However attentive the servants of the Lord's husbandry may be, amid assiduous zeal for planting there always arise also things which it is expedient to cut down. Therefore to the unceasing labors of your solicitude there accrues a most opportune interest of salvation to be gained by these works. But amid the tares of Arian growth — which, what is worse, is spread by a numerous corruption — I cannot conjecture whence the face of the enemy's seed, not indeed new but rather rare, has shown itself, or what wind has brought these overseas contagions to this bright world. But with God governing you, that blight, supported by no consolation, is little to be feared. A storm gains no advantage from a multitude, nor does a slight breeze accomplish a shipwreck.
Wherefore the name of the Donatists, lest it be able to live long in a foreign place, bury forthwith with a life-giving blessing. At the very rise of its kindling let the conflagration of the wandering little fire grow cold. And, that not even the smoke of rumor about it may sprinkle the nostril of innocent Gaul, apply the imposition of the hand to the person about whom you wrote, all mention of that very name being forbidden henceforth, if she is converted from the heart: for it is established that she, if she has indeed been engaged in the profession of the aforesaid schism, was signed, together with the ministry of baptism, also with chrism. This it is manifest that they observe in that region. In which may God first grant that whoever have been of this error may be corrected;
and then, next, since the sect is as far distant from us as is that fatherland, those who have refused to be saved may not be able to cross over to our side to be acknowledged as ours.