Letter 224

224. To Genethlius the Presbyter.

I received the letter of your Reverence, and I praised the title which you aptly gave to the book composed by them, calling it a "bill of divorcement." What defense those who composed it (in order to stand away from our love) have prepared for it at the tribunal of Christ that cannot be deceived, I am unable to conceive. For having set forth an accusation against us, and run us down vehemently, and recounted the things they wished, not such as the truth holds — fashioning for themselves much humility, and laying upon us a mass of arrogance, as though we had not received those sent from them — all false, or at least the greater part of them, that I may not speak too dangerously — persuading men, and not God, and seeking to please men, and not God, with whom nothing is preferable to the truth, thus they composed it. Then they appended to the letters against us heretical words, hiding the author of the impiety, in order that the many and simpler folk, from the accusation set first against us, might suppose the appended matter to be ours, because by those who artfully slander us the name of the father of the wicked doctrines is passed over in silence, and there is left to the suspicion of the more guileless that we are the ones who either conceived or wrote these things. Knowing these things, then, we beg you both not to be disturbed yourselves, and to silence the tumults of those who are shaken; even though we know that our defense is hard to accept, because of the fact that the wicked blasphemies against us have been prepossessed by persons of credit.

As to the fact, then, that the things bandied about as ours are not ours, I think that, even though the anger against us greatly darkens their reasonings against perceiving what is profitable, nevertheless, if they were asked by you yourselves, they would not come to such a degree of hardness as to dare to utter the falsehood with their own mouth and say that the writings are mine. But if they are not mine, why am I judged for what is another's? But they will say that I am a partner of Apollinaris, and that I have the perversion of such doctrines within me. Let the proofs be demanded of them. For if they know how to search out the heart of a man, let them confess this, and then know their truthfulness about everything; but if from things visible and plain to all they convict my fellowship, let them show either canonical letters sent from me to him, or from him to me, or the intercourse of the clergy with us, or whether we ever received any of them into the fellowship of prayer. But if they bring forward a letter written to him some twenty-five years ago, from a layman to a layman, and not even this as written by me, but altered — by whom, God knows — recognize from this very thing the injustice, that no one in the episcopate is accused if he wrote anything indifferently in the lay life without careful observance, and this too not concerning the faith, but a bare letter bearing a friendly greeting. And perhaps those men too appear to have written to both Greeks and Jews and yet have no charge against them. For up to today no one has been judged on such a matter as that for which we are condemned by those who strain out the gnats. That we neither wrote those things, nor composed them, but even anathematize those who hold that wicked opinion of the confusion of the hypostases, in which the most impious heresy of Sabellius was renewed — this, then, is known to God who knows the hearts, and known too to all the brotherhood which has come to experience of our lowliness. And let those very men, who now are our vehement accusers, search their own conscience, and they will know that from childhood we have been far from such doctrines.

But what our opinion is, if anyone seeks it out, he will know from the very document on which their signature is in their own hand. Which they, wishing to set aside, hide their own change of mind under the slander of us. For they do not confess that they repented of signing the book given to them by us; but they bring against us charges of impiety, thinking it is not known that their withdrawal from us is a pretext, but that in truth they have withdrawn from the faith which, having often confessed in writing before many, they at last received also when given by us, and signed — things which all may read, and from the very writings learn the truth. And their purpose will be made known, if anyone, after the signature which they gave to us, reads the creed which they gave to Gelasius, and knows how great the difference of that confession is from this. Those, then, who so easily turn to the opposite, let them not search out the motes of others, but cast out the beam in their own eye.

And more fully, in another letter, we both make our defense and instruct concerning all things, which will fully satisfy those who seek the more. But you, for the present, having received these letters of ours, put away all grief, and ratify your love toward us, for the sake of which I strongly hold fast to union with you. And it is the greatest grief to us, and an inconsolable pain to our heart, if the slanders against us so prevail with you as to cool your love and estrange us from one another. Farewell.