Epistola Episcoporum Africae De Leporii Libello

APPENDIX. a LETTER OF THE AFRICAN BISHOPS, Which they sent together with the above-written booklet of Leporius to the bishops of Gaul. To their most beloved and honorable brothers and fellow priests, PROCULUS and CYLINNIUS, AURELIUS, AUGUSTINE, FLORENTIUS, and SECUNDINUS send greetings in the Lord. Our son Leporius, having been justly and fittingly rebuked before your holiness for the presumption of his error, when he came to us after he was driven out from there, we received him, healthfully disturbed, to be corrected and healed. For just as you obeyed the Apostle to rebuke the restless, so also we obeyed to comfort the faint-hearted and to receive the weak (I Thess. 5:14). For when he had been overtaken, as a man, in some offense (Gal. 6:1), and that not a small one, concerning the only-begotten Son of God, that He was in the beginning the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1): But when the fullness of time came (Gal. 6:4), the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).

I, 14), he did not hold correct opinions nor think truly, denying that God became man, evidently lest an unworthy change or corruption befall the divine substance, which is equal to the Father; nor did he see that he was introducing a fourth person into the Trinity, which is utterly foreign to the soundness of the Creed and of Catholic truth. We instructed him, as we were able with the Lord's help, in a spirit of gentleness, especially since, when that vessel of election gave this admonition, he added, "Take heed to yourself, lest you also be tempted" (Gal. 6:1): lest some rejoice that they have attained such spiritual advancement that they think themselves, as men, no longer capable of being tempted; and he added that wholesome and peaceful sentence, that we should bear one another's burdens, since in this way we will fulfill the law of Christ. For he who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, deceives himself (ibid., 2, 3), most beloved and honorable brothers. Yet we could by no means have accomplished his correction, had you not first condemned what was faulty in him. Therefore the same Lord and our Physician, using his vessels and ministers, who said, "I will strike, and I will heal" (Deut. 32:33), through you struck the swollen one, through us healed the one in pain. The same administrator and steward of his household, through you destroyed what was badly built, through us restored what was well composed. The same diligent farmer of his estate, through you uprooted what was barren and harmful, through us planted what was useful and fruitful.

Let us therefore give glory not to ourselves but to His mercy, in whose hand we and our words alike rest. And just as in the case of our aforementioned son our humility praised your ministry, so may your holiness rejoice in our ministry. Receive therefore with a fatherly and brotherly heart the one corrected by us with merciful severity. For even if one thing is done through us and another through you, yet a single charity has made both necessary for fraternal salvation: one God has done it, since God is charity (1 John 4:1). Accordingly, just as he was received by us through his presence, so let him be received by you through his letter. To that letter we have thought it right to add our own signature as well, attesting that it is his. We have no doubt that your belovedness will accept this correction of his gratefully and make it known to those to whom his error was a scandal; for those who came to us with him have been corrected and healed along with him, as is expressly recorded in the subscriptions made in our presence. It remains that, rejoicing in fraternal salvation, you deign to gladden us in turn with a reply from your blessedness. We pray that you, most beloved and honorable brothers, may fare well in the Lord, mindful of us.