Letter 81

81. To Bishop Innocent.

As glad as I was to receive the letter of your love, so much was I grieved that you have laid upon us a burden of anxiety that is beyond our strength. For how could we, across so great a distance, take in hand so great an administration? While the Church still has you, it rests upon you as upon its own supports; but if the Lord should ordain something concerning your life, whom can I send from here, of rank equal to yours, for the care of the brethren? What you sought in your letter you sought well and prudently, wishing to see, while still alive, the man who is to govern after you the chosen flock of the Lord — a thing that the blessed Moses also both desired and saw. Since, then, the place is great and renowned, and your own work is named among many, and the times are hard, requiring a great helmsman because of the continual squalls and the surging waves that rise up against the Church, I did not think it safe for my own soul to deal with the matter carelessly, remembering above all what you wrote — that you mean to stand against me before the Lord and to call me to judgment for the neglect of the churches.

That I may not, then, come into judgment with you, but rather find you a sharer in my defence before Christ, I looked round about in the council of the presbyterate in the city, and chose out the most honoured vessel, the grandson of the blessed Hermogenes, who wrote the great and unbreakable creed at the great synod: a presbyter of the church now these many years, steadfast in character, experienced in the canons, exact in the faith, living to this day in self-control and ascetic discipline — even though the strictness of his hard life has by now worn away his flesh; poor, with no means of livelihood in this world, so that he does not even have a sufficiency of bread, but weaves out his life by the labour of his hands together with the brethren who dwell with him. It is my wish to send you this man.

If, then, you yourself have need of such a man — and not merely of some younger man fit only to be sent about and to carry out the needs of daily life — be so good as to write to me quickly, at the first opportunity, that I may send you this man, who is chosen of God and fit for the task, reverend to those who meet him, and one who instructs his opponents with gentleness. I could indeed have sent him at once; but since you had already, in advance, asked for a man — in other respects good and dear to us, but falling far short of the man I have described — I wished to make my own mind plain to you, so that, if you have need of such a man, you may either send one of the brethren to escort him during the fasts, or write to us, if you have no one able to bear the toil of the journey as far as us.