Oh, what a way to take care for
the wretched, to look after the poor, to come to the sinner’s aid—so God cries,
saying, I am he who has made the poor and the rich, not because he was
unable to give to the poor as well, but, if he gave to both, the sinner would
not be able to find any means to aid himself. It is written indeed, Just as
water extinguishes fire, so alms extinguish sin. Surely both are in God’s
presence, both the one who gives and the one who opposes the gift. What if God
should now say to Donatus, “Bishop, what would you have Constans be? If an
innocent man, why did you refuse to receive from the innocent? If a sinner, why
did you not allow him to give, when I made the poor for his sake?” Under this
interrogation, how will he turn out? Why did he take pains in his irresponsible
folly to stand in the way of so many of the poor? He had come to believe that
he held the principal place in Carthage; and since there is no-one higher than
the Emperor save God himself who made the Emperor, when Donatus raised himself
above the Emperor, he had already, as it were exceeded human limits, so that he
almost deemed himself God rather than man, because of his lack of reference for
the one whom humans feared next after God. (Optatus of Milevis, Third Book
against the Donatists, in Optatus: Against the Donatists [trans. Mark
Edwards; Translated texts for Historians 27; Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 1997], 63-64)
