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Chapter 174 of 355

Letter LXXXVIII Without address on the subject of the exaction of taxes

Letter LXXXVIII Without address on the subject of the exaction of taxes

1. I do not wish you joy, for there is no joy for the wicked. Even now I cannot believe it; my heart cannot conceive iniquity so great as the crime which you have committed; if, that is, the truth really is what is generally understood. I am at a loss to think how wisdom so deep can have been made to disappear; how such exact discipline can have been undone; whence blindness so profound can have been shed round you; how with utter inconsiderateness you have wrought such destruction of souls. If this be true, you have given over your own soul to the pit, and have slackened the earnestness of all who have heard of your impiety. You have set at nought the faith; you have missed the glorious fight. I grieve over you. What cleric does not lament as he hears? What ecclesiastic does not beat the breast? What layman is not downcast? What ascetic is not sad? Haply, even the sun has grown dark at your fall, and the powers of heaven have been shaken at your destruction. Even senseless stones have shed tears at your madness; even your enemies have wept at the greatness of your iniquity. Oh hardness of heart! Oh cruelty! You did not fear God; you did not reverence men; you cared nothing for your friends; you made shipwreck of all at once; at once you were stripped of all. Once more I grieve over you, unhappy man. You were proclaiming to all the power of the kingdom, and you fell from it. You were making all stand in fear of your teaching, and there was no fear of God before your eyes. You were preaching purity, and you are found polluted. You were priding yourself on your poverty, and you are convicted of covetousness; you were demonstrating and explaining the chastisement of God, and you yourself brought chastisement on your own head. How am I to lament you, how grieve for you? How is Lucifer that was rising in the morning fallen and dashed on the ground? Both the ears of every hearer will tingle. How is the Nazarite, brighter than gold, become dark above pitch? How has the glorious son of Sion become an unprofitable vessel! Of him, whose memory of the sacred Scriptures was in all men’s mouths, the memory to-day has perished with the sound. The man of quick intelligence has quickly perished. The man of manifold wit has wrought manifold iniquity. All who profited by your teaching have been injured by your fall. All who came to listen to your conversation have stopped their ears at your fall. I, sorrowful and downcast, weakened in every way, eating ashes for bread and with sackcloth on my wound, am thus recounting your praises; or rather, with none to comfort and none to cure, am making an inscription for a tomb. For comfort is hid from my eyes. I have no salve, no oil, no bandage to put on. My wound is sore, how shall I be healed?

2. If you have any hope of salvation; if you have the least thought of God, or any desire for good things to come; if you have any fear of the chastisements reserved for the impenitent, awake without delay, lift up your eyes to heaven, come to your senses, cease from your wickedness, shake off the stupor that enwraps you, make a stand against the foe who has struck you down. Make an effort to rise from the ground. Remember the good Shepherd who will follow and rescue you. Though it be but two legs or a lobe of an ear, spring back from the beast that has wounded you. Remember the mercies of God and how He cures with oil and wine. Do not despair of salvation. Recall your recollection of how it is written in the Scriptures that he who is falling rises and he who turns away returns; the wounded is healed, the prey of beasts escapes; he who owns his sin is not rejected. The Lord willeth not the death of a sinner but rather that he should turn and live. Do not despise, like the wicked in the pit of evil. There is a time of endurance, a time of long suffering, a time of healing, a time of correction. Have you stumbled? Arise. Have you sinned? Cease. Do not stand in the way of sinners, but spring away. When you are converted and groan you shall be saved. Out of labour comes health, out of sweat salvation. Beware lest, from your wish to keep certain obligations, you break the obligations to God which you professed before many witnesses. Pray do not hesitate to come to me for any earthly considerations. When I have recovered my dead I shall lament, I shall tend him, I will weep “because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people.” All are ready to welcome you, all will share your efforts. Do not sink back. Remember the days of old. There is salvation; there is amendment. Be of good cheer; do not despair. It is not a law condemning to death without pity, but mercy remitting punishment and awaiting improvement. The doors are not yet shut; the bridegroom hears; sin is not the master. Make another effort, do not hesitate, have pity on yourself and on all of us in Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom be glory and might now and for ever and ever. Amen.

1. I am doubly alarmed to the very bottom of my heart, and you are the cause. I am either the victim of some unkindly prepossession, and so am driven to make an unbrotherly charge; or, with every wish to feel for you, and to deal gently with your troubles, I am forced to take a different and an unfriendly attitude. Wherefore, even as I take my pen to write, I have nerved my unwilling hand by reflection; but my face, downcast as it is, because of my sorrow over you, I have had no power to change. I am so covered with shame, for your sake, that my lips are turned to mourning and my mouth straightway falls. Ah me! What am I to write? What shall I think in my perplexity?

If I call to mind your former empty mode of life, when you were rolling in riches and had abundance of petty mundane reputation, I shudder; then you were followed by a mob of flatterers, and had the short enjoyment of luxury, with obvious peril and unfair gain; on the one hand, fear of the magistrates scattered your care for your salvation, on the other the agitations of public affairs disturbed your home, and the continuance of troubles directed your mind to Him Who is able to help you. Then, little by little, you took to seeking for the Saviour, Who brings you fears for your good, Who delivers you and protects you, though you mocked Him in your security. Then you began to train yourself for a change to a worthy life, treating all your perilous property as mere dung, and abandoning the care of your household and the society of your wife. All abroad like a stranger and a vagabond, wandering through town and country, you betook yourself to Jerusalem. There I myself lived with you, and, for the toil of your ascetic discipline, called you blessed, when fasting for weeks you continued in contemplation before God, shunning the society of your fellows, like a routed runaway. Then you arranged for yourself a quiet and solitary life, and refused all the disquiets of society. You pricked your body with rough sackcloth; you tightened a hard belt round your loins; you bravely put wearing pressure on your bones; you made your sides hang loose from front to back, and all hollow with fasting; you would wear no soft bandage, and drawing in your stomach, like a gourd, made it adhere to the parts about your kidneys. You emptied out all fat from your flesh; all the channels below your belly you dried up; your belly itself you folded up for want of food; your ribs, like the caves of a house, you made to overshadow all the parts about your middle, and, with all your body contracted, you spent the long hours of the night in pouring out confession to God, and made your beard wet with channels of tears. Why particularize? Remember how many mouths of saints you saluted with a kiss, how many bodies you embraced, how many held your hands as undefiled, how many servants God, as though in worship, ran and clasped you by the knees.

2. And what is the end of all this? My ears are wounded by a charge of adultery, flying swifter than an arrow, and piercing my heart with a sharper sting. What crafty wiliness of wizard has driven you into so deadly a trap? What many-meshed devil’s nets have entangled you and disabled all the powers of your virtue? What has become of the story of your labours? Or must we disbelieve them? How can we avoid giving credit to what has long been hid when we see what is plain? What shall we say of your having by tremendous oaths bound souls which fled for refuge to God, when what is more than yea and nay is carefully attributed to the devil? You have made yourself security for fatal perjury; and, by setting the ascetic character at nought, you have cast blame even upon the Apostles and the very Lord Himself. You have shamed the boast of purity. You have disgraced the promise of chastity; we have been made a tragedy of captives, and our story is made a play of before Jews and Greeks. You have made a split in the solitaries’ spirit, driving those of exacter discipline into fear and cowardice, while they still wonder at the power of the devil, and seducing the careless into imitation of your incontinence. So far as you have been able, you have destroyed the boast of Christ, Who said, “Be of good cheer I have overcome the world,” and its Prince. You have mixed for your country a bowl of ill repute. Verily you have proved the truth of the proverb, “Like a hart stricken through the liver.”

But what now? The tower of strength has not fallen, my brother. The remedies of correction are not mocked; the city of refuge is not shut. Do not abide in the depths of evil. Do not deliver yourself to the slayer of souls. The Lord knows how to set up them that are dashed down. Do not try to flee afar off, but hasten to me. Resume once more the labours of your youth, and by a fresh course of good deeds destroy the indulgence that creeps foully along the ground. Look to the end, that has come so near to our life. See how now the sons of Jews and Greeks are being driven to the worship of God, and do not altogether deny the Saviour of the World. Never let that most awful sentence apply to you, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

1. Now is the time to quote the words of the prophet and to say, “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” Though they are wrapped in profound silence and lie stunned by their misfortune, robbed of all sense of feeling by the fatal blow, I at all events must not let such a fall go unlamented. If, to Jeremiah, it seemed that those whose bodies had been wounded in war, were worthy of innumerable lamentations, what shall be said of such a disaster of souls? “My slain men,” it is said, “are not slain with the sword, nor dead in battle.” But I am bewailing the sting of the real death, the grievousness of sin and the fiery darts of the wicked one, which have savagely set on fire souls as well as bodies. Truly God’s laws would groan aloud on seeing so great a pollution on the earth. They have pronounced their prohibition of old “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife”; and through the holy gospels they say that “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery already with her in his heart.” Now they see the bride of the Lord herself, whose head is Christ, boldly committing adultery. So too would groan the companies of the Saints. Phinehas, the zealous, because he can now no more take his spear into his hands and avenge the outrage on the bodies; and John the Baptist, because he cannot quit the realms above, as in his life he left the wilderness, to hasten to convict iniquity, and if he must suffer for the deed, rather lose his head than his freedom to speak. But, peradventure, like the blessed Abel, he too though dead yet speaks to us, and now exclaims, more loudly than John of old concerning Herodias, “It is not lawful for thee to have her.” For even if the body of John in obedience to the law of nature has received the sentence of God, and his tongue is silent, yet “the word of God is not bound.” John, when he saw the wedlock of a fellow servant set at nought, was bold to rebuke even to the death: how would he feel on seeing such an outrage wreaked on the marriage chamber of the Lord?

2. You have flung away the yoke of that divine union; you have fled from the undefiled chamber of the true King; you have shamefully fallen into this disgraceful and impious corruption; and now that you cannot avoid this painful charge, and have no means or device to conceal your trouble, you rush into insolence. The wicked man after falling into a pit of iniquity always begins to despise, and you are denying your actual covenant with the true bridegroom; you say that you are not a virgin, and made no promise, although you have undertaken and publicly professed many pledges of virginity. Remember the good profession which you witnessed before God, angels, and men. Remember the hallowed intercourse, the sacred company of virgins, the assembly of the Lord, the Church of the holy. Remember your grandmother, grown old in Christ, still youthful and vigorous in virtue; and your mother vying with her in the Lord, and striving to break with ordinary life in strange and unwonted toils; remember your sister, who copies their doings, nay, endeavours to surpass them, and goes beyond the good deeds of her fathers in her virgin graces, and earnestly challenges by word and deed you her sister, as she thinks, to like efforts, while she earnestly prays that your virginity be preserved. All these call to mind, and your holy service of God with them, your life spiritual, though in the flesh; your conversation heavenly, though on earth. Remember days of calm, nights lighted up, spiritual songs, sweet music of psalms, saintly prayers, a bed pure and undefiled, procession of virgins, and moderate fare. What has become of your grave appearance, your gracious demeanour, your plain dress, meet for a virgin, the beautiful blush of modesty, the comely and bright pallor due to temperance and vigils, shining fairer than any brilliance of complexion? How often have you not prayed, perhaps with tears, that you might preserve your virginity without spot! How often have you not written to the holy men, imploring them to offer up prayers in your behalf, not that it should be your lot to marry, still less to be involved in this shameful corruption, but that you should not fall away from the Lord Jesus? How often have you received gifts from the Bridegroom? Why enumerate the honours given you for His sake by them that are His? Why tell of your fellowship with virgins, your progress with them, your being greeted by them with praises on account of virginity, eulogies of virgins, letters written as to a virgin? Now, nevertheless, at a little blast from the spirit of the air, “that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” you have abjured all these; you have changed the honourable treasure, worth fighting for at all costs, for short-lived indulgence which does for the moment gratify the appetite; one day you will find it more bitter than gall.

