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Against the Donatists

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

Book 5, That in Baptism the Work is Done by the Trinity, Not by the Person of the Minister

Then you will ask what you have, when praising Baptism, said against yourselves. Listen! But first you must acknowledge something which not one of you will be able to deny.¹ You say that the Trinity counts for nothing,² unless you be present.³

If you think little of us,⁴ at least reverence the Lord, who is First in the Trinity,⁵ who with His Son and the Holy Ghost effects and completes all things,⁶ even when no human person is present.

But, my brother Parmenian, you have said in praise of the water, of which we read in the Book of Genesis, that the waters first gave forth living beings’.⁷ Could they have given them birth of their own instance⁸? Was not the whole Trinity there as well? Surely God the Father was there----He who had deigned to command:
‘Let the waters bring forth swimming things, birds and the rest.’⁹

But if that which was then done were to be done without any to effect it,¹⁰ God would have said:
‘O waters, bring forth.’

So the Son of God----who effected it¹¹ ----was there. The Holy Ghost was there, as it has been written:
‘And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.’¹²

I see nothing there which is a fourth----nothing less than the Three.¹³ Yet that which the Trinity effected came to birth, although you were not there. If then it be not allowed to the Trinity to do anything without you, call back the fishes to their first beginning¹⁴; if in your absence the Trinity may not effect anything, drown in the waters the birds as they fly.

Notes

quod omnes negare minime poteritis.
In Baptism.
The Donatists held that the Invocation of the Trinity effected nothing in Baptism unless the Minister of the Sacrament was pure (mundus). But, as they taught that all the Catholics were impure (inmundi), it followed that they held practically that the Trinity could do nothing in Baptism unless they were present.
si nobis derogatis.
qui in Trinitate prior est. The reference is to Psalm cix, 1: ‘Dixit Dominus Domino meo.’
omnia operatur et complet.
aquas primum vivas animas edidisse. Parmenian no doubt had before his mind the following words of Tertullian (De Baptismo): ‘Primus liquor quod viveret edidit; nec mirum sit in Baptismo, si aquae animare noverunt.’
numquid sua sponte.
Gen. i, 20.
sine operante.
qui operabatur (cf. John i, 3).
Gen. i, 2.
nihil minus a Tribus.
revocate pisces in originem.