But this is not unwonted, that either the apostolic see should rebuke the violators of the paternal sentence as transgressing from the faith, or that all the uncontaminated and those wholly alien from this presumption should complain by a public protestation about such a deed, and pronounce that, if this be once admitted, not only the definitions of Chalcedon but those of all councils could not stand firm. This is the unusual thing, this the marvellous thing, this the thing in which the great power of truth appears: that it compelled even the presumptuous men themselves, by the inward goads of conscience, to confess that these things had been composed for the destruction of the synod of Chalcedon.
For the first to confirm them, Mennas bishop of Constantinople, while he still hesitated to give them his consent in writing, as had been enjoined, protested that it was being done against the synod of Chalcedon. But even after he consented, being confronted by the aforesaid Stephen, deacon and apocrisiarius of the Roman Church of venerable memory, as to why, contrary to his former opinion, he had acquiesced in the very things he had before blamed, and concerning which he had promised to do nothing without the apostolic see, he replied that he had yielded on this condition, and that it had been sworn to him, that he should receive back his signed document if the Roman bishop did not approve these things. In which he sufficiently showed that he was anxious about a human rather than a divine judgement.
But will he, even if he should receive back his own handwriting when the Roman bishop does not approve, and nothing of what he fears from a human judgement should befall him—will he on that account escape the sentence of God, the judge and avenger? Never shall another's secret swearing grant him this, but only his own correction. We swore to God once, O Emperor, when, being to be baptized into the death of His Son, we pledged ourselves to guard the deposit of the faith by which we are saved. To give or to receive an oath against this, therefore, is a great crime of perjury. For if it is reckoned exceedingly terrible when men thus enter into a covenant with one another under oath, that they cause some to be baptized amid their pacts, what must be believed of that oath in which we have covenanted with God, and we who swore have been baptized?
But consider also, I pray, the action of so great a mystery: how, being about to be washed in the laver of regeneration, we stand in the sight of God and of the holy angels, condemning the hidden things of our shame with the Church as witness. Nothing there is veiled, nothing hidden: in short, our body being stripped, we received that great sacrament of the faith and pledged ourselves to keep it; and not by voice alone, but also by the whole bearing of the body, we profess that we have put off the old man with his deeds. Why, then, do we now, taking up again the old man whose deed we renounced, covenant in secret some extraordinary thing concerning the very faith, while the Church is unaware—the Church which was witness when we openly and naked swore that we would keep it simply?
Who, moreover, could despise the authority of these men? Who would hesitate to follow the opinion of such men, seeing that by them the truth is preached freely and undauntedly? Zoilus too, prelate of the city of Alexandria, when he learned that the Roman bishop was coming, sent to meet him in Sicily, complaining that he had been compelled by necessity to the affirmation of that very decree—which the same Roman bishop, after he came, openly to his face, with us also among others present, reproached him with. Likewise Ephraem of Antioch, when it was first commanded him that he too should confirm this by writing back, was unwilling to consent.
But after it was announced to him that he must be excluded unless he did it, he was found to be a lover of his own honour rather than of the truth. What too of Peter of Jerusalem? Does not public report relate that, when a multitude of monks gathered to him, he declared under oath that if anyone consented to that novel decree, he would be acting against the council of Chalcedon? And yet he did not withhold himself from consenting to it. This, moreover, we recognize to have been contracted, as it were by inheritance, from the prevarication of that first woman, who first answered that it had been forbidden her to eat of the tree which was in the midst of paradise, and afterwards usurped what she herself had pronounced unlawful, and persuaded the man to eat.
And what shall we say to these things? Save what the Lord Himself said: «Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on the earth?» (Luke XVIII, 8). But what shall we say of the bishops of the other cities, who, even when they were compelled to write, openly protested that it was being done against the great synod, and after their subscription gave to the aforesaid Stephen, the Roman deacon, written documents to be transmitted to the apostolic see, confessing in them that they had subscribed under compulsion by the bishop of Constantinople; who, if they be inquired of by your piety, will be able even before you to attest our assertions. Whence not only those who did these things, but also those who, by communicating with the doers,
communicating give their consent cannot excuse themselves on the ground of ignorance, and in vain do they dissemble, in vain do they say that they do not know what has been done, whether loving temporal gains or freely neglecting their own souls. For to whom would not the mere confession of the transgressors—made both publicly in words and set forth in written documents—suffice for recognizing the merit of the cause? They hold the errors of those manifest who, with plausible arguments, as it were steadfastly defend their own faults; and can that error be unknown to those men, when it has been condemned by the confession of its own authors? To all these is added also the confession of Domitian the Galatian, formerly bishop of Ancyra, whom we have said confessed that his accomplices, the Origenists, contrived these things to the disturbance of the Church.
