9.

These words which I have quoted out of the Holy Song of Songs, of a kind of bridal song of the Bridegroom and the Bride (for it is a spiritual wedding, wherein we must live in great purity, for Christ hath granted to the Church in spirit that which His Mother had in body, to be at once a Mother and a Virgin); these words, I say, the Donatists accommodate to their own perverted sense in a very different meaning. And how I will not conceal from you, and what ye may answer them, I will, by the Lord's help, as well as I shall be able, briefly recommend. When then we begin to press them with the light of the Church's unity spread over the whole world, and demand of them to show us any testimony out of the Scriptures, where God hath foretold that the Church should be in Africa, as if all the rest of the nations were lost; they are in the habit of taking this testimony in their mouths, and saying; "Africa is under the midday sun; the Church then" they say, "asking the Lord where He feedeth, where He lieth down; He answereth, Under the midday sun;'" as if the voice of her who put the question, were, "Tell me, O Thou whom my soul loveth, where Thou feedest, where Thou liest down;" and the Voice of Him who answereth, were, "Under the midday sun;" that is, in Africa. If then it be the Church which asketh, and the Lord maketh answer where he feedeth, in Africa, because the Church was in Africa; then she who asketh was not in Africa. "Tell me," she saith, "O Thou whom my soul loveth, where Thou feedest, where Thou liest down;" and He maketh answer to some Church out of Africa, "Under the midday sun," in Africa I lie down, in Africa I feed, as if it were, "I do not feed in thee." I repeat, if she who asketh is the Church, which no one disputes, which not even themselves gainsay; and they hear something about Africa; then she who asketh is out of Africa; and because it is the Church, the Church is out of Africa.