In Defence of the Three Chapters 74

It troubles some, and they ask what is the cause of the Three Chapters, for which throughout almost the whole world the members of Christ are scandalized; and they say: what harm can the condemnation that has been pronounced upon the Chapters do to the Catholic Church, whether it be of persons or of statements? Especially, they say, since the condemners themselves profess to hold the same faith with those who do not condemn, to baptize with one creed, and with one rite to celebrate both the solemnities of the readings and likewise the order of the sacrifice.

To these, since they earnestly demand that the reason be rendered them concisely, this must briefly be answered, by the Lord's bounty, in such a way that these very condemners of the Three Chapters—who cannot deny that the cause of those men was determined in the holy Council of Chalcedon nearly one hundred and twenty years ago—be first compelled to say whether they harmed, or did not harm, the Catholic Church in which they were baptized, before their condemnation impiously came forth. If they say it did harm, they are convicted of bringing a mark of error and crime upon the Catholic Church:

so that either she was heretical—which it is wicked to say—since those whom these men condemned as heretics she not only did not condemn, but moreover even praised, and pronounced their statements orthodox from the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon: or certainly, hemmed in by the cloud of ignorance, she is to be branded by every heresy, since through the course of so many years she neither knew, nor could understand, what these men learned fifteen or sixteen years ago—led astray, against the apostolic precept, by various and foreign doctrines, and by obeying the commands of the court. And by this, they themselves are both heretics, and baptized by heretics, and not yet reconciled by anyone:

since, as they themselves say, those are Catholics who recently condemned, or condemn, the Three Chapters, and who commune with those very condemners; but heretics are those who neither condemned, nor condemn, nor commune with the condemners. Since these things are so, either that surely was—as truly she was, and is, and will be—the Catholic Church, which neither condemned, nor condemns the Three Chapters, nor communes with these most wicked condemners and their communicants except upon due satisfaction; and these men are beyond doubt heretics, who have newly admitted what they did not receive in the Church which regenerated them:

or if she—which it is sacrilegious even to hear—was not the Catholic Church, then these men are in like manner, all evasions removed, heretics, because, as has been said, that very Church baptized them which never condemned these Chapters. For which reasons, whichever objection be put forward, they must of necessity be convicted as heretics. But if—which is the truth—they say that these same Chapters did the Catholic Church no harm for one hundred and more years, as aforesaid, let them all the more understand themselves inexcusably guilty: let them mark how great an evil they have committed against her decrees by condemning what she did not condemn;

let them recognize what they have done, and let them perceive that they have been cut off from her whose decrees—tearing them apart as much as in them lies—they have, by favoring the wishes of heretics, obstinately joined to the bands of heretics. For indeed from the Acephalite heretics, that is, the Semi-Eutychians, the condemnation of the Chapters was sought out and elicited; and the writings published against the Church by Vigilius and Pelagius, the Roman prevaricators, and by Primasius of Byzacena, the chief teacher of the Acephalites, bear witness to it. Since these things are so, how can that also now stand firm for them, which they say—that they hold one faith with those who do not condemn?

Whereas we confess in our one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and of man, the property of two natures in the unity of person, which the Catholic Church ever guards and teaches. But these men, by obeying the Acephalites and saying in writing: 'We anathematize the impious letter of Ibas which he wrote to Maris the Persian, together with those who defend it and say it is correct, or any part of it'—are proved beyond doubt to have anathematized the whole Church, which defended and defends it, and said and says it is correct: inasmuch as she confesses concerning the Incarnation of Christ, in which the sacrament of our salvation consists, the very thing which that same letter contains throughout.

Indeed the words of that same letter, where the soundness of the Catholic confession lies, after other matters run thus: 'But the Church thus says: Two natures, one power, one person, which is one Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.' Wherefore if this confession of the two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ in the unity of person is, as these men have said, impious and without God, let them themselves say anew what is pious and fitting to the right faith of Christians. Assuredly then, as the truth, refuting them from their own works and writings, compels them to confess, they affirm either one nature in Christ—like the Eutychians or Acephalites, to whose wishes they yielded and from the Church withdrew—or none at all:

and how impious and blasphemous this is, and how alien from Catholic truth, whoever is endowed with a sound mind will recognize without doubt. Now let us next handle that which they say in words—that they baptize with one creed—whether in fact and in effect it stands true for them. That this may become clearly evident, the force and the greatness of the truth of the creed itself must first be considered and weighed; since unless the virtue and gift of belief, by which it is believed, goes before, that which follows is by no means granted, as it is written: 'Unless you believe, you shall not understand' (Isa. VII, 9, according to the Septuagint).

