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BUT still as those who were the outcome of this stock of pestilent
thorns have already by the Divine help and goodness been healed, we should
also now pray to our Lord God that as in some points that older heresy and
this new one are akin to each other, He would grant a like happy ending to
those which had a like bad beginning. For Leporius, then a monk, now a
presbyter, who followed the teaching or rather the evil deeds of Pelagius,
as we said above, and was among the earliest and greatest champions of the
aforesaid heresy in Gaul, was admonished by us and corrected by God, and so
nobly condemned his former erroneous persuasion that his amendment was
almost as much a matter for congratulation as is the unimpaired faith of
many. For it is the best thing never to fall into error: the second best
thing to make a good repudiation of it. He then coming to himself confessed
his mistake with grief but without shame not only in Africa, where he was
then and is now, but also gave to all the cities of Gaul penitent
letters containing his confession and grief; in order that his return to
the faith might be made known where his deviation from it had been first
published, and that those who had formerly been witnesses of his error
might also afterwards be witnesses of his amendment.
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