Over the Door and in the Pews

'This is the door of the Lord', they wrote on the lintel of a church in Numidia, 'the righteous shall enter in.' 'The man who enters', however, wrote Augustine, 'is bound to see drunkards, misers, tricksters, gamblers, adulterers, fornicators, people wearing amulets, assiduous clients of sorcerers, astrologers. . . . He must be warned that the same crowds that press into the churches on Christian festivals, also fill the theatres on pagan holidays.'

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, Chapter 19, "Ubi Ecclesia?"

The chapter concerns the beginnings of Augustine's controversy with the Donatists. As Brown remarks, the Donatist concern for purity of the church had somewhat less to do with the present behavior of the congregation than with the previous behavior of clergy during a persecution.