Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

To a lapsed Monk. 2093
Letter XLIV. 2092
1. I do not wish you joy, for there is no joy for the wicked. Even now I cannot believe
it; my heart cannot conceive iniquity so great as the crime which you have committed; if,
that is, the truth really is what is generally understood. I am at a loss to think how wisdom
so deep can have been made to disappear; how such exact discipline can have been undone;
whence blindness so profound can have been shed round you; how with utter inconsiderateness
you have wrought such destruction of souls. If this be true, you have given over
your own soul to the pit, and have slackened the earnestness of all who have heard of your
impiety. You have set at nought the faith; you have missed the glorious fight. I grieve over
you. What cleric 2094 does not lament as he hears? What ecclesiastic does not beat the
breast? What layman is not downcast? What ascetic is not sad? Haply, even the sun has
grown dark at your fall, and the powers of heaven have been shaken at your destruction.
Even senseless stones have shed tears at your madness; even your enemies have wept at the
greatness of your iniquity. Oh hardness of heart! Oh cruelty! You did not fear God; you
did not reverence men; you cared nothing for your friends; you made shipwreck of all at
once; at once you were stripped of all. Once more I grieve over you, unhappy man. You
were proclaiming to all the power of the kingdom, and you fell from it. You were making
all stand in fear of your teaching, and there was no fear of God before your eyes. You were
preaching purity, and you are found polluted. You were priding yourself on your poverty,
and you are convicted of covetousness; you were demonstrating and explaining the chastisement
of God, and you yourself brought chastisement on your own head. How am I to
lament you, how grieve for you? How is Lucifer that was rising in the morning fallen and
dashed on the ground? Both the ears of every hearer will tingle. How is the Nazarite,
brighter than gold, become dark above pitch? How has the glorious son of Sion become an
unprofitable vessel! Of him, whose memory of the sacred Scriptures was in all men’s mouths,
the memory to-day has perished with the sound. The man of quick intelligence has quickly
perished. The man of manifold wit has wrought manifold iniquity. All who profited by
your teaching have been injured by your fall. All who came to listen to your conversation
have stopped their ears at your fall. I, sorrowful and downcast, weakened in every way,
eating ashes for bread and with sackcloth on my wound, am thus recounting your praises;
2092 To be ranked with the former letter.
2093 One ms. adds, in a later hand, Alexius.
2094 ἱερεύς. When first this word and its correlatives came to be used of the Christian ministry it was applied
generally to the clergy. cf. Letter of the Council of Illyricum in Theod., Ecc. Hist. iv. 8, and note on Letter liv. p.
157.
To a lapsed Monk.
445
147