Having read the letter of your fraternity, we have recognized the vigor of your faith, which we had long known, congratulating you that you vigilantly discharge the pastoral care for the guarding of the flock of Christ; lest the wolves, who under the appearance of sheep have crept in (Matt. 7:15), tear apart the simple with bestial savagery; and lest they not only themselves profit by no correction, but also corrupt those things which are sound. And that deceit may in no way prevail to obtain this, we have thought your love should be admonished: intimating that it pertains to the peril of the soul, if anyone of those who has slipped from us into the sect of heretics and schismatics is held to be Catholic — with respect to heretical communion — without the profession of a lawful satisfaction.
For it is most wholesome and most full of the benefit of spiritual medicine, that whether presbyters, or deacons, or subdeacons, or clerics of whatever order, who wish to be seen as corrected, and aspire to return again to the Catholic faith which they had formerly lost, should first without ambiguity confess that their errors and the very authors of those errors are condemned by them: so that, their depraved sentiments being also destroyed, no occasion of hoping may remain, nor may any member be able to be violated by the fellowship of such persons, since through their own profession in all things the way shall have begun to be barred against them.
Concerning whom we also enjoin that that constitution of the canons be observed, that they should hold it a great benefit if, all hope of promotion being taken from them, they remain with perpetual stability in the rank in which they are found; provided, however, that they have not been defiled by a repeated dipping. He incurs no light guilt before the Lord who has judged any of such persons to be promoted to the sacred orders. But if promotion is granted to the blameless only with great examination, much more ought it not to be permitted to the suspect.
Therefore let your love, by whose devotion we are emboldened, join its own care to our dispositions, and take pains that those things be circumspectly and swiftly fulfilled which have been both laudably suggested and wholesomely ordained for the safety of the whole Church. But let your love not doubt that we — if, which we do not suppose, those things be neglected which we decree for the guarding of the canons and for the integrity of the faith — shall be more vehemently moved: because the faults of the lower orders are to be referred to none more than to the slothful and negligent rulers, who often nourish much pestilence while they dissemble to apply the necessary medicine. Given on the third day before the Kalends of January, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Calepius and Ardabur.