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

To Petrus, bishop of Alexandria. 3210
Letter CCLXVI. 3209
1. You have very properly rebuked me, and in a manner becoming a spiritual brother
who has been taught genuine love by the Lord, because I am not giving you exact and detailed
information of all that is going on here, for it is both your part to be interested in what
concerns me, and mine to tell you all that concerns myself. But I must tell you, right honourable
and well-beloved brother, that our continuous afflictions, and this mighty agitation
which is now shaking the Churches, result in my taking all that is happening as a matter of
course. Just as in smithies where men whose ears are deafened get accustomed to the sound,
so by the frequency of the strange tidings that reach me I have now grown accustomed to
be undisturbed and undismayed at extraordinary events. So the policy which has been for
a long time pursued by the Arians to the detriment of the Church, although their achievements
have been many and great and noised abroad through all the world, has nevertheless
been endurable to me, because of their being the work of open foes and enemies of the word
of truth. It is when these men do something unusual that I am astonished, not when they
attempt something great and audacious against true religion. But I am grieved and troubled
at what is being done by men who feel and think with me. Yet their doings are so frequent
and so constantly reported to me, that even they do not appear surprising. So it comes about
that I was not agitated at the recent disorderly proceedings, partly because I knew perfectly
well that common report would carry them to you without my help, and partly because I
preferred to wait for somebody else to give you disagreeable news. And yet, further, I did
not think it reasonable that I should show indignation at such proceedings, as though I were
annoyed at suffering a slight. To the actual agents in the matter I have written in becoming
terms, exhorting them, because of the dissension arising among some of the brethren there,
not to fall away from charity, but to wait for the matter to be set right by those who have
authority to remedy disorders in due ecclesiastical form. That you should have so acted,
stirred by honourable and becoming motives, calls for my commendation, and moves my
gratitude to the Lord that there remains preserved in you a relic of the ancient discipline,
and that the Church has not lost her own might in my persecution. The canons have not
suffered persecution as well as I. Though importuned again by the Galatians, I was never
able to give them an answer, because I waited for your decision. Now, if the Lord so will
and they will consent to listen to me, I hope that I shall be able to bring the people to the
Church. It cannot then be cast in my teeth that I have gone over to the Marcellians, and
they on the contrary will become limbs of the body of the Church of Christ. Thus the disgrace
3209 Placed in 377.
3210 cf. Letter cxxxiii. p. 200.
To Petrus, bishop of Alexandria.
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