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

To the Chorepiscopi. 2193
Letter LIII. 2192
1. My soul is deeply pained at the enormity of the matter on which I write, if for this
only, that it has caused general suspicion and talk. But so far it has seemed to me incredible.
I hope then that what I am writing about it may be taken by the guilty as medicine, by the
innocent as a warning, by the indifferent, in which class I trust none of you may be found,
as a testimony. And what is it of which I speak? There is a report that some of you take
money from candidates for ordination, 2194 and excuse it on grounds of religion. This is
indeed worse. If any one does evil under the guise of good he deserves double punishment;
because he not only does what is in itself not good, but, so to say, makes good an accomplice
in the commission of sin. If the allegation be true, let it be so no more. Let a better state of
things begin. To the recipient of the bribe it must be said, as was said by the Apostles to
him who was willing to give money to buy the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, “Thy money
perish with thee. 2195 It is a lighter sin to wish in ignorance to buy, than it is to sell, the gift
of God. A sale it was; and if you sell what you received as a free gift you will be deprived of
the boon, as though you were yourself sold to Satan. You are obtruding the traffic of the
huckster into spiritual things and into the Church where we are entrusted with the body
and blood of Christ. These things must not be. And I will mention wherein lies an ingenious
contrivance. They think that there is no sin because they take the money not before but
after the ordination; but to take is to take at whatever time.
2. I exhort you, then, abandon this gain, or, I would rather say, this approach to Hell.
Do not, by defiling your hands with such bribes, render yourselves unfit to celebrate holy
2192 Placed in the beginning of the episcopate.
2193 “A class of ministers between bishops proper and presbyters, defined in the Arabic version of the Nicene
canons to be ‘loco episcopi super villas et monasteria et sacerdotes villarum;’ called into existence in the latter
part of the third century, and first in Asia Minor, in order to meet the wants of episcopal supervision in the
country parts of the now enlarged dioceses without subdivision: first mentioned in the Councils of Ancyra and
Neo-Cæsarea a.d. 314.” D.C.A. i. 354. Three mss. give the title “to the bishops under him.” The Ben. Ed. remarks:
“Liquet Basilium agere de episcopis sibi subditis. Nam qui proprie dicebantur chorepiscopi, manus non ponebant,
sed clero inferiores ministros ascribebant, ut videre est in epist. sequenti. Sed tamen ipsi etiam episcopi, qui Eccle-
sias metropoli subjectas regebant, interdum vocabuntur chorepiscopi. Queritur enim Gregorius Naz. in carmine
De vita sua. quod a Basilio, qui quinquaginta chorepiscopos sub se habebat, vilissimi oppiduli constitutus episcopus
fuisset. τούτοις μ᾽ ὁ πεντήκοντα χωρεπισκόποις στενούμενος δέδωκεν Hoc exemplo confirmatur vetustissimorum
codicum scriptura quam secuti sumus.
2194 cf. note on Theodoret, iv. 20, p. 125.
2195 Acts viii. 20.
To the Chorepiscopi.
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