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

To Patrophilus, bishop of Ægæ.
Letter CCL. 3093
There has been some delay in my receiving your answer to my former letter; but it has
reached me through the well-beloved Strategius, and I have given thanks to the Lord for
your continuance in your love to me. What you have now been kind enough to write on
the same subject proves your good intentions, for you think as you ought, and you counsel
me to my gain. But I see that my words will be extending too far, if I am to reply to everything
written to me by your excellency. I therefore say no more than this, that, if the blessing of
peace goes no further than the mere name of peace, it is ridiculous to go on picking out here
one and there another, and allow them alone a share in the boon, while others beyond
number are excluded from it. But if agreement with mischievous men, under the appearance
of peace, really does the harm an enemy might do to all who consent to it, then only consider
who those men are who have been admitted to their companionship, who have conceived
an unrighteous hatred against me; who but men of the faction not in communion with me.
There is no need now for me to mention them by name. They have been invited by them
to Sebasteia; they have assumed the charge of the Church; they have performed service at
the altar: they have given of their own bread to all the people, being proclaimed bishops by
the clergy there, and escorted through all the district as saints and in communion. If one
must adopt the faction of these men, it is absurd to begin at the extremities, and not rather
to hold intercourse with those that are their heads. 3094 If then we are to count heretic and
shun no one at all, why, tell me, do you separate yourself from the communion of certain
persons? But if any are to be shunned, let me be told by these people who are so logically
consistent in everything, to what party those belong whom they have invited over from
Galatia to join them? If such things seem grievous to you, charge the separation on those
who are responsible for it. If you judge them to be of no importance, forgive me for declining
to be of the leaven of the teachers of wrong doctrine. 3095 Wherefore, if you will, have no
more to do with those specious arguments, but with all openness confute them that do not
walk aright in the truth of the Gospel.
3093 Placed in 376.
3094 i.e. with Euzoius, Eudoxius, and the more pronounced Arians.
To Patrophilus, bishop of Ægæ.
3095 τῶν ἑτεροδιδασκαλούντων. cf. 1 Tim. i. 3. The Ben. note compares Greg., Orat. xii. 203.
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