Hexaemeron; On the Holy Spirit; Letters

1. You will hardly believe what I am about to write, but it must be written for truth's sake. I have been very anxious to communicate as often as possible with your excellency, but when I got this opportunity of writing a letter I did not at once seize the lucky chance. I hesitated and hung back. What is astonishing is, that when I got what I had been praying for, I did not take it. The reason of this is that I am really ashamed to write to you every time, not out of pure friendship, but with the object of getting something. But then I bethought me (and when you consider it, I do hope you will not think that I communicate with you more for the sake of a bargain than of friendship) that there must be a difference between the way in which one approaches a magistrate and a private man. We do not accost a physician as we do any mere nobody; nor a magistrate as we do a private individual. We try to get some advantage from the skill of the one and the position of the other. Walk in the sun, and your shadow will follow you, whether you will or not. Just so intercourse with the great is followed by an inevitable gain, the succour of the distressed. The first object of my letter is fulfilled in my being able to greet your excellency. Really, if I had no other cause for writing at all, this must be regarded as an excellent topic. Be greeted then, my dear Sir; may you be preserved by all the world while you fill office after office, and succour now some now others by your authority. Such greeting I am wont to make; such greeting is only due to you from all who have had the least experience of your goodness in your administration.

2. Now, after this prayer, hear my supplication on behalf of the poor old man whom the imperial order had exempted from serving in any public capacity; though really I might say that old age anticipated the Emperor in giving him his discharge. You have yourself satisfied the boon conferred on him by the higher authority, at once from respect to natural infirmity, and, I think, from regard to the public interest, lest any harm should come to the state from a man growing imbecile through age. But how, my dear Sir, have you unwittingly dragged him into public life, by ordering his grandson, a child not yet four years old, to be on the roll of the senate? You have done the very same thing as to drag the old man, through his descendant, again into public business. But now, I do implore you, have mercy on both ages, and free both on the ground of what in each case is pitiable. The one never saw father or mother, never knew them, but from his very cradle was deprived of both, and has entered into life by the help of strangers: the other has been preserved so long as to have suffered every kind of calamity. He saw a son's untimely death; he saw a house without successors; now, unless you devise some remedy commensurate with your kindness, he will see the very consolation of his bereavement made an occasion of innumerable troubles, for, I suppose, the little lad will never act as senator, collect tribute, or pay troops; but once again the old man's white hairs must be shamed. Concede a favour in accordance with the law and agreeable to nature; order the boy to be allowed to wait till he come to man's estate, and the old man to await death quietly on his bed. Let others, if they will, urge the pretext of press of business and inevitable necessity. But, even if you are under a press of business, it would not be like you to despise the distressed, to slight the law, or to refuse to yield to the prayers of your friends.

That the oath ought not to be taken.¹

It is my invariable custom to protest at every synod and to urge privately in conversation, that oaths about the taxes ought not to be imposed on husbandmen by the collectors. It remains for me to bear witness, on the same matters, in writing, before God and men, that it behoves you to cease from inflicting death upon men's souls, and to devise some other means of exaction, while you let men keep their souls unwounded. I write thus to you, not as though you needed any spoken exhortation (for you have your own immediate inducements to fear the Lord), but that all your dependents may learn from you not to provoke the Holy One, nor let a forbidden sin become a matter of indifference, through faulty familiarity. No possible good can be done them by oaths, with a view to their paying what is exacted from them, and they suffer an undeniable wrong to the soul. For when men become practised in perjury, they no longer put any pressure on themselves to pay, but they think that they have discovered in the oath a means of trickery and an opportunity for delay. If, then, the Lord brings a sharp retribution on the perjured, when the debtors are destroyed by punishment there will be none to answer when summoned. If on the other hand the Lord endures with long suffering, then, as I said before, those who have tried the patience of the Lord despise His goodness. Let them not break the law in vain; let them not whet the wrath of God against them. I have said what I ought. The disobedient will see.

I know that a first and foremost object of your excellency is in every way to support the right; and after that to benefit your friends, and to exert yourself in behalf of those who have fled to your lordship's protection. Both these pleas are combined in the matter before us. The cause is right for which we are pleading; it is dear to me who am numbered among your friends; it is due to those who are invoking the aid of your constancy in their sufferings. The corn, which was all my very, dear brother Dorotheus had for the necessaries of life, has been carried off by some of the authorities at Berisi, entrusted with the management of affairs, driven to this violence of their own accord or by others' instigation. Either way it is an indictable offence. For how does the man whose wickedness is his own do less wrong than he who is the mere minister of other men's wickedness? To the sufferers the loss is the same. I implore you, therefore, that Dorotheus may have his corn returned by the men by whom he has been robbed, and that they may not be allowed to lay the guilt of their outrage on other men's shoulders. If you grant me my request I shall reckon the value of the boon conferred by your excellency in proportion to the necessity of providing one's self with food.

