Letter 173
1. If you could see the sorrow of my heart and my concern for your salvation, you would perhaps take pity on your soul, pleasing God by hearing not our word but his, and you would not fix his scriptures in your memory so that you close your heart against them. You are unhappy because you are being dragged to salvation, though you have dragged so many of our people to destruction. For what do we want but that you be seized, brought here, and kept from perishing? But as for the injury you have suffered in the body, you did it to yourself, for you refused to use the mount that was immediately offered to you and you fell roughly to the ground. For the other man, your companion, who was brought along with you, arrived uninjured because he did not do such harm to himself.
Augustine records that Donatus earlier threw himself, of his own will, into a well (paragraph 4). He mentions Donatus' village of Mutugenna (paragraph 7).
(trans. R. Teske 2004: 124; summary by S. Adamiak)