3. Who would not grieve over such things and say, “How is the faithful city become an harlot?” How would not the Lord Himself say to some of those who are now walking in the spirit of Jeremiah, “Hast thou seen what the virgin of Israel has done to me?” I betrothed her to me in trust, in purity, in righteousness, in judgment, in pity, and in mercy; as I promised her through Hosea the prophet. But she loved strangers, and while I, her husband, was yet alive, she is called adulteress, and is not afraid to belong to another husband. What then says the conductor of the bride, the divine and blessed Paul, both that one of old, and the later one of to-day under whose mediation and instruction you left your father’s house and were united to the Lord? Might not either, in sorrow for such a trouble, say, “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” “I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” I was indeed ever afraid “lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your mind should be corrupted;” wherefore by countless counter-charms I strove to control the agitation of your senses, and by countless safeguards to preserve the bride of the Lord. So I continually set forth the life of the unmarried maid, and described how “the unmarried” alone “careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit.” I used to describe the high dignity of virginity, and, addressing you as a temple of God, used as it were to give wings to your zeal as I strove to lift you to Jesus. Yet through fear of evil I helped you not to fall by the words “if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” So by my prayers I tried to make you more secure, if by any means “your body, soul, and spirit might be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet all my toil on your behalf has been in vain. Bitter to me has been the end of those sweet labours. Now I needs must groan again at that over which I ought to have rejoiced. You have been deceived by the serpent more bitterly than Eve; and not only your mind but also your body has been defiled. Even that last horror has come to pass which I shrink from saying, and yet cannot leave unsaid, for it is as a burning and blazing fire in my bones, and I am undone and cannot endure. You have taken the members of Christ and made them the members of a harlot. This is an evil with which no other can be matched. This outrage in life is new. “For pass over the Isles of Chittim and see; and send unto Chedar and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods which are yet no gods.” But the virgin has changed her glory, and her glory is in her shame. The heavens are astonished at this, and the earth is horribly afraid, saith the Lord, for the virgin has committed two evils; she has forsaken Me, the true and holy Bridegroom of holy souls, and has betaken herself to an impious and lawless destroyer of body and soul alike. She has revolted from God, her Saviour, and yielded her members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity. She forgot me and went after her lover from whom she will get no good.

4. It were better for him that a mill-stone had been hanged about his neck, and that he had been cast into the sea, than that he should have offended the virgin of the Lord. What slave ever reached such a pitch of mad audacity as to fling himself upon his master’s bed? What robber ever attained such a height of folly as to lay hands upon the very offerings of God, not dead vessels, but bodies living and enshrining a soul made after the image of God?

Who was ever known to have the hardihood, in the heart of a city and at high noon, to mark figures of filthy swine upon a royal statue? He who has set at naught a marriage of man, with no mercy shewn him, in the presence of two or three witnesses, dies. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose you, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and defiled His pledged bride and done despite unto the spirit of virginity? But the woman, he urges, consented, and I did no violence to her against her will. So, that unchaste lady of Egypt raged with love for comely Joseph, but the chaste youth’s virtue was not overcome by the frenzy of the wicked woman, and, even when she laid her hand upon him, he was not forced into iniquity. But still, he urges, this was no new thing in her case; she was no longer a maid; if I had been unwilling, she would have been corrupted by some one else. Yes; and it is written, the Son of Man was ordained to be betrayed, but woe unto that man by whom He was betrayed. It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom they come.

5. In such a state of things as this, “Shall they fall and not arise? Shall he turn away and not return?” Why did the virgin turn shamefully away, though she had heard Christ her bridegroom saying through the mouth of Jeremiah, “And I said, after she had done all these things (committed all these fornications, LXX.), turn thou unto me, but she returned not?” “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” You might indeed find many remedies for evil in Scripture, many medicines to save from destruction and lead to health; the mysteries of death and resurrection, the sentences of terrible judgment and everlasting punishment; the doctrines of repentance and of remission of sins; all the countless illustrations of conversion, the piece of money, the sheep, the son who wasted his substance with harlots, who was lost and was found, who was dead and alive again. Let us not use these remedies for ill; by these means let us heal our soul. Bethink you of your last day, for you will surely not, unlike all other women, live for ever. The distress, the gasping for breath, the hour of death, the imminent sentence of God, the angels hastening on their way, the soul fearfully dismayed, and lashed to agony by the consciousness of sin, turning itself piteously to things of this life and to the inevitable necessity of that long life to be lived elsewhere. Picture to me, as it rises in your imagination, the conclusion of all human life, when the Son of God shall come in His glory with His angels, “For he shall come and shall not keep silence;” when He shall come to judge the quick and dead, to render to every one according to his work; when that terrible trumpet with its mighty voice shall wake those that have slept through the ages, and they that have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. Remember the vision of Daniel, and how he brings the judgment before us: “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool; . . . and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth before Him; thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened,” clearly disclosing in the hearing of all, angels and men, things good and evil, things done openly and in secret, deeds, words, and thoughts all at once. What then must those men be who have lived wicked lives? Where then shall that soul hide which in the sight of all these spectators shall suddenly be revealed in its fulness of shame? With what kind of body shall it sustain those endless and unbearable pangs in the place of fire unquenched, and of the worm that perishes and never dies, and of depth of Hades, dark and horrible; bitter wailings, loud lamenting, weeping and gnashing of teeth and anguish without end? From all these woes there is no release after death; no device, no means of coming forth from the chastisement of pain.

6. We can escape now. While we can, let us lift ourselves from the fall: let us never despair of ourselves, if only we depart from evil. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. “O come, let us worship and fall down; let us weep before Him.” The Word Who invited us to repentance calls aloud, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” There is, then, a way of salvation, if we will. “Death in his might has swallowed up, but again the Lord hath wiped away tears from off all faces” of them that repent. The Lord is faithful in all His words. He does not lie when He says, “Though your sins be scarlet they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool.” The great Physician of souls, Who is the ready liberator, not of you alone, but of all who are enslaved by sin, is ready to heal your sickness. From Him come the words, it was His sweet and saving lips that said, “They that be whole need not a physician but they that are sick. . . . I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” What excuse have you, what excuse has any one, when He speaks thus? The Lord wishes to cleanse you from the trouble of your sickness and to show you light after darkness. The good Shepherd, Who left them that had not wandered away, is seeking after you. If you give yourself to Him He will not hold back. He, in His love, will not disdain even to carry you on His own shoulders, rejoicing that He has found His sheep which was lost. The Father stands and awaits your return from your wandering. Only come back, and while you are yet afar off, He will run and fall upon your neck, and, now that you are cleansed by repentance, will enwrap you in embraces of love. He will clothe with the chief robe the soul that has put off the old man with all his works; He will put a ring on hands that have washed off the blood of death, and will put shoes on feet that have turned from the evil way to the path of the Gospel of peace. He will announce the day of joy and gladness to them that are His own, both angels and men, and will celebrate your salvation far and wide. For “verily I say unto you,” says He, “there is joy in heaven before God over one sinner that repenteth.” If any of those who think they stand find fault because of your quick reception, the good Father will Himself make answer for you in the words, “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad for this” my daughter “was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.”

“Who will give me wings like a dove? Or how can my old age be so renewed that I can travel to your affection, satisfy my deep longing to see you, tell you all the troubles of my soul, and get from you some comfort in my affliction? For when the blessed bishop Eusebius fell asleep, we were under no small alarm lest plotters against the Church of our Metropolis, wishful to fill it with their heretical tares, should seize the present opportunity, root out by their wicked teaching the true faith sown by much labour in men’s souls, and destroy its unity. This has been the result of their action in many churches. When however I received the letters of the clergy exhorting me not to let their needs be overlooked at such a crisis, as I ranged my eyes in all directions I bethought me of your loving spirit, your right faith, and your unceasing zeal on behalf of the churches of God. I have therefore sent the well beloved Eustathius, the deacon, to invite your reverence, and implore you to add this one more to all your labours on behalf of the Church. I entreat you also to refresh my old age by a sight of you; and to maintain for the true Church its famous orthodoxy, by uniting with me, if I may be deemed worthy of uniting with you, in the good work, to give it a shepherd in accordance with the will of the Lord, able to guide His people aright. I have before my eyes a man not unknown even to yourself. If only we be found worthy to secure him, I am sure that we shall acquire a confident access to God and confer a very great benefit on the people who have invoked our aid. Now once again, aye, many times I call on you, all hesitation put aside, to come to meet me, and to set out before the difficulties of winter intervene.

I have had considerable difficulty in finding a messenger to convey a letter to your reverence, for our men are so afraid of the winter that they can hardly bear even to put their heads outside their houses. We have suffered from such a very heavy fall of snow that we have been buried, houses and all, beneath it, and now for two months have been living in dens and caves. You know the Cappadocian character and how hard it is to get us to move. Forgive me then for not writing sooner and bringing to the knowledge of your excellency the latest news from Antioch. To tell you all this now, when it is probable that you learnt it long ago, is stale and uninteresting. But as I do not reckon it any trouble to tell you even what you know, I have sent you the letters conveyed by the reader. On this point I shall say no more. Constantinople has now for some time had Demophilus, as the bearers of this letter will themselves tell you, and as has doubtless been reported to your holiness. From all who come to us from that city there is unanimously reported about him a certain counterfeit of orthodoxy and sound religion, to such an extent that even the divided portions of the city have been brought to agreement, and some of the neighbouring bishops have accepted the reconciliation. Our men here have not turned out better than I expected. They came directly you were gone, said and did many painful things, and at last went home again, after making their separation from me wider. Whether anything better will happen in the future, and whether they will give up their evil ways, is unknown to all but God. So much for our present condition. The rest of the Church, by God’s grace, stands sound, and prays that in the spring we may have you with us again, and be renewed by your good counsel. My health is no better than it ever is.

I thanked the Holy God when I read your letter, most pious brother. I pray that I may not be unworthy of the expectations you have formed of me, and that you will enjoy a full reward for the honour which you pay me in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I was exceedingly pleased to hear that you have been occupied in a matter eminently becoming a Christian, have raised a house to the glory of God, and have in practical earnest loved, as it is written, “the beauty of the house of the Lord,” and have so provided for yourself that heavenly mansion which is prepared in His rest for them that love the Lord. If I am able to find any relics of martyrs, I pray that I may take part in your earnest endeavour. If “the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance,” I shall without doubt have a share in the good fame which the Holy One will give you.

