Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 736

Amid so many cares and solicitudes which you sustain for the governance of the nations subject to you, to prove yourself a helper of those labouring in the cause of God is a matter of exceptional praise and great reward. And because you have shown yourself such by your preceding good deeds, that we may presume better things of you, we are most willingly moved to ask the things that are for your reward. Certain men, therefore, who had gone forth with our most reverend brother and fellow-bishop Augustine to the nation of the Angles, on their return recounted with how great charity your Excellency refreshed this same brother of ours while he was present, and with how great supports you aided him as he set forth.

But because the works of those are always pleasing to our God who do not withdraw from the good things they have begun, greeting you with fatherly affection, we ask that you hold specially commended the monks who bear this present letter, whom we have sent to our aforesaid brother together with our most beloved sons, the presbyter Laurentius and the abbot Mellitus. And whatever you formerly bestowed on him, bestow it also more abundantly on these, to the increase of your praise, so that, while under your provision they complete their begun journey without delay, almighty God may prove Himself the recompenser of your good deeds, and may be for you both a keeper in prosperity and a helper in adversities. Moreover, it has come to us that sacred orders are there conferred with the giving of money.

And we are vehemently afflicted, if one approaches the gifts of God not by merits, but leaps to them by rewards. And because this simoniac heresy, arising first in the Church, was condemned by the authority of the apostles, we ask that for your reward you cause a synod to be gathered, so that, being suppressed and torn out by the roots through the definition of all the priests, it may henceforth find no strength there to the peril of souls, nor be permitted to rise up again under any excuse whatever; that our almighty God may exalt you against your adversaries so much the more, as He shall have seen you to have zeal in His commandments, and to take thought for the salvation of the souls which were, by the sword of this crime, doomed to perish.