Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 462

Gregory to George the priest and Theodore the deacon of the Church of Constantinople. Mindful of your goodness and charity, I greatly reprehend myself, that I released you to return too soon; but because I saw you once and again importunately pressing me about your release, I weighed whether it might be burdensome if your dearness should tarry with us. But after I learned that on account of the winter season you had remained so long a time on the journey, I confess, I grieved that you had been dismissed too soon. For if your dearness was not able to accomplish the journey proposed, it would have been better that it should make its delay with me than outside of me.

Moreover, after your departure, from my most beloved sons the deacons relating it, I learned that your dearness had said that our Almighty Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, descending to hell, saved all who there confessed Him to be God, and freed them from the due punishments. Concerning which matter I wish that your charity should think far otherwise. For, descending to hell, He freed by His grace only those who both believed that He was to come, and held His precepts by their living. But it is certain that after the incarnation of the Lord no one can be saved, even of those who hold His faith and have not the life of faith, because it is written: 'They profess that they know God, but in their works they deny Him' (Titus 1:16).

And John says: 'He who saith that he knoweth Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar' (1 John 2:4). James also, the brother of the Lord, writes, saying: 'Faith without works is dead' (James 2:20). If, therefore, the faithful are now not saved without good works, and the unfaithful and reprobate were saved without good action when the Lord descended to hell, then the lot of those was better who did not at all see the incarnation of the Lord, than of those who were born after the mystery of His incarnation. And of how great folly it is to say or think this, the Lord Himself bears witness to His disciples, saying: 'Many kings and prophets desired to see the things that you see, and saw them not' (Matt. 13:17; Luke 10:24).

But lest I detain your dearness in my disputation, let it learn what Philaster said concerning this heresy in the book which he wrote about heresies. His words are these: 'There are heretics who say that the Lord descended into hell, and there announced Himself to all after death, so that those confessing there might be saved; whereas this is contrary to the prophet David, who says: In hell who shall confess to Thee? (Ps. 6:6); and to the Apostle: As many as have sinned without the law shall perish without the law (Rom. 2:12).' With whose words blessed Augustine also agrees, in that book which he wrote about heresies. Weighing thoroughly, therefore, all these things, hold nothing else save what the true faith teaches through the catholic Church:

namely, that the Lord, descending to hell, delivered from the prisons of hell only those whom, while they were living in the flesh, He preserved by His grace in faith and good working. For what He says through the Gospel, 'When I shall be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to Myself' (John 12:32), means, of course, all the elect. For he could not be drawn to God after death who separated himself from God by living evilly. May Almighty God guard you by His protection, that wherever you are, you may feel the help of His grace both in soul and in body. Gregory to Agnellus, bishop of Terracina. A relation sent to us has disclosed the death of the prelate Bacauda; wherefore we solemnly delegate to Your Fraternity the task of visitation of the destitute Church:

which it befits you so to discharge, that nothing of the promotions of the clergy, of the revenue, or of the adornment and the ministries, or whatever there is in the patrimony of that Church, be presumed upon by anyone. And therefore let Your Fraternity hasten to go to the aforesaid Church, and make haste by constant exhortations to admonish the clergy and people of that same Church, that, with partisanship removed, they may with one and the same consent seek out for themselves such a priest to be set over them as may be found worthy of so great a ministry, and be in no wise rejected by the venerable canons. Who, when he shall have been petitioned for, let him come to us to be consecrated, with the solemnity of a decree strengthened by the subscriptions of all, and with the testimony of your Love in letters:

admonishing also Your Fraternity that you permit none to be chosen from another Church, unless perchance among the clergy of that same city in which you exercise the office of visitation no one worthy of the episcopate—which we do not believe will come to pass—can be found. Providing above all things that no lay persons, of whatever manner of life or merit, presume to aspire to this, and that you incur not the peril of your order—which God forbid.