Whom, indeed, could it better befit to encourage the timid, and rouse the slumbering, than you, my godly lord, who have shewn your general excellence in this, too, that you have consented to come down among us, your lowly inferiors, like a true disciple of Him Who said, “I am among you,” not as a fellow guest, but “as he that serveth.” For you have condescended to minister to us your spiritual gladness, to refresh our souls by your honoured letter, and, as it were, to fling the arms of your greatness round the infancy of children. We, therefore, implore your good soul to pray, that we may be worthy to receive aid from the great, such as yourself, and to have a mouth and wisdom wherewith to chime in with the strain of all, who like you are led by the Holy Spirit. Of Him I hear that you are a friend and true worshipper, and I am deeply thankful for your strong and unshaken love to God. I pray that my lot may be found with the true worshippers, among whom we are sure your excellency is to be ranked, as well as that great and true bishop who has filled all the world with his wonderful work.

How do you think my heart was pained at hearing of the slanders heaped on me by some of those that feel no fear of the Judge, who “shall destroy them that speak leasing”? I spent nearly the whole night sleepless, thinking of your words of love; so did grief lay hold upon my heart of hearts. For verily, in the words of Solomon, slander humbleth a man. And no man is so void of feeling as not to be touched at heart, and bowed down to the ground, if he falls in with lips prone to lying. But we must needs put up with all things and endure all things, after committing our vindication to the Lord. He will not despise us; for “he that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker.” They, however, who have patched up this new tragedy of blasphemy seem to have lost all belief in the Lord, Who has declared that we must give account at the day of judgment even for an idle word. And I, tell me, I anathematized the right blessed Dianius? For this is what they have said against me. Where? When? In whose presence? On what pretext? In mere spoken words, or in writing? Following others, or myself the author and originator of the deed? Alas for the impudence of men who make no difficulty at saying anything! Alas for their contempt of the judgment of God! Unless, indeed, they add this further to their fiction, that they make me out to have been once upon a time so far out of my mind as not to know what I was saying. For so long as I have been in my senses I know that I never did anything of the kind, or had the least wish to do so. What I am, indeed, conscious of is this; that from my earliest childhood I was brought up in love for him, thought as I gazed at him how venerable he looked, how dignified, how truly reverend. Then when I grew older I began to know him by the good qualities of his soul, and took delight in his society, gradually learning to perceive the simplicity, nobility, and liberality of his character, and all his most distinctive qualities, his gentleness of soul, his mingled magnanimity and meekness, the seemliness of his conduct, his control of temper, the beaming cheerfulness and affability which he combined with majesty of demeanour. From all this I counted him among men most illustrious for high character.

However, towards the close of his life (I will not conceal the truth) I, together with many of them that in our country feared the Lord, sorrowed over him with sorrow unendurable, because he signed the creed brought from Constantinople by George. Afterwards, full of kindness and gentleness as he was, and willing out of the fulness of his fatherly heart to give satisfaction to everyone, when he had already fallen sick of the disease of which he died, he sent for me, and, calling the Lord to witness, said that in the simplicity of his heart he had agreed to the document sent from Constantinople, but had had no idea of rejecting the creed put forth by the holy Fathers at Nicaea, nor had had any other disposition of heart than from the beginning he had always had. He prayed, moreover, that he might not be cut off from the lot of those blessed three hundred and eighteen bishops who had announced the pious decree to the world. In consequence of this satisfactory statement I dismissed all anxiety and doubt, and, as you are aware, communicated with him, and gave over grieving. Such have been my relations with Dianius. If anyone avers that he is privy to any vile slander on my part against Dianius, do not let him buzz it slave-wise in a corner; let him come boldly out and convict me in the light of day.

1. I have been very much distressed by a painful report which reached my ears; but I have been equally delighted by my brother, beloved of God, bishop Bosporius, who has brought a more satisfactory account of you. He avers by God’s grace that all those stories spread abroad about you are inventions of men who are not exactly informed as to the truth about you. He added, moreover, that he found among you impious calumnies about me, of a kind likely to be uttered by those who do not expect to have to give the Judge in the day of His righteous retribution an account of even an idle word. I thank God, then, both because I am cured of my damaging opinion of you, an opinion which I have derived from the calumnies of men, and because I have heard of your abandonment of those baseless notions about me, on hearing the assurances of my brother. He, in all that he has said as coming from himself, has also completely expressed my own feeling. For in us both there is one mind about the faith, as being heirs of the same Fathers who once at Nicaea promulgated their great decree concerning the faith. Of this, some portions are universally accepted without cavil, but the homoousion, ill received in certain quarters, is still rejected by some. These objectors we may very properly blame, and yet on the contrary deem them deserving of pardon. To refuse to follow the Fathers, not holding their declaration of more authority than one’s own opinion, is conduct worthy of blame, as being brimful of self-sufficiency. On the other hand the fact that they view with suspicion a phrase which is misrepresented by an opposite party does seem to a small extent to relieve them from blame. Moreover, as a matter of fact, the members of the synods which met to discuss the case of Paul of Samosata did find fault with the term as an unfortunate one.

For they maintained that the homoousion set forth the idea both of essence and of what is derived from it, so that the essence, when divided, confers the title of co-essential on the parts into which it is divided. This explanation has some reason in the case of bronze and coins made therefrom, but in the case of God the Father and God the Son there is no question of substance anterior or even underlying both; the mere thought and utterance of such a thing is the last extravagance of impiety. What can be conceived of as anterior to the Unbegotten? By this blasphemy faith in the Father and the Son is destroyed, for things, constituted out of one, have to one another the relation of brothers.

2. Because even at that time there were men who asserted the Son to have been brought into being out of the non-existent, the term homoousion was adopted, to extirpate this impiety. For the conjunction of the Son with the Father is without time and without interval. The preceding words shew this to have been the intended meaning. For after saying that the Son was light of light, and begotten of the substance of the Father, but was not made, they went on to add the homoousion, thereby showing that whatever proportion of light any one would attribute in the case of the Father will obtain also in that of the Son. For very light in relation to very light, according to the actual sense of light, will have no variation. Since then the Father is light without beginning, and the Son begotten light, but each of Them light and light; they rightly said “of one substance,” in order to set forth the equal dignity of the nature. Things, that have a relation of brotherhood, are not, as some persons have supposed, of one substance; but when both the cause and that which derives its natural existence from the cause are of the same nature, then they are called “of one substance.”

3. This term also corrects the error of Sabellius, for it removes the idea of the identity of the hypostases, and introduces in perfection the idea of the Persons. For nothing can be of one substance with itself, but one thing is of one substance with another. The word has therefore an excellent and orthodox use, defining as it does both the proper character of the hypostases, and setting forth the invariability of the nature. And when we are taught that the Son is of the substance of the Father, begotten and not made, let us not fall into the material sense of the relations. For the substance was not separated from the Father and bestowed on the Son; neither did the substance engender by fluxion, nor yet by shooting forth as plants their fruits. The mode of the divine begetting is ineffable and inconceivable by human thought. It is indeed characteristic of poor and carnal intelligence to compare the things that are eternal with the perishing things of time, and to imagine, that as corporeal things beget, so does God in like manner; it is rather our duty to rise to the truth by arguments of the contrary, and to say, that since thus is the mortal, not thus is He who is immortal. We must neither then deny the divine generation, nor contaminate our intelligence with corporeal senses.

4. The Holy Spirit, too, is numbered with the Father and the Son, because He is above creation, and is ranked as we are taught by the words of the Lord in the Gospel, “Go and baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” He who, on the contrary, places the Spirit before the Son, or alleges Him to be older than the Father, resists the ordinance of God, and is a stranger to the sound faith, since he fails to preserve the form of doxology which he has received, but adopts some new fangled device in order to be pleasing to men. It is written “The Spirit is of God,” and if He is of God, how can He be older than that of which He is? And what folly is it not, when there is one Unbegotten, to speak of something else as superior to the Unbegotten? He is not even anterior, for nothing intervenes between Son and Father. If, however, He is not of God but is through Christ, He does not even exist at all. It follows, that this new invention about the order really involves the destruction of the actual existence, and is a denial of the whole faith. It is equally impious to reduce Him to the level of a creature, and to subordinate Him either to Son or to Father, either in time or in rank. These are the points on which I have heard that you are making enquiry. If the Lord grant that we meet I may possibly have more to say on these subjects, and may myself, concerning points which I am investigating, receive satisfactory information from you.

1. My soul is deeply pained at the enormity of the matter on which I write, if for this only, that it has caused general suspicion and talk. But so far it has seemed to me incredible. I hope then that what I am writing about it may be taken by the guilty as medicine, by the innocent as a warning, by the indifferent, in which class I trust none of you may be found, as a testimony. And what is it of which I speak? There is a report that some of you take money from candidates for ordination, and excuse it on grounds of religion. This is indeed worse. If any one does evil under the guise of good he deserves double punishment; because he not only does what is in itself not good, but, so to say, makes good an accomplice in the commission of sin. If the allegation be true, let it be so no more. Let a better state of things begin. To the recipient of the bribe it must be said, as was said by the Apostles to him who was willing to give money to buy the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, “Thy money perish with thee. It is a lighter sin to wish in ignorance to buy, than it is to sell, the gift of God. A sale it was; and if you sell what you received as a free gift you will be deprived of the boon, as though you were yourself sold to Satan. You are obtruding the traffic of the huckster into spiritual things and into the Church where we are entrusted with the body and blood of Christ. These things must not be. And I will mention wherein lies an ingenious contrivance. They think that there is no sin because they take the money not before but after the ordination; but to take is to take at whatever time.

2. I exhort you, then, abandon this gain, or, I would rather say, this approach to Hell. Do not, by defiling your hands with such bribes, render yourselves unfit to celebrate holy mysteries. But forgive me. I began by discrediting; and now I am threatening as though I were convinced. If, after this letter of mine, any one do anything of the kind, he will depart from the altars here and will seek a place where he is able to buy and to sell God’s gift. We and the Churches of God have no such custom. One word more, and I have done. These things come of covetousness. Now covetousness is the root of all evil and is called idolatry. Do not then price idols above Christ for the sake of a little money. Do not imitate Judas and once more betray for a bribe Him who was crucified for us. For alike the lands and the hands of all that make such gain shall be called Aceldama.

I am much distressed that the canons of the Fathers have fallen through, and that the exact discipline of the Church has been banished from among you. I am apprehensive lest, as this indifference grows, the affairs of the Church should, little by little, fall into confusion. According to the ancient custom observed in the Churches of God, ministers in the Church were received after careful examination; the whole of their life was investigated; an enquiry was made as to their being neither railers nor drunkards, not quick to quarrel, keeping their youth in subjection, so as to be able to maintain “the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.” This examination was made by presbyters and deacons living with them. Then they brought them to the Chorepiscopi; and the Chorepiscopi, after receiving the suffrages of the witnesses as to the truth and giving information to the Bishop, so admitted the minister to the sacerdotal order. Now, however, you have quite passed me over; you have not even had the grace to refer to me, and have transferred the whole authority to yourselves. Furthermore, with complete indifference, you have allowed presbyters and deacons to introduce unworthy persons into the Church, just any one they choose, without any previous examination of life and character, by mere favoritism, on the score of relationship or some other tie. The consequence is, that in every village, there are reckoned many ministers, but not one single man worthy of the service of the altars. Of this you yourselves supply proof from your difficulty in finding suitable candidates for election. As, then, I perceive that the evil is gradually reaching a point at which it would be incurable, and especially at this moment when a large number of persons are presenting themselves for the ministry through fear of the conscription, I am constrained to have recourse to the restitution of the canons of the Fathers. I thus order you in writing to send me the roll of the ministers in every village, stating by whom each has been introduced, and what is his mode of life. You have the roll in your own keeping, so that your version can be compared with the documents which are in mine, and no one can insert his own name when he likes. So if any have been introduced by presbyters after the first appointment, let them be rejected, and take their place among the laity. Their examination must then be begun by you over again, and, if they prove worthy, let them be received by your decision. Drive out unworthy men from the Church, and so purge it. For the future, test by examination those who are worthy, and then receive them; but do not reckon them of the number before you have reported to me. Otherwise, distinctly understand that he who is admitted to the ministry without my authority will remain a layman.