Our Catholic fathers and teachers, then, taught that the creed should be interpreted as a covenant or pact made by man with God. Since therefore we made a pact with God, and were thus baptized in the one name of the Holy Trinity, if anyone dissolves one iota or one tittle from the pact which he entered into with God, he is without doubt convicted of having lost the faith by which he believed God, and God himself in whom he believed. But who they are that have violated this pact we shall presently see, when we have set down the words of this creed—not indeed in full order, for the sake of avoiding prolixity, but merely tasting of them. The beginning of the creed, then, is this: We believe in one God the Father almighty;

and in one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried; on the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, whence he is to come to judge the living and the dead, and the rest. Behold, surely in this now the whole question consists, concerning the judgment of the living and the dead: which was added to the creed against no heresy at any time—as was that concerning the equality of the Father and the Son at the Council of Nicaea against Arius, or that concerning the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit at the Council of Constantinople against Macedonius—and which was violated by no heresy ever, save by this one alone, arisen in these latest times as from the gathered dregs of all heretics;

namely through that condemnation of the living and the dead which they thus put forth in writing, saying among other things: 'If anyone defends the impious Theodore and his impious writings, yet does not anathematize him and his impious writings, and all who receive or defend him and say that he expounded orthodox things; and those who wrote on his behalf and held the same impious things, or write on his behalf or on behalf of his impious writings, and those who hold things like his or ever held them—let such a one be anathema. If anyone defends the impious writings of Theodoret, yet does not anathematize them, and those who held or hold things like his—let such a one be anathema.

If anyone defends the impious letter which is said to have been written by Ibas to Maris the Persian heretic, yet does not anathematize it and its defenders, and those who say it is correct, or any part of it, and those who wrote, or who write, on its behalf, or on behalf of the impiety contained in it, and who presume to defend it—let such a one be anathema.' By which blasphemous sentence they have [condemned] even those dead men whom, while they were established in the body, no one condemned, nor did anyone judge their doctrine heretical, but rather, as can be proved by the most evident

documents can prove, the authority of the Fathers' synodal acts pronounced their teaching orthodox, and devout posterity has hitherto preserved and still preserves it; and they have wrapped up, in an equal anathema with those men, the very Fathers who praised them and their statements, and us the living, so far as in them lies. Where then is that which they wish to seem, or to be called—Christians—and boast with empty verbosity that they keep the faith of the creed, who have usurped to themselves, with proud and exceedingly lamentable audacity of rashness, the judgment which the Father gave to the Son alone, when by such presumption they are proved to overstep even the insane pride of the devil? For he with the most arrogant appetite of heart said: 'I will be like the Most High' (Isa. xiv, 14).

But these men, by forestalling the judgment of God, and by perpetrating with deadly deed the condemnation of the dead and of the living who did not consent to them, had set themselves up not now as equal or like, as he still said of the future, 'I will be,' but as superior to their Lord, so far as their intention is concerned. And the wretches do not blush, with sacrilegious mouth and impudent effrontery, to say that they hold one faith with the condemners! As though indeed even the demons do not believe and tremble; but these very erring ones, who send others also into error, are known to possess an operation of nothing but error—the very thing which these new pests also exercise.

And not only do they lead men astray into error with lying words, but moreover, by violent persecutions, they compel whomever they can, dragging them along to consent to them or commune with them. And the unhappy ones neither attend nor consider that it does not help them, but rather greatly burdens them, to profess in words that they know God, yet in deeds to deny him?

For in truth, if they truly confessed—or others on their behalf, when they were being baptized, professed—that they believe in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ his Son, and in the Holy Spirit, which the authority of the creed maintains, they ought also truly to have believed and patiently to await that same Son of God and of man, Jesus Christ our Lord, coming from heaven at the predetermined time to judge the living and the dead; and not themselves now, with vehemently atrocious impiety, not only to judge us the living, and the Catholic pontiffs long since dead, but even to condemn them as though with the anathema of a perpetual sentence.

