Letter 320

320. Without address, by way of greeting

It has been long since we were able to greet your honour, because the man who brings back our answers spent much time in our country and fell in with men and affairs of a most troublesome kind. For a whole year he was kept away from his homeland. Drawn on by men's deceits and proposals of settlement, in the belief that, if he could master the present mischief against him, he would come out ahead in everything, he perceived only late the sum of his loss, his discernment being stolen away by the deceit that worked upon him little by little.

Since, then, he is now returning, delivered both from the hardships of the climate and from the wickedness of those men, we greet you through him, entreating you to remember us in your prayers (for we have great need of the help that comes from prayers); and at the same time we make known to you that those who were left answerable for the discharge of the debt by the blessed bishop—who in his will made mention both of the debt itself, and of the source from which it ought to be paid, and through whom—have disregarded our friendly reminders and are waiting for the constraints of the courts. For this reason our companion has returned with nothing accomplished, and asked that these very facts be testified to him by us, so that he might incur no charge of idleness or negligence before your honour. So much for this. As for the affairs of the churches—whether they have been permitted to remain in their present state, or whether they have fallen to the worse, or what hope there is of a change for the better—deign to make it known to us through one of the true brethren.