40. quorum species revocastis in massas, merces nefariis nundinis procurantes.
41. inconsiderate = passim.
42. passi estis. Casaubon conjectures passi essetis = in your avarice you would even have suffered.
43. This is simply a sarcastic retort. Albaspinaeus and Du Pin find here a mysterious identification between the chalices and the hands of the priests who used them. When the chalices were melted down, so metaphorically were the hands of the priests who had touched them. In so far as this was true, it held good not of Catholics only, but also of Donatists who had said Mass at the same altars with the same chalices. It seems however to me that the thought of St. Optatus may be expressed more simply. If the Donatists imagined that by burning the chalices which they considered to have been polluted through the touch of Catholic priests, they were burning away that touch----in the concrete, those hands----they should remember that at the same time they were burning away their own touch----their own hands----for they too had touched the chalices which they burned. The drift of the argument is sufficiently clear, but to us it must seem laboured and far-fetched (cf. note 4, p. 255).
44. Hagg. ii, 14.
45. fumis.
46. nidoribus (cf. infra 'immundis nidoribus' and iii, 8: 'immundis arae fumabant nidoribus').
47. fumis, nidoribus, sacrilegiis, sacrificiis, sanguine. Casaubon thinks that Optatus wrote fumi sacrilegis nidoribus, sacrilego sacrificii sanguine.
48. immundis nidoribus.
49. ambulare ( = ire opposite of stare).
50. suspicio non est idoneum crimen.
51. ubi vel erubuit vel confusus est?
52. servate vobis suspiciones vestras.
53. id est, by Macarius.
54. Septiformis Ecclesia. The Seven Churches of Asia which (mystically) were interpreted as the whole. (Cf. note 2, p. 79.)
55. furtivas lectiones = falsified versions of Holy Scripture.
56. alienas lectiones. If the Donatists denied that they used corrupt versions, at least (writes St. Optatus) they will not be able to deny that they use alienas lectiones. Ziwsa writes that alienas here = diversas, and so I have translated it. But may it not mean books to which, as schismatics, you have no right? (Cf. ii, 6: Extra septem Ecclesias quicquid foris est, alienum est.)
57. St. Augustine ( Ep . clxv) also uses this argument: 'Quid autem perversius et insanius quam lectoribus easdem epistulas legentibus dicere, Pax tecum, et ab earum Ecclesiarum Pace separari, quibus ipsae epistulae scriptae sunt? '
58. si infamatis manus nostras, quare illic damnatis et vestras? Cf. note 6, p. 252.
59. Hagg. ii, 14.
60. Cf. Num. xvi, 37, 38.
61. quasi dignitatem vestram.
62. Nuns who had deserted the Catholic Church for the Donatist schism.
63. ut iamdudum professae signa voluntatis capitibus . . . immutarent. Casaubon thinks that there should be a comma after professae, and conjectures that the word imposita has fallen out after capitibus. He remarks that the words profiteri and professae were already quite common, but that he knows no other instance of the phrase capite profiteri signa voluntatis, whereas Optatus proceeds very soon to write of veils capiti impositae. But signa voluntatis for veils sounds quite Optatian. The word signum for a Nun's veil is traditional in the Church. Thus the consecrated virgin on receiving the veil is bidden by the Pontifical straightway to stand up and to sing 'Posuit signum in faciem meam.'
64. ut mitellas alias proicerent et alias accepissent. For the first alias RBv read aureas.