Letter 91

91. To Valerian, bishop of the Illyrians.

Thanks be to the Lord, who has granted us to see the fruit of an ancient love in your purity — you who, though separated so far in body, have joined yourself to us by letter, and, embracing us with your spiritual and holy longing, have wrought in our souls an unspeakable affection. For we have learned by deed the force of the proverb: As cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.

For there is among us a grievous famine of love, most honoured brother. And the cause is plain: because lawlessness has been multiplied, the love of the many has grown cold. For this reason, too, your letter seemed to us of great worth; and we send our reply by the same man, our most reverent fellow deacon and brother Sabinus, through whom we also make ourselves known to you and beg you to keep watch in prayers on our behalf, that the holy God may at length grant calm and quiet to affairs here too, and rebuke this wind and this sea, so that we may have rest from the tossing and the upheaval in which we are now set, ever awaiting that we shall be utterly sunk.

But this the Lord has greatly granted us in the present circumstances: to hear that you are in exact harmony and unity with one another, and that among you the proclamation of true religion is announced without hindrance. For at some point — if indeed the time of this world is not yet closed up, but there still remain days of human life — it must be that through you the faith will be renewed in the East, and that for the good things you received from her, you will at the right time render her the recompense. For the sound part here, that defends the godliness of the fathers, has grown sufficiently weary, the devil in his subtlety having shaken it with many and various assaults of his devices. But by your prayers, of you who love the Lord, may the wicked and people-deceiving heresy of the false doctrine of Arius be quenched, and may the good teaching of our fathers who gathered at Nicaea blaze up again, so that, in harmony with our saving baptism, the doxology may be rendered in full to the blessed Trinity.