Letters (Epistulae)

...we discuss it better, she persecuted Sarra more by acting with pride than Sarra persecuted her by restraining her; for she was doing an injury to her mistress, while the other was imposing discipline upon pride. Furthermore, I ask, if good and holy people inflict persecution upon no one, but only suffer it, whose voice do they think it is in the Psalm, where it is read:

I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not turn back until they fail.

If, therefore, we wish to speak or acknowledge the truth, there is an unjust persecution, which the impious inflict upon the church of Christ, and there is a just persecution, which the church of Christ inflicts upon the impious. Therefore, she is blessed who suffers persecution for the sake of righteousness, but those are miserable who suffer persecution for the sake of iniquity. Accordingly, the church pursues with love, while the others pursue with cruelty; the church pursues to correct, the others to destroy; the church to recall from error, the others to cast into error. Finally, the church pursues her enemies and overtakes them until they fail in vanity, so that they may progress in truth. The others, however, rendering evil for good, because we consult for their eternal salvation, even try to take away our temporal life, so loving homicides that they carry them out upon themselves when they cannot inflict them upon others. For just as the charity of the church labors to liberate them from that perdition so that no one of them dies, so their fury labors either to kill us, so that they may feed the lust of their cruelty, or even to kill themselves, so that they may not appear to have lost the power of killing men.

III 12 Those who do not know their custom think they are only killing themselves when so many people are liberated from their most insane domination by the opportunity of these laws, which are constituted for unity; but those who know...

Scriptural references: Ps 17:38; Matt 5:10; Ps 34:12.