On the Unity of the Church

Hence an example has been given to us to flee the way of the old man, to tread in the footsteps of the living Christ; lest, again unwary, we be entangled in the snare of death, but, forewarned of the danger, we may obtain the immortality we have received. But how can we obtain immortality, unless we keep the commandments of Christ, by which death is overcome and conquered, as he himself warns and says: If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. And again: If ye do what I command you, I call you not servants, but friends. These, finally, he calls strong and steadfast, these founded upon a rock with solid mass, these made firm against all the storms and tempests of the world with immovable and unshaken firmness. Whosoever, he says, heareth my words and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock.

The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. We ought therefore to stand by his words, and to learn and do whatsoever he both taught and did. Moreover, how does he who does not do what Christ commanded to be done say that he believes in Christ? Or how shall he attain to the reward of faith, who is unwilling to keep the faithfulness of the commandment? He must needs waver and wander, and, swept away by the spirit of error, be tossed about like dust which the wind scatters; and he will make no progress by walking toward salvation, who does not hold the truth of the saving way.

But we must beware, dearly beloved brethren, not only of what is open and manifest, but also of what deceives by the subtlety of crafty fraud. For what is more crafty, or what more subtle, than that the enemy, detected and overthrown by the coming of Christ, after the light came to the Gentiles and the saving light shone forth for the healing of men, so that the deaf might receive the hearing of spiritual grace, the blind open their eyes to God, the infirm grow strong again with eternal health, the lame run to the Church, the dumb pray with clear voices and supplications—that he, seeing the idols forsaken and his abodes and temples deserted through the great multitude of believers, devised a new fraud, to deceive the unwary under the very title of the Christian name? He invented heresies and schisms, whereby he might subvert the faith, corrupt the truth, shatter the unity. Those whom he cannot detain in the blindness of the old way, he circumvents and deceives with the error of a new path.

He snatches men from the Church itself; and, while they seem to themselves to have already drawn near to the light and to have escaped the darkness of the world, he pours upon them again other darkness in their ignorance, so that, not standing by the Gospel of Christ and his observance and law, they call themselves Christians, and, walking in darkness, think they possess the light—the adversary flattering and deceiving, who, according to the voice of the Apostle, transforms himself as an angel of light, and suborns his ministers as ministers of righteousness, asserting night for day, destruction for salvation, despair under the guise of hope, perfidy under the pretext of faith, antichrist under the name of Christ; so that, while they lie with plausible falsehoods, they frustrate the truth by subtlety. This comes to pass, dearly beloved brethren, because men do not return to the origin of truth, nor seek the head, nor keep the teaching of the heavenly Master.

If anyone considers and examines this, there is no need of lengthy discussion and argument. The proof is easy for faith by the compendium of truth. The Lord speaks to Peter: I say unto thee, he says, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And again he says to the same man after his resurrection: Feed my sheep. Upon that one he builds his Church, and to him he commits his sheep to be fed.

And although to all the Apostles after his resurrection he grants equal power and says, As the Father hath sent me, even so I send you: receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto him, whosoever sins ye retain, they shall be retained, yet, in order that he might make unity manifest, he established one chair, and by his authority disposed the origin of that same unity as beginning from one. Assuredly the rest of the Apostles were what Peter was, endowed with an equal share of honour and power, but the beginning proceeds from unity, and the primacy is given to Peter, that one Church of Christ and one chair may be shown. And all are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, which is to be fed by all the Apostles with unanimous agreement, that the one Church of Christ might be shown.

This one Church the Holy Spirit also designates in the Song of Songs in the person of the Lord, and says: My dove, my perfect one, is but one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bare her. Does he who does not hold this unity of the Church believe that he holds the faith? Does he who resists and opposes the Church, who forsakes the chair of Peter upon which the Church is founded, trust that he is in the Church? When the blessed apostle Paul also teaches this same thing and shows the sacrament of unity, saying: One body and one spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God.

This unity we ought to hold firmly and defend, especially we bishops who preside in the Church, that we may also prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided. Let no one deceive the brotherhood with falsehood, let no one corrupt the truth of the faith with perfidious transgression. The episcopate is one, of which each part is held by each in its entirety. The Church also is one, which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude by an increase of fruitfulness. As there are many rays of the sun but one light; and many branches of a tree but one strength founded in the tenacious root; and when many streams flow from one spring, though a multitude appears to overflow from the abundance of the copious supply, yet unity is preserved in the origin.