But perhaps for their sanctity and the efficacy of their wondrous works, inasmuch as they are judges of the living and the dead—appointed by themselves, nay rather by their father the devil—they say that they have raised up these very dead whom they condemned, and so, their cause having been heard, as the Lord says in the Gospel, 'As I hear, I judge' (John v, 30), pronounced the sentence of judgment against them. We ask them, therefore, when they gathered the revived ashes of these men and raised them up, or where they sat to judge them. Surely in the valley of Josaphat the Lord is to judge all nations, although it bears another sense too. But is the valley of Josaphat then Constantinople, where this sacrilege was begun?

Is the valley of Josaphat the other towns and cities, which subscribed and accepted the decree just now put forth in the condemnation of the living and the dead? Let them also say and show where they have placed their condemned ones, so that—not by any non-condemner, but only by the condemners—it may be known whether to them alone the place of the lower regions stands opened. Let them then tell us the living, whom they condemned together with the long-dead, when they caused these to die and forthwith raised them up again—as the Catholic Church confesses will happen, in that judgment of the Lord, or before that judgment, with respect to those whom his coming shall find living in the flesh.

But if they were unable to do these things and others which we believe will come to pass at a time known to God alone, what madness invaded their hearts, and what smoky vanity—like the murky night of dense and palpable shadows—blinded their eyes, so that they neither saw nor steadfastly held what they received in the creed when they were baptized? But according to their own pleasure—now corrupted by bribes, now enticed by honors and ambitions, now also led about by the cunning of a foreign, or rather serpentine,

doctrine, and being puffed up and inflated by the wind of pride, they reared up the crests of pride against God, by snatching beforehand his judgment, and by founding a new error through the condemnation of the living and the dead, and by restoring the old—since they have both become the fosterers and partners of the Acephalites, and have given their right hands to the rest of the heretics, that it might be lawful for them, as often and in whatever manner they please, to rescind or condemn the decrees of orthodox pontiffs. For it is not, as certain ignorant men say,

the cause of the Three Chapters that is being conducted, but of all the pontiffs who, from the apostles and the successors of the apostles down to the Council of Chalcedon—in which those same Chapters were judged orthodox—and thereafter down to our own times, persevering in one and the same defense and communion, departed Catholic from this life: it is their perpetrated condemnation that is lamented. This we could here more amply show by the most evident documents and truthful reasonings of the paternal traditions, did chastened brevity allow.

These things being diligently considered and weighed, let whoever fears the judgment of God judge—whoever believes and confesses that the Son of God, who at the opportune time came in the form of a servant which he took up for us, will come as a manifest judge, the same whom by believing he learned to have come hidden in the fullness of time—whether these such men, who exist prouder and more excellent in audacity than the devil, and worse even than Antichrist, are to be reckoned at least by the Christian name, and not rather to be called ministers of Antichrist, and are by every means to be shunned.

Since these things are so, how can it now stand firm for them that they say they believe in God the Father and in his Son—which goes before in the creed—when that which follows there does not stand firm for them, said specially concerning the one and the same Christ who is to come to judge the living and the dead? Since these men, as was said and shown above, have hurled the javelins of their condemnation both at the long-dead and at us the living. But these things being premised, let us now look at yet another matter.

For if they say that the dead whom they condemned taught wrongly and composed books with a heretical sense, we ask them whether, while these were living, they were admonished according to the custom of Catholic observance and discipline to be sound and right in understanding, [and whether] they obstinately resisted, and, being convicted of their error, or summoned in some council—as Arius at Nicaea, Macedonius at Constantinople, Nestorius at the first Council of Ephesus, Eutyches and Dioscorus at Chalcedon—were condemned, or not. If they say it was done, we shall at once demand that the synodal acts be produced—as those of these men are produced—wherein their error was condemned, wherein the sentence pronounced against them may be shown.

If they show it, we ask again how, through a span of a hundred and more years, these things lay hidden from the whole Catholic Church—since even human laws bar human suits after thirty years, and our Lord Jesus Christ gave to his apostles, as a divine law, the power of binding and loosing only those things which are upon the earth. Or where do we suppose those acts lay concealed, that they could but recently come to the notice only of the condemners, and not also of those who do not condemn?

