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 caused by heresy will be made to
disappear by the method I adopt, and I shall escape the opprobrium of
having gone over to them.