Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 197

Gregory to Gennadius, patrician and exarch of Africa. If it were not by the merit of your faith and by the grace of the Christian religion that so great a prosperity of warlike deeds attended your Excellency, it would not have been greatly to be wondered at, since we know that these things were granted also to the ancient leaders of wars. But since, by God's bounty, you anticipate the victories that are to come not by carnal foresight but rather by prayers, this is the very thing that moves us to astonishment: that your glory descends not from earthly counsel, but from God bestowing it from above. For where does the talkative report of your merits not run its course?

It also declares that you frequently seek wars not from a desire to shed blood, but for the sake of enlarging the commonwealth, in which we behold God being worshipped, so that the name of Christ may run everywhere among the subject nations through the preaching of the faith. For just as your outward works of virtue set you on high in this present life, so too the inward adornments of character, proceeding from a pure heart, will glorify you in the future partaking of heavenly joys. For we have learned that your Excellency has rendered many services for the interests of the blessed Peter, chief of the apostles, in feeding his sheep, so that you have restored no small portions of his patrimony, which had been stripped of their own cultivators, by settling upon them householders bestowed by your bounty.

Whatever therefore you bestow upon him with a Christian mind, you will receive its recompense through hope at the future judgement. Wherefore we have judged that the bearer of these present letters, Hilarus, ought to be commended to your Eminence, so that in those things which he shall suggest as necessary to himself—justice nevertheless going before—you may extend to him your accustomed favour. And rendering you the address of a father's charity, we beseech our Lord and Saviour, who in His mercy protects your Eminence for the comfort of the holy commonwealth, that He may more and more strengthen you by the might of His arm to spread His name among the neighbouring nations.