Prescription against Heretics 3

These weaker ones are commonly built up to their ruin even by certain persons captured by heresy. Why did this woman or that man, most faithful, most prudent, most experienced in the church, cross over to that side? Who says this without answering himself that those whom heresies could change should not be reckoned prudent or faithful or experienced? And is it a marvel, I suppose, that someone formerly approved should afterwards fall away? Saul, good above the rest, is afterwards overthrown by envy. David, a good man after the Lord's heart, is afterwards guilty of murder and debauchery. Solomon, endowed by the Lord with every grace and wisdom, is led into idolatry by women. For to remain without sin was reserved for the Son of God alone. What then? If a bishop, a deacon, a widow, a virgin, a teacher, even a martyr, has fallen from the rule, will heresies therefore seem to possess the truth? Do we test the faith by persons, or persons by the faith? No one is wise, no one faithful, no one greater, except the Christian; and no one is a Christian except him who has persevered to the end. You, as a man, know each person from the outside. You think what you see; and you see only as far as you have eyes. But “the eyes of the Lord,” it says, “are lofty.” “Man looks on the face, God on the heart.” And so “the Lord” sees, and so he “knows those who are his,” and “the plant which he has not planted he uproots,” and he shows the last from among the first, and he carries “the winnowing fork in his hand to clear his threshing floor.” Let the chaff of light faith fly off as far as it will at every gust of temptation; so much the purer will the heap of wheat be stored in the Lord's granaries. Did not certain disciples, scandalized, turn away from the Lord himself? Yet the rest did not therefore think that they too must leave his footsteps; but those who knew that he was the Word of life and had come from God persevered in his company to the end, although he had gently offered them the chance to leave too, if they wished. It is a lesser thing if a Phygelus, a Hermogenes, a Philetus, and a Hymenaeus deserted his apostle: the betrayer of Christ was himself one of the apostles. We are astonished about his churches if they are deserted by some, when the things we suffer after the example of Christ himself are what show us to be Christians. “They went out from us,” it says, “but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.”