The deed which you indicated by your letters had reached me, before your address, by a slight rumor. Its bitterness having been learned through holy Archidius, if you deign to believe it, I groaned no less than you at the sorrow of your disturbance. For it is a precedent grave enough, that priestly ordination should now be said to be governed by the people—whereas election is preserved to the plebs in the consecrating of bishops only for this reason, that the steadfastness of the constitution may, as by a kind of mandate, allow those elected to choose what seems fit. But you ought not to receive as something new whatever clerical wickedness, propped by the support of secular insolence, may be able to contrive for our tribulation.
I think indeed that the consent of your son ought to be sought for the ecclesiastical discipline, on account of those by whose habitual abuse it has been decreed to care little about excommunications. I have also examined the letters which you sent, no less piously than in accordance with the rule, to the presbyter who was presuming unlawful things: in which you truly reserved more of patience than the person deserved. Wherefore, although the devil has been permitted enough in so horrible a rebellion, do you nonetheless, without any perturbation of mind, chastise the injury done to God and to yourselves. And, that a like daring may seize nothing in the future, look to it with lavish severity.