Letters (Epistulae)

3 ...of the entire world of nations, since the kingdom is the Lord's and He Himself shall rule over the nations. They acknowledge Christ with us in the passage where it is read: "The Lord said to me, 'You are My Son; today I have begotten You,'" and they do not wish to acknowledge the 5 Church in the passage that follows: "Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession." They acknowledge Christ with us in the passage where the Lord Himself speaks in the Gospel: "It was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead on the third day," and they do not wish to 10 acknowledge the Church in the passage that follows: "And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." And there are countless testimonies of the holy books, which I did not think I should crowd into this one volume. In these books, just as 15 the Lord Christ appears—whether according to His divinity equal to the Father, which in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, or according to the humility of the flesh He assumed, because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us—so also His Church appears, not 20 in Africa alone, as they rave in their most shameless vanity, but spread throughout the whole world.

4 For they prefer their own disputes to the divine testimonies; because in the case of Caecilian, formerly bishop of the church of Carthage, to whom they objected crimes which they could not and cannot prove, 25 they divided themselves from the Catholic Church, that is, from the unity of all nations. Even if what they objected against Caecilian were true, and could at some point be shown to us, we would...

Scriptural references: Ps 2:7-8; Lk 24:46-47; Jn 1:1; Jn 1:14.