Letters 1 part 13/32

But since some of our honored brothers, worthy of all trust, reported to us that certain innovations were being made concerning the faith, and that things contrary to sound doctrine were being spoken by you, we were the more deeply moved by this, and struggled greatly with the fear that, in addition to the countless wounds which the Church has suffered from those who have sinned against the truth of the Gospel, yet another evil might spring up, the ancient heresy of Sabellius, the enemy of the Church, being renewed (for our brothers reported to us that what was being said was akin to it). For this reason we wrote, so that you would not hesitate, moved by so short a journey, to come to us, and by providing full assurance concerning these matters, both to soothe our distress and to console the churches of God, which are now grieving unbearably and heavily both over what has been done and over what is being rumored to have been said by you.

TO EUSEBIUS, BISHOP OF SAMOSATA. The loving God, who joins consolations proportionate to afflictions, and comforts the humble, lest they be swallowed up unawares by excessive grief, brought a consolation equal to the disturbances that befell us at Nicopolis, by setting the most God-beloved bishop Jovinus before us at the opportune time;

let him himself relate how opportunely he appeared to us.

...of the change, to hold up to reproach, as it were, by the reminder of the fault, those who had become dear to us...

But may the holy God grant that you come to our region, so that we may embrace your dignified reverence, and you may relate everything in detail.

For it is somehow the nature of things that what has grieved us in the actual experience brings delight when recounted in narrative.

Nevertheless, for the things in which the most God-beloved bishop acted perfectly, as regards his love toward us, and above all firmly, as regards strict adherence to the canons, praise him, and give thanks to the Lord that your own foster-children everywhere display the character of your own dignity.

TO EUSEBIUS, BISHOP OF SAMOSATA. I have not yet been able to demonstrate in deed, as I ought, my zeal for the peace of the churches of the Lord; but I declare that I hold in my heart so great a longing for it that I would gladly even lay down my own life, that the flame of hatred kindled by the Evil One might be quenched.

And if it were not for my desire for peace that I endured drawing near to the districts around Colonia, may my life never know peace.

I seek, indeed, the true peace left to us by the Lord himself, and what I asked to be granted me for full assurance is the desire of nothing other than true peace, even if some, twisting the truth, explain it otherwise.

Let them, then, use their tongues for whatever they wish;

for surely at some time they will repent of these words.

But I beseech your holiness to remember the original propositions and not to be led astray into accepting answers that do not correspond to the questions, nor to give effect to the sophistries of those who, without any power of eloquence, by their intent alone most terribly of all wrong the truth.

For I proposed simple, clear, and easily remembered words:

whether we refuse communion to those who do not accept the faith of Nicaea, and whether we cannot bear to have any part with those who dare to call the Holy Spirit a creature.

But he, instead of answering the questions point by point, rambled on to us with the very things you had written, and this was not out of simplicity of mind, as someone might suppose, nor from an inability to perceive the logical consequence,

but he calculates that if he denies our proposition he will expose himself before the people, while if he agrees with us he will fall away from the middle ground, than which nothing has been more precious to him up to now.

Let him not, then, deceive us with sophistry, nor mislead your good judgment along with everyone else's, but let him send us a brief answer to the question, either acknowledging communion with the enemies of the faith or denying it.

If you persuade him of this and send me the correct answers, such as I pray for, then I am the one who has erred in all that has gone before; I take all that blame upon myself;

then demand of me a display of humility.

But until none of this has come to pass, forgive me, most God-beloved Father, for being unable to stand before the altar of God with hypocrisy.

For if I did not fear this, why would I have separated myself from Euippius, a man of such eloquence, so advanced in years, and possessing so many just claims to our friendship? But if we acted rightly and fittingly on behalf of the truth in that matter, it would surely be ridiculous to appear, through the mediation of these clever and charming go-betweens, joined again to those who say the same things as he does.

...proposing the faith of the Fathers, to call upon them to unite;

and if we persuade them, to be united with them in common; but if we fail, that we be content with one another, and banish this wavering between two sides from our character, taking up instead the evangelical and guileless manner of life in which those who from the beginning came to the Word lived together.

For it is said, 'The heart and soul of those who believed were one.' If, then, they are persuaded by you, this is best;

but if not, recognize those who make war, and cease henceforth writing to us about reconciliations.

TO MELETIUS, BISHOP OF ANTIOCH. I knew that the accusation now newly arisen against Apollinaris—that man so ready to say anything—would astonish the hearing of your perfection.

