For a great insensibility and utter inflexibility abounds in you — you who are genuine brothers, fellow-dwellers, moreover fellow-partakers of the same libation, fellow-diners and fellow-companions at table, having obtained one and the same kinship — you have turned this into such bitter hatred, as to send one another away from your own borders and common hearth, and to drive one another far off, making one another cityless and homeless, and moreover fugitives, so far as it lay in your power to do so — and this, not fixing the exile to any limited span of time, but for as long as you were able, even without end, on account of your savage temper and your greatly disturbed state.
This very hatred you have possessed against them, and against the blessed John also, rekindling your rancorous enmity and, like a sharpened sword, loosening your tongue against him even until now — you embrace wrath instead of profitable teaching, pouring out accusation upon the church to the defilement of those who hear it. And these things indeed belong to those to whom the Lord, in mercy and love for mankind, will render according to their works. But for you, O blessed John, having departed from the arena, what unfading crown of words shall I weave and bring, not fearing to pronounce your praise (for you have stripped off the raging billows)? — is it not, indeed, of those Mosaic laws which he gave, blessing the active Joseph and the contemplative Levi the priest (for in you I see both)? — 'Blessed of the Lord is your land, with the choice gifts of heaven, with the dew, and the deep that lies beneath, with the choicest fruits ripened by the courses of the sun, and the conjunctions of the months, from the top of the ancient mountains, and from the top of the everlasting hills — let these come upon the head of Joseph (if there be a Joseph), and upon the crown of him who was leader among his brothers, glorified among his brethren.'
Amen. {THE BISHOP} And this is the discipline of your understanding, O Theodore, hunter of thoughts — to bring forth out of the treasury of your mind (according to the Savior's own saying) things both new and old;
From which treasures, to whichever part you have granted what is fitting, expressing from your own prudence what was proper for the offenders, and weaving from the Mosaic blessing the crown owed to John;
who, having exercised the priesthood without passion, truly did not know father or mother or blood kin, by reason of the surpassing measure of his righteousness, but rather knew only the lovers and workers of the Word.
But those who among us are reputed to be bishops have moored the earthly race in acquisitions, in military commissions, and in dignities, transgressing the law that says:
while squandering the things of the Spirit on intrigues, on misfortunes, on imprisonments, and on restrictions, having drunk ignorance undiluted, thinking by these means to dishonor the friends of virtue, concerning whom the Savior foretold:
'The days will come, in which those who kill you will think they are offering service to God.' And surely he did not speak this concerning the Greeks, since if he had meant them, he would have said 'to the gods,' who signify more than one.
'I shall not be shaken from generation to generation, without evil.' For no longer finding a newer kind of heresy, the deviser of lawlessness and cultivator of the most evil desire, the serpent, has goaded the leaders of the church into mutual slaughter, by the passion of love of one's own seat and love of the first seat, through which they wrought the schism.
For if there had been harmony of the Spirit of God among the bishops, and if, as one guilty of an offense, or unworthy of the priesthood, or (as Theophilus says) guilty of pride, John ought to have been restrained, the all-powerful wisdom of God was able lawfully to prevent him from the priesthood, or to devise a way by which he might be cast out without disturbance and without weeping — whether by death, or by paralysis, or by loss of speech — as we know some of those who set themselves against him have suffered, and some are yet to suffer.
But since, from these events, such deeds unworthy of the Savior followed — and he himself was not deposed, but exiled — it is quite evident that this is the drama of the devil, by whose teaching his kingdom was being undone.
Who wept? Whose nostrils dripped blood? What spider's web was torn? Who went out from his house? Who was fined even an obol? What charlatan, or craftsman, or farmer, or shoemaker, or common citizen of Asia did not rejoice at what had happened, in vindication of the sacred laws? — crying out in praise:
Was the all-powerful wisdom of God at a loss (as I said before) to stop John, unworthy as he was, by an invisible power, or to persuade those who disputed with him to bear the matter calmly, apart from the great necessity of earthly rulers? For if it is the same God who worked together with Moses for the freedom and obedience of Israel, when Pharaoh openly cried out:
'I do not know the LORD, and I will not send Israel away' — how then, in the case of John, did he need the help of earthly rulers, as though he had grown old, or had lost his strength, or was at a loss? Then again, he who exposed the adulteries of some, the pederasty of others, and the sorceries of others still — was he now at a loss to convict John further? Or, on the contrary, he who swelled one man's tongue with quinsy after a written confession, and permitted another to fall into a death-bringing climacteric crisis, or embalmed yet another — speechless upon his bed for almost an entire year, with worms already generating in him — or he who brought unspeakable terrors upon another together with accompanying gout, or he who swelled the legs of whomever he willed, or he who swiftly carried off yet another by a foul-smelling death (whom all know) — did he lack the strength to work one of these things upon John (as you say, who was a temple-robber), but instead needed the help of this man and that man, in order that, having dishonored him, he might drive John out — thereby glorifying him all the more by this very act? They are deceived, then, not knowing the commandment of the word.
For properly speaking, the temple-robber is not he who has distributed gold, or silver, or the threads of silkworms — the food of moths — to the poor, but he who, for silver and flattery and a place at table, sells off the doctrines and the ordinances of the Savior;
and further, he who does violence to a sacred man adorned in life and word, through whom the Savior, as through a mixing-bowl or a treasured vessel, gave the lovers of the Word to drink what was fitting for their salvation.
Let these, then, be called temple-robbers — those who have plundered the apostolic church, depriving her of such teachers, and selling ordinations for silver — whom divine justice will now pursue, for the correction of their wrongdoing.
how much worse punishment, do you suppose, shall he be deemed worthy of, who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and counted common the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said:
'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.' 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.' And may the God who has glorified this holy and sacred shepherd, this luminary of righteousness, grant us to find a portion and inheritance with him on the fearful day of his righteous judgment;
to whom belongs glory, honor, majesty, and magnificence — to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit — now and always, and unto the ages of ages.