But if—which is the more true and certain—they cannot produce any such thing done in antiquity, because in truth they have nothing to produce, we, on the contrary, produce the synodal letters of the Council of Antioch in defense of Theodore and his statements—he who has been condemned by these men, branded now with a new name and charge of heresy, that is, 'Necrodioctae' or 'Porcianistae.' Next we set forth the acts of the assembled holy Council of Chalcedon, whose authority none but a heretic contradicts;

where not only were the praises of blessed Theodore received and recited, and proclaimed with admirable glory, but also the letter of the venerable Ibas, which was condemned by these men as impious, is there shown to have been pronounced orthodox and praised. The doctrine of Theodoret too was acclaimed in the same synod as harmonizing, of old and from the beginning, with the orthodox faith; and both—that is, Theodoret and Ibas—were judged worthy of the episcopate, and ordained to govern, as before, the Churches entrusted to them. These things being shown beforehand, we put it to these condemners of the Chapters and of us, and to their communicants: what do they think of that same great Council of Chalcedon—do they call it Catholic, or not? If they say, 'It is Catholic,' we reply:

You, then, are beyond doubt heretics. For either what, or whom, those Fathers there presiding praised, and pronounced to accord with the Catholic faith, you have condemned as heretics and impious: whence it is concluded—will you or not, as the consequence of reason demands—that those whom they condemned as heretics, that is, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Dioscorus, you pronounce and proclaim orthodox: if not in words, for fear of men perhaps, yet certainly in deeds, by unbridled persecutions, by the expulsions of Catholic pontiffs, by the substitutions of heretics, and by condemnations issued in writing against Catholics.

Finally, in one and the same Council of Chalcedon, among other matters this cause too was settled—namely, the approbation and condemnation of the three. For behold, on the one side of that council there stand, as it were: Theodore, although already deceased, yet living in the synodal letters that contain his praises, there left on record and approved; Theodoret too and Ibas, praised and pronounced orthodox; and on the other side, no less: Nestorius, condemned indeed at the first Council of Ephesus, but bound again with the chain of condemnation at Chalcedon; Eutyches also and Dioscorus, there likewise condemned as heretics. What do you say? Is it not so?

However thick the callus of hardness with which your brow, overlaid with its accustomed lies, may be, will you be able to deny that it is so? But if, out of your twofold confusion, you should wish even to deny it, behold, I am present—the acts of the Council of Chalcedon; behold, there stand the six hundred and thirty pontiffs there assembled: assuredly they cry out through it and say: We received into our assembly and approved the praises—read out again—of Theodore, who died in the peace and communion of the Catholic Church. And we pronounced the venerable Theodoret and Ibas orthodox, and we truly know that they subscribed with us to the definition of the Catholic faith.

The letter which the venerable Ibas wrote to Maris the Persian, read again by us, we judged to be orthodox, and we confirmed our judgment by subscribing in concord. We laid low Nestorius—condemned indeed before—with a renewed condemnation, together with Eutyches and Dioscorus, the Holy Spirit presiding over us: whoever strives to violate our judgment is a heretic; whoever attempts to tear apart our decrees in anything is alien from the Catholic faith, alien from the Christian name.

For whoever condemns these whom we, pronouncing them Catholic, praised, and on the contrary praises those whom we condemned as heretics, is therefore a heretic—whoever does not acquiesce in the things well defined by us, whoever proudly rebels against the things determined in lawful and Catholic order. Hearing these things, what, we ask, will you say to so many illustrious pontiffs, or to the universal Catholic Church spread throughout the whole world, which has always devoutly kept their statutes, and hitherto keeps them in its relics propagated everywhere—unless perhaps you should be willing to speak the truth, and [tell] how the heresy of the Necrodioctae or Porcianistae was to be? But if they say:

The Council of Chalcedon is heretical—then it is no longer necessary to contend anew against them, except that they be held by all who are truly Catholic like that one who, asked by the Lord in the Gospel what his name was, answered: 'Legion, for we are many' (Mark v, 9).

For in truth whoever presumes or attempts to contradict in anything the authority of the holy and great Council of Chalcedon is at once an Arian, and a Macedonian, and a Nestorian, and a Eutychian, and an Acephalite, or whatever can be derived from the various seeds of heretical impiety and fitted to them—against which pests, of both kinds, the watchfulness of that synod kept guard, so that it might both strike the past heretics with a renewed condemnation, and anathematize the present, and, with the foreknowing Spirit of God, bind the future, together with their followers and partakers in whatever manner, in the chains of condemnation.