Take away a ray of the sun from its body, its unity does not allow a division of the light: break a branch from a tree, the broken branch will not be able to bud: cut off a stream from its source, the stream once cut off dries up. So also the Church of the Lord, flooded with light, pours her rays over the whole world; yet it is one light which is diffused everywhere, nor is the unity of the body separated. She spreads her branches over the whole earth in the abundance of her fruitfulness, she extends her richly flowing streams more widely; yet there is one head and one origin, and one mother prolific in the successions of her fruitfulness. Of her womb we are born, by her milk we are nourished, by her spirit we are animated.

The spouse of Christ cannot be made an adulteress; she is incorrupt and chaste. She knows one home, she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one chamber.

She keeps us for God, she assigns to the kingdom the sons whom she has borne. Whoever is separated from the Church and joined to an adulteress is separated from the promises of the Church: nor shall he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger, he is profane, he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his father, who has not the Church for his mother. If anyone could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he also escapes who is outside the Church. The Lord warns and says: He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. He who breaks the peace and concord of Christ acts against Christ. He who gathers elsewhere outside the Church scatters the Church of Christ. The Lord says: I and the Father are one. And again it is written of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: And these three are one.

And does anyone believe that this unity, which comes from divine firmness and coheres with heavenly sacraments, can be rent asunder in the Church and separated by the divorce of colliding wills? He who does not hold this unity does not hold the law of God, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation.

This sacrament of unity, this bond of concord inseparably cohering, is shown when in the Gospel the tunic of the Lord Jesus Christ is not divided at all nor cut, but they who cast lots for the garment of Christ as to who should put on Christ receive the garment whole, and the tunic is possessed undamaged and undivided. The divine Scripture speaks and says: But of the tunic, because it was without seam from the upper part, woven throughout, they said among themselves: Let us not divide it, but let us cast lots for it, whose it shall be.

That unity bore from the upper part, that is, coming from heaven and from the Father, which could not at all be divided by the one receiving and possessing it, but obtained the whole and solid firmness inseparably at once. He cannot possess the garment of Christ who rends and divides the Church of Christ. On the other hand, when, upon the death of Solomon, his kingdom and people were divided, the prophet Ahijah, meeting king Jeroboam in the field, tore his own garment into twelve pieces, saying: Take thee ten pieces, for thus saith the Lord: Behold, I rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give thee ten sceptres, and two sceptres shall be his for my servant David's sake and for Jerusalem the city which I have chosen to put my name there. When the twelve tribes of Israel were divided, the prophet Ahijah tore his garment. But because the people of Christ cannot be divided, his tunic, woven throughout and joined together, was not divided by those who possessed it.

Undivided, united, connected, it declared the cohering concord of our people who have put on Christ. By the sacrament of the garment and by the sign it declared the unity of the Church.

Who then is so wicked and faithless, who so mad with the fury of discord, as either to believe that the unity of God, the garment of the Lord, the Church of Christ can be divided, or to dare to divide it? He himself warns and teaches in his Gospel, saying: And there shall be one flock and one shepherd. And does anyone think that in one place there can be either many shepherds or several flocks? The apostle Paul likewise, impressing upon us this same unity, entreats and exhorts, saying: I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you.

Be ye composed in the same mind and in the same judgment. And again he says: Bearing with one another in love, striving earnestly to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Do you think that one who departs from the Church, who builds for himself other seats and different dwellings, can stand and live, when it was said to Rahab, in whom the Church was prefigured: Thy father and thy mother and thy brethren and all the house of thy father thou shalt gather to thyself into thy house, and whosoever shall go out of the door of thy house abroad, he shall be guilty in himself? Likewise, that the sacrament of the Passover contains nothing else in the law of Exodus than that the lamb, which is slain in the figure of Christ, should be eaten in one house. God speaks saying: It shall be eaten in one house, ye shall not carry the flesh outside the house.

