Letter 90

90. To the most holy brethren and bishops in the West.

The good God, who ever yokes consolations to afflictions, has given us even now, amid the multitude of our pains, to find some measure of comfort in the letters which our most honoured father, Bishop Athanasius, received from your uprightness and forwarded to us — letters that bear witness to a sound faith and give proof of your unassailable concord and harmony of spirit, so as to show forth shepherds who follow in the footprints of the fathers and who shepherd the people of the Lord with knowledge. All this gladdened us so greatly as to dissolve our despondency, and to bring some little smile into our souls, away from this gloomy condition of affairs in which we are now set.

And the Lord increased our consolation through our son, the most reverent fellow deacon Sabinus, who, by relating accurately the good things among you, fed our souls; and who, having learned our affairs by experience, will report them to you plainly, so that, first of all, by your earnest and laborious supplication to the Lord, you may contend together with us, and, next, may not refuse to bring such comfort as you can to the hard-pressed churches. For things here have grown weary, most honoured brethren, and the Church, under the continual assaults of her adversaries, has given out — like a ship in mid-ocean racked by the successive blows of the waves — unless there come some swift visitation of the goodness of the Lord. As, then, we make your mutual harmony and unity our own good, so we beg you, too, to feel for our divisions, and not, because we are separated by the situation of our places, to cut us off from yourselves, but, because we are united in the fellowship of the Spirit, to take us up into the concord of one body.

The things that afflict us are known, even if we do not speak of them; for by now they have echoed out into the whole world. The doctrines of the fathers are despised; apostolic traditions are set at nought; the inventions of innovating men hold sway in the churches; men now ply a craft of argument rather than do theology; the wisdom of the world wins the first place, having thrust aside the boast of the cross. Shepherds are driven off, and grievous wolves are brought in their stead, tearing apart the flock of Christ. Houses of prayer are bereft of worshippers; the wildernesses are full of mourners. The elders mourn, comparing the old days with the present; the young are more pitiable still, not knowing of what they have been deprived.

These things are enough to move to sympathy those who have been schooled in the love of Christ; yet, set beside the truth of the facts, my account falls far short of their full worth. If, then, there is any consolation of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any tender mercies of compassion, be moved to come to our aid. Take up a zeal for true religion; deliver us from this storm. Let that good proclamation of the fathers be spoken among us, too, with freedom — the proclamation that overthrows the ill-named heresy of Arius and builds up the churches in sound teaching, in which the Son is confessed to be of one substance with the Father, and the Holy Spirit is numbered together and worshipped together with equal honour: so that the freedom of speech for the truth which the Lord has given you, and the boast that lies in the confession of the divine and saving Trinity, He may grant to us also through your prayers and your cooperation. The particulars the aforesaid fellow deacon will himself report to your love. And to all that has been done canonically by your honour we have given our assent, welcoming your apostolic zeal for orthodoxy.