I have given patient attention to your letter, and I am astonished that when you are perfectly well able to furnish me with a short and easy defence by taking action at once, you should choose to persist in what is my ground of complaint, and endeavour to cure the incurable by writing a long story about it. I am not the first, Paregorius, nor the only man, to lay down the law that women are not to live with men. Read the canon put forth by our holy Fathers at the Council of Nicaea, which distinctly forbids subintroducts. Unmarried life is honourably distinguished by its being cut off from all female society. If, then, any one, who is known by the outward profession, in reality follows the example of those who live with wives, it is obvious that he only affects the distinction of virginity in name, and does not hold aloof from unbecoming indulgence. You ought to have been all the more ready to submit yourself without difficulty to my demands, in that you allege that you are free from all bodily appetite. I do not suppose that a man of three score years and ten lives with a woman from any such feelings, and I have not decided, as I have decided, on the ground of any crime having been committed. But we have learnt from the Apostle, not to put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in a brother’s way;” and I know that what is done very properly by some, naturally becomes to others an occasion for sin. I have therefore given my order, in obedience to the injunction of the holy Fathers, that you are to separate from the woman. Why then, do you find fault with the Chorepiscopus? What is the good of mentioning ancient ill-will? Why do you blame me for lending an easy ear to slander? Why do you not rather lay the blame on yourself, for not consenting to break off your connexion with the woman? Expel her from your house, and establish her in a monastery. Let her live with virgins, and do you be served by men, that the name of God be not blasphemed in you. Till you have so done, the innumerable arguments, which you use in your letters, will not do you the slightest service. You will die useless, and you will have to give an account to God for your uselessness. If you persist in clinging to your clerical position without correcting your ways, you will be accursed before all the people, and all, who receive you, will be excommunicate throughout the Church.

I naturally forget very easily, and I have had lately many things to do, and so my natural infirmity is increased. I have no doubt, therefore, that you have written to me, although I have no recollection of having received any letter from your excellency; for I am sure you would not state what is not the case. But for there having been no reply, it is not I that am in fault; the guilt lies with him who did not ask for one. Now, however, you have this letter, containing my defence for the past and affording ground for a second greeting. So, when you write to me, do not suppose that you are taking the initiative in another correspondence. You are only discharging your proper obligation in this. For really, although this letter of mine is a return for a previous one of yours, as it is more than twice as bulky, it will fulfil a double purpose. You see to what sophisms my idleness drives me. But, my dear Sir, do not in a few words bring serious charges, indeed the most serious of all. Forgetfulness of one’s friends, and neglect of them arising from high place, are faults which involve every kind of wrong. Do we fail to love according to the commandment of the Lord? Then we lose the distinctive mark imprinted on us. Are we puffed to repletion with empty pride and arrogance? Then we fall into the inevitable condemnation of the devil. If, then, you use these words because you held such sentiments about me, pray that I may flee from the wickedness which you have found in my ways; if, however, your tongue shaped itself to these words, in a kind of inconsiderate conventionality, I shall console myself, and ask you to be good enough to adduce some tangible proof of your allegations. Be well assured of this, that my present anxiety is an occasion to me of humility. I shall begin to forget you, when I cease to know myself. Never, then, think that because a man is a very busy man he is a man of faulty character.

If your holiness only knew the greatness of the happiness you cause me whenever you write to me, I know that you would never have let slip any opportunity of sending me a letter; nay, you would have written me many letters on each occasion, knowing the reward that is kept in store by our loving Lord for the consolation of the afflicted. Everything here is still in a very painful condition, and the thought of your holiness is the only thing that recalls me from my own troubles; a thought made more distinct to me by my communication with you through that letter of yours which is so full of wisdom and grace. When, therefore, I take your letter into my hand, first of all, I look at its size, and I love it all the more for being so big; then, as I read it, I rejoice over every word I find in it; as I draw near the end I begin to feel sad; so good is every word that I read, in what you write. The overflowing of a good heart is good. Should I, however, be permitted, in answer to your prayers, while I live on this earth, to meet you face to face, and to enjoy the profitable instruction of your living voice, or any aids to help me in the life that now is, or that which is to come, I should count this indeed the best of blessings, a prelude to the mercy of God. I should, ere now, have adhered to this intention, had I not been prevented by true and loving brothers. I have told my brother Theophrastus to make a detailed report to you of matters, as to which I do not commit my intentions to writing.

How am I to dispute with you in writing? How can I lay hold of you satisfactorily, with all your simplicity? Tell me; who ever falls a third time into the same nets? Who ever gets a third time into the same snare? Even a brute beast would find it difficult to do so. You forged one letter, and brought it me as though it came from our right reverend uncle the bishop, trying to deceive me, I have no idea why. I received it as a letter written by the bishop and delivered by you. Why should I not? I was delighted; I shewed it to many of my friends; I thanked God. The forgery was found out, on the bishop’s repudiating it in person. I was thoroughly ashamed; covered as I was with the disgrace of cunning trickery and lies, I prayed that the earth might open for me. Then they gave me a second letter, as sent by the bishop himself by the hands of your servant Asterius. Even this second had not really been sent by the bishop, as my very reverend brother Anthimus has told me. Now Adamantius has come bringing me a third. How ought I to receive a letter carried by you or yours? I might have prayed to have a heart of stone, so as neither to remember the past, nor to feel the present; so as to bear every blow, like cattle, with bowed head. But what am I to think, now that, after my first and second experience, I can admit nothing without positive proof? Thus I write attacking your simplicity, which I see plainly to be neither what generally becomes a Christian man, nor is appropriate to the present emergency; I write that, at least for the future, you may take care of yourself and spare me. I must speak to you with all freedom, and I tell you that you are an unworthy minister of things so great. However, whoever be the writer of the letter, I have answered as is fit . Whether, then, you yourself are experimenting on me, or whether really the letter which you have sent is one which you have received from the bishops, you have my answer. At such a time as this you ought to have borne in mind that you are my brother, and have not yet forgotten the ties of nature, and do not regard me in the light of an enemy, for I have entered on a life which is wearing out my strength, and is so far beyond my powers that it is injuring even my soul. Yet for all this, as you have determined to declare war against me, you ought to have come to me and shared my troubles. For it is said, “Brethren and help are against time of trouble.” If the right reverend bishops are really willing to meet me, let them make known to me a place and time, and let them invite me by their own men. I do not refuse to meet my own uncle, but I shall not do so unless the invitation reaches me in due and proper form.

1. “I have long time holden my peace. Am I to hold my peace for ever? Shall I still further endure to enforce against myself the hardest punishment of silence, by neither writing myself, nor receiving any statement from another? By holding fast to this stern determination up to the present time I am able to apply to myself the prophet’s words, “I endure patiently like travailing woman.” Yet I am ever longing for communication either in person or by letter, and ever, for my own sins’ sake, missing it. For I cannot imagine any reason for what is happening, other than what I am convinced is the true one, that by being cut off from your love I am expiating old sins; if indeed I am not wrong in using such a phrase as “cut off” in your case, from any one, much less from me, to whom you have always been as a father. Now my sin, like some dense cloud overshadowing me, has made me forget all this. When I reflect that the only result to me of what is going on is sorrow, how can I attribute it to anything but to my own wickedness? But if events are to be traced to sins, be this the end of my troubles; if there was any intended discipline in it, then your object has been very completely attained, for the punishment has been going on for a long time; so I groan no longer, but am the first to break silence, and beseech you to remember both me and yourself who, to a greater degree than our relationship might have demanded, have shewn me strong affection all my life. Now, I implore you, show kindness to the city for my sake. Do not on my account alienate yourself from it.

2. If, then, there is any consolation in Christ, any fellowship of the Spirit, any mercy and pity, fulfil my prayer. Put a stop to my depression. Let there be a beginning of brighter things for the future. Be yourself a leader to others in the road to all that is best, and follow no one else in the way to what is wrong. Never was any feature so characteristic of any one’s body as gentleness and peace are of your soul. It were well becoming such a one as you are to draw all others to yourself, and to cause all who come near you to be permeated with the goodness of your nature, as with the fragrance of myrrh. For though there be a certain amount of opposition now, nevertheless ere long there will be a recognition of the blessings of peace. So long, however, as room is found for the calumnies that are bred of dissension, suspicion is sure to grow from worse to worse. It is most certainly unbecoming for the rest to take no notice of me, but it is especially unbecoming in your excellency. If I am wrong I shall be all the better for being rebuked. This is impossible if we never meet. But, if I am doing no wrong, for what am I disliked? So much I offer in my own defence.

3. As to what the Churches might say in their own behalf, perhaps it is better for me to be silent: they reap the result of our disagreement, and it is not to their gain. I am not speaking to indulge my grief but to put a stop to it. And your intelligence, I am sure, has suffered nothing to escape you. You will yourself be better able to discern and to tell to others points of far greater importance than I can conceive. You saw the mischief done to the Churches before I did; and you are grieving more than I am, for you have long learnt from the Lord not to despise even the least. And now the mischief is not confined to one or two, but whole cities and peoples are sharers in my calamities. What need to tell what kind of report will spread about me even beyond our borders? It were well for you, large hearted as you are, to leave the love of strife to others; nay rather, if it be possible, to root it from their hearts, while you yourself vanquish what is grievous by endurance. Any angry man can defend himself, but to rise above the actual anger belongs only to you, and any one as good as you, if such there be. One thing I will not say, that he who has a grudge against me is letting his anger fall on the innocent. Do then comfort my soul by coming to me, or by a letter, or by inviting me to come to you, or by some means or other. My prayer is that your piety may be seen in the Church and that you may heal at once me and the people, both by the sight of you and by the words of your good grace. If this be possible it is best; if you determine on any other course I shall willingly accept it. Only accede to my entreaty that you will give me distinct information as to what your wisdom decides.

