Answered by Gregory:  This may thy brotherliness determine from the thief’s condition, how he may be corrected.  For there are some who have worldly wealth, and yet commit theft; there are some who are in this wise guilty through poverty.  Therefore need is that some be corrected by waning of their worldly goods, some by stripes; some more sternly, some more mildly.  And though the punishment be inflicted a little harder or sterner, yet it is to be done of love, not of wrath nor of fury; because through the throes of this is procured to the man that he be not given to the everlasting fires of hell-torments.  For in this manner we ought to punish men, as the good fathers are wont [to do] their fleshly children, whom they chide and swinge for their sins; and yet those same whom they chide and chastise by these pains they also love, and wish to have for their heirs, and for them hold their worldly goods which they possess, whom they seem in anger to persecute and torment.  For love is ever to be held in the mind, and it dictates and determines the measure of the chastisement, so that the mind does nothing at all beside the right rule.  Thou likewise addest in thy inquiry, how those things should be compensated which have been taken away from a church by theft.  But, oh! far be it that God’s Church should receive with increase what she seems to let alone of earthly things, and seek worldly gain by vain things.

Asked by Bishop St. Augustine:  At what generation shall Christian people be joined among themselves in marriage with their kinsfolk?...  Answered by St. Gregory:  ...  But because there are many in the English nation [who], while they were then yet in unbelief, are said to have been joined together in this sinful marriage,[44] now they are to be admonished, since they have come to the faith, that they hold themselves off from such iniquities, and understand that it is a heavy sin, and dread the awful doom of God, lest they for fleshly love receive the torments of everlasting death.  They are not, however, for this cause to be deprived of the communion of Christ’s body and blood, lest this thing may seem to be revenged on them, in which they through unwittingness sinned before the bath of baptism.  For at this time the Holy Church corrects some things through zeal, bears with some through mildness, overlooks some through consideration, and so bears and overlooks that often by bearing and overlooking she checks the opposing evil.  All those who come to the faith of Christ are to be reminded that they may not dare to commit any such thing.  But, if any shall commit them, then are they to be deprived of Christ’s body and blood; for, as some little is to be borne with in regard to those men who through unwittingness commit sin, so on the other hand it is to be strongly pursued in those who dread not to sin wittingly.

Asked by Bishop St. Augustine:  If a great distance of journey lies between, so that bishops may not easily come, whether may a bishop be hallowed without the presence of other bishops.