Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 403

Gregory to the count Narses. Your Charity, having concern for our reputation, took pains to write what you thought concerning that codex which was sent against the priest Athanasius. Running through it in some part with attention, we found it to have fallen into the doctrine of Manichaeus. But he who marks certain passages as heretical by a sign placed against them, himself also slips into the Pelagian heresy, because he has annotated as though heretical certain passages spoken in a catholic manner and altogether orthodox. For where it is written that when Adam sinned his soul died, he shows further in what manner it died, namely that it lost the beatitude of its state. Whoever denies this is not catholic. For God had said:

In the hour that you eat of it, you shall die the death (Genesis 2:17). When therefore Adam ate of the forbidden tree, since we know he did not die in the body, for after this he begot sons and lived many years, if then he did not die in the soul—which it is impious to say—He Himself lied who foretold that he would die on the day he sinned. But it must be known that death befalls in two ways: either by the absence of living, or by the quality of living.

In this, therefore, that by eating the forbidden thing his soul is said to have died, it was not by the absence of living but by the quality of living, so that thereafter he who had been created to live blessedly in gladness should live in punishment. This passage, then, which he who annotated in that codex, sent to me by my brother John the bishop, marked as heretical, is Pelagian, because that opinion is manifestly Pelagius's, which the apostle Paul openly demolishes in his Epistles. The several passages of his Epistles I forbear to cite, because I speak to one who knows. Now Pelagius, who was condemned in the Ephesine synod, said this with the intent of showing that we were redeemed by Christ to no purpose.

For if we did not die in soul through Adam—which it is impious to say—then we were redeemed to no purpose. But searching through the Ephesine synod concerning Adelphius and Sabas and the others who are said to have been condemned there, we found absolutely nothing, and we surmise that, just as the Chalcedonian synod was in one place falsified by the Church of Constantinople, so something was done in the Ephesine synod. Let your Charity therefore seek out the truly ancient codices of that same synod, and see there whether anything of the kind is found, and transmit to me the very codex you shall have found, which, as soon as I have read it, I will send back.

For let no one give credence indiscriminately to new codices; on which account I have been made doubtful, and have as yet been unwilling to write anything back to my aforesaid brother John the bishop about this matter. Now the Roman codices are much truer than the Greek, because we possess neither your subtleties nor your impostures, as you do. But concerning the priest John, know that his case was decided by synod, in which I clearly recognized that his adversaries wished to make him a heretic and long strove to do so, but were by no means able. Greet in my stead your people, who are ours, and ours, who are yours, greet you much through me. May Almighty God protect you with His hand amid so many thorns, that unharmed you may pluck those flowers whom the Lord has chosen. (See indiction 15, epistle

1; John the Deacon, book 4, no. 36.)