'Written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the Living God, not on Tables of Stone, but on the fleshy tablets of the heart.'
After the Law had been broken by Moses, and abandoned by the children of Israel to their enemies, and torn up and burned (when offered by Baruch to Joachim the king)----before the Christian times in which later on God would write in a better way----God pointed out a law through the Prophet, when He said:
'For this is My Covenant, which I will provide for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah, and after those days, saith the Lord, I will give My Laws and will write them in their heart and in their minds.'
This He promised long ago and has last of all fulfilled in Christian times. Therefore the Book is now in the second place; in the second place are the parchments. If God wrote the Law there, where it could not be betrayed ----so that your fathers, who had already believed in the Trinity, although they gave up the books, gave up neither their own hearts nor minds, in which God, according to His Promise, had already written His Law----on what ground, my brother Parmenian, have you said that the Law was completely burned by the Betrayers? Behold, neither has it been completely burned, nor has it been wholly taken away, so long as it both remains in the |304 hearts of the Faithful, and thousands of books are everywhere read aloud. From these considerations it is evident that you have, though in ignorance, taken on you to accuse your fathers in vain. If, therefore, it would have been impossible to repel even your fathers from communion, had they at the time of Unity brought forward so many examples which might have been reasonably alleged, how much more impossible is it to reject you, who are certainly not Betrayers, but the sons of Betrayers; since a distinction has to be made between both the persons and the names of fathers and sons, and where the sin has not been shared, there the same judgement cannot be passed?
Although if they had been brought into unity, and had come to the Catholic Church of their own accord .... etc. |305
Pseudo-Optatus Passage B (see p. 279, line 3 ).
Nor would he have visited upon the fathers any offences perchance committed by the sons. Since, therefore, the Law was renewed in the times of Moses without any man being punished, and the Ark of the Covenant was freely restored by the enemy, and at God's command a second book was written by Jeremiah, why is it thought that your fathers alone committed a deadly sin, when they did something, on account of which, in so many instances, no one was condemned?
For if the Law was given for this purpose, that men should be taught, not that the Law itself should be as it were worshipped in the place of God, then, after your fathers' sin, though individuals lost their volumes under the pressure of fear, yet the mass of the Faithful suffered no loss. For the Law, which had been necessary, still has its force amongst the teachers of the people and the worshippers of God. The libraries are filled with books. Nothing is wanting to the Church. In different places the divine praises are everywhere proclaimed. The mouths of the lectors keep not silence. The hands of all are full of volumes [of Scripture]. Nothing is lacking to the people who wish to be taught----although the law would not seem to have been written more for the sake of teaching, than for that of the judgement to |306 come, in order that the sinner may know what may befall him, should he not live rightly. Thus has it been written, and thus do we read, that
'the Law has not been given for the just,'
because
'every just man is himself a law unto himself.'
And in another place the blessed Apostle Paul also says that the Law does not make men just, but itself loves justice. It is results which are always looked for in all those things that produce results. The Law, which produces results, is not needed, when the result is obtained in a quicker way. It was not said to Abraham: 'Believe,' but he believed of his own accord ----so in him the result of the Law was made complete without the Law. We do not read:
'Abraham heard the Law and believed,'
but we do read:
'Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for justice.'
And in the earliest times the Patriarch Noah did nothing by which he might become just, yet he as a just man was chosen to build the Ark, in which during the Deluge he might navigate the waters with success. It were a long task to go through all the cases individually of all who, without the Law, were found to be just. |307
If these things had been pleaded by your fathers, who would then have rejected them from his communion? Again, [what would have happened] if they had asserted that what the Apostle says of those who are outside the Law ought not to be passed over in silence?
'the nations, that know not the Law, do the things that belong to the Law, for they have the Law written in their hearts.'