For in the document which he wrote to Vigilius, complaining of those who were contradicting the dogmas of Origen—who asserts that human souls pre-existed before bodies in a certain blessed life, and that all who have been destined to eternal punishment are restored to their pristine blessedness together with the devil and his angels—he also says this: «They sprang forward to anathematize the most holy and most glorious doctors, on the occasion of those dogmas which had been set in motion concerning pre-existence and restoration, under the pretext indeed of Origen, but anathematizing all the saints who were before him and after him. But those who had proposed to defend a dogma of this kind, were by no means willing to carry it out:»
«but leaving such a conflict, they turned to stir up matters against Theodore who was bishop of Mopsuestia, and began to contrive that he too should be anathematized, for the abolition, as they supposed, of those things which had been established against Origen.» Considering these things, most clement Emperor, who would not understand that, if the primates of the Churches, whose confessions we have recalled, stood firm for the truth, they could easily obtain from you that it should not be done, which they allege they did in vain and not of their own will? As though we were ordained bishops only for this, that we might be enriched by the gifts of princes, and sit with them among the greatest powers, as if upheld by the privileges of a divine priesthood:
but if anywhere, by the deceits of the malicious—which were lacking in no age—something should have been stolen upon them, amid their so great cares for their commonwealth, which prejudices the Church of God or disturbs the peace of the Church, we ought not, for their own salvation, to suggest to them the things that are true, and, if it be necessary, to resist by the authority of religion, and patiently to endure even their offence, if it should occur. And where will that prophetic saying be: «I spoke of Thy testimonies in the sight of kings, and was not confounded» (Ps. cxviii, 46)? unless perhaps we be shepherds indeed for the milk and the wool, but deserters when it comes to averting the snares of the wolves and guarding the sheepfolds.
For what have we already suffered, or what have we feared to suffer from a Christian emperor, while contending for the defence of that same faith which he holds? Indeed it might perhaps be said by another, that the spirit was willing but the flesh weak, and could not long endure being tormented—so that each one's own conscience of its frailty is prone to grant indulgence to those who give way. For pusillanimity is wont to obtain pardon from human hearts, on account of the devotion of its faithful beginning, if it does not persevere unto the end. But in this case, what at last can be offered by way of excuse? Especially when your clemency, not unmindful of its own surname, has done nothing harshly even against the very heretics who contradict it.
If, therefore, anyone has suffered anything on this account, it must rather be charged to the spiteful suggestions of those men who, while pretending to dissociate themselves from the rest, complained that they alone were contradicting them. As though, indeed, the moment the design of this deed became known, it did not at once offend the hearing of the Christian people, so that one man was said to have wished to do this—as if it were a matter of great and singular justice not to condemn so many venerable Fathers who recognized that this was being done against the Council of Chalcedon and openly detested it. These men, however, subscribed to the definitions of the book in which it was said: «If anyone says that we have stated these things in order to abolish or exclude the holy Fathers who were in the Council of Chalcedon, let him be anathema;
» and thus they made themselves anathema, who, by giving their assent, said that these things had been written against the holy Fathers who were in the Council of Chalcedon, so that if anyone says this, let him be anathema. But even if this had not been the case, ought it to be reckoned among the canons and statutes by which matters of God are decreed, that if anyone should believe otherwise concerning the author of that book—whoever he be or be said to be—than the author himself intends, he should be anathema as a heretic? Whereas, if it seemed right that it should be so decreed and stated, it ought to have been decreed that he should be made anathema, if anyone should use the things said in the aforesaid book to abolish or exclude the holy Fathers who were in the Council of Chalcedon.
But now, lest anyone should resist such pronouncements, all are forbidden to complain; yet to no one is it denied to use them for the exclusion of the holy synod. But since, as we said before, we have proved that both the letter of the venerable Ibas and the writings of Theodoret, as well as Theodore and his dogmas, were condemned to the prejudice of the Council of Chalcedon, we must now, in the conclusion of this volume, also demonstrate that which we promised in the second place of our division. For it is vainly denied that the same letter was approved by the synod; rather, the Eutychians, in order to mock us, sowed this lie through their partisans.