Optatus of Milevis, Against the Donatists (1917) Book 7. pp.275-310.
BOOK THE SEVENTH
In this last Book it is shown that the Children of the Betrayers, whose Names were given in the First Book, may now, for the Sake of Unity, be received back into the Catholic Communion.
I. That the Donatists can be received back into the Communion of the Church more easily than could have been their fathers who were guilty of Betrayal.
Having shown up the Betrayers and having pointed out the holy Church----having refuted the calumnies which you were wont to utter against us, and having exposed your sins----which have merited to be chidden by God----and your repetition of the Sacraments, and your gratuitous claims and your violence, we ought now to finish our answers and statements ; but, since I perceive that, though the wood of malice has been cut down by the axes of truth, challenges are still sprouting forth from you or from your friends, in which, as I hear, you maintain that, in consequence of your being known as the children of Betrayers, you ought not to be invited to the communion of unity ----to this let me say a few words in reply.
It is most true that the Catholic Church was sufficient for herself with her countless peoples in all |276 countries ; she was sufficient for herself also in Africa, although here she is but in few places. But God was not pleased with your separation, for the members of one body had been torn asunder, and, against the Will of God, you, who are our brothers, wandered away from your brethren. Sentence had been passed at home upon your fathers, that they who ought to have been expelled in consequence of their confession of Betrayal, should go forth of their own accord. No [formal] judgement was pronounced, yet the effect of the sentence was obtained. They should have been cast off after the Betrayal, to which they owned in the Council in Numidia. But, not to give an opportunity for the display of their malice, the severity of judgement was refrained from, and your ancestors of their own accord made their plans, in consequence of their guilt, to cover up their crime and depart with the appearance of pride----when they should have grieved and blushed for shame. For if at that time they had thought it right, for the sake of Peace, to enter into unity, {Passage A is found here in the manuscripts} and had come to the Catholic Church of their own accord----unlike you, who are known to have been drawn by the Will of |277 God to return whence you had wandered (though you are wandering still)----if, as I have said, they had come of their own accord to the Catholic Church, perhaps our fathers would have hesitated about receiving them, because they had been Betrayers; but we have cause for rejoicing, that none guilty of Betrayal have lived down to our times.
So to-day we find quite a new state of affairs, since we have to deal, not with them, but with you. Although it appears that a stain has passed from them to you by inheritance, nevertheless you cannot on this ground be held guilty together with your fathers, according to the Judgement of God, who has spoken by Ezekiel the prophet, saying:
'The soul of the father is Mine, and Mine is the soul of the son. The soul that sinneth, shall be punished alone.'
And this was proved even in ancient times----at the very beginning of the world, in that his father's sin did not belong to Seth, the son of Adam. And |278 that no one might say that in another place it was written by the Lord that He would
'punish the sins of the fathers even unto the fourth generation' ----
----these are undoubtedly both words of God, but both do not refer to one people. The first was said through Moses to a definite set of men, the second through Ezekiel to a different class. God, since He knew that the Jews would declare to Pontius Pilate:
'His Blood be upon us, and upon our children,'
in His foreknowledge saw that what they would say, was, in comparison with the greatness of their sin, but little, and threatened the Jews themselves, in order that their crime might be expiated by adequate penalties, saying that He would punish the offences of the fathers even to the fourth generation. So this word belongs in a particular way to the Jews, and to them alone; but the other, in which God has deigned |279 to promise not to punish in sons any sins of their fathers, nor in fathers any faults perchance committed by their sons, belongs to Christians.
{Passage B is found here in the manuscripts}
Your fathers, who are proved to have done these things in the days of Unity, have fallen away from the number of the living, leaving you as it were an inherited stain, which God has already washed away by His Providence, when He made a distinction (as we have said above) between fathers and their sons. Accordingly, since Betrayal is a sin, your fathers must see to it, as to what answer they may make in the Judgement of God; but your sin it cannot be, since you are living in other times.
II. That good and evil will be found in the Church of God, and must be borne with to the Day of Judgement.
So it is that for long past we have desired to receive you into our Communion, because it was not you that sinned at that time, but your fathers.
{Passage C is found here in the manuscripts}
Nor ought any man to judge concerning another man, as though he were himself wholly without sin, since it has been written in the Gospel that Christ says:
'Judge not, that you be not judged.'
And this above all, because it will not be possible to find one who is absolutely holy. For should any such there be, who are unable to sin, they are guilty of lying in the Lord's Prayer, if without reason they beg for pardon and say to God the Father: |280
'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.'
So the Apostle John both shows the consciences of all men and discloses his own with these words:
'If we shall say that we have not sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,' ----
a saying the reason of which we have explained more clearly in our Fourth Book. But grant that there are some who have been made perfect with complete sanctity, it is not lawful for them to be without brethren, whom they are taught not to repel by the precepts of the Gospel, wherein we find described a field----that is the whole world, in which is the Church and Christ the Sower, who gives wholesome precepts. On the other hand there is an evil man----that is the Devil, who sows cruel sins not in the light, but in the |281 darkness. Different kinds of seeds come to birth in one field. Similarly, in the Church there is not a mass of souls all alike. The field receives good seeds or bad----the seeds are different. But there is One Creator of all souls----one Lord of the field. There are Two who sow seeds where the tares are born, but the field has one Lord, the Lord God Himself. His is the earth; His are the good seeds; His is also the rain. Accordingly, we have consented to receive in unity you, who have been drawn [to the Catholic Church], for we are not free either to separate or to reject even sinners who have been born with us in one field [and] have received nourishment from one water ----that is from the one Baptism; even as the Apostles were not free to separate the tares from the wheat (since separation is impossible without destruction ), lest, whilst pulling up what ought to be pulled up, that which ought |282 not to be, should be, trodden down. In like manner Christ has commanded that both His own seeds, and those which belong to the other, should grow in His field throughout the entire world, in which there is the One Church.