judged fitting, he wished to introduce to their knowledge the Lord Himself, unknown to them, but known to him, he says among other things, that "He is not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said."[781] Can it be said that here also, because he found among the sacrilegious the evidence of truth, he either approved their wickedness because of the evidence, or condemned the evidence because of their wickedness? But it is unavoidable that you should be always in the wrong, so long as you do despite to the sacraments of God because of the faults of men, or think that we take upon ourselves the sacrilege even of your schism, for the sake of the sacraments of God, to which we are unwilling to do despite in you. * * * * * CHAP. XXXI.--70. PETILIANUS said: "'For there is no power but of God,'[782] none in any man of power; as the Lord Jesus Christ answered Pontius Pilate, 'Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.'[783] And again, in the words of John, 'A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.'[784] Tell us, therefore, _traditor_, when you received the power of imitating the mysteries." 71. AUGUSTINE answered: Tell us rather thyself when the power of baptizing was lost by the whole world through which is dispersed the inheritance of Christ, and by all that multitude of nations in which the apostles founded the Churches. You will never be able to tell us,--not only because you have calumniated them, and do not prove them to be _traditors_, but because, even if you did prove this, yet no guilt on the part of any evil-doers, whether they be unsuspected, or deceitful, or be tolerated as the tares or as the chaff, can possibly overthrow the promises, so that all the nations of the earth should not be blessed in the seed of Abraham; in which promises you deprive them of their share when you will not have the communion of unity with all nations of the earth. * * * * *