To this I then replied: So, said I, you cast about these things with grudging complaints, and you exaggerate them to the reproach of bishops, or indeed of the episcopate itself: as if, where you have read these things, by which you are reasonably moved, there were not also those things which—passed over by you—I shall briefly touch upon in defense of the priestly office. After those words by which the end of negligent priests is shown, the prophet speaks thus of the bishop who attends to his office: But if, when you announce to the wicked man that he should turn from his ways, he is not converted from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your soul (Ezek. 33:9).
Here it is shown quite plainly that, whether the hearers profit or do not profit, the priests ought not to keep silent toward them; nor are they therefore guilty if perchance the peoples do not hear their words or, having heard, despise them; but they are guilty if they desist from correcting them: because if the obstinate peoples, amended neither by the example of the life of their superiors nor by the word of doctrine, do not profit, they themselves become the cause of their own ruin, and they will by no means be able to implicate in their crimes their teachers, whose examples and words alike they despised. The same prophet pursues this more clearly in another place, saying: If the watchman sees the sword coming over the land, and sounds the trumpet, and announces it to the people;
but whoever, hearing the sound of the trumpet, does not take heed to himself, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head; he heard the sound of the trumpet, and did not take heed to himself, his blood shall be upon himself. But if he guards himself, he will save his own soul (Ezek. 33:3ff.). Here the divine word shows clearly enough what he who discharges the office of watchman ought to do: namely, that when he sees the sword coming over the land—that is, the wrath of God over sinners addicted to earthly works—he should by no means keep silent, but cease not to announce to them that, so long as they cling to their iniquities, the ruin of divine indignation is impending over them;
but let him reprove clearly and publicly (for this the name 'trumpet' suggests), so that thus amending themselves from their crimes, they may escape the punishment of the future condemnation. But if earthly men despise the one reproving them, the one announcing the wrath to come which already threatens the contemptuous, their blood shall be upon themselves; and the priest who did not keep silent toward them about their sins will not be able to be a partaker of the punishment that awaits them.