It had been fitting, venerable sons, that this work, such as it is, which has been imposed upon me, I should dedicate after the custom to your names. But fearing lest, as accomplices of our hiding-places, you might fall into the calumnies of the persecutors whom we flee, I was unwilling to name you. Nor was it necessary to say this on your account, who are not strangers to our affliction, but on account of others who are ignorant, into whose hands these things may perhaps come. But I wish you to know that the messenger whom you sent found me laboring under a grave infirmity, so much so that in such days—as he himself will be able to relate to your Sublimity—I am not strong enough to postpone my fast even for an hour to relieve myself.
He further indicated to me, according to your mandate, that—such being the deserts of our age—even Mocianus now dares to censure the decrees of councils, and openly to boast that the African bishops and those of other provinces have decreed unworthily to shun the communion of those who have not been afraid to attack the Council of Chalcedon by a manifest and promulgated decree. But when do you grant us to cease, when to rest, who compel us to answer Mocianus as well? But this too I have learned, the aforesaid messenger relating it to me, that this same Mocianus, wishing to turn aside whatever ignorant persons toward the forbidden communion of the transgressors, circulates certain sayings of blessed Augustine;
and what Augustine fittingly said against the Donatists, he himself unfittingly strives to adapt as a snare for the simple to the present cause. So too once Faustus the Gaul, in the question of free will, by misunderstanding and incongruously applying the very opinions of blessed Augustine, deceived the unwary and led them into assent to his error; who nevertheless was detected and refuted by Fulgentius of Ruspe, of holy memory. But what should we wonder at in this? For neither could Augustine speak better than the prophets, than the apostles and evangelists; whose words likewise, being misunderstood and incongruously applied, so many heretics endeavor to defend their errors.
Nevertheless I rejoice that you have announced that he now openly confesses that the assailants of the Church have condemned, to the prejudice of the Council of Chalcedon itself, Theodore of Mopsuestia, the bishop who died in the peace of the Church, and his doctrine—whose praises were recited in the Council of Chalcedon with no one objecting—and also the letter of Ibas, bishop of Edessa, which was there judged orthodox, and the writings of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, who was there found to be a defender of the dogmatic letter of Pope Leo. For the holy brother Abba Felix, among very many other evils which he wrote to us about him,
reported this also: that he had become a friend of Theodore the Cappadocian, and had often presented him to the emperor, because he supplied him with certain chapters for condemning, after their death, those who had died in the peace of the Church. But at Carthage likewise, as we observed, he was maintaining that the aforesaid Theodore of Mopsuestia had been justly and regularly condemned after death. Now therefore, since you have indicated that he blames what before he used to defend as right and blameless, but nevertheless asserts this—that the communion of these very assailants of the Church is to be tolerated, and to the confirmation of this assertion abuses the words of blessed Augustine put forth against the Donatists:
it has compelled me, as you wished, without regard for the strength of my health, to reply somehow or other to his foolish assertions. For even the books needed for seeking out the necessary testimonies are now lacking to me, as to one put to flight and established in hiding: because he is the one with whom no one is pleasing. But if it seems that we are like the Donatists, why is he himself not ashamed to be found like Tichonius, whom blessed Augustine censured for foolishness, because, while reproving the Donatists for their schism, he yet communicated with them? Or does this man now do anything else, who affirms that Africa has made a schism and is separated from the Church, and yet communicates with it? And while he seems to himself alone to be wise, he has become one of those of whom the Apostle says:
'They became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened: for professing themselves to be wise, they became fools' (Rom. I, 21). But why is it reproached only to the Donatists—who leaped from schism into heresy, so that afterward they held wrong views also about baptism and the divine Trinity—and not to all heretics, either by blessed Augustine himself or by the other doctors of the Church, that they were unwilling to bear the wicked in the Church, except because the Donatists, with no intervening decrees by which they might say the ancient decrees concerning the faith had been opposed, separated themselves from the Church; whereas the others, who were separated by the intervention of decrees,
are blamed not for impatience of departure, but for their dogma alone, since they would have a just and necessary cause of departing, were they not themselves deceived in their dogma? Blessed Gelasius, bishop of Rome, wrote a great work against the Acephali; nor did he, or any other, blame them for impatience, saying that even if the definitions of the Council of Chalcedon were wicked, they ought to have borne the communion of the wicked and not separated themselves from the Church; but they are blamed for this alone, that they were unwilling to receive sound doctrine. Why, I ask, except that these, with decrees intervening, were not separated from the Church for other causes, as the Donatists were?
