275. infinitos.
276. nec vestiendo deficiat.
277. Gal. iii, 27.
278. decenter.
279. nec rugatur. Literally ' is not wrinkled.'
280. qui baptisma singulare servaverint.
281. Is it the case that this strange sentence shows that St. Optatus was a Chiliast? It is quite possible that the text as we have it is corrupt; however, the view that St. Optatus held Millennarian tenets in some form or other is at least plausible. We know that, though St. Augustine abandoned Chiliasm, he would by no means have held that its repudiation, even in his time, was a matter of obligation.
282. nudus et lugubris.
283. quas fraudulentas adisti fauces?
284. quos latrones? (cf. i, 19).
285. All the MSS. finish this Book at this point.
286. This chapter is to be found in G at the end of Chapter viii. Though not to be found in RBv, Du Pin thinks on intrinsic grounds that it was written by Optatus, but that it has been dislocated in position. He placed it (and in this Ziwsa follows him) here, at the end of the Book. The words with which the passage begins (Et ut vel sero compendium faciam, credo etiam hoc sufficere etc.) undoubtedly seem to point to this transposition. It is possible that St. Optatus placed it in his first edition and deliberately omitted it in his second. It is certainly very poor and not worthy of the book or of its argument.
287. sc. of rebaptising.
288. If the holiness of the Donatists was great enough, as they claimed, to give the grace of Baptism----the life of the soul, it ought to suffice to restore the life of the body. According to Catholic doctrine God gives the life of the soul in Baptism, but God can also, if it so please Him, raise the dead to renewed earthly life.
289. Ez. xiii, 19.
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