Letter 65

65. To Atarbius.

And what end will there be to silence, if I, claiming the privileges due to age, should wait for the beginning of the address to come from you, while your charity should wish to persist still longer in the harmful resolve of keeping quiet? Yet nevertheless I, having reckoned that defeat in matters of friendship has the force of victory, confess that I yield to you the ambition of seeming to have prevailed over my own resolve. I myself have come first to writing, knowing that love bears all things, endures all things, nowhere seeks its own — and for this reason never falls. For he who in love submits to his neighbour is not abased. So then, that you too, at least for the time to come, showing forth the first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, love, may cast off the gloom of the angry, which you hint at toward us by your silence, and may take up joy in your heart, peace toward the brethren who are of one mind with you, zeal and care for the continuance of the Churches of the Lord. For know this: that if we do not take up an equal struggle on behalf of the Churches to that which those opposed to sound teaching maintain for their overthrow and utter destruction, there is nothing to prevent the truth from being swept away by the enemies and gone, and ourselves too from sharing in the judgment, unless with all zeal and eagerness, in concord with one another and in agreement according to God, we show all possible care for the union of the Churches.

I exhort you, then: cast out from your soul the thought that you need no other for communion. For it is not the part of one who walks in love, nor of one who fulfils the commandment of Christ, to cut himself off from union with the brethren. And at the same time I wish your good purpose to consider this also: that the evil of war, going round in a circle, may one day enter even to us; and if, along with the others, we too share in the injury, we shall not find any to grieve with us, because in the time of our prosperity we did not first lay down for the wronged the contribution of fellow-feeling.