The flesh of Christ and the holy thing of the Lord cannot be cast outside, nor is there any other house for believers besides the one Church. This house, this dwelling-place of unanimity, the Holy Spirit designates and declares in the Psalms, saying: God who maketh men of one mind to dwell in a house. In the house of God, in the Church of Christ, those of one mind dwell, and they persevere in harmony and simplicity.

Therefore also the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove: a simple and joyful creature, not bitter with gall, not fierce with biting, not violent with the tearing of claws, loving the dwellings of men, knowing the fellowship of one house; when they breed, bringing forth their young together, when they rest, clinging to one another in their flights, passing their life in common intercourse, acknowledging the harmony of peace with the kiss of the mouth, fulfilling in all things the law of unanimity. This is the simplicity to be known in the Church, this is the charity to be obtained, that the love of the brotherhood may imitate the doves, that gentleness and meekness may be equalled to lambs and sheep. What place has the ferocity of wolves and the madness of dogs and the deadly poison of serpents and the bloody savagery of beasts in a Christian breast? We should rejoice when such persons are separated from the Church, lest they prey upon the doves and sheep of Christ with their savage and poisonous contagion.

Bitterness cannot cohere and be joined with sweetness, darkness with light, rain with fair weather, war with peace, barrenness with fruitfulness, drought with springs, storm with calm. Let no one suppose that good men can depart from the Church: the wind does not carry off the wheat, nor does the storm overturn a tree firmly grounded with solid root; empty chaff is tossed about by the tempest, weak trees are overthrown by the onset of the whirlwind. These men the apostle John execrates and strikes, saying: They went out from us, but they were not of us: for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us.

Hence heresies both have been frequently made and are made; while a perverse mind has no peace, while faithless discord does not hold unity. But the Lord permits and suffers these things to happen, the choice of one's own free will remaining, so that, while the discernment of truth examines our hearts and minds, the faith of the approved may shine forth manifest in clear light. The Holy Spirit forewarns through the Apostle and says: There must be heresies, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. Thus the faithful are proved, thus the faithless are detected. Thus also, before the day of judgment, the souls of the just and the unjust are here already divided, and the chaff is separated from the grain.

These are they who of their own accord set themselves over rash assemblies without divine appointment, who constitute themselves rulers without any rule of ordination, who, with no one conferring the episcopate, assume for themselves the name of bishop; whom the Holy Spirit designates in the Psalms as sitting in the seat of pestilence, plagues and blights of the faith, deceiving with the mouth of the serpent, and artificers of corrupting the truth, vomiting deadly poisons with pestiferous tongues; whose word creeps like a cancer, whose discourse pours a deadly venom into the breasts and hearts of individuals.

Against such men the Lord cries out, and calls back and recalls his wandering people from them, saying: Hearken not unto the words of the false prophets, for the visions of their heart frustrate them. They speak, but not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to them that cast away the word of God: Peace shall be unto you and to all that walk in their own desires. Every one that walketh in the error of his own heart, evils shall not come upon him. I have not spoken to them, and they have prophesied. If they had stood in my substance, and had heard my words, and if they had taught my people, I would have turned them from their evil thoughts. These same men the Lord again designates and marks out, saying: They have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and have digged for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. When there cannot be any other baptism besides one, they suppose that they are able to baptize.

Having forsaken the fountain of life, they promise the grace of living and saving water. Men are not washed there, but rather defiled; nor are sins cleansed, but rather heaped up. That birth generates sons not for God, but for the devil. Born of falsehood, they do not receive the promises of truth: begotten of faithlessness, they lose the grace of faith. They cannot come to the reward of peace who have broken the peace of the Lord with the fury of discord.

Nor let certain men deceive themselves with a vain interpretation because the Lord said: Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am with them. Corrupters of the Gospel and false interpreters set down the last part and pass over what precedes, mindful of one part and craftily suppressing the other part; as they themselves are cut off from the Church, so they cut apart the meaning of a single passage: for the Lord, when urging unanimity and peace upon his disciples, said: I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth concerning any matter whatsoever that ye shall ask, it shall be done for you by my Father who is in heaven. For wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am with them, showing that much is granted not to the multitude but to the unanimity of those who pray.

