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| Chapter III.—Avoid schismatics.
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Chapter III.—Avoid schismatics.
Keep yourselves from those evil plants
which Jesus Christ does not tend, because they are not the planting of
the Father. Not that I have found any division among you, but exceeding
purity. For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the
bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of repentance, return into
the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may
live according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren. If any man
follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the
kingdom of God. If any one walks according to a strange893
opinion, he
agrees not with the passion [of Christ.].
Keep yourselves, then, from those evil
plants which Jesus Christ does not tend, but that wild beast, the
destroyer of men, because they are not the planting of the Father, but
the seed of the wicked one. Not that I have found any division among you
do I write these things; but I arm you beforehand, as the children of
God. For as many as are of Christ are also with the bishop; but as many
as fall away from him, and embrace communion with the accursed, these
shall be cut off along with them. For they are not Christ’s
husbandry, but the seed of the enemy, from whom may you ever be delivered
by the prayers of the shepherd, that most faithful and gentle shepherd
who presides over you. I therefore exhort you in the Lord to receive with
all tenderness those that repent and return to the unity of the Church,
that through your kindness and forbearance they may recover894
themselves out of the snare of the devil, and
becoming worthy of Jesus Christ, may obtain eternal salvation in the
kingdom of Christ. Brethren, be not deceived. If any man follows him that
separates from the truth, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God; and if
any man does not stand aloof from the preacher of falsehood, he shall be
condemned to hell. For it is obligatory neither to separate from the
godly, nor to associate with the ungodly. If any one walks according to a
strange895
opinion, he is not of Christ, nor a partaker of
His passion; but is a fox,896
a
destroyer of the vineyard of Christ. Have no fellowship897
with such a man, lest ye perish along with
him, even should he be thy father, thy son, thy brother, or a member of
thy family. For says [the Scripture], “Thine eye shall not spare
him.”898
You ought therefore
to “hate those that hate God, and to waste away [with grief] on
account of His enemies.”899
I do not
mean that you should beat them or persecute them, as do the Gentiles
“that know not the Lord and God;”900
but that you should regard them as your enemies, and separate
yourselves from them, while yet you admonish them, and exhort them to
repentance, if it may be they will hear, if it may be they will submit
themselves. For our God
is a lover of mankind, and “will have all men to be saved, and to
come to the knowledge of the truth.”901
Wherefore “He makes His sun to rise upon the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust;”902
of whose kindness the Lord, wishing us also to
be imitators, says, “Be ye perfect, even as also your Father that
is in heaven is perfect.”903
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