Let not, therefore, this new teacher any further abuse, to his own ruin and that of others, the assertions and examples by which the Donatists were repelled; but let him rather attend—he who, according to the prophet's saying, 'would not understand that he might do well' (Ps. XXXV, 4)—that the cause of the Donatists is one thing, and another is that which is now at issue, in which we follow so many examples of our Fathers. For when Acacius, bishop of Constantinople, dared something against the authority of the Council of Chalcedon—not indeed, as has now been done, with a decree established together with anathema, but only with communion permitted to the enemies of that synod:
The Apostolic See, foreseeing that, as the outcome afterward showed, this remission would tend toward the destruction of the said council (for later the emperor Zeno, who had ordered that communion be granted to them, leaping on from lesser things to greater, scorned that very council by an edict he promulgated), condemned that same Acacius, although the aforesaid Zeno resisted. And even after his death he has down to the present been condemned through the libelli of bishops to be ordained. But after it came about that in their libelli the bishops to be ordained condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia together with his doctrines, the letter of Ibas, and the writings of Theodoret, the said Acacius and the other adversaries of the Council of Chalcedon were withdrawn from condemnation.
Since therefore the aforesaid Zeno, despising the decrees of the Apostolic See, held communion with the aforesaid Acacius, and compelled all the Churches situated within the bounds of his realm to do the same, and since Anastasius then succeeded to the empire and to a like presumption, the whole East—except for a very few who lay hidden within that multitude—remained cut off from communion with the Apostolic See for nearly forty years, down to the times of Justin. And when during that time certain bishops of that same party sought communion with the Apostolic See for themselves and their Churches, they did not obtain it, until in the times of the emperor Justin they should subscribe to the condemnation of Acacius. Yet not one of them said:
「We are not the tares, but we tolerate the tares, lest we root up the wheat together with them.」 But why did they not say this also to the Apostolic See, if that comparison fitted such causes too: 「Nay rather, we do rightly, we abide in the commandments of the Gospel, who tolerate the tares, more than you, who for the sake of the tares have rooted up the wheat together with them, or have departed from the wheat」? What then shall we say here, religious sons?
Was it the case that through the span of so many years no one was found among the Roman pontiffs—from Felix the condemner of Acacius down to Hormisdas, who reconciled the Churches of the East—among whom indeed had been the blessed Gelasius, proclaimed throughout the whole world with the glory of a most celebrated renown for his holiness of life and his learning—was no one found, whether in the Roman clergy or in the Christian people abiding there, or in all the Churches of the West, who was even as solicitous for the unity of the Churches as this new master assigned in these latest times; so that no one perceived and taught that in this same cause communion with the wicked must be tolerated, lest the wheat be rooted up together with the tares?
as if it were lawful to believe that the knowledge and discipline of preserving unity began with the blessed Augustine, whose writings against the Donatists, fitting in their own context, this man now unfittingly drags into the present cause. And for that reason the illustrious teacher of the Churches, Hilary, and the other more ancient Fathers along with him, whom we mentioned above, did not observe the things that pertain to the safeguarding of unity—namely, that before anything was decreed against the Council of Nicaea, they should withdraw themselves from the communion of those who were attempting these things. Although, as we have said, those same men condemned the Donatists beforehand, yet did not the Apostolic See also, when afterward, with Zeno resisting the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, it condemned Acacius—
the Apostolic See, when it condemned Acacius with Zeno resisting the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, had it not read these and suchlike writings of the blessed Augustine? Or is it to be supposed that of itself it was less able to understand the things pertaining to the observance of unity—so as to condemn Acacius, whom the emperor would not allow to be expelled without much wheat? But neither ought the Roman Church to have reconciled the Churches of the East, and to have received them into communion under due satisfaction; rather, the Churches of the East, which had tolerated the tares, ought to have reconciled the Roman Church, separated from the wheat. Or was it not done for this reason, that this man could not yet teach throughout the Catholic Church as he now does?