If two of you, he said, shall agree on earth; he set unanimity first, he put harmony of peace before all else, teaching us that we should agree faithfully and firmly. But how can one agree with another who does not agree with the very body of the Church and with the whole brotherhood? How can two or three be gathered in the name of Christ who are manifestly separated from Christ and from his Gospel? For it is not we who have departed from them, but they who have departed from us. And since heresies and schisms were afterwards born, while they establish for themselves various conventicles, they have abandoned the head and origin of truth.

But the Lord speaks of his Church, and speaks to those who are in the Church, so that if they themselves shall be in harmony, if, according to what he commanded and admonished, even two or three, gathered unanimously, shall have prayed, even though they be but two or three, they may be able to obtain from the majesty of God what they ask. Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, I, he says, am with them, that is, with the simple and the peaceable, with those who fear God and keep God's commandments. With these two or three he said he was pleased to be, just as he was also with the three young men in the fiery furnace, and because they remained simple toward God and unanimous among themselves, while the flames surrounded them he refreshed them in the midst with the breath of dew.

Just as he was present with the two apostles shut up in prison, because they were simple, because they were unanimous, he himself, the bolts of the prison being loosed, set them again in the forum, that they might deliver to the multitude the word which they faithfully preached. When therefore he sets down in his precepts and says: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am with them, he does not divide men from the Church who instituted and made the Church, but reproaching the faithless for their discord, and commending peace to the faithful with his own voice, he shows that he is more truly with two or three who pray unanimously than with many who are at variance, and that more can be obtained by the harmonious prayer of a few than by the discordant prayer of many.

Therefore also when he gave the law of prayer, he added saying: And when ye stand praying, forgive if ye have aught against any man, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your sins. And he calls back from the altar one who comes to sacrifice with dissension, and bids him first be reconciled with his brother, then returning in peace to offer his gift to God, because God did not look upon the gifts of Cain: for he could not have God appeased who did not have peace with his brother through the discord of jealousy. What peace then do the enemies of brethren promise themselves; what sacrifices do they believe themselves to celebrate who are rivals of priests? Or do they suppose that Christ is with them when they are gathered, who are gathered outside the Church of Christ?

Even if such men are slain in confession of the name, that stain is not washed away even by blood: the inexpiable and grievous guilt of discord is not purged even by suffering. One cannot be a martyr who is not in the Church: one will not be able to attain the kingdom who forsakes her that is to reign. Christ gave us peace, he commanded us to be in harmony and of one mind, he enjoined that the bonds of love and charity be kept uncorrupted and inviolate. One who has not maintained brotherly charity cannot present himself as a martyr. The apostle Paul teaches and attests this, saying: And if I have faith so as to remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, I profit nothing.

Charity is long-suffering, charity is kind, charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up, is not provoked, thinketh no evil, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things: Charity never faileth. Charity, he says, never faileth. For this shall always be in the kingdom, this shall endure forever in the unity of the brotherhood cleaving to itself. One who is at discord cannot attain to the kingdom of heaven; one who has violated the love of Christ by faithless dissension will not be able to belong to the rewards of Christ, who said, This is my commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you. He who has not charity has not God. It is the voice of the blessed apostle John: God, he says, is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. Those who were unwilling to be of one mind in the Church of God cannot abide with God.

Though they be given to flames and fires or cast to beasts and lay down their lives, that will not be the crown of faith, but the punishment of faithlessness; not the glorious end of religious virtue, but the destruction of desperation. Such a one can be killed, but cannot be crowned. He professes himself a Christian in the same way as the devil often falsely claims to be Christ, the Lord himself forewarning and saying: Many shall come in my name saying: I am Christ, and shall deceive many. As that one is not Christ, though he deceive in the name, so neither can one be seen to be a Christian who does not remain in the truth of his Gospel and faith.

For indeed to prophesy and to cast out demons and to do great mighty works on earth is assuredly a sublime and admirable thing, yet not everyone who is found in all these things attains the heavenly kingdom, unless he walks in the observance of the right and just way. The Lord declares and says: Many shall say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out demons, and in thy name done great mighty works? And then I will say unto them: I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Justice is needed that one may be able to deserve God as judge: his commandments and admonitions must be obeyed, that our merits may receive their reward. The Lord in his Gospel, directing the way of our hope and faith with a brief compendium, said: The Lord thy God is one God; and: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.

