By the letters of your brotherhood, which our sons Daniel the presbyter and Timothy the deacon have delivered to me, I rejoice to have learned that the faith of the glorious and venerable prince, united to the prophetic and evangelical doctrines, has arrived at the holy and God-pleasing effects of his dispositions, so that—the most bloody invader of the Alexandrian Church being cast down and transferred to more distant places—the election of the whole city might merit a ruler worthy of its governance, to whose consecration no ambition drew you, no sedition impelled, no iniquity incited; but, the holiness of his merits being set in the midst, it did not hesitate to prefer to all that one whom the whole community desired to preside over it.
Hence, rejoicing that the peace of God has been restored to the Christian peoples, we commend to you mutually the dignity of your work, so that the bishop, ordained religiously in all things, may experience himself aided by brotherly assent, and, for abolishing the scandals which the heretical error had stirred up, may rejoice to be helped by your cooperation. For, that one being thrust out who was an imitator of the devil, and who stood not in the truth (John 8:44), ill using the appearance of an invaded honor and name, it is fitting that the Alexandrian Church venerate and love him whom it has proved worthy of so great a priesthood both by the probity of his morals and by the integrity of the catholic faith: to whom we offer the full affection of our soul in mutual charity:
exhorting, most dear brothers, and confidently requiring, that in the preaching of the word, in the teaching of precept, you keep that form of charity, without which no virtues can profit. But what you know to have been written to our brother and fellow-bishop Timothy concerning the recalling of those who, deviating from the path of truth, conducted themselves too rashly and too fiercely, let your love also understand to pertain to its own care: so that, because that pestilent sickness has spread itself widely, everywhere the same medicine may be applied to all wounds: so that by pastoral diligence the fold of the Lord may be repaired in all the Churches, and by the solicitude of charity and doctrine, all the sheep of Christ may feel themselves to have one shepherd.