“Let there be no paying back injury with injury: for it is only the fool who takes into his usurping hands the vengeance which he ought to reserve for God.[87] Our faith should be strong enough to feel full confidence that, whatever we have to endure from the fury of men like these, will avail with God with all the grace of martyrdom. For what is it in this world to conquer in the name of God, unless it be to bear with fortitude the disordered attack of men who trouble the peaceful followers of the law! “If you observe my will, you will speedily find that, thanks to the supreme power, the designs of the presumptuous standard-bearers of this wretched faction will languish, and all men will recognise that they ought not to listen to the persuasion of a few and perish everlastingly, when, by the grace of penitence, they may correct their errors and be restored to eternal life.” ----- Footnote 87: _Nihil ex reciproco reponatur injuriæ: Vindictam enim, quam Deo servare debemus, insipientis est manibus usurpare._ ----- Patience, leniency, and toleration, however, were as futile as force in dealing with the Donatists, who bluntly told the Emperor that his protégé, Cæcilianus, was a “worthless rascal” (_antistiti ejus nebuloni_), and refused to obey his injunctions. Donatus, surnamed the Great in order to distinguish him from the other Donatus, who had been Bishop of Casæ Nigræ, had by this time succeeded to the leadership of the schism on the death of Majorinus, and the extraordinary ascendency which he obtained over his followers, in spite of the powerful Imperial influence which was always at the support of Cæcilianus, warrants the belief that he was a man of marked ability. Learned, eloquent, and irreproachable in private life, he is said to have ruled his party with an imperious hand, and to have treated his bishops like lackeys. Yet his authority was so unbounded and unquestioned that his followers swore by his name and grey hairs, and, at his death, ascribed to him the honours paid only to martyrs.