This is the first commandment; and the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. He taught unity and love together by his teaching, and enclosed all the prophets and the law in two commandments. But what unity does he preserve, what love does he keep or consider, who, maddened with the fury of discord, rends the Church, destroys the faith, disturbs the peace, scatters charity, profanes the sacrament?

This evil, most faithful brethren, had already begun long ago; but now the hostile plague of that same evil has grown, and the poisoned destruction of heretical perversity and schisms has begun to rise up and spread more widely, because it was also necessary that this should happen at the decline of the world, the Holy Spirit foretelling and forewarning us through the Apostle: In the last days, he says, there shall come perilous times, and men shall be lovers of themselves, proud, puffed up, covetous, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, impious, without affection, without covenant, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, not lovers of good, traitors, reckless, puffed up with stupor, lovers of pleasures more than of God, having a form of religion but denying the power thereof. Of these are they who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led away by various lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

And as Jannes and Mambres resisted Moses, so also do these resist the Truth, but they shall proceed no further. For their folly shall be manifest to all, as theirs also was. All things that were foretold are being fulfilled, and with the end of the age now drawing near, they have come with a testing of men and times alike. As the adversary rages more and more, error deceives, stupor exalts, envy inflames, covetousness blinds, impiety corrupts, pride puffs up, discord embitters, anger hurls headlong.

Yet let not the excessive and sudden faithlessness of many move or disturb us, but rather let it strengthen our faith, since the truth of the matter was foretold. Just as certain persons have become such because these things were predicted beforehand, so let the other brethren beware of such persons, because these things too were predicted beforehand, the Lord instructing us and saying: But take ye heed; behold, I have foretold you all things. Shun, I beseech you, brethren, men of this kind, and keep their pernicious conversations away from your side and ears as a contagion of death, as it is written: Hedge thine ears with thorns, and be unwilling to hear a wicked tongue. And again: Evil communications corrupt good manners. The Lord teaches and admonishes that we must withdraw from such persons. They are blind, he says, guides of the blind. But if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Whoever has been separated from the Church must be turned away from and fled.

Such a one is perverse and sins, and is condemned by himself. Does he seem to himself to be with Christ, who acts against the priests of Christ, who separates himself from the fellowship of his clergy and people? He carries arms against the Church, he fights against the ordinance of God. An enemy of the altar, a rebel against the sacrifice of Christ, faithless in place of faithful, sacrilegious in place of religious, a disobedient servant, an impious son, a hostile brother—despising the bishops and forsaking the priests of God—he dares to set up another altar, to make another prayer with unlawful words, to profane the truth of the Lord's sacrifice through false sacrifices, not knowing that he who strives against the ordinance of God is punished by divine chastisement for the audacity of his rashness.

Thus Core and Dathan and Abiron, who attempted to claim for themselves the license of offering sacrifice against Moses and Aaron the priest, paid the penalties for their attempts immediately. The earth, its bonds broken, opened into a deep chasm, and the gaping of the receding soil swallowed up those who were standing and alive. Nor did the wrath of the indignant God strike only those who had been the authors of the deed, but also the other two hundred and fifty participants in the same madness and companions, who had been gathered together with them and had joined in the audacity—fire going out from the Lord consumed them with swift vengeance, admonishing and showing, of course, that whatever wicked men have attempted by human will to destroy the ordinance of God is done against God.

So also king Ozias, when he carried the censer and violently assumed for himself the sacrifice against the law of God, and was unwilling to obey and yield when the priest Azarias resisted him, was confounded by divine indignation and marked with the blemish of leprosy on his forehead, branded in that part of the body where those who deserve the Lord are sealed, because he had offended the Lord. And the sons of Aaron, who placed strange fire upon the altar which the Lord had not commanded, were immediately struck down and extinguished in the sight of the Lord as a punishment.

Those whom they imitate and follow, who, despising the tradition of God, seek after alien doctrines and introduce the teachings of human institution; whom the Lord rebukes and chides in his Gospel, saying: You reject the commandment of God, that you may establish your own tradition. This crime is worse than what the lapsed appear to have committed; who nevertheless, placed in penitence for their crime, entreat God with full acts of satisfaction. There the Church is sought and implored; here the Church is resisted. There necessity may have been present; here the will is held fast in wickedness. There he who fell harmed only himself; here he who has attempted to make heresy or schism has deceived many by drawing them with him. There it is the damnation of one soul; here it is the peril of many.

