unworthiness of another, whose approach it is neither in his power nor his duty to prevent. XVI. But though this temptation sometimes arises even to good men, from an inconsiderate zeal for righteousness, yet we shall generally find that excessive severity is more owing to pride and haughtiness, and a false opinion which persons entertain of their own superior sanctity, than to true holiness, and a real concern for its interests. Those, therefore, who are most daring in promoting a separation from the Church, and act, as it were, as standard-bearers in the revolt, have in general no other motive than to make an ostentatious display of their own superior excellence, and their contempt of all others. Augustine correctly and judiciously observes—“Whereas the pious rule and method of ecclesiastical discipline ought principally to regard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which the apostle enjoined to be preserved by mutual forbearance, and which not being preserved, the medicinal punishment is evinced to be not only superfluous, but even pernicious, and therefore to be no longer medicinal; those wicked children, who, not from a hatred of the iniquities of others, but from a fondness for their own contentions, earnestly endeavour to draw the simple and uninformed multitude wholly after them, by entangling them with boasting of their own characters, or at least to divide them; those persons, I say, inflated with pride, infuriated with obstinacy, insidious in the circulation of calumnies, and turbulent in raising seditions, conceal themselves under the mask of a rigid severity, lest they should be proved to be destitute of the truth; and those things which in the Holy Scriptures are commanded to be done with great moderation, and without violating the sincerity of love, or breaking the unity of peace, for the correction of the faults of our brethren, they pervert to the sacrilege of schism, and an occasion of separation from the Church.” To pious and peaceable persons he gives this advice: that they should correct in mercy whatever they can; that what they cannot, they should patiently bear, and affectionately lament, till God either reform and correct it, or, at the harvest, root up the tares and sift out the chaff. All pious persons should study to fortify themselves with these counsels, lest, while they consider themselves as valiant and strenuous defenders of righteousness, they depart from the kingdom of heaven, which is the only kingdom of righteousness. For since it is the will of God that the communion of his Church should be maintained in this external society, those who, from an aversion to wicked men, destroy the token of that society, enter on a course in which they are in great danger of falling from the communion of saints. Let them consider, in the first place, that in a great multitude there are many who escape their observation, who, nevertheless, are truly holy and innocent in the sight of God.