Letter 177

177. To Sophronius the Master

It is not easy to list all those who through us have been benefited by your magnanimity; so many do we know to have been helped by us through that great hand of yours, which the Lord has granted us as an ally in our gravest hours of need. And the most deserving of all is the man now commended to you by our letter, the most reverend brother Eusebius, who has fallen victim to an unaccountable slander, which it lies with your uprightness alone to scatter. We ask you, therefore — both as one who gives to justice its due, and as one who looks with regard to our common humanity, and as one who grants us your accustomed favours — to be everything to this man, and to stand by him in the cause of truth. For he has no small ally in the justice of his case; and if the present crisis does not work it harm, that justice will very easily be shown to be clear and beyond dispute.