Letter 131

131. To Olympius

Truly the hearing of unexpected things is enough to make both a man's ears ring; and this is just what has now happened to me. For though these treatises being circulated against us fell upon ears by now well exercised — since I myself had received the letter before, a letter befitting indeed my sins, yet never expected to be written by those who sent it — nevertheless this second matter appeared to us to contain in itself so great an excess of bitterness as to throw the former into shadow. For how was I not nearly driven out of my own senses, when I came upon the letter to the most reverend brother Dazinas, full of countless insults and unbearable accusations against us, and of charges of rebellion, as though we had been found among the most grievous schemes against the Church? And forthwith proofs that the blasphemies against us were true were adduced from a treatise written, I do not know, by whom. Some parts of it I recognized, I confess, as written by Apollinaris of Laodicea — and these I had never actually read myself, but knew only from the report of others; but I found certain other things written in it which I had never read nor heard anyone else utter; and of this my witness in heaven is faithful. How, then, those who turn away from falsehood, who have been taught that love is the fulfilling of the law, who profess to bear the weaknesses of the powerless — how they have brought themselves to lay these slanders upon us and to condemn us out of other men's writings, I cannot, for all my reasoning, devise the cause, unless, as I said at the outset, I judged this to be a portion of the punishments owed me for my sins, and the grief that goes with them.

For first I mourned in my soul, because truth has grown scarce among the sons of men; and then I feared also for myself, lest, in addition to my other sins, I should fall victim to misanthropy, reckoning nothing in anyone to be trustworthy, if those whom I had trusted in the greatest matters have shown themselves such towards me, and such towards the truth itself. Know therefore, brother, and let everyone who is a friend of the truth know, that the treatises are not mine, nor do they please me, since they were not written according to my mind. And if I once wrote, many years ago, to Apollinaris or to anyone else, I ought not to be accused on that account; for neither do I myself accuse anyone, if some member of a fellowship has split off into heresy (you surely know the men, even though I do not name them), since each man will die in his own sin.

These things I have now answered to the volume that was sent, so that you yourself may know the truth and may make it plain to those who do not wish to hold the truth in unrighteousness. And if it be necessary to make a fuller defence concerning each of the charges brought against us, this too we will do, with God's help. We, brother Olympius, neither speak of three gods, nor are we in communion with Apollinaris.