Now further, concerning that which they say—that they celebrate the solemnities of the readings, or the order of the sacrifice, with the same rite—we could briefly reply that to those cut off, as we have taught, from Catholic unity, the invocation of the divine name made with feigned words profits nothing, nor does the celebration usurped and drawn from the Church; since the devil also, tempting the Lord, brought forth testimonies of the Scriptures, but such as he might be destroyed by, not strengthened by: and the holy Scriptures themselves consist not in the reading, but in the understanding; and various heretics, once cut off, have perniciously and lethally retained what they had well and wholesomely received in the Catholic Church. We could also say, concerning the sacrifice, that which the Lord said at the beginning of the world to Cain:

'If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, you have sinned.' And also that which the same Lord says through the prophet to the prevaricating priests who violate the pact of God: 'When you multiply your prayers, I will turn my face away from you. And when you offer me sacrifice, I will not accept it from your hands, nor will I be appeased toward you, for your assemblies are iniquitous' (Isa. i, 13, 15); and many similar things which it would be long to recount. But we have judged it opportune to bring forth also one or two testimonies written for a similar cause against them by the most glorious martyr and bishop Cyprian;

because whoever is intelligent in heart, having diligently considered and examined them with the eyes of the heart, will mark whether he ought any longer to crave the sacrifices of the new heretics. For he, in his letter on behalf of the holy Cornelius—likewise martyr and bishop of the city of Rome, whom the heretic Novatian had expelled, having set himself in his place, as has now also been done by the new heretics—writing to Magnus, says, among other things: 'But if the flock is one, how can he be counted in the flock who is not in the number of the flock?

Or how can he be held a pastor, who—while the true pastor remains, and one duly succeeds and presides in the Church of the Lord—himself succeeding no one and beginning from himself, becomes alien and profane, an enemy of the Lord's peace and of divine unity, not dwelling in the house of God, that is, in the Church of God, in which none dwell save the concordant and unanimous? Finally, how inseparable is the sacrament of unity, and how without hope they are, and how they acquire for themselves perdition of soul from the indignation of God, who make schism, and, forsaking the bishop, set up for themselves another, a pseudo-bishop....'

But if anyone objects to this, saying that the Novatian holds the same law that the Catholic Church holds, and baptizes with the same creed that we do, knowing the same God the Father, the same Son Christ, the same Holy Spirit, let the one who thinks this is to be objected know that this cannot help such people. For Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, together with the priest Aaron and Moses, knew the same God, living by the same law and religion; they invoked the one and true God who was to be worshipped and called upon;

yet because, transgressing the ministry of their own station against the priest Aaron, who had received the lawful priesthood by God's favor and ordination, they claimed for themselves the license of sacrificing, being struck down by divine power, they at once paid the penalties for their unlawful attempts, nor could the sacrifices offered irreligiously and unlawfully against the right of the divine arrangement be valid or avail. Wherefore those who patronize Novatian, or others of this kind, contend in vain.

And that it might be the better understood what the divine censure is against audacity of this kind, we find that in such a crime not only the leaders and instigators but also the participants are appointed to punishment, unless they separate themselves from the fellowship of the wicked, the Lord commanding through Moses and saying: Separate yourselves from the tents of these most hardened men, and touch nothing of all that is theirs, lest you perish together in their sin (Num. XVI, 26). And what the Lord had threatened through Moses, He fulfilled: that whoever had not separated himself from Korah, Dathan, and Abiram should at once pay the penalties for the impious fellowship.

By this example it is shown and proved that all are liable both to guilt and to punishment who with irreligious rashness mingle themselves with schismatics against the prelates and priests of God, as the Holy Spirit also testifies through the prophet Hosea, saying: Their sacrifices shall be as the bread of mourning; all who eat of them shall be defiled (Hos. IX, 4): teaching, namely, and showing that all without exception are joined in punishment with the instigators, who have been defiled by their sin. What is more evident than this testimony? What more clear? What can be said more truly? For behold, it teaches that all without exception are bound by equal guilt and equal punishment, as many as have been polluted by the fellowship of the wicked. What then is it that some, as if excusing themselves, say:

'My bishop himself knows whether he condemned anyone'—to such He threatens, saying: But you hated discipline, and cast my words behind you. If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you set your portion (Ps. XLIX, 17, 18). And below the apostle Paul makes manifest and proves (Rom. I, 32) that they are worthy of death and come to punishment, not only those who do evil, but also those who consent to those who do such things: who, when by unlawful fellowship they are mingled with the wicked and sinners and those who do not repent, are polluted by the contact of the harmful, and while they are joined in guilt, so they are not separated in punishment either. But these say: We do not consent to the condemnation of the dead. O intolerable evil!

