On the Unity of the Catholic Church 23

I wish, indeed, dearest brothers, and at the same time I counsel and urge, that if it can be, none of the brothers may perish, and that our rejoicing mother may enclose in her bosom the one body of a people in agreement. Yet if wholesome counsel cannot recall to the way of salvation certain leaders of schisms and authors of dissension who persist in blind and obstinate madness, still you others, whether taken in by simplicity, or led on by error, or deceived by some cunning of deceitful craft, free yourselves from the snares of deceit, release your wandering steps from errors, recognize the straight road of the heavenly way. It is the voice of the apostle bearing witness: "We command you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that you withdraw from all brothers who walk disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us." And again he says: "Let no one deceive you with empty words; for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of stubbornness. Do not, therefore, be partakers with them." We must withdraw from those who do wrong, or rather flee from them, lest, while one is joined to those who walk wickedly and goes along the paths of error and crime, wandering from the way of the true road, he too be held in the same crime. There is one God, and one Christ, and one church of his, and one faith, and one people joined into the solid unity of a body by the glue of concord. Unity cannot be split, nor can one body be separated by the division of its structure, torn into pieces with its vitals ripped apart. Whatever departs from the womb cannot live and breathe apart; it loses the substance of salvation.