The followers of any schisms whatsoever have seemed to veil the sharpness of your subtlety with their own opinions — varied in outlook, diverse in number, empty of truth — under the shadow of the Christian name. But while we commit our states to eternity, while we reserve for the future judgment whatever each one thinks to be right, even in present things a ray of gleaming truth has flashed forth. For divine provision has found a certain arbiter for our age. While you choose for yourselves, you judge for all; your faith is our victory.
Very many are wont, in this same matter, if for the sake of seeking the health of believing they are admonished either by the exhortation of priests or by the suggestion of any companions whatsoever, to set against it the custom of their race and the rite of their fathers' observance. Thus preferring to salvation a shame that harms them, while they keep for their forebears a useless reverence in guarding unbelief, they confess that in a certain way they do not know what to choose. Let harmful shame therefore depart from this excuse, after the miracle of such a deed. From the whole lineage of your ancient origin, content with nobility alone, whatever the summit of high birth can adorn, you willed should arise from you for your race. You have the authors of good things; you willed to be the author of better ones:
you answer your forefathers that you reign in the world, you instruct your posterity that you reign in heaven. Let Greece indeed rejoice to have herself the prince of our law: but not now as though she alone deserved to be made illustrious by the gift of so great a boon, since the rest of the world too does not lack its own dear ones. For in the western regions also, in a king not new, the light of a new radiance flashes forth. His splendor the Nativity of our Redeemer fittingly began: so that consequently, on that same day, you should appear to be reborn from the water unto salvation, on which the world received the Lord of heaven born for its redemption. Therefore let the birthday of the Lord, which is renowned, be yours also: whereby you, that is, are born to Christ, and Christ to the world:
on which you have consecrated your soul to God, your life to those present, your fame to posterity. What now can be said of that most glorious solemnity of your regeneration? To whose ministrations, even though I did not draw near bodily, I was nonetheless not absent in the sharing of joys. Since divine Piety added this too to our regions as a cause of congratulation, that before your baptism the messenger of a most sublime humility reached us. Whence, after this expectation, the holy night found us already secure concerning you. For we were conferring among ourselves and turning over in our minds what that would be, when the throng of assembled pontiffs, with holy hand, in the eager rivalry of service, would cherish the royal limbs in the life-giving waters: when the head that is to be feared by the nations would bow itself to the servants of God:
when, beneath the helmet, the locks that had been nourished would put on the saving casque of holy anointing; when, the covering of the corslet laid aside, the spotless limbs would gleam with a like brightness. It will bring to pass — if you believe anything — most flourishing of kings, it will bring to pass, I say, this softness of garments, that henceforth the hardness of arms may avail you more; and whatever good fortune has bestowed thus far, henceforth holiness will add. But I would gladly attach some word of exhortation to your praises, if anything escaped either your knowledge or your observance. Shall we preach faith to one made perfect, which before perfection you saw without a preacher? Or perhaps humility, which you have long paid to us in devotion — you who now for the first time owe it by profession?
or mercy, which, with joys now released by you, the captive people but lately mingles for the world, and its tears for God? One thing, then, we would wish increased: that, since God through you makes your whole nation entirely His own, you may also stretch out the seeds of faith from the good treasure of your heart to the further nations as well — those still set in natural ignorance, whom no shoots of wicked doctrines have corrupted; and let it neither shame nor irk you, even by embassies dispatched for the purpose, to build up the cause of God, who has so raised up your own. So that even the foreign peoples of the pagans, destined first to serve you at the bidding of religion, while they still seem to hold ownership over others, may distinguish rather the nation than the prince.
Let no fatherland therefore claim for itself, as by a special seat, all those whom you exalt with the grades of honors: it is established that you are wherever all things enjoy in common the single radiance of the one sun. Things near indeed rejoice more in the light, but things more remote do not lack the brightness. Wherefore shine forth perpetually — upon those present with your diadem, upon those absent with your majesty. The successes of the happy triumphs which that region wins through you, all things celebrate together. Your felicity touches us too: as often as you fight there, we conquer. Amid these things, nonetheless, care for the wretched preserves in you the affection of Catholic religion; and while you hold the helm over the summit of all affairs, holiness is no less eminent than power.
From which it has certainly come to pass that you ordered, by a princely rescript, that the son of the illustrious man Laurentius should be sent to you from among your servants. This I report that I have obtained with my lord — the king of his own nation indeed, but your soldier. For there is nothing in which he cannot serve. He commends the one sent; he rejoices with the one dispatched, who will see you whom he has envied. To this man it should be counted as of less profit that he is restored to his own parent than that he is presented to the father of all.