Of Tobit's son.'
19. 'See Tobias vi, 9-10. St. Optatus mystically applies this narrative. Sara is the Church which puts the Evil One to flight through Christ. Christ is the one protection of His Church; by Christ alone, through His Church, is blindness removed from men.
20. per invocationem. The Invocation of God, that is to say, the Blessing of the Font, puts Christ (the Fish) into what was mere empty water, so that it becomes a Fishpond. But in the second Baptism of the Donatists there was no Christ, therefore no symbolic Fish.
21. a pisce.
22. Cf. Tertullian (De Baptismo i): 'Sed nos pisciculi secundum ἴχθυν nostrum Iesum Christum in quo nascimur, nec aliter quam in aqua permanendo salvi sumus.'
23. transduxistis once more. Cf. Is. xxii, 9.
24. solvistis singulare Baptisma.
25. ex quo Baptismate hominibus muri facti sunt ad tutelam. The reference is to Is. xxii, 11, 12: 'Et deicistis muros Hierusalem, ut faceretis alteram munitionem et constituistis aquam inter duas munitiones et ad piscinam antiquam (= the first----the Catholic Baptism) adtendere noluistis.' The thought of St. Optatus is that the Donatists by rebaptising pulled down the first wall and built up a second ( alteros muros, duas munitiones ). This was to build an edifice on a ruin. Hence, as he will say immediately, comes the sorrow of God filiam esse contritam. ('Recedite a Me, amare flebo. Nolite incumbere ut consolemini Me super vastitate filiae populi Mei.' Is. xxii, 4. Vulgate.)
26. Cf. iii. 10: 'foras exeuntes . . . parietem fecerunt,' etc.
27. Cf. iii, 10.
28. Cf. Is. xxii, 4.
29. We here have another 'paronomasia' or play upon words, of which St. Optatus, like many of the Fathers, was so fond.
30. ex se est.
31. The reference is to the description of the Creation of the World in Genesis, where we read: 'The Spirit of God was borne over the waters,' without any account of the creation of the waters themselves.
32. in cuius aquae iniuria.
33. Isaiah xxii, 4: 'Missum Me facite, amare plorabo: nemo poterit consolare Me in contritione filiae generis Mei.' The Vulgate has 'vastatione' for 'contritione.'
34. St. Optatus is continuing his argument from Isaiah xxii, where, instead of The Burden of the Valley of the Vision, he evidently read The Vision of the Valley of Sion. St. Jerome tells us that the LXX had Verbum Vallis Sionis for Onus Vallis Visionis. Optatus' point here is that the subject of this prophecy is not the actual Mount Sion, but the spiritual Sion, which is the Catholic Church. (In v, 4 he writes: 'Sion Ecclesiam esse in tertio libro probavimus.')
35. In tota Sion. Only G has tota, but it seems to have probably slipped out of the older MSS., as a little later Optatus has in toto monte.
36. Is. xxii, 5. Vulgate In valle visionis.
37. We have here a digression which shows, and probably was intended to show, St. Optatus' acquaintance with the topography of Jerusalem. Sion was outside of Jerusalem. We read as follows in the narrative of a Bordeaux pilgrim to the Holy Land, to be found in Itinera Hierosolymitana ( CSEL. vol. 29, p. 22): 'Item exeuntibus Hierusalem ut ascendas Sion, in parte sinistra et deorsum in Valle iuxta murum est piscina, quae dicitur Silua [i.e. Siloe] . . . Intus autem intra murum Sion paret locus, ubi palatium habuit David. Et septem synagogue, quae illic fuerunt, una tantum remansit, reliquae autem arantur et seminantur, sicut Isaias propheta dixit.'
38. fuerant. The Bordeaux pilgrim, whom I have just quoted, wrote in 333, about thirty years before St. Optatus. Nothing else seems to be known concerning these seven synagogues.
39. Is. ii, 3. The topographical digression finishes with this quotation.
40. Psalm ii, 6.
41. The material hill.
42. Psalm lxxxvi, 1.