1.  It has long been expected that, in accordance with the prediction of our Lord, because of iniquity abounding, the love of the majority would wax cold. cf. Matt. xxiv. 12.  Now experience has confirmed this expectation.  But though this condition of things has already obtained among us here, it seems to be contradicted by the letter brought from your holiness.  For verily it is no mere ordinary proof of love, first that you should remember an unworthy and insignificant person like myself; and secondly, that you should send to visit me brethren who are fit and proper ministers of a correspondence of peace.  For now, when every man is viewing every one else with suspicion, no spectacle is rarer than that which you are presenting.  Nowhere is pity to be seen; nowhere sympathy; nowhere a brotherly tear for a brother in distress.  Not persecutions for the truth’s sake, not Churches with all their people in tears; not this great tale of troubles closing round us, are enough to stir us to anxiety for the welfare of one another.  We jump on them that are fallen; we scratch and tear at wounded places; we who are supposed to agree with one another launch the curses that are uttered by the heretics; men who are in agreement on the most important matters are wholly severed from one another on some one single point.  How, then, can I do otherwise than admire him who in such circumstances shews that his love to his neighbour is pure and guileless, and, though separated from me by so great a distance of sea and land, gives my soul all the care he can?