Letters (Epistulae)

V 19 This act of theirs began to be of great value against them for the Catholic Church, so that their mouths might be completely shut. When this matter was spread abroad, as it should have been, to heal the minds of men from schism, and was shown wherever possible through the discourses and disputations of Catholics—that they had received both their own condemned ones back into full honor for the sake of the peace of Donatus, and that they had not dared to rescind the baptism which the condemned or even those granted a delay had given outside their church—while yet they objected to the world against the peace of Christ the contamination of I know not what sins, and emptied the baptism given in those very churches from which the Gospel itself came into Africa, many were confounded and, blushing at the manifest truth, were corrected more frequently than usual, and much more so wherever some liberty breathed, free from their cruelty.

18 Then, indeed, they were so inflamed and incited by such great goads of hatred that against their ambushes, violence, and most open brigandage, hardly any churches of our communion could be secure, and hardly any road was safe for any who preached Catholic peace against their rage and refuted their dementia with clear truth. To such an extent was a harsh condition proposed in some way not only to the laity or any clerics whatsoever, but even to the Catholic bishops themselves: either the truth had to be kept silent or their savagery had to be endured. But if the truth were kept silent, not only was no one to be liberated by its silence, but many were to be lost by their seduction; if, however, their fury were provoked to cruelty by the preaching of the truth, while some were liberated, the fear of our own [persecution] hindered the weak from following the truth again.