For many are known to have sinned with the Law, and many to have lived well without the Law. The Law and Man are two things, but they cannot be on an equality, for Man was not made for the Law, but the Law was given for the sake of men. I do not see that injury has anywhere been done to God, so long as the source of the Law remains with Him. After the Scripture has been given up----so it is said----by your fathers, it wants for nothing, all the members of the Law are sound----are safe, and are read aloud. There is, for those who desire to teach and to be taught, nothing less than there was of the Law. Was it then necessary for man to be slain rather than that any Scripture should be given up? Again, men have not been slain, yet all the Scriptures are here without diminution. The Law and God are not one and the same thing. If they had had to die for God, who can both raise up the dead and give reward, [well and good]; but a book that has not been surrendered cannot do even the second of these two things.
Therefore, necessity shackles [a man's] own strength of will. We often see that carelessness is as disastrous |308 as necessity. For if the parchments or the books, in which the canonical Scripture is contained, must be kept totally unimpaired, why are not some careless people condemned? There is no wide gulf between giving up and placing in a bad situation, or treating badly. One man has placed the book in a house, which has been burned down in a fire. Let him be condemned, who carelessly placed the book in that house, if another is to be condemned who through fear gave up the book that he knew would be demanded of him. Let them also be condemned, who placed neglected parchments, or books, where they might be gnawed by little household animals (that is by mice) in such a way that they could not be read. Let him be condemned, as well, who has placed them in a part of the house, where, in consequence of too great abundance of rain, water has dropped through the eaves from the roof, so that all the writing has been washed away by the wet, and can no longer be read. Let those too be condemned, who have been rash enough to entrust themselves, together with the books of the Law, to the hungry waves of the sea, and in their eagerness to save their lives, when in the water, have let the Scriptures slip from their hands. Accordingly if the Scripture be the same always, and, if he who has not been able to save it, is guilty----then, one has given it up to the waves, another has abandoned it to rodents, another has carelessly allowed it to be spoiled by the dropping water, and yet another, terrified by the fear of death, has, as man, given it to man. If all have done the same thing, why is one chosen out to be condemned----and this, even though the fault of the Betrayer is lighter than is that of him who has been careless? He who placed it in the way of mice, or left it under the dropping water, with his will was careless, whilst he who lost it in the river, sinned through rashness. He who through the fear of death gave anything up, gave it as a |309 man to a man. It was whole whilst with the giver, it remained whole in the hands of the receiver. If he who received it, gave it up to the flames, this is the sin of the one who burned it, not of him who surrendered it. If these things had been urged by your fathers, how could we have rejected them from our communion? Or if again they had thought well to refer to the times of King Antiochus, when all the Jews were compelled to surrender their Books to be burned, and the whole of the Scripture was given up so completely that not a letter remained in any one book? Not one of the Jews was then condemned, nor was any sentence pronounced against any Jew either by God or by some angel, because the sin was his who commanded and threatened, not the people's who surrendered with fearfulness and sorrow. And in order that this Antiochus should do no injury to His people in these early days, God immediately provided for one man Esdras, who was called a Reader at the time, to dictate the whole as it had been before, to the minutest point. In this way the tyrant Antiochus was not able to enjoy the fruit of his wickedness, since (with the exception of the Seven Brothers and one old man who refused to eat swine's flesh) he killed no Jew, and yet the Law could not be destroyed. In the same way your fathers too in their day were not killed, and yet all the books of the Law of the Lord are read aloud everywhere. If, as I have urged above, your fathers had pointed out these things, who would not have received them into his communion without fear, since, as has been said, their sin was a sin of necessity, not of the will ? Your fathers, who are proved, ....etc. |310
Pseudo-Optatus, Passage C (see p. 279, 1. 16 ).
. . . for if one who has sinned, as did your ancestors, comes to the Church to plead the necessity of his case, first of all let him be received, and then sheltered in the kindly bosom of Mother Church.
Nor ought any man, etc.
[Footnotes moved to the end and renumbered. The positions of A, B, and C have been indicated in {} in the text as part of the online edition. The printed copy from which this was made was defective at a couple of points in the footnotes: these are indicated in {} below.]
1. {Note to the online edition: defective printed text here} (cf. i, 7; ii, 5 etc.), i.e. that the effects of Baptism were derived from the sanctity of their recipients, not from God.