Letters 75–91

To Martinianus

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 Mænads, dæmons.  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 Cæsareans 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 Cæsarea.  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 Æschylus, 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 Massagetæ 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.

To Aburgius

Letter LXXV.

To Aburgius.

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 Cæsarea; 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.

To Sophronius the Master

Letter LXXVI.

To Sophronius the Master.

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 Cæsarea 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 Cæsarea 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.

Without inscription: about Therasius

Letter LXXVII.

Without inscription:  about Therasius.

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.

Without inscription, on behalf of Elpidius

Letter LXXVIII.

Without inscription, on behalf of Elpidius.

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 Cæsarea.  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.

To Eustathius bishop of Sebastia

Letter LXXIX.

To Eustathius bishop of Sebastia.

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.

To Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria

Letter LXXX.

To Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria.

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.

To Bishop Innocent

Letter LXXXI.

To Bishop Innocent.

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.

To Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria

Letter LXXXII.

To Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria.

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.

To a Magistrate

Letter LXXXIII.

To a Magistrate.

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.

To the President

Letter LXXXIV.

To the President.

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.

That the oath ought not to be taken

Letter LXXXV.

That the oath ought not to be taken.

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.

To the Governor

Letter LXXXVI.

To the Governor.

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.

Without address on the same subject

Letter LXXXVII.

Without address on the same subject.

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.

Without address on the subject of the exaction of taxes

Letter LXXXVIII.

Without address on the subject of the exaction of taxes.

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.

To Meletius, bishop of Antioch

Letter LXXXIX.

To Meletius, bishop of Antioch.

1.  The eagerness of my longing is soothed by the opportunities which the merciful God gives me of saluting your reverence.  He Himself is witness of the earnest desire which I have to see your face, and to enjoy your good and soul-refreshing instruction.  Now by my reverend and excellent brother Dorotheus, the deacon, who is setting out, first of all I beg you to pray for me that I be no stumbling block to the people, nor hindrance to your petitions to propitiate the Lord.  In the second place I would suggest that you would be so good as to make all arrangements through the aforementioned brother; and, if it seems well that a letter should be sent to the Westerns, because it is only right that communication should be made in writing even through our own messenger, that you will dictate the letter.  I have met Sabinus the deacon, sent by them, and have written to the bishops in Illyria, Italy, and Gaul, and to some of those who have written privately to myself.  For it is right that some one should be sent in the common interests of the Synod, conveying a second letter which I beg you to have written.

2.  As to what concerns the right reverend bishop Athanasius, your intelligence is already aware of what I will mention, that it is impossible for anything to be advanced by my letters, or for any desirable objects to be carried out, unless by some means or other he receives communion from you, who at that time postponed it.  He is described as being very anxious to unite with me, and to be willing to contribute all he can, but to be sorry that he was sent away without communion, and that the promise still remains unfulfilled.

What is going on in the East cannot have failed to reach your reverence’s ears, but the aforementioned brother will give you more accurate information by word of mouth.  Be so good as to dispatch him directly after Easter, because of his waiting for the answer from Samosata.  Look kindly on his zeal strengthen him by your prayers and so dispatch him on this commission.

To the holy brethren the bishops of the West

Letter XC.

To the holy brethren the bishops of the West.

1.  The good God Who ever mixes consolation with affliction has, even now in the midst of my pangs, granted me a certain amount of comfort in the letters which our right honourable father bishop Athanasius has received from you and sent on to me.  For they contain evidence of sound faith and proof of your inviolable agreement and concord, showing thus that the shepherds are following in the footsteps of the Fathers and feeding the people of the Lord with knowledge.  All this has so much gladdened my heart as to dispel my despondency and to create something like a smile in my soul in the midst of the distressing state of affairs in which we are now placed.  The Lord has also extended His consolation to me by means of the reverend deacon Sabinus, my son, who has cheered my soul by giving me an exact narrative of your condition; and from personal experience of his own, will give you clear tidings of ours, that you may, in the first place, aid me in my trouble by earnest and constant prayer to God; and next that you may consent to give such consolation as lies in your power to our afflicted Churches.  For here, very honourable brethren, all is in a weak state; the Church has given way before the continuous attacks of her foes, like some bark in mid-ocean buffeted by successive blows of the waves; unless haply there be some quick visitation of the divine mercy.  As then we reckon your mutual sympathy and unity an important blessing to ourselves, so do we implore you to pity our dissensions; and not, because we are separated by a great extent of country, to part us from you, but to admit us to the concord of one body, because we are united in the fellowship of the Spirit.

2.  Our distresses are notorious, even though we leave them untold, for now their sound has gone out into all the world.  The doctrines of the Fathers are despised; apostolic traditions are set at nought; the devices of innovators are in vogue in the Churches; now men are rather contrivers of cunning systems than theologians; the wisdom of this world wins the highest prizes and has rejected the glory of the cross.  Shepherds are banished, and in their places are introduced grievous wolves hurrying the flock of Christ.  Houses of prayer have none to assemble in them; desert places are full of lamenting crowds.  The elders lament when they compare the present with the past.  The younger are yet more to be compassionated, for they do not know of what they have been deprived.  All this is enough to stir the pity of men who have learnt the love of Christ; but, compared with the actual state of things, words fall very far short.  If then there be any consolation of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any bowels of mercy, be stirred to help us.  Be zealous for true religion, and rescue us from this storm.  Ever be spoken among us with boldness that famous dogma of the Fathers, which destroys the ill-famed heresy of Arius, and builds up the Churches in the sound doctrine wherein the Son is confessed to be of one substance with the Father, and the Holy Ghost is ranked and worshipped as of equal honour, to the end that through your prayers and co-operation the Lord may grant to us that same boldness for the truth and glorying in the confession of the divine and saving Trinity which He has given you.  But the aforenamed deacon will tell you every thing in detail.  We have welcomed your apostolic zeal for orthodoxy and have agreed to all that has been canonically done by your reverences.