Certainly this one both understands that he has sinned, and laments and weeps; but that one, swelling in his own heart and pleased with himself even in his very offences, separates children from their mother, draws sheep away from the shepherd, disturbs the sacraments of God: and whereas the lapsed has sinned once, that one sins daily. Finally, the lapsed, having afterwards attained martyrdom, can receive the promised rewards of the kingdom; that one, if he is slain outside the Church, cannot attain to the rewards of the Church.

Nor let anyone wonder, most beloved brethren, that even some of the confessors proceed to these things, that from that quarter too some sin in deeds as unspeakable as they are grave. For confession does not make one immune from the snares of the devil, nor does it defend with perpetual security one who is still placed in the world against temptations and dangers and assaults and attacks of the world. Otherwise we would never afterwards see in confessors frauds and fornications and adulteries, which we now see in certain of them and groan and grieve over. Whoever that confessor may be, he is not greater or better or more dear to God than Solomon: who nevertheless, as long as he walked in the ways of the Lord, retained for so long the grace which he had obtained from the Lord; after he forsook the way of the Lord, he lost also the grace of the Lord. And therefore it is written: Hold fast what thou hast, lest another take thy crown.

Which the Lord would certainly not threaten could be taken away, unless because, when righteousness departs, the crown also must of necessity depart.

Confession is the beginning of glory, not yet the merit of the crown; it does not complete the praise, but initiates the dignity. And since it is written, He that shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved, whatever before the end is a step by which one ascends to the summit of salvation, not a terminus by which the topmost height is already held. He is a confessor; but after confession the danger is greater, because the adversary has been more provoked: he is a confessor; for this reason he ought to stand all the more with the Lord's Gospel, having obtained glory from the Lord through the Gospel. For the Lord says: To whom much is given, much shall be required of him; and to whom more dignity is ascribed, more service is demanded of him. Let no one perish through the example of a confessor, let no one learn injustice, let no one learn insolence, let no one learn faithlessness from the conduct of a confessor. He is a confessor.

Let him be humble and quiet, let him be modest in his conduct with discipline; so that he who is called a confessor of Christ may imitate the Christ whom he confesses. For since he says: He that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted, and he himself was exalted by the Father because the Word and Power and Wisdom of God the Father humbled himself on earth, how can he love haughtiness who both commanded humility to us by his own law, and himself received from the Father a most exalted name as the reward of humility? He is a confessor of Christ, but only if the majesty and dignity of Christ is not afterwards blasphemed through him. Let the tongue that has confessed Christ not be evil-speaking, not be turbulent, not be heard clamoring with insults and quarrels, let it not after words of praise hurl the venom of the serpent against the brethren and the priests of God.

Otherwise, if he shall afterwards be blameworthy and detestable, if he shall have squandered his confession by evil conduct, if he shall have stained his life with foul disgrace, if finally, forsaking the Church in which he became a confessor and rending the concord of unity, he shall have exchanged his former faith for later faithlessness, he cannot flatter himself through his confession as though he were chosen for the reward of glory, since from this very thing the merits of his punishment shall have rather increased.

For the Lord also chose Judas among the Apostles, and yet Judas afterwards betrayed the Lord. Nevertheless the faith and steadfastness of the Apostles did not therefore fall because the traitor Judas fell away from their fellowship. So also here the holiness and dignity of confessors is not straightway diminished because the faith of certain of them has been broken. The blessed Apostle Paul speaks in his Epistle: For what if some of them have fallen from the faith? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God of none effect? God forbid. For God is true, but every man a liar.

The greater and better part of the confessors stands firm in the strength of their faith and in the truth of the Lord's law and discipline; nor do they depart from the peace of the Church, those who remember that they obtained grace in the Church by the condescension of God; and by this very thing they obtain greater praise for their faith, in that, separated from the faithlessness of those who had been joined with them in the fellowship of confession, they have withdrawn from the contagion of the crime, illumined by the true light of the Gospel, radiant with the pure and bright light of the Lord, they are as praiseworthy in preserving the peace of Christ as they were victorious in the encounter with the devil.

