Chapter 15.—34. Petilianus said: "David also spoke of you as persecutors in the following terms: ‘Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues have they deceived; the poison of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and unhappiness is in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God
before their eyes. Have all the workers of wickedness no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread?’"2012
| 2012 Ps. xiv. 5-8, cp. LXX. and Hieron., the last verse only being in the Hebrew.
|
35. Augustin answered: Their throat is an open sepulchre, whence they breathe out death by lies. For "the mouth that belieth slayeth the soul."2013
But if nothing is more true than that which
Christ said, that His
Church should be throughout all
nations, beginning at
Jerusalem, then there is nothing more false than that which you say, that it is in the party of Donatus. But the
tongues which have
deceived are the
tongues of those who, whilst they are acquainted with their own
deeds, not only say that they are just men, but that they are justifiers of men, which is said of One only "that
justifieth the
ungodly,"
2014
and that because "He is just and the justifier."
2015
As regards the
poison of
asps, and the mouth full of cursing and
bitterness, we have said enough already. But you have yourselves said that the followers of Maximianus had
feet swift to shed
blood, as is testified by the sentence of your plenary
Council, so often quoted in the records of the proconsular
province and of the
state. But they, so
far as we hear, never
killed any one in the body. You evidently, therefore, understood that the
blood of the
soul was shed in
spiritual murder by the
sword of
schism, which you
condemned in Maximianus. See then if your
feet are not swift to shed
blood, when you
cut off men from the
unity of the whole
world, if you were right in saying it of the followers of Maximianus, because they
cut off some from the party of Donatus. Are we again without the
knowledge of the way of
peace, who study to
preserve the
unity of the Spirit in the
bond of
peace? and yet do you possess that
knowledge, who
resist the
discourse which
Christ held with His
disciples after His resurrection, of so
peaceful a
nature that He began it with the greeting, "
Peace be unto you;"
2016
and that so strenuously that you are
proved to be saying nothing less to Him than this, "What Thou saidst of the
unity of all
nations is false; what we say of the offense of all
nations is true"? Who would say such things as this if they had the
fear of
God before their
eyes? See, therefore, if in
daily saying things like this you are not trying to
destroy the people of God dispersed throughout the world, eating them up as it were bread.
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