Formerly I was glad to see my brother. Why not, since he is my brother and such a brother? Now I have received him on his coming to visit me with the same feelings, and have lost none of my affection. God forbid that I should ever so feel as to forget the ties of nature and be at war with those who are near and dear to me. I have found his presence a comfort in my bodily sickness and the other troubles of my soul, and I have been especially delighted at the letter which he has brought me from your excellency. For a long time I have been hoping that it would come, for this only reason, that I need not add to my life any doleful episode of quarrel between kith and kin, sure to give pleasure to foes and sorrow to friends, and to be displeasing to God, Who has laid down perfect love as the distinctive characteristic of His disciples. So I reply, as I am indeed bound, with an earnest request for your prayers for me, and your care for me in all things, as your relative. Since I, from want of information, cannot clearly understand the meaning of what is going on, I have judged it right to accept the truth of the account which you are so good as to give me. It is for you of your wisdom to settle the rest, our meeting with one another, the fitting time and a convenient place. If your reverence really does not disdain to come down to my lowliness and to have speech with me, whether you wish the interview to take place in the presence of others or in private, I shall make no objection, for I have once for all made up my mind to submit to you in love, and to carry out, without exception, what your reverence enjoins on me for the glory of God.

I have not laid my reverend brother under the necessity of reporting anything to you by word of mouth, because on the former occasion what he said was not borne out by facts.

I have read the letter of your holiness, in which you have expressed your distress at the unhappy governor of Libya. I am grieved that my own country should have given birth to and nurtured such vices. I am grieved too that Libya, a neighbouring country, should suffer from our evils, and should have been delivered to the inhumanity of a man whose life is marked at once by cruelty and crime. This however is only in accordance with the wisdom of the Preacher, “Woe to thee O land when thy King is a child;” (a still further touch of trouble) and whose “Princes” do not “eat” after night but revel at mid-day, raging after other men’s wives with less understanding than brute beasts. This man must surely look for the scourges of the righteous Judge, repaid him in exact requital for those which he himself has previously inflicted on the saints. Notice has been given to my Church in accordance with the letter of your reverence, and he shall be held by all as abominable, cut off from fire, water and shelter, if indeed in the case of men so possessed there is any use in general and unanimous condemnation. Notoriety is enough for him, and your own letter, which has been read in all directions, for I shall not fail to show it to all his friends and relatives. Assuredly, even if retribution does not reach him at once, as it did Pharaoh, certainly it will bring on him hereafter a heavy and hard requital.

Following an ancient custom, which has obtained for many years, and at the same time shewing you love in God, which is the fruit of the Spirit, I now, my pious friends, address this letter to you. I feel with you at once in your grief at the event which has befallen you, and in your anxiety at the matter which you have in hand. Concerning all these troubles I can only say, that an occasion is given us to look to the injunctions of the Apostle, and not to sorrow “even as others which have no hope.” I do not mean that we should be insensible to the loss we have suffered, but that we should not succumb to our sorrow, while we count the Pastor happy in his end. He has died in a ripe old age, and has found his rest in the great honour given him by his Lord.

As to the future I have this recommendation to give you. You must now lay aside all mourning; you must come to yourselves; you must rise to the necessary management of the Church; to the end that the holy God may give heed to His own little flock, and may grant you a shepherd in accordance with His own will, who may wisely feed you.

The wise man, even if he dwells far away, even if I never set eyes on him, I count a friend. So says the tragedian Euripides. And so, if, though I have never had the pleasure of meeting your excellency in person, I speak of myself as a familiar friend, pray do not set this down to mere empty compliment. Common report, which loudly proclaims your universal benevolence, is, in this instance, the promoter of friendship. Indeed since I met the highly respectable Elpidius, I have known you as well, and I have been as completely captured by you, as though I had long lived with you and had practical experience of your excellent qualities. For he did not cease telling me about you, mentioning one by one your magnanimity, your exalted sentiments, your mild manners, your skill in business, intelligence, dignity tempered by cheerfulness, and eloquence. All the other points that he enumerated in his long conversation with me it is impossible for me to write to you, without extending my letter beyond all reasonable bounds. How can I fail to love such a man? How could I put such restraint upon myself as not loudly to proclaim what I feel? Accept then, most excellent Sir, the greeting which I send you, for it is inspired by true and unfeigned friendship. I abhor all servile compliment. Pray keep me enrolled in the list of your friends, and, by frequently writing to me, bring yourself before me and comfort me in your absence.

From the beginning I have had many points in common with your excellency, your love of letters, everywhere reported by all who have experienced it, and our old friendship with the admirable Terentius. But since that most excellent man, who is to me all that friendship could require, my worthy brother Elpidius, has met me, and told me all your good qualities, (and who more capable than he at once to perceive a man’s virtue and to describe it?) he has kindled in me such a desire to see you, that I pray that you may one day visit me in my old home, that I may enjoy your good qualities, not merely by hearing of them, but by actual experience.

If I continue to insist on the privileges to which my superior age entitles me, and wait for you to take the initiative in communication , and if you, my friend, wish to adhere more persistently to your evil counsel of inaction, what end will there be to our silence? However, where friendship is involved, to be defeated is in my opinion to win, and so I am quite ready to gave you precedence, and retire from the contest as to which should maintain his own opinion. I have been the first to betake myself to writing, because I know that “charity beareth all things . . . endureth all things . . . seeketh not her own” and so “never faileth.” He who subjects himself to his neighbour in love can never be humiliated. I do beg you, then, at all events for the future, show the first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, Love; away with the angry man’s sullenness which you are showing me by your silence, and recover joy in your heart, peace with the brothers who are of one mind with you, and zeal and anxiety for the continued safety of the Churches of the Lord. If I were not to make as strenuous efforts on behalf of the Churches as the opponents of sound doctrine make to subvert and utterly destroy them, you may be quite sure that there is nothing to prevent the truth from being swept away and destroyed by its enemies, and my being involved in the condemnation, for not shewing all possible anxiety for the unity of the Churches, with all zeal and eagerness in mutual unanimity and godly agreement. I exhort you then, drive out of your mind the idea that you need communion with no one else. To cut one’s self off from connexion with the brethren is not the mark of one who is walking by love, nor yet the fulfilling of the commandment of Christ. At the same time I do wish you, with all your good intentions, to take into account that the calamities of the war which are now all round about us may one day be at our own doors, and if we too, like all the rest, have our share of outrage, we shall not find any even to sympathise with us, because in the hour of our prosperity we refused to give our share of sympathy to the wronged.

No one, I feel sure, is more distressed at the present condition, or, rather to speak more truly, ill condition of the Churches than your excellency; for you compare the present with the past, and take into account how great a change has come about. You are well aware that if no check is put to the swift deterioration which we are witnessing, there will soon be nothing to prevent the complete transformation of the Churches. And if the decay of the Churches seems so pitiful to me, what must—so I have often in my lonely musings reflected—be the feelings of one who has known, by experience, the old tranquillity of the Churches of the Lord, and their one mind about the faith? But as your excellency feels most deeply this distress, it seems to me only becoming that your wisdom should be more strongly moved to interest itself in the Church’s behalf. I for my part have long been aware, so far as my moderate intelligence has been able to judge of current events, that the one way of safety for the Churches of the East lies in their having the sympathy of the bishops of the West. For if only those bishops liked to show the same energy on behalf of the Christians sojourning in our part of the world which they have shewn in the case of one or two of the men convicted of breaches of orthodoxy in the West, our common interests would probably reap no small benefit, our sovereigns treating the authority of the people with respect, and the laity in all quarters unhesitatingly following them. But, to carry out these objects, who has more capacity than yourself, with your intelligence and prudence? Who is keener to see the needful course to be taken? Who has more practical experience in working a profitable policy? Who feels more deeply the troubles of the brethren? What through all the West is more honoured than your venerable gray hairs? O most honoured father, leave behind you some memorial worthy of your life and character. By this one act crown your innumerable efforts on behalf of true religion. Despatch from the holy Church placed under your care men of ability in sound doctrine to the bishops in the West. Recount to them the troubles whereby we are beset. Suggest some mode of relief. Be a Samuel to the Churches. Share the grief of the beleaguered people. Offer prayers for peace. Ask favour from the Lord, that He will send some memorial of peace to the Churches. I know how weak letters are to move men in matters of such importance; but you yourself no more need exhortation from others than the noblest athletes need the children’s cheers. It is not as though I were instructing one in ignorance; I am only giving a new impulse to one whose energies are already roused. For the rest of the affairs of the East perhaps you may need the aid of more, and we must wait for the Westerns. But plainly the discipline of the Church of Antioch depends upon your reverence’s being able to control some, to reduce others to silence, and to restore strength to the Church by concord. No one knows better than you do, that, like all wise physicians, you ought to begin your treatment in the most vital parts, and what part is more vital to the Churches throughout the world than Antioch? Only let Antioch be restored to harmony, and nothing will stand in the way of her supplying, as a healthy head, soundness to all the body. Truly the diseases of that city, which has not only been cut asunder by heretics, but is torn in pieces by men who say that they are of one mind with one another, stand in need of your wisdom and evangelic sympathy. To unite the sundered parts again, and bring about the harmony of one body, belongs to Him alone Who by His ineffable power grants even to the dry bones to come back again to sinews and flesh. But the Lord always works His mighty works by means of them that are worthy of Him. Once again, in this case too, we trust that the ministry of matters so important may beseem your excellency, with the result that you will lay the tempest of the people, do away with the party superiorities, and subject all to one another in love, and give back to the Church her ancient strength.

In my former letter it seemed to me sufficient to point out to your excellency, that all that portion of the people of the holy Church of Antioch who are sound in the faith, ought to be brought to concord and unity. My object was to make it plain that the sections, now divided into several parts, ought to be united under the God-beloved bishop Meletius. Now the same beloved deacon, Dorotheus, has requested a more distinct statement on these subjects, and I am therefore constrained to point out that it is the prayer of the whole East, and the earnest desire of one who, like myself, is so wholly united to him, to see him in authority over the Churches of the Lord. He is a man of unimpeachable faith; his manner of life is incomparably excellent, he stands at the head, so to say, of the whole body of the Church, and all else are mere disjointed members. On every ground, then, it is necessary as well as advantageous, that the rest should be united with him, just as smaller streams with great ones. About the rest, however, a certain amount of management is needed, befitting their position, and likely to pacify the people. This is in keeping with your own wisdom, and with your famous readiness and energy. It has however by no means escaped your intelligence, that this same course of procedure has already recommended itself to the Westerns who are in agreement with you, as I learn from the letters brought to me by the blessed Silvanus.

I wished to detain the reverend brother Dorotheus, the deacon, so long at my side, with the object of keeping him until the end of the negociations, and so by him acquainting your excellency with every detail. But day after day went by; the delay was becoming protracted; now, the moment that some plan, so far as is possible in my difficulties, has occurred to me concerning the course to be taken, I send him to approach your holiness, to make a personal report to you on all the circumstances, and show you my memorandum, to the end that, if what has occurred to me seems to you to be likely to be of service, your excellency may urge on its accomplishment. To be brief, the opinion has prevailed that it is best for this our brother Dorotheus to travel to Rome, to move some of the Italians to undertake a voyage by sea to visit us, that they may avoid all who would put difficulties in their way. My reason for this course is that I see that those, who are all powerful with the Emperor, are neither willing nor able to make any suggestion to him about the exiled, but only count it so much to the good that they see no worse thing befalling the Churches. If, then, my plan seems good also to your prudence, you will be good enough both to indite letters and dictate memoranda as to the points on which he must enlarge, and as to whom he had better address himself. And so that your despatches may have weight and authority, you will add all those who share your sentiments, even though they are not on the spot. Here all is uncertain; Euippius has arrived, but so far has made no sign. However, he and those who think with him from the Armenian Tetrapolis and Cilicia are threatening a tumultuous meeting.

