Letter 130

130. To Theodotus, Bishop of Nicopolis

Rightly and fittingly you have reproached us, my truly honoured and most beloved brother, that ever since we withdrew at that time, bearing to Eustathius those propositions of yours concerning the faith, we have made known to you nothing at all, neither small nor great, of what concerns him. But I passed over the things he did to us, not as though I held them of little account, but because the report had by now been spread abroad to all men, and no one had any further need of teaching from us in order to learn the man's true purpose. For this he himself contrived, as though afraid he might have but few witnesses to his own opinion, dispatching to every furthest corner the letters he composed against us. From our communion, then, he himself broke away, refusing both to meet us at the appointed place and to bring forward his disciples, as he had promised; nay, he even branded us in public synods, together with Theophilus the Cilician, charging us with bare and undisguised blasphemy, as having sown in the souls of the people doctrines foreign to his own teaching. These things alone were enough to dissolve all our union with him. But when, on coming into Cilicia and meeting a certain Gelasius, he set forth to him a creed which only Arius, or some genuine disciple of his, could have composed, then indeed we were the more confirmed in our separation, reckoning that neither will the Ethiopian ever change his skin, nor the leopard his spots, nor can one bred up in perverse doctrines wash off the evil of his heresy.

He played the bold youth in these matters too, writing against us — rather, composing long discourses full of every kind of abuse and slander; to which for the present we have made no answer, because we have been taught by the apostle not to avenge ourselves, but to give place to wrath; and at the same time, when we considered the depth of the hypocrisy with which he dealt with us all that time, we were held by a kind of speechlessness through astonishment.

But even if none of those things existed, this latest deed of his, the thing he has dared — in whom would it not have stirred a shudder and an utter turning-away from the man? For he has dared, as I hear (if indeed the report is true and not a fabrication put together in slander), even to reordain certain men — something which to this day none of the heretics is found to have done. How, then, is it possible for us to bear such things meekly, and to think the man's sins curable? Do not, therefore, be led astray by false words, nor be persuaded by the suspicions of men who readily take everything in the worst sense, as though we treated such matters as things indifferent. For know, most beloved and honoured of us, that I do not remember ever before admitting into my soul so great a grief as now, when I heard of the confusion of the laws of the Church. Only pray that the Lord may grant us to do nothing in anger, but to keep that love which behaves not unseemly and is not puffed up. For see how those who lack it have been lifted up beyond the measure of men, and behave unseemly in their lives, daring deeds for which the time past holds no precedents.