講道與書信 第 161 章

CHAP. I. — How great is the love of God in your Clemency, whom by serving you reign, and by reigning you serve, the very condescension of your most religious discourse shows, and it inflames me with the whole heart into this affection, that for the safety of your glory I do not cease to offer vows and to supplicate: because much provision is divinely made both for the holy Church and for the Roman commonwealth by your welfare. On the same occasion therefore, on which I reverently received the missives of your Piety, I discharge the due services of salutation, and give insufficient thanks, because concerning the most sacred day of Easter your Piety has admonished me with priestly solicitude.

Although some time ago I professed that I acquiesce in this rule of observance, and that I have intimated to all the priests of the Western parts the same day of the venerable feast which the instruction of the Alexandrian bishop declared, that is, that in the present year Easter be celebrated on the eighth day before the Kalends of May, all scruples being laid aside out of zeal for unity and peace. CHAP. II.

— But concerning Carosus and Dorotheus, who by heretical depravity were protecting condemned errors to the ruin of many, I rejoice that your Piety, as my venerable brother Julian the bishop has indicated to me, has most wholesomely commanded that, removed from their monasteries, they be ordered to dwell among those whom they could not harm: which, as I hope, will be a remedy for the many whom you have freed from perverse teachers, while in all things the merits of your glory increase in the love of the Christian faith, on account of which the just and merciful God has granted that, as divine things are dear to you, so worldly things may be made subject. Given on the third day before the Ides of March, Valentinian Augustus being consul for the eighth time.