Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 314

Gregory to Constantius, bishop of Milan. It has come to us that certain bishops of your diocese were contracting kinship with laypersons. (The historians relate that very many deacons prevailed in such favour among clergy and laity that they not only grew proud above the presbyters, but even resisted their own bishops to the face, as though censors. GUSSANVILLE: This Gussanville observed concerning deacons, because Constantius had been a deacon of the Church of Milan when he was assumed to its episcopal chair by the votes of all.) —seeking rather than finding an occasion, they have attempted to cut themselves off from the unity of your Fraternity, saying that you had, at the city of Rome, made a written pledge for the condemnation of the Three Chapters.

This indeed they say, because they know not how much I am accustomed to trust your Fraternity even without a written pledge. For if this were necessary for me, it could have been believed on your bare words. Yet I recall the Three Chapters named among us neither in word nor in writing. But these men, if they return more quickly, are to be spared for their error, because, according to the voice of the apostle Paul: They understand neither the things they say, nor those concerning which they affirm (1 Tim. 1:7).

For we, with truth as our author and conscience as our witness, confess that we keep the faith of the holy Synod of Chalcedon inviolate in all things, daring neither to add anything to its definition nor to take anything away. But if anyone against it, and against the faith of that same Synod, presumes to usurp for his own thinking anything more or less, him, all delay set aside, we anathematize, and we decree him to be alien from the bosom of Mother Church. Whom therefore this my confession does not heal, he no longer loves the Synod of Chalcedon, but hates the bosom of Mother Church. If, then, they have presumed to speak against their own souls the very things they seemed to dare;

—it remains that, this satisfaction being received, they return to the unity of your Fraternity, and do not divide themselves from the body of Christ, which is the holy universal Church.