Letter 94

94. To Elias, governor of the province.

I myself was minded to come to your honour, so that by my absence I might not stand at any disadvantage against my slanderers; but since bodily illness prevented me, attacking far more violently than usual, I have of necessity had recourse to a letter. I, then, admirable man, when I lately met with your honour, was minded both to share with your prudence all the affairs of my life, and to make some statement on behalf of the churches, so that no room might be left for the slanders that come afterward. But I held myself back, reasoning that it was altogether officious, and ambitious beyond measure, to lay even the cares outside of necessity upon a man who has so great a multitude of affairs hanging upon him. And, at the same time — for the truth shall be told — I shrank from it on another ground as well, lest we should ever come to the necessity, by mutual disputes, of wounding your soul, which ought, in pure reverence toward God, to reap the perfect reward of godliness. For in truth, if we turn you toward ourselves, we shall leave you little leisure for public affairs, and shall do much as if a man were to burden, with an added cargo, a helmsman who is steering a newly built ship in a great swell, when he ought rather to take off some of the load and lighten it as far as he can. Whence it seems to me that the great emperor too, having understood this busy zeal of ours, has left us to administer the churches by ourselves.

Those, however, who trouble your guileless ears, I would have asked: in what is the public welfare the worse for us? Or what, small or great, of the common interests has been diminished by our administration of the churches? Unless one should say that it brings harm to affairs to raise up to our God a house of prayer magnificently built, and around it a dwelling — the one part, a free residence set apart for the chief, the others, ranked below, distributed in order among the servants of the divine, the use of which is common both to you the rulers and to those who attend you. And whom do we wrong in building lodgings for strangers, both for those who visit us in passing and for those who need some tending because of weakness, and in establishing for these the necessary comfort: the nurses, the physicians, the beasts of burden, the escorts? With these there must follow trades as well — both those necessary for living and all that have been devised for a seemly conduct of life — and other buildings, again, suited to the labours; all of which are an ornament to the place and, to our governor, a matter of dignified report, since the praise of them comes back to him. For not even on this account were you forced to take up our oversight, as though you alone sufficed, by the greatness of your judgment, both to take up the works that had fallen into decay, and to people the unpeopled places, and altogether to refashion the wildernesses into cities. To drive off and outrage the man who lends his aid to such things, or to honour and cherish him — which was the more fitting? And do not suppose, best of men, that what we say is mere talk; for we are already at the work, in the meantime collecting the materials.

Such, then, is my defence toward the governor. But what must be answered to the reproaches of fault-finders — as to a Christian and a friend who has cared for our good name — it is necessary for now to leave unsaid, as being both longer than the measure of a letter and, besides, not safe to entrust to lifeless writing. But so that, in the time before our meeting, being led on by the slanders of certain men, you may not be forced to lower somewhat your goodwill toward us, do what Alexander did. For they say that he too, when one of his familiars was being slandered, left one of his ears open to the slanderer, but carefully stopped the other with his hand, showing thereby that the man who is to judge rightly must not be wholly carried off at once by those who speak first, but must keep the half of his hearing unimpaired, as a defence for the one who is absent.