59. veneficio. G has beneficio, but there can be little doubt that veneficio, which has the support of all the other MSS., is the true reading. Beneficio is obviously a guess, to escape the difficulty of veneficio.
60. quia peregrimus es (cf. i, 5; ii, 4; ii, 7).
61. paupertas.
62. patientia episcopali.
63. multorum ore ubique cantantur. Cf. St. Augustine ( Retract. i, 21): 'ut ore multorum vibique cantatur.'
64. potestatibus et regibus iniuriam facere.
65. i Tim. ii, 1.
66. now enim respublica est in Ecclesia, sed Ecclesia in republica est, id est in Imperio Romano. It had from very early times been the custom in the Christian Church to pray for the prosperity of the Emperor and the Empire. The preservation and the well-being of the Christian Church was considered to be in a certain sense dependent on the preservation and the well-being of the Roman Empire, inasmuch as the fall of the Empire was commonly expected to synchronise with the coming of Antichrist and the end of the world----a time of utmost stress and affliction for the Church of Christ on earth. It must also be remembered that St. Optatus is writing of the local conditions of his time. In no sense could the Empire, as a whole, be said to be in the Church (even theologically), for as a matter of fact a considerable part of the Empire was still pagan. On the other hand the Church was confined within the temporal jurisdiction of the Empire and overlapped by it on every side. Thus Lord Bryce writes with reference to this passage in Optatus: 'Christianity as well as civilisation became conterminous with the Roman Empire' (Bryce's The Holy Roman Empire, p. 11, eighth edition). The Church therefore had at that period no claim upon the Empire, as such, excepting to be treated with justice; whereas the Empire had this claim upon the Church, that the Church, being an external organisation within itself (though in a different order), should strive to promote peace and harmony and avoid unnecessary antagonism. Such good offices and hearty co-operation the temporal ruler has always a right to expect from the spiritual society within his borders. This the Catholic Church consistently remembered; Donatus as consistently forgot.
67. veni, sponsa Mea inventa (cf. Cant. iv, 8).
68. sacerdotia sancta.
69. in barbaris gentibus.
70. qui gentiliter viveret.
71. Constans.
72. nihil Donato. Perhaps this should be translated: 'This was nothing to Donatus.'
73. Proverbs xxii, 2 .
74. Eccles. iii, 33.
75. tantis (cf. Vulgate: sed haec quid sunt inter tantos? Ioan. vi, 9).
76. Ez. xxviii, 2.
77. Is. xxiii, 1. The Vulgate has naves maris; the Hebrew ' Ships of Tarshish '; the Old Latin (as we see from St. Optatus and St. Ambrose) naves Carthaginis; the LXX πλοῖα Καρχηδόνος .
78. mundanae litterae.
79. non adversus saecularem aliquem regem.
80. It may be well to give here in English those sentences in Ez. xxviii, 2-9, which, as Optatus thinks, may be applied to Donatus the Great. (We possess an African text of the passage in Tyconius Donatista, but I translate from the Vulgate.)
2. 'O Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre: Thus saith the Lord God: Because thine heart has been puffed up, and thou hast said "I am God, and I have sat on the Chair of God [Tyconius has habitationem Dei habitavi ) in the heart of the sea," although thou art a man and not God,
3. Behold thou art wiser than Daniel. [St. Optatus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and Tyconius read with the LXX Numquid tu sapientior quant Daniel? ]
5. And thine heart has been lifted up in thy strength;