or rather because there had not yet come into the Catholic Church the man who wishes to bring upon it this perverse and confused doctrine—and would that it were not colored with the name of Augustine? For he wishes that the Apostolic See, which then forgave the fault of others, should itself rather, together with the rest who maintained its judgment in the matter of Acacius, have been culpable as it were for a schism actually committed; and, after his manner sparing no one, he wishes that even those Easterns to whom forgiveness was granted at their request should be seen to have turned to the schismatic Westerns, whom they themselves ought to have converted to their own side. And these things indeed would suffice us for the refutation of this man, if the adversaries—whom he himself blames for not bringing an anathema against the Council of Chalcedon,
and not against us all, but as doing something against its authority—if these rather were condemned by us under an anathema. But now, since they act impiously and anathematize both us and our Fathers, and by this anathema separate themselves from the whole Church of Christ, we who, with God ruling us, persevere in the judgment and communion of the Fathers—we, I say, have determined, according to the observance of the Christian religion, not to communicate with those who have been separated from the Church.
Not even this, then, would I concede to these men, that we did what Hilary did with his colleagues, who, while as yet no decree had gone forth in prejudice of the Council of Nicaea, when the first machinations of their opponents had been ventured, hastened to divide themselves from their communion. Nor would I concede to these men that the African Church separated itself from the assailants of the Council of Chalcedon; but rather that it avoided communicating with those already separated. Whence anyone more diligent and more fervent in zeal for God could more acceptably, after the example of Hilary, blame us for tardiness than Mocianus could accuse us of schism or of haste. Who, moreover, unless out of his mind and wise in his own conceit, and, as the Apostle says, 「vainly puffed up by the mind of his own flesh」 (Colossians
2:18) against the judgment of the whole Church, not even regarding the outcome of events that has followed, who would dare to reprehend Hilary, that gentle and moderate steersman of the Church, who would not bear even to communicate by letters either with the bishops of Gaul themselves, because he believed they had kept silent in so great a cause, nor with the adversaries whom he had withstood? Or who, not daring to reprehend that man, would reprehend the African Church for levity or impatience;
which African Church, only when it saw the Council of Chalcedon anathematized by a decree already openly published and promulgated—and all who hold its judgment likewise condemned—avoided communicating with those who condemned their own Fathers and themselves; following not, as it were, the doctrine of Augustine contrary to the Donatists, but rather the observance of Hilary against the assailants of the universal synod?
But that you may know how, with the help of God who rules and directs us, we follow Augustine and Hilary in harmony, and do not set them up as if contrary to one another—so as to disapprove the one by approving the other—but follow both according to the diversity of their causes: receive what, in the judgment of Vigilius himself, I prosecuted among other things, as the acts of the third session, published to us by the official, declare. 「I ask,」 I said, 「of your justice, that you inquire whether the letter of Ibas, which was condemned as if Nestorian, was received by the synod of Chalcedon; and when it shall have been established that what the adverse party advances concerning the person of Theodore does no harm to the synod, you may then permit those things which they wish to bring forward to be read again:
lest perchance the things that are being done seem to pertain to the revision of the said synod. For I frankly confess to your Beatitude that it was not on account of the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia that I withdrew myself from the communion of those who contradicted. For even if this is not to be approved, I nevertheless judge it to be tolerable, nor do I judge it to be so great a cause that for its sake we ought to be separated from the communion of the multitude. But since from the person of Theodore they attempted to prove the letter of Ibas Nestorian, and from the letter of Ibas to disprove the synod by which it was received.」 In these words of mine, then, you perceive that first of all I was solicitous for the standing of the general synod, lest—what the Acephali always sought—its authority should be broken by being brought into revision.
