教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 405 章

Gregory to Maurice Augustus. Since in you, most Christian of princes, the rectitude of faith shines forth like a radiance sent from heaven, and since it is known to all that your Serenity vehemently embraces and with a safe heart loves the whole profession by which, God being propitious, it is strong, we have deemed it very necessary to make suggestion and to entreat you, whom one and the same faith illumines, that the Piety of our lords may protect them by its grace and guard them from all molestation. For while indeed they despise their confession, they seem to contradict the true faith. For since the Apostle cries out that confession is made with the mouth unto salvation, he who does not consent to believe a right profession, in that he condemns another, accuses himself (Romans 10:10).

Having therefore re-read in council the things that were done against John, priest of the Church of Chalcedon, together also with the record of the judgment, we came to know that he had suffered the greater injustice, inasmuch as him who was crying out and demonstrating himself to be catholic it was not the guilt of a charge but a long and uncertain accusation that crushed—to such a degree that his accusers, by an open response, professed that they did not know that heresy of the Marcianists which they kept mentioning. And those who ought at once to have been repelled at the very threshold of the trial were, in their uncertain accusation of him, permitted to persist. But lest at least mere rumour should have been able to tear him, he produced a little book of faith, in which he took pains openly to show himself a professor and follower of the right faith.

But the judges delegated by our most holy brother and fellow-bishop John, unjustly and unreasonably neglecting this, while they strove to occupy themselves in burdening him, showed themselves rather the more reprehensible. For no one doubts that it is infidelity not to hold faith with the faithful. Since therefore, all things having been subtly searched out and treated, the definition of the holy council together with me, by the revealing grace of divine power, has declared the above-written John a catholic priest, and no stain of heretical depravity has been found in him, I beseech that the pious protection of your Serenity may command him to be preserved unharmed from all molestation, nor allow a confessor of the catholic faith to suffer any disquiet.

For not to believe one truly professing is not to purge heresy but to make it. And if this be permitted, an occasion for infidelity will arise, and they themselves incur those very faults which they incautiously wish to correct. Let therefore the most Serene Lord consider these things with pious foresight, and, as I have entreated, with prayers poured forth again I ask, that he not permit an innocent man to be afflicted anew as though guilty; so that Almighty God, who perceives that your Clemency loves and defends the integrity of catholic rectitude pleasing to Him, may both here, with enemies vanquished, make you rule over a pacified commonwealth, and with His saints make you reign in eternal life. (Cf. John the Deacon, book 4, no. 36.)