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BUT perhaps you say that you were a baby when you were regenerated, and
so were not then able to think or to contradict. It is true: that your
infancy did prevent you from contradicting, when if you had been a man you
would have died for contradicting. For what if when in that most faithful
and devout Church of Christ the priest delivered the Creed to the
Catechumen and the attesting people, you had tried to hold your tongue at
any point, or to contradict? Perhaps you would have been heard, and not
sent forth at once like some new kind of monster or prodigy as a plague to
be expelled. Not because that most earnest and religious people of God has
any wish to be stained with the blood of even the worst of men: but because
especially in great cities the people inflamed with the love of God cannot
restrain the ardour of their faith when they see anyone rise up against
their God. But be it so. As a baby, if it be so, you could not contradict
and deny the Creed. Why did you hold your tongue when you were older and
stronger. At any rate you grew up, and became a man, and were placed in the
ministry of the Church. Through all these years, through all the steps of
office and dignity, did you never understand the faith which you taught so
long before? At any rate you knew that you were His deacon and priest. If
the rule of salvation was a difficulty to you, why did you undertake the
honour of that, of which you disliked the faith? But indeed you were a far
sighted and simply devout man, who wished so to balance yourself between
the two, as to maintain both your wicked blasphemy, and the honour of
Catholicity!
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