Letter 175

175. To Magnenianus the count

A while ago your Gravity wrote to me, charging me expressly to write certain things and, among them, about the faith. But I, for my part, admire your earnestness about the matter, and pray to God that the choice of good things may dwell in you unshaken, and that you, ever advancing, may be perfected both in knowledge and in good works. Yet because I do not wish to leave behind a treatise on the faith, nor to write differing creeds, I have refrained from sending what you sought.

But it seems to me that you are being deafened by those there, men who do nothing, who, to discredit me, say certain things, thinking thereby to establish themselves, if they fasten the most shameful falsehoods upon me. For time past has shown those men for what they are, and the experience that comes will make them plainer still. But we exhort those who have set their hope on Christ to busy themselves about nothing beyond the ancient faith, but, as we believe, so also to be baptized, and as we are baptized, so also to give glory. And it is enough for us to confess those names which we have received from holy Scripture, and to flee the innovation that goes beyond them. For our salvation is not in the inventing of titles, but in the sound confession concerning the Godhead in which we have believed.