Letter 245

245. To Theophilus the bishop.

Having long ago received the letter from your love, I waited to write back through a trustworthy person, so that the bearer of the letter might fill up whatever should escape the letter. Since, then, our most longed-for and most reverent brother Strategius has come to us, I thought it just to make use of him as my agent, since he both knows our mind and is able to deliver our message both genuinely and reverently.

Know, then, most longed-for and most honoured of men, that we count of great worth our love toward you—from which, so far as the disposition of the soul is concerned, we are not conscious of having departed for a single hour, even though many and great occasions for reasonable grief have arisen. But we judged this, as in a balance, setting the more agreeable things against the more unpleasant, to attach our mind to the inclination of the better. But since affairs have been altered by those by whom least of all it ought to have happened, forgive us too, who have not altered our mind, but have changed our position. Or rather, we remain in the same position, while it is others who are continually shifting, and who now even openly desert to the adversaries—men whose communion we counted of how great worth, while they were on the sound side, you yourself are not ignorant. But now, if we neither follow those men nor turn away from those who think the same as they, we should justly obtain pardon, setting nothing before the truth and our own safety.