Next, observe that it is not from this man that we now learn that for the sake of the unity of the Church the wicked are to be tolerated, as Augustine taught. For when I said: 「I frankly confess to your Beatitude that it was not on account of the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia that I withdrew myself from the communion of those who contradicted, for even if this is not to be approved, I nevertheless judge it to be tolerable, nor do I judge it so great a cause that for its sake we ought to be separated from the communion of the multitude,」 I showed that I was mindful of the doctrine of Augustine.
But since I ought not to have been contrary to Hilary and his colleagues—who, although without doubt they themselves also endured many wicked men in the Churches and condemned schismatics, nevertheless judged that those prelates of the Churches were not to be tolerated who by their own decrees attempted to infringe the authority of the general synods by which the Church is fortified—on that account, following them, I added, saying that I avoided the communion of these men for this reason: because from the person of Theodore, in whose letter his doctrine was praised, they attempted to prove the letter of Ibas Nestorian, and from the letter of Ibas to disprove the synod by which it was received.
For what other cause is to be alleged, that, a hundred and twenty years after his death, a bishop who died in the peace of the Church should be condemned together with his doctrines—or a letter whose author is said to be uncertain! For they do not even confess that it is of Ibas, but only that it is said to be his. Or why was the subscription of so many bishops in this matter sought, except because the consensus, not of a few, but of a multitude, could prejudice the whole council? And since the judge feigned to be ignorant of this, I both petitioned and said:
「This therefore I bid first be permitted me to demonstrate, that I may teach that it is falsely denied that it was received by the holy synod of Chalcedon, and that I may refute all the fabrications of those who contradict, by which they have condemned it as impious unto the destruction of the synod of Chalcedon.」 But since his hidden promise made before the trial was being held—wherein he had pledged that he would condemn those same chapters, and that he might, as it were, through ignorance be able to absolve himself—he did not permit me to make the proof which I was offering, and which he himself ought urgently to have demanded. But, the acts by which the cause had begun to be opened being removed from the midst, and his own judgment being interrupted, he begged of the bishops sitting with him that each should signify in writing the response that seemed to him concerning the cause that had been brought forward.
And because those bishops had, for the most part, hastened to Constantinople at his coming, and no subscription of theirs was held in this cause, and they were secure of their own integrity, on the occasion of this interrogation they too were separately compelled by the adversaries of the Church to respond as they dictated, in prejudice of the great council. And lest afterward they should withdraw and not offer in judgment what they had answered in writing, they were now, under the prosecution and custody of these same men, openly led to that man to deliver their profane and detestable responses. With our own eyes we saw these things. We beheld the Acephali, before the judge himself, eager and exulting, as they brought the bishops to him carrying those same responses.
And when these things so cleave to the hearts of those who hear, how can you so detest and bewail them as we do, in whose minds the very image of those evils still hovers? But that man, receiving the said responses, after some days carried them to the palace and handed them over to the other party, to be reserved in prejudice of the synod of Chalcedon, together with the autographs of the others who had previously subscribed. Yet, lest he should seem to them a betrayer, he deceived them with such words as these, saying: 「Why do we keep with us these responses contrary to the synod of Chalcedon, lest, being found at some time in the archive of the Roman Church, they be believed to have been approved by us? But let us bring them into the palace, and let them deal with them: they themselves will now know.」
As if he himself could not tear or burn them, or annul them by his own sentence, or restore them to those very ones from whom they had been given—things which he ought neither to have received from them, nor to have extorted, if he truly was guarding against prejudice to the general synod. And by that customary pretense, feigning that he was guarding against its prejudice, he did this at the will of the opponents—a thing which, if we connive at it, prejudices the synod. For how does it not prejudice it, if some seventy bishops are shown to have been gathered at Constantinople with the Roman pontiff—to say nothing of those who had subscribed beforehand—to have condemned, together with its approvers, the letter approved by the Council of Chalcedon?
