Letter 70

70. Without inscription, concerning a synod.

To renew the bonds of ancient love, and to bring back again to its prime the peace of the fathers — that heavenly and saving gift of Christ, withered by time — is necessary for us and profitable, and I well know that it will appear delightful also to your Christ-loving disposition. For what could be more gracious than to behold those divided by so great a number of places bound, through the union of love, into one harmony of members in the body of Christ? Almost the whole East, most honoured father — by the East I mean the regions from Illyricum as far as Egypt — is shaken by a great storm and surge, since the heresy long ago sown by the enemy of the truth, Arius, but now sprung up to shamelessness and yielding, like some bitter root, its deadly fruit, now prevails. This is because the leaders of right doctrine in each diocese have fallen from the Churches through slander and ill-treatment, and the strength of affairs has been delivered over to those who take captive the souls of the more simple. We expected one deliverance from these things: the visitation of your compassion. And the marvel of your love in time past has ever cheered our souls, and for a little while we were strengthened in spirit by a brighter report, as though some visitation from you would come to us. But when we failed of this hope, no longer able to bear it, we have come to entreat you by our letter to rouse yourselves to our aid, and to send some of those of one mind with you — either to reconcile those at variance, or to bring back the Churches of God to friendship, or at least to make the authors of the disorder more plain to you; so that for the future it may be clear to you also with whom it is fitting to have communion.

We seek nothing new at all, but what was customary to the rest of the blessed and God-loving men of old, and especially to you. For we know, by the succession of memory — being taught both by our fathers who were asked, and from letters preserved among us even now — that that most blessed bishop Dionysius, who shone among you for rightness of faith and for the rest of his virtue, visited our Church of Caesarea by letters, and exhorted our fathers by letters, and sent ransom for the brotherhood who were being redeemed from captivity. But now our affairs are in a more grievous and gloomy state, and need greater care. For we lament not the overthrow of earthly buildings, but the capture of Churches; nor a bodily slavery, but a captivity of souls, worked each day by the champions of the heresy. So that, unless you rouse yourselves at once to our aid, a little later you will not even find those to whom you may stretch out your hand, when all have come under the dominion of the heresy.