For indeed I myself did not know of it before this time; but now the people of Sebasteia, having searched it out from somewhere, have brought it forth into public view and are circulating a treatise, on the basis of which they especially condemn us as well, as though we held the same views; it contains sayings such as these:

so that everywhere one must necessarily conceive the first identity as conjoined—or rather united—with otherness, calling the same reality both second and third.

For whatever the Father is in the first instance, this the Son is in the second, and the Spirit in the third.

Again, whatever the Spirit is in the first instance, this the Son is in the second, inasmuch as the Lord too is the Spirit;

and the Father in the third, inasmuch as God is Spirit.

And, to signify the ineffable in a rather forceful way, the Father is Son in a fatherly manner, and the Son is Father in a filial manner.

And likewise concerning the Spirit, inasmuch as the Trinity is one God.

These are the reports being bandied about, which I can never bring myself to believe are fabrications of those who circulate them, even though, on account of the slander they spread against us, I consider nothing too audacious for them to attempt.

For, writing to certain persons of their own party, and adding slander against us, they appended these words, naming them the words of heretics while concealing the true author of the composition, so that we should be thought by the majority to be the authors of these writings.

Nevertheless, their ingenuity would not, I persuade myself, have gone so far as actually to compose the words.

For this reason, in order to repel the blasphemy that is prevailing against us and to show all men that we have nothing in common with those who say such things, we have been compelled to make mention of the man as approaching the impiety of Sabellius.

And so much for this matter.

But someone has come from the camp reporting that, following the first impulse of the ruler—which those who have poured out slanders against us stirred up in him—a second decision has now been made, so that we are not to be handed over to our accusers nor delivered up to their will, as had been determined from the start, but that for the time being some postponement has occurred.

If, then, either this decision stands, or something even more humane than this is resolved upon, we will inform your godliness.

But if the earlier decision should prevail, this too will not escape your notice.

The brother Sanctissimus, however, has certainly been with you for a long time now, and what he seeks has become clear to your perfection.

For the necessary matters have already been anticipated, and to write superfluous things would be altogether vain.

...to receive those who are in communion, and not to attach oneself to everyone who writes a confession of faith merely on the pretext of orthodoxy.

For in this way they will be found to be in communion with those who are at war with one another, who often put forward the very same words, yet fight against each other as much as those who are most widely divided.

In order, then, that the heresy might not be further inflamed, while those at variance with one another put forward against each other the documents they possess, it was necessary that they be exhorted to make discerning judgments both concerning their communion with those who approach them, and concerning that communion effected in writing according to the pattern of the Church.

But I did not overlook the things done against us by him as though they were of little account; rather, since the report had already been spread abroad to all men, no one had any further need of instruction from us in order to be taught the man's intention.

For this he himself contrived, as though fearing that he might have too few witnesses to his own opinion, by sending the letters he had composed against us to every remote corner.

He, then, has himself torn himself away from our communion, neither consenting to meet with us at the appointed place nor bringing forward his own disciples, as he had promised, but even publicly pillorying us at general assemblies, together with Theophilus the Cilician, with open and undisguised blasphemy, as having sown in the souls of the people doctrines foreign to his teaching.

These things alone, then, were sufficient to dissolve all our connection with him.

But when he went to Cilicia and, meeting a certain Gelasius, set forth to him a confession of faith such as only Arius himself, or one of his genuine disciples, could have composed, then indeed we were the more confirmed in our separation, reckoning that neither will the Ethiopian ever change his skin, nor the leopard its spots, nor can one who has been reared in perverse doctrines shake off the evil of heresy.

And to these actions he added a further display of youthful rashness, writing against us—or rather composing lengthy discourses full of every kind of abuse and calumny—to which we have thus far made no reply, because we have been taught by the Apostle not to avenge ourselves but to give place to wrath; and at the same time, considering the depth of the hypocrisy with which he had all along conducted himself toward us, we were seized with a kind of speechlessness out of sheer astonishment.

But even if none of that had happened, in whom would this recent audacity he has ventured upon not produce a shudder and complete aversion toward the man? For he, as I hear (if the report is true and not a fabrication put together for the purpose of slander), has even dared to reordain certain persons, a thing which no heretic up to this day appears to have done.