and to have anathematized after his death, with the rest knowing it and remaining in their communion, that bishop—whose doctrine, with his name expressed, had its praises recited in the said Council of Chalcedon—together with his doctrines? For this reason, therefore, it was necessary not only to withdraw ourselves from their communion, but also—because those seemed to hold a more powerful place in the Church who first, at the emperor's command, yielded to this prejudice, lest their opinion should seem the more to be held—to commemorate, as we have done elsewhere, how both Menas of Constantinople, and Zoilus of Alexandria, and Ephraem of Antioch, and Peter of Jerusalem, before they either consented or yielded, testified that it ought not to be done.
For this reason also, concerning the autographs of that very Roman bishop—whether earlier under the impulse of ambition, when he burned to become bishop, or afterward by venality made over to the other party—we judged it necessary not to keep silent, lest the true faith should suffer prejudice through the authority of his name. For if this had not been so, and he himself had not first anathematized the whole Church, it would have behooved us to preserve his sentence in that matter, and to follow the example of ancient integrity which he had furnished us. For before he himself also committed this, writing about the journey to the bishop of Constantinople, who first assented to the prejudice of the great synod, but anticipating him by his letter, he says:
「Wherefore we have believed it should be made known that our lord and son, the most clement emperor, through the illustrious man Leo, has exhorted us with most serene admonitions, that we should keep with you and with all our brethren and fellow bishops, and with steadfast firmness preserve, that peace which Christ our Lord God and Savior loves above all holocausts. This exhortation of the most pious prince we gladly embrace. But if you wisely attend to the good of peace, as befits the rank of your priesthood, you must needs perceive and proclaim what peace is to be held in the Church of God, since the Apostle, who professed that the Lord our Spirit spoke in him, says:
『The peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, shall keep your hearts and your minds』 (Philippians 4:7). And Christ our God Himself, wishing to demonstrate the marks of perfect peace, says: 『My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world gives, do I give unto you』 (John 14:27). For what kind the world can give, He Himself instructs us through the prophet, who says: 『Saying, Peace, peace, when there was no peace』 (Jeremiah 6:14). And let us weigh this also by like reasoning, that in the Acts of the Apostles concerning perfect peace it is thus declared of those believing in the Lord, that in them 『there was one heart and one soul』 (Acts 4:32). Many things therefore are found written which are to be distinguished concerning earthly and heavenly peace.
Since we do not believe you to be ignorant of these things, let it suffice to have excerpted a few out of many, that the judgment of your fraternity may the better be able to estimate what peace is rather to be held by priests.」 Is it not manifest and evidently apparent from the things we have mentioned, that even those very opponents who dissent from us in many matters, nevertheless agree in this: that in such causes the communion of prevaricators is to be avoided? And that that peace is to be held by the priests of God in the Church which does not subvert the standing of the Church itself? But it is subverted, if its general decrees concerning the faith are broken on any occasion by the decrees of other priests.
On account of which, those too who had communicated with such men he, coming into the royal city, suspended from communion. He likewise again says in his said letters: 「Since it is not unknown to us that the deacon Stephen, then the representative of our Church over which by the grace of God we preside, together with very many Christians, suspended himself from your communion as long as you lived; and we have learned, from our brother and fellow bishop Datius reporting it, that those established in the island of Sicily—both he himself and our other fellow priests, and many Christian sons of the Church—nonetheless withdrew themselves from your communion;
and when we inquired into the causes of the scandal that had arisen, our aforesaid brother and fellow bishop answered that your fraternity's person had done this, which had by no means been committed in the times of any of your predecessors or of ours.」 You discern that not this judge alone and his deacon, but also Datius bishop of Milan, with other priests, judged that the communion of such prevaricators was not to be tolerated. Why then is a question still stirred up among us about this matter, wherein there is not even among those who contradict one another a single contradiction, nor among those who dissent in many things is any dissension held? For the judge asserts that he reluctantly pronounced that judgment.
