Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume IV/Donatist Controversy/On Baptism/Book VII/Chapter 40

by Philip Schaff et al.

Chapter 40.—78.  Salvianus of Gazaufala^[1] said:  "It is generally known that heretics have nothing; and therefore they come to us, that they may receive what previously they did not have."^[2]

79.  Our answer is:  On this theory, the very men who founded heresies are not heretics themselves, because they separated themselves from the Church, and certainly they previously had what they received there.  But if it is absurd to say that those are not heretics through whom the rest became heretics, it is therefore possible that a heretic should have what turns to his destruction through his evil use of it.

Footnotes

1. Gazaufala (Gazophyla) was in ecclesiastical province of Numidia.
2. Conc. Carth. sec. 76.