O unheard-of disgrace! They say they do not consent, as it were in words, to the condemnation, yet they consent in deeds—which is worse—to the accursed fellowship; whereas a heavier punishment remains for those who both are not ignorant of the truth and yet hold communion with the enemies of the truth. For if those with whom you hold communion have made a heresy, as we have taught, by condemning the living and the dead; if they have gone over to heretics, by doing what the Acephali wished, both parties have surely remained heretics by the offenses admitted. How then shall those who hold communion with heretics be denied to be held by the crime of heresy? Or with what face do they seem to themselves to be in communion with the Catholic Church?

Is it because, supported by court favor, they have seized the man-made churches with the Catholics driven out, that you therefore suppose the Catholic faith and Christian peace to consist in walls? If you think this, hear what even the holy bishop Hilary, confessor and outstanding teacher, wrote on this matter to certain bishops in the time of the emperor Constantius—when the Arians, under the name of peace and of the king, had thus seized nearly all the local churches of the whole world, just as now the Eutychians or Acephali—saying among other things: 'I beseech you, bishops, who believe yourselves to be this: by what favors did the apostles make use to preach the Gospel?

By what powers' aid did they preach Christ and transfer nearly all the nations from idols to the Lord? Did they assume to themselves any dignity from the palace?' And below: 'One thing I warn,' he says, 'beware of Antichrist; for the love of walls has wickedly seized you, wickedly you venerate the Church of God in roofs and buildings, wickedly you bring in under these the name of peace. Is it doubtful that Antichrist will sit in these? Mountains and woods and lakes and prisons and pits are safer to me. For in these the prophets, abiding, prophesied by the Spirit of God.' Let these testimonies, brought forth meanwhile for brevity's sake, suffice, since, if we wished to heap up or argue more, we should perhaps burden the memory of our readers.

Now we must also briefly recall this, which they object from the works of blessed Augustine written against the Donatists, saying: Saint Augustine said: Peace is good, have peace; unity is good, love unity, let not unity be torn. But these and such testimonies of the outstanding teacher—how far they undermine them, but establish us—they by no means perceive. For if these who rather object these things against themselves were unwilling to tear unity; if they were unwilling to bring war against the Catholic Church, by which peace would be violated; what they found in it, this surely they ought, as has been shown above, to keep and manfully guard.

But what they did not receive in it or from it, as truly harmful and deadly, they ought to have fled and shunned. For peace is to be had, according to apostolic doctrine, with all men, if it can be done, yet it is not to be held with all. Indeed it is one thing to have something, another to hold it. Therefore not only with schismatics and heretics, but even with carnal Jews and pagans, peace is to be had. But that peace, surely, by which we long and desire to gain them for God, and to ally them to Catholic truth and unity; on account of which we even pray for them according to God's command, that they may be converted: not such as to be held so that we go out to them, and become also that which they are.

Finally, what blessed Augustine was saying and urging to the Donatists—to have peace, to love unity—he was saying right excellently and wholesomely: for he desired them, just as we desire these, with their error condemned to return to the Catholic Church, as he most clearly teaches in many works written against their schism. Not that he himself, or any of the orthodox, with the Catholic Church abandoned—far be it—should mingle in sacrilegious fellowship with their error. This we too say to these with great peace: Condemn the error you have introduced, take away the evil of condemnation you have inflicted, through which you have both become heretics and stood forth as supporters of heretics;

and having peace with us, and holding fast as you formerly did, you will have confounded all the heretics, and restored yourselves to Catholic unity. Whoever therefore you are who read these things, do not seek eloquence, but diligently look upon the substance and weight of the truth. And if you are not polluted by the fellowship of the prevaricators, pray God that you may persevere. But if you have fallen either through ignorance or through violence, hasten to repair yourself by running back to Catholic truth, by resuming its communion: for pardon is promised to all who repent. Let no one be broken by despair. Let no one be ensnared any longer by serpentine deceptions:

since, just as for transgressors and those remaining with an impenitent heart everlasting punishment with the devil has been prepared, so for those who keep His covenant with the Lord God, and guard the foundations of the Catholic faith, and shun profane novelties, an eternal and endless glorious reward has been reserved.