1. As time moves on, it continually confirms the opinion which I have long held of your holiness; or rather that opinion is strengthened by the daily course of events. Most men are indeed satisfied with observing, each one, what lies especially within his own province; not thus is it with you, but your anxiety for all the Churches is no less than that which you feel for the Church that has been especially entrusted to you by our common Lord; inasmuch as you leave no interval in speaking, exhorting, writing, and despatching emissaries, who from time to time give the best advice in each emergency as it arises. Now, from the sacred ranks of your clergy, you have sent forth the venerable brother Peter, whom I have welcomed with great joy. I have also approved of the good object of his journey, which he manifests in accordance with the commands of your excellency, in effecting reconciliation where he finds opposition, and bringing about union instead of division. With the object of offering some contribution to the action which is being taken in this matter, I have thought that I could not make a more fitting beginning than by having recourse to your excellency, as to the head and chief of all, and treating you as alike adviser and commander in the enterprise. I have therefore determined to send to your reverence our brother Dorotheus the deacon, of the Church under the right honourable bishop Meletius, being one who at once is an energetic supporter of the orthodox faith, and is earnestly desirous of seeing the peace of the Churches. The results, I hope, will be, that, following your suggestions (which you are able to make with the less likelihood of failure, both from your age and your experience in affairs, and because you have a greater measure than all others of the aid of the Spirit), he may thus attempt the achievement of our objects. You will welcome him, I am sure, and will look upon him with friendly eyes. You will strengthen him by the help of your prayers; you will give him a letter as provision by the way; you will grant him, as companions, some of the good men and true that you have about you; so you will speed him on the road to what is before him. It has seemed to me to be desirable to send a letter to the bishop of Rome, begging him to examine our condition, and since there are difficulties in the way of representatives being sent from the West by a general synodical decree, to advise him to exercise his own personal authority in the matter by choosing suitable persons to sustain the labours of a journey,—suitable, too, by gentleness and firmness of character, to correct the unruly among us here; able to speak with proper reserve and appropriateness, and thoroughly well acquainted with all that has been effected after Ariminum to undo the violent measures adopted there. I should advise that, without any one knowing anything about it, they should travel hither, attracting as little attention as possible, by the sea, with the object of escaping the notice of the enemies of peace.

2. A point also that is insisted upon by some of those in these parts, very necessarily, as is plain even to myself, is that they should drive away the heresy of Marcellus, as grievous and injurious and opposed to the sound faith. For up to this time, in all the letters which they write, they are constant in thoroughly anathematizing the ill-famed Arius and in repudiating him from the Churches. But they attach no blame to Marcellus, who propounded a heresy diametrically opposite to that of Arius, and impiously attacked the very existence of the Only begotten Godhead, and erroneously understood the term “Word.” He grants indeed that the Only begotten was called “Word,” on coming forth at need and in season, but states that He returned again to Him whence He had come forth, and had no existence before His coming forth, nor hypostasis after His return. The books in my possession which contain his unrighteous writings exist as a proof of what I say. Nevertheless they nowhere openly condemned him, and are to this extent culpable that, being from the first in ignorance of the truth, they received him into the communion of the Church. The present state of affairs makes it specially necessary that attention should be called to him, so that those who seek for their opportunity, may be prevented from getting it, from the fact of sound men being united to your holiness, and all who are lame in the true faith may be openly known; that so we may know who are on our side, and may not struggle, as in a night battle, without being able to distinguish between friends and foes. Only I do beseech you that the deacon, whom I have mentioned, be despatched by the earliest possible packet, that at least some of the ends which we pray for may be accomplished during the ensuing year. One thing, however, even before I mention it, you quite understand and I am sure will give heed to, that, when they come, if God will, they must not let loose schisms among the Churches; and, even though they find some who have personal reasons for mutual differences, they must leave no means untried to unite all who are of the same way of thinking. For we are bound to regard the interests of peace as paramount, and that first of all attention be paid to the Church at Antioch, lest the sound portion of it grow diseased through division on personal grounds. But you will yourself give more complete attention to all these matters, so soon as, by the blessing of God, you find every one entrusting to you the responsibility of securing the peace of the Church.

To renew laws of ancient love, and once again to restore to vigorous life that heavenly and saving gift of Christ which in course of time has withered away, the peace, I mean, of the Fathers, is a labour necessary indeed and profitable to me, but pleasant too, as I am sure it will seem to your Christ-loving disposition. For what could be more delightful than to behold all, who are separated by distances so vast, bound together by the union effected by love into one harmony of members in Christ’s body? Nearly all the East (I include under this name all the regions from Illyricum to Egypt) is being agitated, right honourable father, by a terrible storm and tempest. The old heresy, sown by Arius the enemy of the truth, has now boldly and unblushingly reappeared. Like some sour root, it is producing its deadly fruit and is prevailing. The reason of this is, that in every district the champions of right doctrine have been exiled from their Churches by calumny and outrage, and the control of affairs has been handed over to men who are leading captive the souls of the simpler brethren. I have looked upon the visit of your mercifulness as the only possible solution of our difficulties. Ever in the past I have been consoled by your extraordinary affection; and for a short time my heart was cheered by the gratifying report that we shall be visited by you. But, as I was disappointed, I have been constrained to beseech you by letter to be moved to help us, and to send some of those, who are like minded with us, either to conciliate the dissentient and bring back the Churches of God into friendly union, or at all events to make you see more plainly who are responsible for the unsettled state in which we are, that it may be obvious to you for the future with whom it befits you to be in communion. In this I am by no means making any novel request, but am only asking what has been customary in the case of men who, before our own day, were blessed and dear to God, and conspicuously in your own case. For I well remember learning from the answers made by our fathers when asked, and from documents still preserved among us, that the illustrious and blessed bishop Dionysius, conspicuous in your see as well for soundness of faith as for all other virtues, visited by letter my Church of Caesarea, and by letter exhorted our fathers, and sent men to ransom our brethren from captivity. But now our condition is yet more painful and gloomy and needs more careful treatment. We are lamenting no mere overthrow of earthly buildings, but the capture of Churches; what we see before us is no mere bodily slavery, but a carrying away of souls into captivity, perpetrated day by day by the champions of heresy. Should you not, even now, be moved to succour us, ere long all will have fallen under the dominion of the heresy, and you will find none left to whom you may hold out your hand.

1. I have received the letter of your holiness, by the most reverend brother Helenius, and what you have intimated he has told me in plain terms. How I felt on hearing it, you cannot doubt at all. However, since I have determined that my affection for you shall outweigh my pain, whatever it is, I have accepted it as I ought to do, and I pray the holy God, that my remaining days or hours may be as carefully conducted in their disposition towards you as they have been in past time, during which, my conscience tells me, I have been wanting to you in nothing small or great. [But that the man who boasts that he is now just beginning to take a look at the life of Christians, and thinks he will get some credit by having something to do with me, should invent what he has not heard, and narrate what he has never experienced, is not at all surprising. What is surprising and extraordinary is that he has got my best friends among the brethren at Nazianzus to listen to him; and not only to listen to him, but as it seems, to take in what he says. On most grounds it might be surprising that the slanderer is of such a character, and that I am the victim, but these troublous times have taught us to bear everything with patience. Slights greater than this have, for my sins, long been things of common occurrence with me. I have never yet given this man’s brethren any evidence of my sentiments about God, and I have no answer to make now. Men who are not convinced by long experience are not likely to be convinced by a short letter. If the former is enough let the charges of the slanderers be counted as idle tales. But if I give license to unbridled mouths, and uninstructed hearts, to talk about whom they will, all the while keeping my ears ready to listen, I shall not be alone in hearing what is said by other people; they will have to hear what I have to say.]

2. I know what has led to all this, and have urged every topic to hinder it; but now I am sick of the subject, and will say no more about it, I mean our little intercourse. For had we kept our old promise to each other, and had due regard to the claims which the Churches have on us, we should have been the greater part of the year together; and then there would have been no opening for these calumniators. Pray have nothing to say to them; let me persuade you to come here and assist me in my labours, particularly in my contest with the individual who is now assailing me. Your very appearance will have the effect of stopping him; directly you show these disturbers of our home that you will, by God’s blessing, place yourself at the head of our party, you will break up their cabal, and you will shut every unjust mouth that speaketh unrighteousness against God. And thus facts will show who are your followers in good, and who are the halters and cowardly betrayers of the word of truth. If, however, the Church be betrayed, why then I shall care little to set men right about myself, by means of words, who account of me as men would naturally account who have not yet learned to measure themselves. Perhaps, in a short time, by God’s grace, I shall be able to refute their slanders by very deed, for it seems likely that I shall have soon to suffer somewhat for the truth’s sake more than usual; the best I can expect is banishment, or, if this hope fails, after all Christ’s judgment-seat is not far distant. [If then you ask for a meeting for the Churches’ sake, I am ready to betake myself whithersoever you invite me. But if it is only a question of refuting these slanders, I really have no time to reply to them.]

I know your affection for me, and your zeal for all that is good. I am exceedingly anxious to pacify my very dear son Callisthenes, and I thought that if I could associate you with me in this I might more easily achieve my object. Callisthenes is very much annoyed at the conduct of Eustochius, and he has very good ground for being so. He charges the household of Eustochius with impudence and violence against himself. I am begging him to be propitiated, satisfied with the fright which he has given the impudent fellows and their master, and to forgive, and end the quarrel. Thus two results will follow; he will win the respect of men, and praise with God, if only he will combine forbearance with threats. If you have any friendship and intimacy with him, pray ask this favour of him, and, if you know any in the town likely to be able to move him, get them to act with you, and tell them that it will be specially gratifying to me. Send back the deacon so soon as his commission is performed. After men have fled for refuge to me, I should be ashamed not to be able to be of any use to them.

1. When I had read your letter I thanked God; first, that I been greeted by a man desirous of doing me honour, for truly I highly estimate any intercourse with persons of high merit; secondly, with pleasure at the thought of being remembered. For a letter is a sign of remembrance; and when I had received yours and learnt its contents I was astonished to find how, as all were agreed, it paid me the respect due to a father from a son. That a man in the heat of anger and indignation, eager to punish those who had annoyed him, should drop more than half his vehemence and give me authority to decide the matter, caused me to feel such joy as I might over a son in the spirit. In return, what remains for me but to pray for all blessings for you? May you be a delight to your friends, a terror to your foes, an object of respect to all, to the end that any who fall short in their duty to you may, when they learn how gentle you are, only blame themselves for having wronged one of such a character as yourself!

2. I should be very glad to know the object which your goodness has in view, in ordering the servants to be conveyed to the spot where they were guilty of their disorderly conduct. If you come yourself, and exact in person the punishment due for the offence, the slaves shall be there. What other course is possible if you have made up your mind? Only that I do not know what further favour I shall have received, if I shall have failed to get the boys off their punishment. But if business detain you on the way, who is to receive the fellows there? Who is to punish them in your stead? But if you have made up your mind to meet them yourself, and this is quite determined on, tell them to halt at Sasima, and there show the extent of your gentleness and magnanimity. After having your assailants in your own power, and so showing them that your dignity is not to be lightly esteemed, let them go scot free, as I urged you in my former letter. So you will confer a favour on me, and will receive the requital of your good deed from God.

