Letter 25

25. To Athanasius, bishop of Ancyra

Some of those who have come to us from Ancyra have reported to me—and these are many, not easy even to number, yet all speaking in agreement—that you, the dear head (how could I put it kindly?), do not remember us as pleasantly as may be, nor in your own manner. But nothing human astonishes me, be assured, nor is the change of any of all men unexpected to me, since I learned long ago the weakness of our nature and its readiness to be overturned toward the contrary. Hence neither, if anything of ours has changed, and instead of the former honour there now come reproaches and insults upon us, do I make much of this. But that did appear to me truly strange and beyond nature: that you should be one so disposed toward us as to be angry with us and to be harsh, and even now to threaten somewhat, as the report of those who heard goes.

At the threats, indeed, I laughed outright (for the truth shall be told). Surely I would be wholly a child, to fear such bugbears. But this seemed to me both fearful and worthy of much concern: that your exactness, which we have believed to be preserved among the few as a prop of rightness and a seed of the ancient and true love, for the comfort of the churches, should so far share in the present state of things as to make the blasphemies of chance persons of more authority than our long experience, and to be led, without proofs, to the suspicion of absurd things. And yet why do I say "suspicion"? For one who has been indignant and has uttered threats, as they say, seems to have shown the anger not of one who suspects, but of one already clearly and irrefutably persuaded.

But, as I said, we refer the cause to this present time; since how great a labour was it, my admirable friend, in a short letter to discuss, as it were, alone with one alone, the matters you wished?—or, if you did not trust such things to writing, to summon me to yourself? But if by all means it had to be spoken, and the ungovernableness of your anger gave no time for delay, yet you might surely have used as the minister of your words to us some one of your intimates who is by nature able to keep secrets. But as it is, whose ears have not been filled, of those who visit you on any sort of business, with the report that we write and compose certain ruinous things? For this is the word they say you used, those who recount your words verbatim. And though I have led my own mind over many possibilities, it does not in the least release me from my perplexity.

So that something of this kind too came to me: whether one of the heretics, having maliciously inscribed my name upon his own writings, grieved your rightness and led you to let fall that utterance. For surely it is not for the things written by us against those who dared to call the Son unlike in essence, and God to God and Father, or against those who blasphemed that the Holy Spirit is a creature and a thing made, that you would have endured to bring this reproach upon us—you who carried through those great and far-famed contests on behalf of orthodoxy. You yourself would resolve our perplexity, if you would openly declare the things that moved you to grief against us.