CHAPTER I.—By the great gift of God's mercy the joys of the whole catholic Church have been multiplied, since by the holy and glorious zeal of your clemency the most pernicious error has been extinguished; so that our labor might the more quickly arrive at its desired effect, which your sovereignty, serving God, had aided both by faith and by power. For although, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, amid whatever dissensions the liberty of the Gospel was to be defended through the ministry of the apostolic see, yet the grace of God appeared more manifest, which granted to the world that in the victory of truth only the authors of the violated faith should perish, and its integrity be restored to the Church.
The war therefore which the enemy of our peace had stirred up was so happily brought to an end, the right hand of the Lord fighting, that, with Christ triumphing, there was one victory of all the priests, and, the light of truth flashing forth, only the darkness of error with its assertors was driven away. For just as, in the very belief of the Lord's resurrection, much assurance accrued to the strengthening of the beginnings of faith—that certain apostles doubted concerning the bodily reality of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by sight and touch, searching out the marks of the nails and the wound of the lance, took away ambiguity from all, while they themselves doubt:
so now also, while the unbelief of some is confuted, the hearts of all who wavered have been made firm, and that which brought blindness to some avails to the enlightenment of all. In which work your clemency worthily and justly exults, which faithfully and in a manner proper to itself provided that the devil's snares should not harm the Eastern Churches; but that everywhere more effective holocausts should be offered for propitiating God: when, through the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the same confession was that of the peoples, the same of the priests, the same also of the kings, O most glorious son and most clement Augustus. CHAPTER II.
—But these things, on account of which so great a gathering of priests took place, having been settled with a good and desirable end, I wonder and grieve that the peace of the universal Church, divinely reformed, is again disturbed by the spirit of ambition. For although my brother Anatolius may seem to have necessarily consulted for himself, in that, forsaking the error of those who ordained him, he passed into the assent of the catholic faith by a wholesome correction, nevertheless he ought to have guarded that what he is known to have obtained by your benefit he should disturb by the depravity of no covetousness.
For we, having regard to your faith and intervention, when according to the authors of his consecration his beginnings were tottering, wished to be more kindly toward him than more just, that we might, by remedies applied, soothe all the disturbances which had been stirred up by the working of the devil: things which ought to have made him sorrowful rather than immoderate.
Who, even if by preeminent merits and the best judgment he had been legitimately and solemnly ordained, yet against the reverence of the paternal canons, against the ordinances of the Holy Spirit, against the examples of antiquity, could be aided by no votes. I speak before a Christian and truly religious and truly orthodox prince: bishop Anatolius greatly detracts from his own merit, if he desires to grow by unlawful increase. CHAPTER III.—Let the city of Constantinople have, as we desire, its glory, and, the right hand of God protecting it, enjoy the long-lasting empire of your clemency. Yet the reckoning of secular matters is one thing, that of divine matters another; nor apart from that rock which the Lord laid in the foundation (Matthew
16:18), no construction shall stand firm. He loses his own who covets what is not owed to him. Let it suffice for the aforesaid that, by the aid of your piety and the assent of my favor, he has obtained the episcopate of so great a city. Let him not disdain the royal city, which he cannot make an apostolic see; nor let him hope in any way that he can be augmented through the offenses of others. For the privileges of the Churches, established by the canons of the holy Fathers and fixed by the decrees of the venerable Nicene synod, can be overthrown by no wickedness, changed by no novelty. In faithfully carrying out this task, with Christ's help, it is necessary that I show myself persevering in my service:
For the stewardship entrusted to me tends to my own guilt if, with me conniving at it (which God forbid), the enactments of the paternal rules — which were established in the Council of Nicaea for the governance of the whole Church under the instruction of the Spirit of God — should be violated; and if the will of a single brother should count for more with me than the common good of the whole household of the Lord.
And therefore, knowing that your glorious clemency is zealous for ecclesiastical concord and grants your most devout consent to those things which befit peaceful unity, I beg and by earnest suggestion beseech you, that you withdraw from all approval of your piety those wicked designs contrary to Christian unity and peace, and that you wholesomely restrain the ambition of my brother Anatolius, which will harm him himself if he persists: lest, coveting those things which are hostile to your glory and to your age, he should wish to be greater than his predecessors; whereas he is free to shine with as many virtues as he can, of which he will not otherwise become a partaker unless he chooses to be adorned by charity rather than to be puffed up by ambition.
But this conception of a wicked desire he ought never to have received within the secret of his heart; yet since those brethren and fellow-bishops of mine who were present in my stead opposed him, he should at least have desisted from his unlawful craving because of their wholesome contradiction. For both the letters of your piety and his own writings declare that the legates of the Apostolic See resisted, as was fitting, with most just contradiction: so that his presumption might be the more inexcusable, since not even when rebuked did it hold itself in check. Wherefore, since it befits your faith and glory that, just as heresy has been destroyed with God working through you, so also every ambition should be beaten back;
do that which is both of Christian uprightness and of royal duty, namely, that the aforesaid bishop obey the Fathers, take thought for peace, and not deem it lawful for himself that he presumed — without any precedent and against the ordinances of the canons — to ordain a bishop for the Church of Antioch; which we, out of love for restoring the faith and zeal for peace, have refrained from reopening. Let him therefore abstain from injuring the ecclesiastical rules and shun unlawful excesses, lest, while he attempts things hostile to peace, he cut himself off from the universal Church. Him I would rather love as one acting more blamelessly, than see him persist in this presumption which will have power to separate him from all.
But my brother and fellow-bishop Lucian, who together with my son the deacon Basil brought me the letters of your clemency, fulfilled with all devotion the duties of the legation he had undertaken; for he must not be reckoned to have failed in the business, whom rather the cause forsook. Given on the eleventh day before the Kalends of June, in the consulship of the most illustrious Herculanus.