2. But, as I said, for the present I postpone the
case. Would it have been too hard a task, my dear sir, to discuss
in a short letter, as between friend and friend, points which you wish
to raise; or, if you objected to entrusting such things to writing, to
get me to come to you? But if you could not help speaking out,
and your uncontrollable anger allowed no time for delay, at least you
might have employed one of those about you who are naturally adapted
for dealing with confidential matters, as a means of communication with
me. But now, of all those who for one reason or another approach
you, into whose ears has it not been dinned that I am a writer and
composer of certain “pests”? For this is the word
which those, who quote you word for word, say that you have used.
The more I bring my mind to bear upon the matter the more hopeless is
my puzzle. This idea has struck me. Can any heretic have
grieved your orthodoxy, and driven you to the utterance of that word by
malevolently putting my name to his own writings? For you, a man
who has sustained great and famous contests on behalf of the truth,
could never have endured to inflict such an outrage on what I am well
known to have written against those who dare to say that God the Son is
in essence unlike God the Father, or who blasphemously describe the
Holy Ghost as created and made. You might relieve me from my
difficulty yourself, if you would tell me plainly what it is that has
stirred you to be thus offended with me.