講道與書信 第 138 章

CHAPTER I. We would indeed have wished to receive the letters of your brotherhood at the time when you had promised, so that to our brethren setting out for the East—whom we directed to the holy synod in our place for the defense of the catholic faith—the profession of your judgment might also be joined. But since many obstacles brought upon you an unforeseen delay, we have gratefully received, through our brother and fellow bishop Ingenuus, your letters, however late and long awaited, and reviewing them with joy we have approved them; even as we were confident, that by the instruction of the Holy Spirit the heavenly doctrine is vigorous in you, which in the Eastern Churches the cunning of the ancient enemy, through those whom he found followers of his falsehood, endeavored to wear down;

since the catholic faith, which is in no part of itself mutable, through the very exercises of its adversaries is always rendered both stronger and clearer, the grace of God working this—so that if perchance any were less instructed and less watchful in turning aside these subtle darts of the enemy, having received the arms of truth, they might become stronger against the lies of the impious. Since therefore, as the cause required, you have faithfully and obediently increased our confidence, which we have concerning you in the Lord, we rejoice with much exultation. CHAPTER II.

—And with good reason we recognize that we intimated to our brethren and fellow bishops of the East that, according to the evangelical and apostolic tradition concerning the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the confession of us all should be one and undivided; and that by no disputations of heretics could it be brought about that we should think anything otherwise concerning the truth of the supreme and salvific mystery than what we have learned and teach from the preaching of the holy Fathers and from the authority of the immutable Creed, both Eutyches now and formerly Nestorius having been condemned by the universal Church.

If anyone should choose to cling to their unbearable impieties, he cuts himself off from the body of Christian unity. For no longer is any refuge of excuse granted to anyone on the ground of the ignorance of unlearning or the difficulty of understanding; since for this very reason a synod of nearly six hundred of our brethren and fellow bishops was gathered, which permitted no art of reasoning, no eloquence of discourse, to breathe against the faith divinely founded:

since, our brethren and vicars striving through the help of God's grace—whose devotion was most fully manifest in every action—it plainly and evidently appeared, not only to the priests of Christ, but also to the Christian princes and powers and to all the orders of clergy and people, that this is truly the apostolic and catholic faith, flowing from the fountain of divine piety; which faith, sincere and estranged from every dreg of all error, even as we have received it, we preach, and now, with the whole world consenting, we defend—the dogmas being extinguished throughout the whole earth which either the preceding heretic dared to introduce, or the subsequent one, with a lie indeed unlike, but with impiety not unequal. CHAPTER III.

—For just as Nestorius was not tolerated, asserting that the blessed Mary was only the mother of a man, who was afterwards assumed by the Deity of the Word—that is, with two persons distinct and divided, so that He who was Son of God was not the Son of man, nor one Christ in each nature, but one eternal from the Father, another temporal from the mother—whereas the evangelical authority so proclaims the Word made flesh (John 1:14) that it insinuates to us not two Christs, nor two sons, but in one Lord Jesus Christ the truth both of God and of man: so that the property of each substance, that is, of the saving and the saved, can neither be confounded, nor the person doubled.

As therefore Nestorius was execrable in his dogma, so also Eutyches, following an error long ago condemned, blaspheming with another profanity, was cut off from the framework of catholic solidity: because he attempted to persuade certain unlearned and overly simple men that the Word of God was so made flesh that He did not take true flesh from His mother; and he said that Christ had not a body of our race, but that there is one nature of His Divinity and of the flesh, or that our one Lord Jesus Christ was both a false man and a God capable of suffering. Which neither the piety of faith nor the reason of the mystery admits, that either the Godhead was passible in its own nature, or the truth lied in the assumption of humanity. CHAPTER IV.

—These monstrous inventions of diabolical thoughts the holy synod now, assenting with religious unanimity to the writings of our humility, strengthened by the authority and merit of my most blessed lord Peter the apostle, has amputated as an abomination from the Church of God, Dioscorus of Alexandria being also condemned in his impiety: lest that Church, which among the very beginnings of the Gospel had as its founder the blessed Mark, disciple of the most blessed apostle Peter, in all things assuredly consonant with the teaching of his master, and which afterward, in times more recent to our age, had Athanasius, Theophilus, and most recently Cyril as its most approved prelates, should suffer an unworthy captivity under the domination of a heretic.

Wherefore, according to the great mercy of God, you shall know that all the endeavors of the devil, by which he strove to trouble the Church of God, have been destroyed. CHAPTER V.—Rendering therefore to God, most dear brethren, worthy thanksgiving, let your love pray with us, that we may rejoice that our brethren, whom our expectation longs for, have returned unharmed as soon as possible, and that concerning all things which have been done with the Lord's help we may be able more fully to instruct you. For we did not wish brother Ingenuus to be delayed by this waiting; since for this very reason he ought to return the more speedily, lest the matter of our common joys should be longer unknown to you: which we wish, through the care of your love, to reach also our brethren the bishops of Spain:

so that what God has wrought may be unknown to none. Given on the sixth day before the Kalends of February, in the consulship of Herculanus, most illustrious man.