4. Luke xiv. 23.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 193 not on their account forsake the Catholic Church because we are unable to separate the wheat from the chaff before the final winnowing, especially since you yourselves have not forsaken the Donatist party on account of Optatus, when you had not courage to excommunicate him for his crimes.
You say, however, "Why seek to have us joined to you, if we be thus stained with guilt?" I reply: Because you still live, and may, if you are willing, be restored. For when you join yourselves to us, i.e. to the Church of God, the heritage of
Christ, who has the ends of the earth as His possession, you are restored so that you Hve in vital union with the Root. ... If deserters carry with them the imperial standards, these standards are welcomed back again as they were, if they have remained unharmed, when the deserters are either punished with a severe sentence, or, in the exercise of clemency, restored. If, in regard to this, any more particular inquiry is to be made, that is, as
I have said, another question; for in these things, the practice of the Church of God is the rule of our practice.
Vincentius, My Brother Dearly Beloved, Augustine sends greetings.
You are of opinion that no one should be compelled to follow righteousness; and yet you read that the householder said to his servants, ^'Whomsoever ye shall find, compel them to come in." * You also read how he who was at first
Saul, and afterwards Paul, was compelled, by the great violence with which Christ coerced him, lo know and to embrace the truth; for you canb. Letters, XCIII, 5-10. 4. Luke xiv. 23.