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. Answer me this, ye ravening wolves, who, seeking to be clad in
sheep's clothing,[90] think that the letters of the blessed Cyprian
are in your favour. Did the sacrilege of schismatics defile Cyprian,
or did it not? If it did, the Church perished from that instant, and
there remained no source from which ye might spring. If it did not,
then by what offence on the part of others can the guiltless possibly
be denied, if the sacrilege of schism cannot defile them? Wherefore,
then, have ye severed yourselves? Wherefore, while shunning the
lighter offences, which are inventions of your own, have ye committed
the heaviest offence of all, the sacrilege of schism? Will ye now
perchance confess that those men were no longer schismatics or heretics
who had been baptized without the communion of the Church, or in some
heresy or schism, because by coming over to the Church, and renouncing
their former errors, they had ceased to be what formerly they were? How
then was it, that though they were not baptized, their sins remained
not on their heads? Was it that the baptism was Christ's, but that it
could not profit them without the communion of the Church; yet when
they came over, and, renouncing their past error, were received into
the communion of the Church by the laying on of hands, then, being
now rooted and founded in charity, without which all other things are
profitless, they began to receive profit for the remission of sins and
the sanctification of their lives from that sacrament, which, while
without the pale of the Church, they possessed in vain?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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