Augustine said separation is vain, harmful, and sacrilegious

 Institutes of the Christian Religion IV, xii, 13

“For counsels of separation are vain, sacrilegious, and pernicious, because impious and proud, and do more to disturb the weak good than to correct the wicked proud,” (August. ^[1]

 

Meaning:

13. Augustine requires discrimination in discipline*

^cAugustine especially commends this one thing: if the contagion of sin invades the multitude, the severe mercy of a vigorous discipline is necessary. “For advice to separate,” he says, “is vain, harmful, and sacrilegious, because it becomes impious and proud; and it disturbs weak good men more than it corrects bold bad ones.”²⁴ And what he there enjoins on others, he himself has faithfully followed. For, writing to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, he complains that drunkenness (so severely condemned in Scripture) is raging unpunished in Africa, and he advises calling a council of bishops to provide a remedy. He then adds: “These things, in my judgment, are removed not roughly or harshly, or in any imperious manner; and more by teaching than by commanding, more by monishing than by menacing. For so we must deal with a great number of sinners. But we are to use severity toward the sins of a few.”²⁵ Yet he does not mean that bishops should on this account condone public crimes, or remain silent because they cannot punish them more severely, as he explains afterward. But he wishes the method of correction to be so tempered that, as far as possible, it may bring health rather than death to the body. Therefore, he concludes as follows: “That precept of the apostle on the separation of evil persons must accordingly by no means be neglected when it can be applied without danger of violating peace. For he did not wish it to be done otherwise. And this principle must also be kept: bearing with one another, we should try to keep ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ [1 Cor. 5:3–7; Eph. 4:2–3].”^26[2]

My Comment:

I pray that fundamentalists have mercy in their judgment!

 

---

^[1] John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 258–259.

* following a section title indicates that the title has been supplied by the present editor.

^c edition of 1543

²⁴ Augustine, op. cit., III. ii. 14 (MPL 43. 93).

²⁵ Augustine, Letters xxii. 1. 4. 5 (MPL 33. 92; tr. FC 12. 54 f.).

²⁶ Augustine, Against the Letter of Parmenianus III. ii. 15, 16 (MPL 43. 94 f.).

^[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1240.