6. It remains, then, that what
the Priscillianists think, according to the nefarious falsity of
their heresy, of God, of the soul, of the body, and the rest, we
hesitate not with truthful pity to condemn; but what they think of
the right of telling a lie to hide the truth is to be to us and
them (which God forbid!) a common dogma. This is so great an evil,
that even though this attempt of ours, whereby we desire by means
of a lie to catch them and change them, should so prosper that we
do catch and change them, there is no gain that can compensate the
damage of making ourselves wrong with them in order to set them
right. For through this lie shall both we be in that respect
perverse, and they but half corrected; seeing that their thinking
it right to tell a lie on behalf of the truth is a fault which we
do not correct in them, because we have learned and do teach the
same thing, and lay it down that it is fit to be done, in order
that we may be able to attain to the amending of them. Whom yet we
amend not, for their fault, with which they think right to hide the
truth, we take not away, rather we make ourselves faulty when by
such a fault we seek them; nor do we find how we can believe them,
when converted, to whom, while perverted, we have lied; lest haply
what was done to them that they might be caught, they do to us when
caught; not only because to do it hath been their wont, but because
in us also, to whom they come, they find the same.