We, on the contrary, respond that he sinned the more, since the pledge was made through ambition, and that he endured no torments by which he could be believed to have yielded. And whereas he asserts that he did this unwillingly, again in that same place he says that he did it in ignorance. But we prove that he could not have done in ignorance what he asserts he committed unwillingly. After these things he also wishes it to appear that he did nothing in prejudice of the Council of Chalcedon. To whom we oppose his own excuses: because, unless he had done that which prejudiced it, he would by no means strive to purge and absolve himself either of the princes' violence or of his own ignorance.
Since, therefore, between us there is found to be much dissension about these and other things, yet from this it is agreed among the parties, and is established among all without any controversy, that in such causes the communion of prevaricators is to be avoided. Finally, not even Sorcius—that chief ornament of their party, who would not befit being anywhere except with such men—contradicts this opinion; nay rather, he himself says something even more. For, writing to the blessed old man Boethus before he set sail, intending to resume the things he had condemned, the anathema which the African councils did not pronounce, he pronounced against them, saying: 『I anathematize Eutyches with all his followers and abettors, whoever attempt to infringe in any point the tome of the holy Council of Chalcedon;
and whoever anathematizes the letter of Ibas which that holy Council of Chalcedon received, let him be anathema to me.』 Accordingly, if the observance of Hilary and of his other colleagues displeases Mocianus in the like cause of the Council of Nicaea—through whom the orthodox faith was preserved in that storm and has come down to us unstained; if the solicitude and caution of the holy and most learned orthodox man Jerome also displeases him; if in the cause of the Council of Chalcedon too the example long ago furnished to us in the matter of Acacius by so many prelates of the Apostolic See, confirmed by the consent of the universal Church, displeases him; if what the African councils decreed in the present assault also upon that same council displeases him;
if what the bishops of other provinces also saw must be done—as those of Illyricum and Dalmatia—displeases him: let at least that please him which Vigilius himself, or which Sorcius himself, perceived, namely that in causes of this kind the communion of such prevaricators is to be avoided. For this reason, the blessed Stephen too, prelate of the Apostolic See, when he learned that the holy Cyprian and other African bishops had decreed concerning the rebaptizing of all heretics—although, as has been said, with no anathema interposed, nor against any of the more ancient decrees of a general council, nor conniving at heretics had they pronounced such a sentence—nevertheless immediately denounced to him that, if any should dare this, they would be expelled from the Church:
and the Church holds the opinion of Stephen rather than of Cyprian, not only concerning not rebaptizing heretics, but also concerning not tolerating those who rebaptize. But the most prudent man Augustine, in order to refute the Donatists of their schism—who, by the authority of the blessed Cyprian, attempt to defend the sacrilege whereby they repeat baptism—believed that his example sufficed: because, although he held a view of baptism otherwise than very many bishops of other provinces, he nevertheless did not, as the Donatists themselves did, separate himself from the Church. But he would have separated himself, if he had defined an anathema between himself and those who dissented. This example of the blessed Cyprian, then, in no way aids this man's assertion, as you see; but how it rather aids us, you ought to see.
We say, therefore, that just as, although we condemn the rebaptizing Donatists as separated from the Church, we nevertheless do not condemn Cyprian and his associates, who by the interposition of no anathema divided themselves from the Church when they defined concerning baptism what now seems to have given occasion to the error of the Donatists—so, although we condemn the Nestorians as separated from the Church, we nevertheless do not condemn Theodore of Mopsuestia, who by the interposition of no anathema divided himself from the Church, or, if he wrote anything which now perhaps seems to have given occasion to the error of the Nestorians.
