A mistaken, anti-Puritan footnote in one of Augustine's anti-Donatist writings

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Reformed Covenanter

Cancelled Commissioner
I came across this footnote in one of Augustine's anti-Donatist letters. The translator/editor clearly has confused the Puritans for the Separatists/Brownists, as the former used arguments similar to Augustine when correcting the extremism of the latter group. Indeed, there are many arguments by Puritans against separating from the Church of England on account of the supposedly ungodly people who were tolerated in the midst of it:

The Donatists were the Puritans of their time, and the reason they alleged for their separation from the Catholic Church was the supposed corruption of the Church in Africa, or of some of its ministers or members. They thought to maintain their own 'purity' by separation, claiming that they were contaminated by the acts of others. Augustine easily demolishes their contention by a reductio ad absurdum.

Augustine of Hippo, ‘Letter 87 to Emeritus, c. 405’ in Letters: Volume II (c. 405-12), trans. Wilfred Parsons, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, 18 (New York: The Fathers of the Church, 1953), pp 13-14n.
 
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