Letter 219

219. To the Clergy of Samosata.

The Lord, who defines all things for us by measure and weight, and who brings upon us trials that do not exceed our strength, but proves through circumstance the contenders for piety, and does not allow them to be tried beyond what they can endure, and who gives the cup of tears in measure to those who ought to be taught whether in their afflictions they keep their thankfulness toward God — He has especially in the stewardship of your affairs made manifest His own lovingkindness, not permitting the persecution from the enemies to be brought upon you of such a kind as to be able to overturn or unsettle any from the faith in Christ. For having yoked you with light and easily-vanquished adversaries, in the victory over them He has prepared for you the prize of endurance. But the common enemy of our life, who by his own devices fights against the goodness of God, when he saw you despising, like a strong wall, the assault from without, has devised, as I hear, that there should arise among you yourselves certain griefs and small-mindednesses toward one another; which at the first are small and easily cured, but as time goes on, increasing through contentiousness, naturally fall away into what is altogether incurable. Therefore I have set out to entreat you through this letter. If it were possible, I myself would have come and supplicated you in person; but since the times do not permit this, we hold out this letter to you in place of a suppliant's olive-branch, that, out of reverence for our entreaties, you may put away all your contentiousness toward one another, and quickly send me the good news that you have forgiven one another your grievances.

For this I wish your good sense to know: that he is great with God who has humbly submitted himself to his neighbor and without shame taken upon himself the charges, even though they are not true, in order to grant the great benefit of peace to the Church of God. Let there be, then, among you a good rivalry, who shall first be deemed worthy to be called a son of God, having won for himself this dignity through peacemaking. The most God-beloved bishop has written to you what is fitting, and will write again what falls to him. But we too — because it has been granted us still to be nearer to you — cannot neglect your affairs. Hence, when the most reverend brother Theodore the subdeacon came and said that the church was in grief and disturbance, being sorely crushed and stricken in heart with deep pain, we could not bear to be silent; but we have entreated you, casting away all pleading of your rights against one another, to accomplish peace, that you may neither give pleasure to the adversaries, nor betray the boast of the Church, which is now noised abroad into all the inhabited world — that all of you, as ordered by one soul and heart, so pass your life in one body. All the people of God, both those in dignities and civic powers and the whole fullness of the clergy, we greet through your Reverence, and we beseech them to remain like themselves. For we seek no addition, since they have anticipated all excess by the display of their good works and shut it out.