Chapter 48.—111. Petilianus said: "Yet that you should not call yourselves holy, in the first place, I declare that no one has holiness who has not led a life of innocence."
112. Augustin answered: Show us the tribunal where you have been enthroned as judge, that the whole world should stand for trial before you, and with what eyes you have inspected and discussed, I do not say the consciences, but even the acts of all men, that you should say that the whole world has lost its innocence. He who was carried up as far as the third heaven says, "Yea, I judge not mine own self;" 2131
and do you venture to pronounce sentence on the whole
world, throughout which the inheritance of
Christ is spread abroad? In the next place, if what you have said appears to you to be sufficiently certain, that "no one has
holiness who has not led a
life of
innocence," I would ask you, if
Saul had not the
holiness of the sacrament, what was in him that
David reverenced? But if he had
innocence, why did he
persecute the
innocent? For it was on account of the
sanctity of his
anointing that
David honored him while alive, and
avenged him after he was dead; and because he
cut off so much as a scrap from his
garment, he trembled with a panic-stricken
heart. Here you see that
Saul had not
innocence, and yet he had
holiness,—not the personal
holiness of a holy
life (for that no one can have without innocence), but the holiness of the sacrament of God, which is holy even in unrighteous men.
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