1.  Truly unexpected tidings make both ears tingle.  This is my case.  These compositions against me, which are being carried about, have fallen upon ears by this time pretty well seasoned, on account of my having formerly received the letter, appropriate enough to my sins, but which I should never have expected to be written by those who sent it.  Nevertheless what followed did seem to me so extraordinarily cruel as to blot out all that had gone before.  How could I fail to be driven almost out of my senses when I read the letter addressed to the reverend brother Dazinas, full of outrageous insults and calumnies and of attacks against me, as though I had been convicted of much pernicious designs against the Church?  Moreover proofs were forthwith offered of the truth of the calumnies against me, from the document of whose authorship I am ignorant.  Parts I recognise, I own, as having been written by Apollinarius of Laodicea.  These I had purposely not even ever read, but I had heard of them from the report of others.  Other portions I found included, which I had never either read or heard of from any one else; of the truth of this there is a faithful witness in heaven.  How then can men who shun lies, who have learnt that love is the fulfilling of the law, who profess to bear the burdens of the weak, have consented to bring these calumnies against me and to condemn me out of other men’s writings?  I have often asked myself this question, but I cannot imagine the reason, unless it be, as I have said from the beginning, that my pain in all this is a part of the punishment which is due to my sins.