How, then, is it possible for us to bear such things calmly, or to consider the man's sins curable? Do not, then, be led astray by false reports, nor be persuaded by the suspicions of men who readily take everything in the worst sense, as though we regarded such matters as indifferent.

For know, most beloved and most honored by us, that I do not recall ever before having admitted so great a grief into my soul as now, when I heard of the confusion of the ecclesiastical ordinances.

But only pray that the Lord may grant us to do nothing out of anger, but to have that love which does not behave unseemly, is not puffed up,

...merely human, while they disgrace themselves in their manner of life, daring to commit deeds for which past ages offer no precedent.

TO OLYMPIUS. Truly, hearing of unexpected things is enough to make both a man's ears ring.

Although these treatises now being circulated against us fell upon my ears, which by now have been well exercised, since I myself had earlier received a letter fitting for my sins, though never expected to be written by those who sent it, nevertheless these latter documents appeared to us to contain such an excess of bitterness in themselves that they eclipsed those that came before.

For I acknowledge that I recognized parts as having been written concerning Apollinaris of Laodicea, though I myself never actually read them, but heard of them from others who reported them.

But I found other things written there which I have never read nor heard anyone else say, and my witness for these is faithful in heaven.

How, then, is it that men who turn away from falsehood, who have been taught that love is the fulfillment of the law, who profess to bear the weaknesses of the weak, have consented to bring these slanders against us and to condemn us on the basis of writings not our own? Though I have pondered much within myself, I am unable to devise the reason, unless it be, as I said from the beginning, that I have judged this, and the grief that comes with it, to be part of the punishments owed to me for my sins.

For first I grieved in my soul that truths have grown few among the sons of men;

and then I also feared for myself, lest I should add to my other sins the affliction of misanthropy, considering nothing to be trustworthy in anyone—if indeed those whom I trusted with the greatest matters have shown themselves to be such toward me, and such toward the truth itself.

Know, then, brother, and every one who is a friend of truth, that these treatises are neither mine, nor am I pleased with them, nor were they composed in accordance with my judgment.

But if I ever, many years ago, wrote a letter to Apollinaris or to someone else, I ought not to be blamed for that.

For neither do I myself find fault if someone from a certain company has broken off into heresy (and you certainly know the men, even if I do not name them), because each one shall die for his own sin.

These things I have now replied concerning the volume that was sent, so that you yourself may know the truth, and so that you may make it clear to those who are willing not to hold the truth in unrighteousness.

But if it should be necessary to defend ourselves more fully concerning each of the charges brought against us, we will do this too, with God's cooperation.

We, brother Olympius, neither speak of three gods, nor are we in communion with Apollinaris.

TO ABRAMIUS, BISHOP OF BATNAE. For the whole time since autumn I have been ignorant as to where your piety was residing.

For I found the reports conflicting: some said that your piety was residing in Samosata, others in the countryside, while others still affirmed that they had seen you at Batnae itself;

for this reason I did not write continuously.

But having learned that you were residing in Antioch, in the house of the most reverend Saturninus the count, I gladly gave this letter to our most beloved and most devout brother Sanctissimus, our fellow presbyter, through whom I address your charity, beseeching you, wherever you may be, to remember above all God, and then also us, whom from the beginning you chose to love and to count among those nearest and dearest to you.

True love, however, is established by the gift of the Spirit, which joins together those who are separated by great distance in place, and makes those who are beloved known to one another, not through bodily features, but through the distinctive marks of virtue.

This indeed the grace of the Lord has also worked in our case, granting us to see you with the eyes of the soul, to embrace you with true love, and, as it were, to grow together with you and to come into one union through the communion that is according to the faith.

For we are persuaded that you, being the disciple of so great a man, and having enjoyed a long-standing association with him, walk by the same spirit and hold to the same doctrines of true religion.

To Paeonius the Presbyter. How much you gladdened us by your letter you can surely guess from those very words you wrote, so exactly did the purity of the heart from which those words proceeded show itself through the letter.

For just as the flow of water reveals its own source, so the nature of speech characterizes the heart that brought it forth.

So I confess that what has happened to me is strange and quite different from what might reasonably be expected.

For though I am always eager to receive letters from your perfection, when I took the letter in hand and read it, I was not so much pleased by what was written as grieved, reckoning how great a loss we had suffered during the time of your silence.

But since you have begun to write, do not cease doing so.

For you will gladden me more than those who send great sums of money to men who love riches.

