Writings in Connection with the Donatist ControversyAugustine, of Hippo, Saint
ReligionChristian
Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
Donatists; Donatists -- Controversial literature
11. If any one is brought to the surgeon, afflicted with a grievous
wound in some vital part of the body, and the surgeon says that unless
it is cured it must cause death, the friends who brought him do not, I
presume, act so foolishly as to count over to the surgeon all his sound
limbs, and, drawing his attention to them, make answer to him, "Can it
be that all these sound limbs are of no avail to save his life, and
that one wounded limb is enough to cause his death?" They certainly do
not say this, but they entrust him to the surgeon to be cured. Nor,
again, because they so entrust him, do they ask the surgeon to cure
the limbs that are sound as well; but they desire him to apply drugs
with all care to the one part from which death is threatening the
other sound parts too, with the certainty that it must come, unless
the wound be healed. What will it then profit a man that he has sound
faith, or perhaps only soundness in the sacrament of faith, when
the soundness of his charity is done away with by the fatal wound of
schism, so that by the overthrow of it the other points, which were in
themselves sound, are brought into the infection of death? To prevent
which, the mercy of God, through the unity of His holy Church, does
not cease striving that they may come and be healed by the medicine of
reconciliation, through the bond of peace. And let them not think that
they are sound because we admit that they have something sound in them;
nor let them think, on the other hand, that what is sound must needs be
healed, because we show that in some parts there is a wound. So that in
the soundness of the sacrament, because they are not against us, they
are for us; but in the wound of schism, because they gather not with
Christ, they scatter abroad. Let them not be exalted by what they have.
Why do they pass the eyes of pride over those parts only which are
sound? Let them condescend also to look humbly on their wound, and give
heed not only to what they have, but also to what is wanting in them.
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