Chapter 79.—173. Petilianus said: "And again, ‘Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own.’ But you seek what belongs to other men. ‘Is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.’
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This is to say, in short,
Charity does not
persecute, does not inflame
emperors to take away the lives of other men; does not plunder other men’s goods; does not go on to
murder men whom it has
spoiled."
174. Augustin answered: How often must I tell you the same thing? If you do not prove these charges, they tell against no one in the world; and if you prove them, they have no bearing upon us; just as those things have no bearing upon you which are daily done by the furious deeds of the insane, by the luxury of the drunken, by the blindness of the suicides, by the tyranny of robbers. For who can fail to see that what I say is true?
But now if charity were in you, it would rejoice in the truth. For how neatly it is said under covering of the sheep’s clothing, "Charity beareth all things, endureth all things!" but when you come to the test, the wolf’s teeth cannot be concealed. For when, in obedience to the words of Scripture, "forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,"2186
charity would compel you, even if you knew of any evils within the
Church, I do not say to consent to them, but yet to tolerate them if you could not prevent them, lest, on account of the
wicked who are to be separated by the winnowing-
fan at the last day, you should at the present time sever the
bond of
peace by
breaking off from the society of good men, you, resisting her influence, and being cast out by the
wind of levity, charge the
wheat with being
chaff, and declare
that what you
invent of the
wicked holds good through the force of contagion even in the
righteous. And when the
Lord has said, "The
field is the
world, the
harvest is the end of the
world," though He said of the
wheat and of the tares, "Let both grow together until the
harvest,"
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you endeavor by your words to bring about a belief that the
wheat has
perished throughout the main portion of the
field, and only continued to exist in your little corner,—being desirous that
Christ should be
proved a
liar, but you the man of
truth. And you speak, indeed, against your own conscience; for no one who in any way looks truly at the
gospel will venture in his
heart to say that in all the many
nations throughout which is heard the response of
Amen, and among
whom Alleluia is
sung almost with one single voice, no
Christians are to be found. And yet, that it may not appear that the party of Donatus, which does not communicate with the several
nations of the
world, is involved in error, if any
angel from
heaven, who could see the whole
world, were to declare that outside your
communion good and
innocent men were nowhere to be found, there is little doubt that you would
rejoice over the
iniquity of the human race, and
boast of having told the
truth
before you had received assurance of it. How then is there in you that
charity which
rejoices not in
iniquity? But be not
deceived. Throughout the
field, that is, throughout the
world, there will be found the
wheat of the
Lord growing till the end of the
world.
Christ has said this:
Christ is
truth. Let
charity be in you, and let it
rejoice in the
truth. Though an
angel from heaven preach unto you another gospel contrary to His gospel, let him be accursed.
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