As for scribes, I had none at hand, neither of the calligraphers nor of the shorthand-writers.

For those whom I happened to have trained, some have returned to their former way of life, while others, worn down by chronic illnesses, have given up under the strain of the labor.

And with the second I was exceedingly pleased, not only for its brevity — as would be fitting for one who is now sluggish and weak toward all things — but because it is at once dense with thought, and in it the objections of our opponents and the answers to them are set forth with clarity, and the simplicity and plainness of its style seemed to me fitting for the purpose of a Christian who writes not so much for display as for the common benefit.

it appeared to require both much time to go through and much mental labor to gather the thoughts together and retain them in memory.

For the accusations and characterizations of opponents inserted in between, even if they seem to introduce a certain dialectical charm into the composition, nevertheless, by causing delay and digression, they break up the continuity of the thought and slacken the tension of the polemical argument.

For your keen intellect has surely observed this: that among the pagan philosophers too, those who composed dialogues — Aristotle and Theophrastus — went straight to the matters at hand, because they were conscious of their own lack of the Platonic graces.

But Plato, by the mastery of his eloquence, at once contends against their doctrines and at the same time satirizes the persons themselves, exposing the boldness and impudence of Thrasymachus, the frivolity and shallowness of Hippias's mind, and the boastfulness and bombast of Protagoras.

But where he introduces unspecified persons into the dialogues, he employs the interlocutors merely for the sake of clarity in the subject matter, and introduces nothing else into the arguments by way of the characters.

which is what he did in the Laws.

But if the interlocutor is left undefined, the digressions concerning the persons interrupt the continuity, and serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

I have said these things to show that you have not sent your labors into the hands of a flatterer, but have shared your toils with a most genuine brother.

And I have said this not for the correction of what has already been written, but as a caution for what is yet to come.

For surely one who possesses such skill and zeal for writing will not grow weary of writing, since those who supply him with subject matter do not cease either.

For us, it will suffice to read what you write; but as for being able to write anything ourselves, we fall as far short of it as — I am almost tempted to say — we fall short of good health, or even of having a modest measure of leisure from our affairs.

I have now sent, through the reader, the longer work, having first gone through it myself as best I could.

But the second I have kept back, wishing to have it copied, and not yet having found anyone able to write in shorthand.

For the once-envied resources of the Cappadocians have come to such a state of poverty.

To Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata. In what condition the good Josaces found us, he himself will relate to you better, even though his tongue is not sufficient to describe in tragic terms the excess of my sufferings — so great was the magnitude of my illness.

And what is likely is evident to anyone who knows me even a little.

For if even in what seemed to be good health I was weaker than those given up for dead, one may readily understand what I must have been in my illness.

And yet it ought to have been (forgive the fever its mischief-making) that, since sickness was for me a matter of nature, in the change of this condition the very best of health should now have remained to me.

But since the scourge of the Lord intensifies the pain according to additions befitting our deserts, I have acquired sickness upon sickness, so that from this even a child could see clearly that this husk of ours will inevitably depart from us, unless perhaps the loving-kindness of God, granting us in His long-suffering yet more time for repentance, should now, as often before, provide some release and way out from these inescapable troubles.

These things, then, will be as is pleasing to Him and profitable for us.

...is gone and has already been drunk down, while for the sake of our own safety we overlook the affairs of our neighbors, unable even to perceive this: that in the common ill-fortune, each individual's own fate perishes along with it — what need is there even to speak of this, especially to a man who long ago foresaw each of these things and testified beforehand and proclaimed them in advance, who himself rose up first and roused the rest as well, by writing letters, by coming in person — what did you not do, what cry did you not raise? These things we remember at each turn of events as they occur, but we no longer profit from them.

And now, had my sins not stood in my way (for first our most devout and beloved brother Eustathius the deacon, having fallen into a severe illness, kept me waiting a full two months, day after day awaiting his recovery;

and then all those who were with me fell ill, the remnants of which our brother Josaces will recount in detail;

and finally I myself was seized by this same illness) — had none of this happened, I would long since have been with your honored self, not indeed providing any benefit to the common cause, but gaining for myself great profit from meeting with you.

For I had resolved to place myself beyond the range of ecclesiastical arrows, on account of our unguarded state against the machinations devised by our adversaries.

May the mighty hand of God preserve you all your life — the noble guardian of the faith and the vigilant protector of the Churches — and may He deem us worthy, before our departure, of meeting with you for the benefit of our souls.

