Letter 82

82. To Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria.

When we look at the state of things and observe the difficulties by which every good activity is hindered and held back as if by some chain, we come to utter despair of ourselves. But when, on the other hand, we look to your venerable dignity and reflect that the Lord has reserved you as a physician of the maladies in the churches, we take up our reasonings again, and rise up from the fall of despair to the hope of better things. The whole Church is dissolved, as not even your wisdom is unaware. And you surely see what is happening everywhere, as if from some high watchtower of mental contemplation: how, just as on the open sea, when many are sailing together, by the force of the swell all are dashed against one another, and shipwreck follows — partly from the outward cause that violently stirs the sea, partly from the confusion of those aboard, who oppose and thrust at one another. Let it suffice to leave the matter at the image, since neither does your wisdom permit anything more, nor does the present condition allow us freedom of speech. And for these things who is a sufficient helmsman? Who is trustworthy enough to rouse the Lord to rebuke the wind and the sea? Who but the man who from boyhood has wrestled in the contests for true religion?

Since, then, all among us that is sound in the faith has now set itself in earnest toward fellowship and union with those of like belief, we have come with confidence to the entreaty of your long-suffering: to write one letter to us all, containing an exhortation of what must be done. For so they wish the beginning of these communications of fellowship to come to them from you. But since perhaps they appear suspect to you, through the memory of what is past, do this, most God-loving father: send to me the letters to the bishops, either by one of the faithful from there, or also by the brother Dorotheus, our fellow deacon; and having received them, I will not deliver them earlier — not until I have received the replies from them. But if not, I shall have sinned against you all the days of my life. And surely this is no more to be feared than what he said of old to the father, or what I now say to you, my spiritual father. But if this is in every way forbidden by you, at least free us from the blame attaching to the embassy, since it is without guile and without contrivance, out of a longing for peace and for our union with one another among those of one mind in the things pertaining to the Lord, that we have come to this mediation and intercession.