an accuser. For it has been written that no man should be condemned before his case has been heard.

Tell us, then, who accused him and was not listened to? Tell us (if you can) that Macarius confessed his fault and that we did not pronounce sentence. For after all, we are in the Church judges of a kind,¹ as you yourselves do not deny. Indeed, you maintain that we ought to judge in accordance with truth. We, then, cannot do that which God has not done. In His Judgement He has thought well to separate persons, and has not willed that one man should be at the same time accuser and judge. For no man can in one case at the same moment bear the weight of two persons,² so as to be in the same judgement both accuser and judge. This is a thing which God has not done by His omnipotence, but, in order to set before us the form of passing judgement, has taught us that neither should a guilty man be condemned without an accuser, nor should he be the accuser, who would be the judge in the same case.

Accordingly, at the very beginning of the world, when men were commencing to be born, after his brother Abel had been killed by Cain, we read that God called Cain and asked him where was his brother.³ He doubled his sin and said that he did not know, as though he would make God ignorant, and when could there be anything not known to God, under whose eyes and countenance are all things which are done? Nevertheless, God does not judge without an accuser and asks concerning a thing which surely He knew. And yet you wish us to repel one whom we have not seen doing any evil, and who has had no one to accuse him. I perceive here what your malice is about to whisper: you will say that what has been done has not escaped our knowledge. We acknowledge that we have heard about it, but to condemn one whom no man has ventured to accuse would be to sin. If you tell us that his deed has not escaped us, will you tell God, who had seen the brother’s murder, why He asked about it? It would not have been right for us to do something which God refused to do, when He would not pass sentence, excepting on one who was guilty. You must find an accuser. Otherwise the condemnation could not be just----unless he who should pass sentence was himself to be the accuser! Wherefore God says:
‘Behold thy brother’s blood. It cries to me from the earth.’⁴

Thus it is that, since by no means can you prove that Macarius was accused before us by any man, you cannot find fault with our judgement.

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