3. I speak in this way, not because the business ought so to be ended, but as a concession to your agitated feelings, and in fear lest somewhat of your wrath may remain still raw. When a man’s eyes are inflamed the softest application seems painful, and I am afraid lest what I say may rather irritate than calm you. What would really be most becoming, bringing great credit to you, and no little cause of honour to me with my friends and contemporaries, would be for you to leave the punishment to me. And although you have sworn to deliver them to execution as the law enjoins, my rebuke is still of no less value as a punishment, nor is the divine law of less account than the laws current in the world. But it will be possible for them, by being punished here by our laws, wherein too lies your own hope of salvation, both to release you from your oath and to undergo a penalty commensurate with their faults.

But once more I am making my letter too long. In the very earnest desire to persuade you I cannot bear to leave unsaid any of the pleas which occur to me, and I am much afraid lest my entreaty should prove ineffectual from my failing to say all that may convey my meaning. Now, true and honoured son of the Church, confirm the hopes which I have of you; prove true all the testimony unanimously given to your placability and gentleness. Give orders to the soldier to leave me without delay; he is now as tiresome and rude as he can well be; he evidently prefers giving no cause of annoyance to you to making all of us here his close friends.

1. How high do you suppose one to prize the pleasure of our meeting one another once again? How delightful to spend longer time with you so as to enjoy all your good qualities! If powerful proof is given of culture in seeing many men’s cities and knowing many men’s ways, such I am sure is quickly given in your society. For what is the difference between seeing many men singly or one who has gained experience of all together? I should say that there is an immense superiority in that which gives us the knowledge of good and beautiful things without trouble, and puts within our reach instruction in virtue, pure from all admixture of evil. Is there question of noble deed; of words worth handing down; of institutions of men of superhuman excellence? All are treasured in the store house of your mind. Not then, would I pray, that I might listen to you, like Alcinous to Ulysses, only for a year, but throughout all my life; and to this end I would pray that my life might be long, even though my state were no easy one. Why, then, am I now writing when I ought to be coming to see you? Because my country in her troubles calls me irresistibly to her side. You know, my friend, how she suffers. She is torn in pieces like Pentheus by veritable Maenads, daemons. They are dividing her, and dividing her again, like bad surgeons who, in their ignorance, make wounds worse. Suffering as she is from this dissection, it remains for me to tend her like a sick patient. So the Caesareans have urgently appealed to me by letter, and I must go, not as though I could be of any help, but to avoid any blame of neglect. You know how ready men in difficulties are to hope; and ready too, I ween, to find fault, always charging their troubles on what has been left undone.

2. Yet for this very reason I ought to have come to see you, and to have told you my mind, or rather to implore you to bethink you of some strong measure worthy of your wisdom; not to turn aside from my country falling on her knees, but to betake yourself to the Court, and, with the boldness which is all your own, not to let them suppose that they own two provinces instead of one. They have not imported the second from some other part of the world, but have acted somewhat in the same way in which some owner of horse or ox might act, who should cut it in two, and then think that he had two instead of one, instead of failing to make two and destroying the one he had. Tell the Emperor and his ministers that they are not after this fashion increasing the empire, for power lies not in number but in condition. I am sure that now men are neglecting the course of events, some, possibly, from ignorance of the truth, some from their being unwilling to say anything offensive, some because it does not immediately concern them. The course likely to be most beneficial, and worthy of your high principles, would be for you, if possible, to approach the Emperor in person. If this is difficult both on account of the season of the year and of your age, of which, as you say, inactivity is the foster brother, at all events you need have no difficulty in writing. If you thus give our country the aid of a letter, you will first of all have the satisfaction of knowing that you have left nothing undone that was in your power, and further, by showing sympathy, if only in appearance, you will give the patient much comfort. Would only that it were possible for you to come yourself among us and actually see our deplorable condition! Thus, perhaps, stirred by the plain evidence before you, you might have spoken in terms worthy alike of your own magnanimity and of the affliction of Caesarea. But do not withhold belief from what I am telling you. Verily we want some Simonides, or other like poet, to lament our troubles from actual experience. But why name Simonides? I should rather mention AEschylus, or any other who has set forth a great calamity in words like his, and uttered lamentation with a mighty voice.

3. Now we have no more meetings, no more debates, no more gatherings of wise men in the Forum, nothing more of all that made our city famous. In our Forum nowadays it would be stranger for a learned or eloquent man to put in an appearance, than it would for men, shewing a brand of iniquity or unclean hands, to have presented themselves in Athens of old. Instead of them we have the imported boorishness of Massagetae and Scythians. And only one noise is heard of drivers of bargains, and losers of bargains, and of fellows under the lash. On either hand the porticoes resound with doleful echoes, as though they were uttering a natural and proper sound in groaning at what is going on. Our distress prevents our paying any attention to locked gymnasia and nights when no torch is lighted. There is no small danger lest, our magistrates being removed, everything crash down together as with fallen props. What words can adequately describe our calamities? Some have fled into exile, a considerable portion of our senate, and that not the least valuable, prefering perpetual banishment to Podandus. When I mention Podandus, suppose me to mean the Spartan Ceadas or any natural pit that you may have seen, spots breathing a noxious vapour, to which some have involuntarily given the name Charonian. Picture to yourself that the evils of Podandus are a match for such a place. So, of three parts, some have left their homes and are in exile, wives and hearth and all; some are being led away like captives, the majority of the best men in the city, a piteous spectacle to their friends, fulfilling their enemies’ prayers; if, that is, any one has ever been found to call down so dire a curse upon our heads. A third division yet remains: these, unable to endure abandonment by their old companions, and at the same time unable to provide for themselves, have to hate their very lives.

This is what I implore you to make known everywhere with an eloquence all your own, and that righteous boldness of speech which your manner of life gives you. One thing distinctly state; that, unless the authorities soon change their counsels, they will find none left on whom to exercise their clemency. You will either prove some help to the state, or at least you will have done as Solon did, who, when he was unable to defend his abandoned fellow citizens on the capture of the Acropolis, put on his armour, and sat down before the gates, thus making it plain by this guise that he was no party to what was going on. Of one thing I am assured, even though at the present moment there may be some who do not approve of your advice, the day is not far distant when they will give you the greatest credit for benevolence and sagacity, because they see events corresponding with your prediction.

You have many qualities which raise you above the common run of men, but nothing is more distinctly characteristic of you than your zeal for your country. Thus you, who have risen to such a height as to become illustrious throughout all the world, pay a righteous recompense to the land that gave you birth. Yet she, your mother city, who bore you and nursed you, has fallen into the incredible condition of ancient story; and no one visiting Caesarea; not even those most familiar with her, would recognise her as she is; to such complete abandonment has she been suddenly transformed, many of her magistrates having been previously removed, and now nearly all of them transferred to Podandus. The remainder, torn from these like mutilated extremities, have themselves fallen into complete despair, and have caused such a general weight of despondency, that the population of the city is now but scanty; the place looks like a desert, a piteous spectacle to all who love it, and a cause for delight and encouragement to all who have long been plotting for our fall. Who then will reach out a hand to help us? Who will drop a tear of pity over our faith? You have sympathised with a stranger city in like distress; will not your kindly excellency feel for her who gave you birth? If you have any influence, show it in our present need. Certainly you have great help from God, Who has never abandoned you, and has given you many proofs of His kindness. Only be willing to exert yourself in our behalf, and use all the influence you have for the succour of your fellow citizens.

The greatness of the calamities, which have befallen our native city, did seem likely to compel me to travel in person to the court, and there to relate, both to your excellency and to all those who are most influential in affairs, the dejected state in which Caesarea is lying. But I am kept here alike by ill-health and by the care of the Churches. In the meantime, therefore, I hasten to tell your lordship our troubles by letter, and to acquaint you that never ship, drowned in sea by furious winds, so suddenly disappeared, never city shattered by earthquake or overwhelmed by flood, so swiftly vanished out of sight, as our city, engulfed by this new constitution, has gone utterly to ruin. Our misfortunes have passed into a tale. Our institutions are a thing of the past; and all our men of high civil rank, in despair at what has happened to our magistrates, have left their homes in the city and are wandering about the country. There is a break therefore in the necessary conduct of affairs, and the city, which ere now gloried both in men of learning and in others who abound in opulent towns, has become a most unseemly spectacle. One only consolation have we left in our troubles, and that is to groan over our misfortunes to your excellency and to implore you, if you can, to reach out the helping hand to Caesarea who falls on her knees before you. How indeed you may be able to aid us I am not myself able to explain; but I am sure that to you, with all your intelligence, it will be easy to discover the means, and not difficult, through the power given you by God, to use them when they are found.

One good thing we have certainly gained from the government of the great Therasius and that is that you have frequently paid us a visit. Now, alas! we have lost our governor, and we are deprived of this good thing too. But since the boons once given us by God remain immovable, and, although we are parted in body, abide fixed by memory in the souls of each of us, let us constantly write, and communicate our needs to one another. And this we may well do at the present moment, when the storm for a brief space has cried a truce. I trust that you will not part from the admirable Therasius, for I think that it is very becoming to share his great anxieties, and I am delighted at the opportunity given you both of seeing your friends and of being seen by them. I have much to say about many things, but I put it off till we meet, for it is, I think, hardly safe to entrust matters of such importance to letters.

I have not failed to observe the interest you have shown in our venerable friend Elpidius; and how with your usual intelligence you have given the prefect an opportunity of showing his kindness. What I am now writing to ask you is to make this favour complete and suggest to the prefect that he should by a particular order set over our city the man who is full of all possible care for the public interests. You will therefore have many admirable reasons to urge upon the prefect for his ordering Elpidius to remain at Caesarea. There is at all events no need for you to be taught by me, since you yourself know only too well, what is the position of affairs, and how capable Elpidius in administration.

Even before receiving your letter I knew what trouble you are ready to undergo for every one, and specially for my humble self because I am exposed in this struggle. So when I received your letter from the reverend Eleusinius, and saw him actually before my face, I praised God for bestowing on me such a champion and comrade, in my struggles on behalf of true religion by the aid of the Spirit. Be it known to your exalted reverence that I have hitherto sustained some attacks from high magistrates, and these no light ones; while both the prefect and the high chamberlain pleaded with sympathy for my opponents. But, so far, I have sustained every assault unmoved, by that mercy of God which supplies to me the aid of the Spirit, and strengthens my weakness through Him.

The worse the diseases of the Churches grow, the more do we all turn to your excellency, in the belief that your championship is the one consolation left to us in our troubles. By the power of your prayers, and your knowledge of what is the best course to suggest in the emergency, you are believed to be able to save us from this terrible tempest by all alike who know your excellency even to a small extent, whether by hearsay or by personal experience. Wherefore, cease not, I implore, to pray for our souls and to rouse us by your letters. Did you but know of what service these are to us you would never have lost a single opportunity of writing. Could I only, by the aid of your prayers, be deemed worthy of seeing you, and of enjoying your good qualities, and of adding to the story of my life a meeting with your truly great and apostolical soul, then I should indeed believe that I had received from God’s mercy a consolation equivalent to all the afflictions of my life.

