I have received your letters after a long time, in which [you should know] that I am one who keeps charity — however sad you may know me to be, you ought not on that account to believe me negligent. For truly God is witness that, from the greatness of your affection, the groaning in my mind is greater still. Nor can I, without great grief, suggest to you by how grave an easiness your sanctity — grant me pardon — has been overtaken. You have equipped your adversaries with your own weapons, you have betrayed our secrets to the imperfect, you have sung the Lord's song in a foreign land (Ps. 137:4). You have brought forth, as it were the vessels of the Lord (Dan. 5:3), for a banquet spectacle, things which they mock; you have exposed yourself, like Noah uncovered (Gen. 9:22), to guffaws that will never be free from reproach.
If they retain it or follow it, its quality has risen up dangerously against the truth. Certainly, if what was judged fit to be published was precious to you, the fault of king Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:13) ought to have frightened you, whom the prophet rebuked as sinning by the odor of boastfulness (Isa. 39:5,6). But since you say that this trepidation has been wiped away by the mind of one converting, it is just that we say with exultation: 'This is the change of the right hand of the Most High' (Ps. 77:10). For as to the fact that beasts so menacing contradict you in vain — God protecting — it is because they are weak; and the more wonderful it is that they lack teeth and yet feed upon rage: who, while they groaned that the disciples of their perdition were perishing, begin to lose their masters as well.
Wholesomely, before God and men, are such gains sought out. There is nothing violent in receiving one who desires it: so that a blessing to be bestowed may confirm the devotion of a willing person is not rapine but grace; and what Christ deigns to receive we cannot be said to have seized. But for the rest, in that you believe I should be consulted concerning the status of the convert, I define — by divine inspiration — that a man can rise to any grade of the priesthood, if there is not, either in the matter of marriage or in any rule and conduct, anything that prohibits the clerical state.
For why should he not feed the flock of Christ, who wisely perceived that they were not sheep whom he had been feeding, and who — because he is no thief and robber — being rightly a shepherd to come, entered through the doors and chose the altars? Why should he not be set up in our priesthood, who out of love of humility willed to fall from his own? Let him be a true priest from a layman, who is content to become a layman from a false priest. Let him hold his own people in our Church, who in his own church despised another's. The fullness of heavenly grace will give increase to such great goods, so that both he, having attained it, may begin to rejoice at what he grieved over, and this one, daily more fruitful, may understand rather that he has gone before those whom he left behind.