I desire indeed, most beloved brethren, and I counsel and urge alike, that, if it can be done, none of the brethren should perish and that the mother, rejoicing, should enclose the one body of a consenting people in her bosom. If, however, wholesome counsel shall not have been able to recall to the way of salvation those certain leaders of schisms and authors of dissension, persisting in blind and obstinate madness, yet let the rest who have been caught by simplicity, or led astray by error, or deceived by some cunning trick of the deceiver, be loosed from the deceitful snares, let wandering steps be freed from errors, let the straight path of the heavenly way be recognized. The voice of the Apostle bearing witness is: We command you, he says, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from all brethren walking disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us. And again he says: Let no man deceive you with vain words.

For because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not therefore partakers with them. We must withdraw from the delinquent, or rather flee from them, lest, while one is joined to those who walk evilly and treads the paths of error and crime, straying from the way of the true path, he too be held in equal guilt. God is one, and Christ is one, and his Church is one, and the faith is one, and the people is one, joined into the solid unity of the body by the bond of concord. Unity cannot be rent asunder, nor can the one body be separated by the tearing apart of its structure, its entrails torn by laceration and cut into pieces. Whatever has departed from the mother cannot live and breathe apart, it loses the substance of salvation.

The Holy Spirit admonishes us and says: What man is he that desireth life and loveth to see good days? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile. Depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. The son of peace ought to seek and pursue peace, he who knows and loves the bond of charity ought to restrain his tongue from the evil of dissension. Among his divine commandments and saving teachings, the Lord, now close to his passion, added saying: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. This he gave us as an inheritance, all the gifts of his promise and rewards he pledged in the preservation of peace. If we are co-heirs of Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ. If we are sons of God, we ought to be peacemakers. Blessed, he says, are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

The sons of God ought to be peacemakers, gentle in heart, simple in speech, harmonious in affection, faithfully cleaving to one another in the bonds of unanimity.

This unanimity existed among the Apostles of old. Thus the new people of believers, keeping the commandments of the Lord, maintained their charity. The divine Scripture proves this, saying: And the multitude of them that believed were of one soul and one mind. And again: And they were all persevering with one accord in prayer with the women and Mary who had been the mother of Jesus and with his brethren. And therefore, because they prayed with efficacious prayers, they were therefore able to obtain with confidence whatever they asked of the mercy of the Lord.

But in us unanimity has been so diminished that even the generosity of good works has been broken down. Then they sold houses and lands, and laying up treasures for themselves in heaven, they offered to the Apostles the proceeds to be distributed for the use of the needy. But now we do not even give tithes from our patrimony; and whereas the Lord commands us to sell, we rather buy and increase. Thus has the vigor of faith withered in us, thus has the strength of believers grown faint. And therefore the Lord, looking upon our times, says in His Gospel: When the Son of man shall come, thinkest thou He shall find faith on earth? We see come to pass what He foretold.

In the fear of God, in the law of justice, in love, in works, there is no faith: no one thinks of the dread of things to come; no one considers the day of the Lord and the wrath of God and the punishments awaiting unbelievers and the eternal torments appointed for the faithless: which our conscience would fear, if it believed; because it does not believe at all, neither does it fear. But if it believed, it would also be on guard; if it were on guard, it would escape. Let us rouse ourselves as much as we can, most beloved brethren, and shaking off the sleep of old sloth, let us be watchful to observe and carry out the commandments of the Lord. Let us be such as He Himself commanded us to be, saying: Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning in your hands; and be ye yourselves like men waiting for their lord when he shall return from the wedding, that when he cometh and knocketh they may open to him.

Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching. We must be girded, lest, when the day of the expedition shall come, it find us hindered and entangled. Let our light shine and gleam in good works, that it may lead us through this night of the world to the light of eternal brightness. Let us always wait with anxious and watchful care for the sudden coming of the Lord, so that when He shall knock, our faith may be awake, about to receive from the Lord the reward of watchfulness. If these commandments are kept, if these warnings and precepts are held fast, we cannot be overwhelmed while sleeping by the devil's deceit; as watchful servants we shall reign with Christ as our Lord.