3. How could mere words give you any clear idea of
all this without your being stirred to sympathy by personal experience
and the evidence of eyewitnesses? We implore you, therefore, to
stretch out a helping hand to those that have already been stricken to
the ground, and to send messengers to remind us of the prizes in store
for the reward of all who patiently suffer for Christ. A voice
that we are used to is naturally less able to comfort us than one which
sounds from afar, and that one coming from men who over all the world
are known by God’s grace to be among the noblest; for common
report everywhere represents you as having remained steadfast, without
suffering a wound in your faith, and as having kept the deposit of the
apostles inviolate. This is not our case. There are among
us some who, through lust of glory and that puffing up which is
especially wont to destroy the souls of Christian men, have audaciously
uttered certain novelties of expression with the result that the
Churches have become like cracked pots and pans and have let in the
inrush of heretical impurity. But do you, whom we love and long
for, be to us as surgeons for the wounded, as trainers for the whole,
healing the limb that is diseased, and anointing the limb that is sound
for the service of the true religion.