I was delighted to receive the letter your affection sent me; but I am equally grieved at your having laid on me the load of a responsibility which is more than I can carry. How can I, so far removed as I am, undertake so great a charge? As long as the Church possesses you, it rests as it were on its proper buttress. Should the Lord be pleased to make some dispensation in the matter of your life, whom, from among us here can I send to take the charge of the brethren, who will be in like esteem with yourself? That is a very wise and proper wish which you express in your letter, that while you are yet alive you may see the successor destined after you to guide the chosen flock of the Lord (like the blessed Moses, who both wished and saw). As the place is great and famous, and your work has great and wide renown, and the times are difficult, needing no insignificant guide on account of the continuous storms and tempests which are attacking the Church, I have not thought it safe for my own soul to treat the matter perfunctorily, specially when I bear in mind the terms in which you write. For you say that, accusing me of disregard of the Churches, you mean to withstand me before the Lord. Not then to be at issue with you, but rather to have you on my side in my defence which I make in the presence of Christ I have, after looking round in the assembly of the presbyters of the city, chosen the very honourable vessel, the offspring of the blessed Hermogenes, who wrote the great and invincible creed in the great Synod. He is a presbyter of the Church, of many years standing, of steadfast character, skilled in canons, accurate in the faith, who has lived up to this time in continence and ascetic discipline, although the severity of his austere life has now subdued the flesh; a man of poverty, with no resources in this world, so that he is not even provided with bare bread, but by the labour of his hands gets a living with the brethren who dwell with him. It is my intention to send him. If, then, this is the kind of man you want, and not some younger man fit only to be sent and to discharge the common duties of this world, be so good as to write to me at the first opportunity, that I may send you this man, who is elect of God, adapted for the present work, respected by all who meet him, and who instructs with meekness all who differ from him. I might have sent him at once, but since you yourself had anticipated me in asking for a man of honourable character, and beloved by myself, but far inferior to the one whom I have indicated, I wished my mind in the matter to be made known to you. If therefore this is the kind of man you want, either send one of the brethren to fetch him at the time of the fast, or, if you have no one able to undertake the journey to me, let me know by letter.

When I turn my gaze upon the world, and perceive the difficulties by which every effort after good is obstructed, like those of a man walking in fetters, I am brought to despair of myself. But then I direct my gaze in the direction of your reverence; I remember that our Lord has appointed you to be physician of the diseases in the Churches; and I recover my spirits, and rise from the depression of despair to the hope of better things. As your wisdom well knows, the whole Church is undone. And you see everything in all directions in your mind’s eye like a man looking from some tall watch tower, as when at sea many ships sailing together are all dashed one against the other by the violence of the waves, and shipwreck arises in some cases from the sea being furiously agitated from without, in others from the disorder of the sailors hindering and crowding one another. It is enough to present this picture, and to say no more. Your wisdom requires nothing farther, and the present state of affairs does not allow me freedom of speech. What capable pilot can be found in such a storm? Who is worthy to rouse the Lord to rebuke the wind and the sea? Who but he who from his boyhood fought a good fight on behalf of true religion? Since now truly all that is sound among us is moving in the direction of fellowship and unity with those who are of the same opinion, we have come confidently to implore you to send us a single letter, advising us what is to be done. In this way they wish that they may have a beginning of communication which may promote unity. They may, peradventure, be suspected by you, when you remember the past, and therefore, most God-beloved Father, do as follows; send me the letters to the bishops, either by the hand of some one in whom you place trust in Alexandria, or by the hand of our brother Dorotheus the deacon: when I have received these letters I will not deliver them till I have got the bishops’ answers; if not, let me “bear the blame for ever.” Truly this ought not to have struck more awe into him who first uttered it to his father, than into me who now say it to my spiritual father. If however you altogether renounce this hope, at least free me from all blame in acting as I have, for I have undertaken this message and mediation in all sincerity and simplicity, from desire for peace and the mutual intercourse of all who think alike about the Lord.

I have had only a short acquaintance and intercourse with your lordship, but I have no small or contemptible knowledge of you from the reports through which I am brought into communication with many men of position and importance. You yourself are better able to say whether I, by report, am of any account with you. At all events your reputation with me is such as I have said. But since God has called you to an occupation which gives you opportunity of showing kindness, and in the exercise of which it lies in your power to bring about the restoration of my own city, now level with the ground, it is, I think, only my duty to remind your excellency that in the hope of the requital God will give, you should show yourself of such a character as to win a memory that cannot die, and be made an inheritor of everlasting rest, in consequence of your making the afflictions of the distressed hard to bear. I have a property at Chamanene, and I beg you to look after its interests as though they were your own. And pray do not be surprised at my calling my friend’s property my own, for among other virtues I have been taught that of friendship, and I remember the author of the wise saying a friend is another self. I therefore commend to your excellency this property belonging to my friend, as though it were my own. I beg you to consider the misfortunes of the house, and both to grant them consolation for the past, and for the future to make the place more comfortable for them; for it is now left and abandoned on account of the weight of the rates imposed upon it. I will do my best to meet your excellency and converse with you on points of detail.

1. You will hardly believe what I am about to write, but it must be written for truth’s sake. I have been very anxious to communicate as often as possible with your excellency, but when I got this opportunity of writing a letter I did not at once seize the lucky chance. I hesitated and hung back. What is astonishing is, that when I got what I had been praying for, I did not take it. The reason of this is that I am really ashamed to write to you every time, not out of pure friendship, but with the object of getting something. But then I bethought me (and when you consider it, I do hope you will not think that I communicate with you more for the sake of a bargain than of friendship) that there must be a difference between the way in which one approaches a magistrate and a private man. We do not accost a physician as we do any mere nobody; nor a magistrate as we do a private individual. We try to get some advantage from the skill of the one and the position of the other. Walk in the sun, and your shadow will follow you, whether you will or not. Just so intercourse with the great is followed by an inevitable gain, the succour of the distressed. The first object of my letter is fulfilled in my being able to greet your excellency. Really, if I had no other cause for writing at all, this must be regarded as an excellent topic. Be greeted then, my dear Sir; may you be preserved by all the world while you fill office after office, and succour now some now others by your authority. Such greeting I am wont to make; such greeting is only due to you from all who have had the least experience of your goodness in your administration.

2. Now, after this prayer, hear my supplication on behalf of the poor old man whom the imperial order had exempted from serving in any public capacity; though really I might say that old age anticipated the Emperor in giving him his discharge. You have yourself satisfied the boon conferred on him by the higher authority, at once from respect to natural infirmity, and, I think, from regard to the public interest, lest any harm should come to the state from a man growing imbecile through age. But how, my dear Sir, have you unwittingly dragged him into public life, by ordering his grandson, a child not yet four years old, to be on the roll of the senate? You have done the very same thing as to drag the old man, through his descendant, again into public business. But now, I do implore you, have mercy on both ages, and free both on the ground of what in each case is pitiable. The one never saw father or mother, never knew them, but from his very cradle was deprived of both, and has entered into life by the help of strangers: the other has been preserved so long as to have suffered every kind of calamity. He saw a son’s untimely death; he saw a house without successors; now, unless you devise some remedy commensurate with your kindness, he will see the very consolation of his bereavement made an occasion of innumerable troubles, for, I suppose, the little lad will never act as senator, collect tribute, or pay troops; but once again the old man’s white hairs must be shamed. Concede a favour in accordance with the law and agreeable to nature; order the boy to be allowed to wait till he come to man’s estate, and the old man to await death quietly on his bed. Let others, if they will, urge the pretext of press of business and inevitable necessity. But, even if you are under a press of business, it would not be like you to despise the distressed, to slight the law, or to refuse to yield to the prayers of your friends.

It is my invariable custom to protest at every synod and to urge privately in conversation, that oaths about the taxes ought not to be imposed on husbandmen by the collectors. It remains for me to bear witness, on the same matters, in writing, before God and men, that it behoves you to cease from inflicting death upon men’s souls, and to devise some other means of exaction, while you let men keep their souls unwounded. I write thus to you, not as though you needed any spoken exhortation (for you have your own immediate inducements to fear the Lord), but that all your dependents may learn from you not to provoke the Holy One, nor let a forbidden sin become a matter of indifference, through faulty familiarity. No possible good can be done them by oaths, with a view to their paying what is exacted from them, and they suffer an undeniable wrong to the soul. For when men become practised in perjury, they no longer put any pressure on themselves to pay, but they think that they have discovered in the oath a means of trickery and an opportunity for delay. If, then, the Lord brings a sharp retribution on the perjured, when the debtors are destroyed by punishment there will be none to answer when summoned. If on the other hand the Lord endures with long suffering, then, as I said before, those who have tried the patience of the Lord despise His goodness. Let them not break the law in vain; let them not whet the wrath of God against them. I have said what I ought. The disobedient will see.

I know that a first and foremost object of your excellency is in every way to support the right; and after that to benefit your friends, and to exert yourself in behalf of those who have fled to your lordship’s protection. Both these pleas are combined in the matter before us. The cause is right for which we are pleading; it is dear to me who am numbered among your friends; it is due to those who are invoking the aid of your constancy in their sufferings. The corn, which was all my very, dear brother Dorotheus had for the necessaries of life, has been carried off by some of the authorities at Berisi, entrusted with the management of affairs, driven to this violence of their own accord or by others’ instigation. Either way it is an indictable offence. For how does the man whose wickedness is his own do less wrong than he who is the mere minister of other men’s wickedness? To the sufferers the loss is the same. I implore you, therefore, that Dorotheus may have his corn returned by the men by whom he has been robbed, and that they may not be allowed to lay the guilt of their outrage on other men’s shoulders. If you grant me my request I shall reckon the value of the boon conferred by your excellency in proportion to the necessity of providing one’s self with food.

I am astonished that, with you to appeal to, so grave an offence should have been committed against the presbyter as that he should have been deprived of his only means of livelihood. The most serious part of the business is that the perpetrators transfer the guilt of their proceedings to you; while all the while it was your duty not only not to suffer such deeds to be done, but to use all your authority to prevent them in the case of any one, but specially in the case of presbyters, and such presbyters as are in agreement with me, and are walking in the same way of true religion. If then you have any care to give me gratification, see that these matters are set right without delay. For, God helping you, you are able to do this, and greater things than this to whom you will. I have written to the governor of my own country, that, if they refuse to do what is right of their own accord, they may be compelled to do so on pressure from the courts.

Your excellency knows better than any one else the difficulty of getting together the gold furnished by contribution. We have no better witness to our poverty than yourself, for with your great kindness you have felt for us, and, up to the present time, so far as has lain within your power, have borne with us, never departing from your own natural forbearance from any alarm caused by superior authority. Now of the whole sum there is still something wanting, and that must be got in from the contribution which we have recommended to all the town. What I ask is, that you will grant us a little delay, that a reminder may be sent to dwellers in the country, and most of our magistrates are in the country. If it is possible for it to be sent in short of as many pounds as those in which we are still behind-hand, I should be glad if you would so arrange, and the amount shall be sent later. If, however, it is absolutely necessary that the whole sum should be sent in at once, then I repeat my first request that we may be allowed a longer time of grace.

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