To Antipater the Governor. Now, it seems to me, I feel most keenly the loss I suffer through my illness, since, when such a man as yourself is overseeing our homeland, I am compelled to be absent on account of the care of my body.

For a whole month now I have been sitting by the treatment of the natural hot springs, as if I were to gain some benefit from it.

But it seems I am laboring in vain in this wilderness, and appear worthy of ridicule to most people, since I pay no heed to the proverb which says that hot springs are of no benefit to the dead.

For the household of our most revered mother Palladia is my very own concern — she to whom we are joined not only by kinship of family, but whose gracious character has made her to us as a mother.

Since, then, some disturbance has arisen concerning her household, we ask your magnanimity to postpone the inquiry for a little while and to await our arrival — not so that justice might be corrupted (for I would choose to die ten thousand times over rather than ask such a favor from a judge who is a friend of the laws and of justice), but so that you may learn from my own mouth, as I report it in person, those things which it is not fitting for me to write.

For in this way neither will you yourself fail of the truth, nor shall we suffer anything undesired.

To Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata. What state of soul do you suppose I was in when I received the letter from your piety? For if I looked to the disposition expressed in the letter, I was at once eager to fly straight to Syria;

but if I looked to the sickness of body by which I lay bound, I felt myself lacking not only the power to fly, but even the power to turn over on my bed.

...an illness, during which our beloved and most zealous brother, the deacon Elpidius, came to us — I having been much consumed by the fever, which, for lack of the matter that sustains it, coiling about this dried-up flesh like a wick that has burned down, brought on a wasting and prolonged illness;

and thereafter my old affliction, this liver of mine, taking its turn, shut me off from food, drove sleep from my eyes, and held me on the borderline between life and death, permitting me to live only so much as to feel its distressing effects.

So I even made use of the naturally hot waters, and accepted certain treatments from physicians.

But all these were put to shame by this violent malady — which, if it came by habit, even another man might bear, but when it falls upon one unprepared, no one is so adamant as to withstand it.

Having been troubled by it for a long time, I have never been so grieved as I am now, hindered by it from meeting your true love.

For I myself know well what delight I have been deprived of, even though last year we tasted, but with the tip of a finger, the sweetest honey of your Church.

And I, for the sake of other necessary matters too, needed to meet with your piety, both to confer with you on many things and to learn many things.

For here it is not even possible to find true love.

And even when one does find a person who loves one dearly, there is no one able, in a manner comparable to your perfect prudence and to the experience which you have gathered from your many labors on behalf of the Churches, to give us counsel concerning the matters before us.

Now the other matters could not be committed to writing; but the following are things which it is safe to disclose.

Those in Sebasteia who share our convictions, having exposed the festering wound of Eustathius's false doctrine, are demanding from us some ecclesiastical oversight for themselves.

Iconium is a city of Pisidia, which of old ranked first after the greatest city, but now itself takes first place presiding over a district which, gathered together from various sections, has received the administration of its own province.

This city calls upon us to visit, so that we might give it a bishop.

For Faustinus had died.

So then, whether I ought not to hesitate over ordinations beyond my own borders, and what sort of answer I should give to the people of Sebasteia, and how I should be disposed toward the views of Evagrius — on all these matters I longed to be instructed by meeting with your honored self in person, of all of which I have been deprived by my present illness.

If, then, it is possible to find someone who is coming to us quickly, be so good as to send me your replies on all these matters;

but if not, pray that whatever is pleasing to the Lord may come to my mind.

And at the synod, command that mention be made of us, and yourself also pray on our behalf, and take the people along with you, that during the remaining days or hours of our sojourn we may be deemed worthy to serve as is pleasing to the Lord.

...sets hidden snares for us, concealing their plot behind the name they carry about, so that we might suffer the same things as our fathers, yet not seem to suffer for the sake of Christ, since even our persecutors bear the name of Christians.

Pondering these things, we sat in silence for a long time, struck with astonishment at the report of what had happened.

For indeed, both our ears truly rang when we learned of the shameless and misanthropic heresy of those who persecuted you — that they had no regard for age, nor for labors spent in public life, nor for the love of the people, but even tortured their bodies, dishonored them, delivered them to exile, and plundered whatever possessions they were able to find, neither respecting the condemnation of men nor foreseeing the fearful requital of the just Judge.

These things astounded us and very nearly drove us out of our senses.