Letters 48–60

To Gregory

“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.

To Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata

Letter XLVIII.

To Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata.

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.

To Arcadius the Bishop

Letter XLIX.

To Arcadius the Bishop.

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.

To Bishop Innocentius

Letter L.

To Bishop Innocentius.

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.

To Bishop Bosporius

Letter LI.

To Bishop Bosporius.

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 Nicæa, 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.

To the Canonicæ

Letter LII.

To the Canonicæ.

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 Nicæa 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.

To the Chorepiscopi

Letter LIII.

To the Chorepiscopi.

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.

To the Chorepiscopi

Letter LIV.

To the Chorepiscopi.

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.

To Paregorius, the presbyter

Letter LV.

To Paregorius, the presbyter.

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 Nicæa, 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.

To Pergamius

Letter LVI.

To Pergamius.

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.

To Meletius, Bishop of Antioch

Letter LVII.

To Meletius, Bishop of Antioch.

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.

To Gregory my brother

Letter LVIII.

To Gregory my brother.

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.

To Gregory, his uncle

Letter LIX.

To Gregory, his uncle.

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.