21. Prov. ix. 9.
204 ST. AUGUSTINE my own town, which, although it was once wholly on the side of Donatus, was brought over to the Catholic unity by fear of the imperial edicts, but which we now see filled with such detestation of your ruinous perversity, that it would scarcely be believed that it had ever been involved in your error. There were so many others which were mentioned to me by name, that from facts themselves,
I was made to own that to this matter the word of Scripture might be understood as applying: "Give opportunity to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser." ^i For how many were already, as we assuredly know, willing to be CathoUcs, being moved by the indisputable plainness of truth, but daily putting off their avowal of this through fear of offending their own party! How many were bound, not by truth—^for you never pretended to that as yours—but by the heavy chains of inveterate custom, so that in them was fulfilled the divine saying: "A servant (who is hardened) will not be corrected by words; for though he understand, he will not answer"! 22 How many supposed the sect of Donatus to be the true Church, merely because ease had made them too Ustless, or conceited, or sluggish, to take pains to examine Catholic truth! How many would have entered earlier had not the calumnies of slanderers, who declared that we offered something else than we do upon the altar of God, shut them out! How many, beUeving that it mattered not to which party a Christian might belong, remained in the schism of Donatus only because they had been bom in it, and no one was compelling them to forsake it and pass over into the Catholic Church!
21. Prov. ix. 9. 22. Prov. xxix. 19.