And just as it suffices us to reject the opinions concerning baptism of Cyprian and his associates, without condemning them under an anathema, so, if perchance Theodore, understanding too little, wrote anything amiss, it suffices us to reject it, without condemning it under an anathema: because the Church has always shown this reverence, in the reward of her peace and in honor to the departed, that not only those who perchance in such questions had erred through the ignorance of human infirmity, but not even their very sayings, as those of heretics, should she condemn under an anathema. For it is not the ignorance of human infirmity, but obstinacy, that makes a heretic. Whence the blessed Augustine in his book On Catechizing the Uninstructed:
「Although,」 he says, 「even those who departed catholic from this life, and left behind to posterity some Christian writings, in certain passages of their little works—either not being understood, or, as is human infirmity, being less able by the edge of their mind to penetrate the more hidden things, and by verisimilitude straying from the truth—have been an occasion to presumptuous and bold men for contriving and begetting some heresy.」 Augustine, then, being catholic, says that those departed catholic from this life who, established in the Church, were through human infirmity less able by the edge of their mind to penetrate the more hidden things, and by verisimilitude strayed from the truth:
nor does he wish them to be called heretics, although they were an occasion to presumptuous and bold men for contriving and begetting some heresy. And therefore the blessed Cyprian and his colleagues, who through human infirmity erred in the question of baptism, or Theodore of Mopsuestia—if it should be shown that he perhaps strayed in something from the truth, and departed this life while remaining in that very error—we do not call heretics, whom we do not deny to have remained in the Catholic Church unto the end. In vain, therefore, did this man gather up for himself I know not what examples not pertaining to the cause, by which he strove to prove that the oft-mentioned Theodore of Mopsuestia had been justly and regularly condemned.
For not so: if any bishop is to be condemned who, dying, made a heretic his heir in his estate by testament, it was not that, to do this, he was unable by the edge of his mind to penetrate the more hidden things, or that by verisimilitude he strayed from the truth; but he committed a manifest crime, not through the ignorance of infirmity, but through the depravity of will. Hence it is that to Philip, saying: 『Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us』 (John 14:8), it was passed over with impunity that for so long a time he had not known Christ. But upon Ananias and Sapphira, withholding part of the price of their estate, the punishment of death immediately followed the offense committed a little before. Otherwise, then, is the simple ignorance of piety judged by the Lord, and otherwise the double conscience of depravity.
And the Apostolic See indeed, through the blessed Gelasius, judges it a wickedness to condemn after death anyone who has died in the peace of the Church, when he says: 「What is above the measure of our power, let us leave to the divine judgment. They will not, however, be able to impute to us the offense of prevarication, if to the living we remit that which, by God's bounty, is possible to the Church—those who demand that we give either pardon or condemnation even to the dead, which it is manifest is not possible for us: because, since it has been said, 『Whatsoever ye shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven』 (Matthew 18:18), those who are clearly no longer upon earth He has reserved not to human, but to His own judgment.
Nor does the Church dare to claim for herself what she perceives was not granted even to the blessed Apostles themselves. For if it is lawful to bind the dead, it is lawful also to loose them; and if it is lawful to inflict condemnation on the dead, it is lawful also to grant pardon.」 But if perchance it seems to anyone to hold that opinion by which some who have died in the peace of the Church are believed to be condemnable—and not rather this opinion of the Apostolic See, which alone understands these things to be reserved to the divine judgment—and if he should concede that, since it is lawful to bind the dead, it is lawful also to loose them, and if it is lawful to inflict condemnation on the dead, it is lawful also to grant pardon: it does not follow that on that account Theodore of Mopsuestia should seem to him also to be condemnable.
For that opinion does not impugn those who, like the blessed Cyprian and his associates, through human infirmity were less able by the edge of their mind to penetrate the more hidden things, and by verisimilitude strayed from the truth; but rather those who are proved to have sinned knowingly and willingly. Moreover, it is also known that judgment was rendered concerning this cause of Theodore at that time when the Apollinarists, the progenitors of the Acephali, with certain of his chapters sought to have him repudiated, and were repelled by John of Antioch and the Eastern council, as also by Cyril of Alexandria and Proclus of Constantinople. But now, in prejudice of the great synod of Chalcedon, his question is revived—a question finished a hundred and twenty years ago and already consigned to oblivion.