Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume IV/Donatist Controversy/Answer to the Letters of Petilian, the Donatist/Book II/Chapter 48

111.&#160; said:&#160; "Yet that you should not call yourselves holy, in the first place, I declare that no one has holiness who has not led a life of innocence."

112.&#160; answered:&#160; Show us the tribunal where you have been enthroned as judge, that the whole world should stand for trial before you, and with what eyes you have inspected and discussed, I do not say the consciences, but even the acts of all men, that you should say that the whole world has lost its innocence.&#160; He who was carried up as far as the third heaven says, "Yea, I judge not mine own self;" and do you venture to pronounce sentence on the whole world, throughout which the inheritance of Christ is spread abroad?&#160; In the next place, if what you have said appears to you to be sufficiently certain, that "no one has holiness who has not led a life of innocence," I would ask you, if Saul had not the holiness of the sacrament, what was in him that David reverenced?&#160; But if he had innocence, why did he persecute the innocent?&#160; For it was on account of the sanctity of his anointing that David honored him while alive, and avenged him after he was dead; and because he cut off so much as a scrap from his garment, he trembled with a panic-stricken heart.&#160; Here you see that Saul had not innocence, and yet he had holiness,—not the personal holiness of a holy life (for that no one can have without innocence), but the holiness of the sacrament of God, which is holy even in unrighteous men.