But when Gundobad had recognized that the assertions of the heretics were nothing, being taught by the holy Avitus, bishop of Vienne, he confessed that Christ the Son of God and the Holy Spirit are equal to the Father, and asked to be chrismated secretly. To him the priest said: If you truly believe this which the Lord Himself has taught us, carry it out. But he answered: If anyone shall confess me before men, I also will confess him before my Father who is in heaven. So too, when the Lord was teaching His own holy and beloved blessed apostles about the temptations of the persecution to come, He intimated, saying: Beware of men; for they will deliver you up in councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you, and you shall stand before kings and governors for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles.
But you, though you are a king and fear to be seized by no one, dread the sedition of the people, lest you confess the Creator of all in public. Abandon this folly, and what you say you believe in your heart, bring forth by mouth among the people. For so also the blessed Apostle says: With the heart one believes unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. So too the prophet says: I will confess to you, O Lord, in the great Church; among a mighty people I will praise you. And again: I will confess to you among the peoples, O Lord; I will sing a psalm to your name among the Gentiles. But fearing the people, O king, you are ignorant that it is better that the people should follow your faith, than that you should favour the weakness of the populace. For you are the head of the people, not the people the head of you.
For if you set out to war, you go before the ranks of the enemy, and they follow wherever you have gone. Whence it is better that, with you going before, they should acknowledge the truth, than that, with you perishing, they should remain in error. For God is not mocked. For He does not love the one who, for the sake of an earthly kingdom, does not confess Him in the world. Confounded by that reasoning, that man persisted in this madness even to the end of his life, nor was he willing to confess publicly the equality of the Trinity.