Why say anything more? How am I to endure this sacred war? Let there be such a thing as a “sacred war,” just as there are wars called “barbarian.”
How am I to join together these men sitting on rival seats and acting as rival shepherds, along with the people who have split apart with them and now stand opposed to one another? They are like neighboring places torn apart by chasms in an earthquake. Or they are like caregivers and relatives during an epidemic, when the sickness passes easily from one person to another.
And it is not only local communities that have been caught up in these factions. Whole regions of the inhabited world have been drawn into them. East and West have been divided into opposing camps, in danger of becoming separated in conviction no less than in geography.
How long must there be “mine” and “yours,” “old” and “new,” “more learned” and “more spiritual,” “more noble” and “less noble,” richer in numbers and poorer in numbers? I am ashamed, at my age, to be called by the names of other men when it is Christ who saved me.