34. Some codices read dividunt, i.e., "the tongues separate."
138 ST. AUGUSTINE
Son and of the Holy Spirit." Thanks be to God!'' The Lord solved the problem; the dove taught it. Thanks be to God! The aposdes were sent to the nations; if to the nations, to all tongues. The Holy Spirit, parted in tongues, united in the dove, signified this. On this side tongues are parted;'^ on that the dove joins them together. Have the tongues of the nations achieved harmony and only the tongue of Africa become disharmonious? What is clearer, my brothers? In the dove is unity; in the tongues of the nations is community.
(2) For one time through pride the tongues became disharmonious, and then from one the tongues became many. For after the Flood, as if striving to fortify themselves against God, as if there could be anything high for God or anything secure for pride, certain proud men built a tower, ostensibly so that they might not be destroyed by a flood if one came later.'^ For they had heard and recalled that all iniquity had congregations, the most important of which was the ve: y small congregation of Africans in Rome. The Donatists claimed that they alone, the Donatist church of North Africa, were the one true Church. Optatus of Milevis, 2.1 (CSEL 26.33), expresses this idea most unmistakably:
You said, brother Parmenianus, that it (the one dove and bride of Christ, i.e., the Church), was among you alone ... so that the church is there where you want it to be and not there where you wish it not. So, in order that it can be among you, in a small section of Africa, in the corner of a tiny region, will it not be in the rest of Africa among us? Will it not be in the Spains, in Gaul, in Italy, where you are not? If you want it to be only among you, will it not be in the three Pannonias, in Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Achaia, Macedonia, and in the whole of Greece, where you are not? That it can be among you, will it not be in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Pamphilia, Phrygia, Cilicia, in the three Syrias, in the two Armenias, in the whole of Egypt and Mesopotamia, where you are not? Will it not, then, be in so many countless islands and the other provinces which can scarcely be numbered, where you are not?
33. 'Thanks be to God," i.e., Deo gratias, had become a rallying cry for the Catholics against the "Praises be to God," i.e., Deo laudes, the rallying cry of the Donatists, especially of the Circumcellions who used it as a war chant. See Augustine, Contra litteras Petiliani 2.65.146 and 84.186 (PL 43.306 and 318; and CSEL 52.98 and 1 151 16), and Epistulae 108.5.14 (PL 33 414; and CSEL 34.627-628). An account of the Donatist watchword, Deo laudes, is found in H. LeClercq, "Deo gratias, Deo laudes," DACL 4.1.652-659. See also Augustine, En in Ps 132.6 (CCL 40. 1930193 1); Berrouard, Homelies I -XVI, 362-363; and Frend, Donatist Church, 54, 73-74, 144, 174, 184, and 307. 34. Some codices read dividunt, i.e., "the tongues separate." 35. Cf. Gn 11.1-9.