Letter 141

141. To Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata

I have already received two letters from your divinely inspired and most perfect wisdom, of which one described to us plainly both how we were awaited by the people under the hand of your Holiness, and how greatly we grieved them by being absent from the most holy synod. The other, the older one, as I conjecture from the writing, but delivered to us later, contained an instruction befitting you and necessary for us: not to be negligent of the churches of God, nor little by little to surrender affairs to our opponents, whereby their cause will grow and ours be diminished. And I think I have answered both; but nevertheless even now, since it is uncertain whether those entrusted with the service preserved our answers, I make my defence concerning the same matters. As to the absence, writing a most true reason — of which I think the report has reached even to your Holiness — that I was held by a sickness which brought me down to the very gates of death. And even now, when I was sending about these things, I wrote bearing the remnants of the illness. And these are such as would suffice to be grievous diseases for another man.

But as to its not being through any negligence of ours that the affairs of the churches have been betrayed to our opponents, I wish your Reverence to know that those bishops who are supposedly in communion with us, whether through hesitation, or because they are still suspicious of us and not wholehearted, or through the opposition to good works that comes from the devil, will not endure to lend us their aid. In outward appearance, indeed, the greater number of us are together with one another, the good Bosporius too having been joined to us; but in truth they lend us aid in none of the most necessary matters; so that I too am for the most part hindered, by this very despondency, from recovery, my sicknesses continually returning upon me from my intense grief.

And what could I do alone, since the canons, as you yourself know, do not permit such administrative measures to one man? And yet what remedy have I not tried? Of what judgement have I not reminded them, partly through letters, partly through meeting them? For I went even as far as the city on the report of my death. And when it pleased God that we should be found alive by them, we discoursed to them as was fitting. And when present I am reverenced, and they promise everything fitting; but once we are gone, they run back again to their own opinion. These things we too reap from the common state of affairs, the Lord plainly having forsaken us, who, because lawlessness has been multiplied, have grown cold in love. But for all this let your great and most powerful intercession with God suffice us. For perhaps we may either become of some use to affairs, or, failing of what we strive for, may escape condemnation.