Without address on the same subject.²

I am astonished that, with you to appeal to, so grave an offence should have been committed against the presbyter as that he should have been deprived of his only means of livelihood. The most serious part of the business is that the perpetrators transfer the guilt of their proceedings to you; while all the while it was your duty not only not to suffer such deeds to be done, but to use all your authority to prevent them in the case of any one, but specially in the case of presbyters, and such presbyters as are in agreement with me, and are walking in the same way of true religion. If then you have any care to give me gratification, see that these matters are set right without delay. For, God helping you, you are able to do this, and greater things than this to whom you will. I have written to the governor of my own country,³ that, if they refuse to do what is right of their own accord, they may be compelled to do so on pressure from the courts.

Without address on the subject of the exaction of taxes.

Your excellency knows better than any one else the difficulty of getting together the gold furnished by contribution.⁴ We have no better witness to our poverty than yourself, for with your great kindness you have felt for us, and, up to the present time, so far as has lain within your power, have borne with us, never departing from your own natural forbearance from any alarm caused by superior authority. Now of the whole sum there is still something wanting, and that must be got in from the contribution which we have recommended to all the town. What I ask is, that you will grant us a little delay, that a reminder may be sent to dwellers in the country, and most of our magistrates are in the country. If it is possible for it to be sent in short of as many pounds as those in which we are still behind-hand, I should be glad if you would so arrange, and the amount shall be sent later. If, however, it is absolutely necessary that the whole sum should be sent in at once, then I repeat my first request that we may be allowed a longer time of grace.

To Meletius, bishop of Antioch.

1. The eagerness of my longing is soothed by the opportunities which the merciful God gives me of saluting your reverence. He Himself is witness of the earnest desire which I have to see your face, and to enjoy your good and soul-refreshing instruction. Now by my reverend and excellent brother Dorotheus, the deacon, who is setting out, first of all I beg you to pray for me that I be no stumbling block to the people, nor hindrance to your petitions to propitiate the Lord. In the second place I would suggest that you would be so good as to make all arrangements through the aforementioned brother; and, if it seems well that a letter should be sent to the Westerns, because it is only right that communication should be made in writing even through our own messenger, that you will dictate the letter. I have met Sabinus the deacon, sent by them, and have written to the bishops in Illyria, Italy, and Gaul, and to some of those who have written privately to myself. For it is right that some one should be sent in the common interests of the Synod, conveying a second letter which I beg you to have written.

2. As to what concerns the right reverend bishop Athanasius, your intelligence is already aware of what I will mention, that it is impossible for anything to be advanced by my letters, or for any desirable objects to be carried out, unless by some means or other he receives communion from you, who at that time postponed it. He is described as being very anxious to unite with me, and to be willing to contribute all he can, but to be sorry that he was sent away without communion, and that the promise still remains unfulfilled.⁵

What is going on in the East cannot have failed to reach your reverence's ears, but the aforementioned brother will give you more accurate information by word of mouth. Be so good as to dispatch him directly after Easter, because of his waiting for the answer from Samosata. Look kindly on his zeal strengthen him by your prayers and so dispatch him on this commission.

To the holy brethren the bishops of the West.⁶

1. The good God Who ever mixes consolation with affliction has, even now in the midst of my pangs, granted me a certain amount of comfort in the letters which our right honourable father bishop Athanasius has received from you and sent on to me. For they contain evidence of sound faith and proof of your inviolable agreement and concord, showing thus that the shepherds are following in the footsteps of the Fathers and feeding the people of the Lord with knowledge. All this has so much gladdened my heart as to dispel my despondency and to create something like a smile in my soul in the midst of the distressing state of affairs in which we are now placed. The Lord has also extended His consolation to me by means of the reverend deacon Sabinus, my son, who has cheered my soul by giving me an exact narrative of your condition; and from personal experience of his own, will give you clear tidings of ours, that you may, in the first place, aid me in my trouble by earnest and constant prayer to God; and next that you may consent to give such consolation as lies in your power to our afflicted Churches. For here, very honourable brethren, all is in a weak state; the Church has given way before the continuous attacks of her foes, like some bark in mid-ocean buffeted by successive blows of the waves; unless haply there be some quick visitation of the divine mercy. As then we reckon your mutual sympathy and unity an important blessing to ourselves, so do we implore you to pity our dissensions; and not, because we are separated by a great extent of country, to part us from you, but to admit us to the concord of one body, because we are united in the fellowship of the Spirit.

2. Our distresses are notorious, even though we leave them untold, for now their sound has gone out into all the world. The doctrines of the Fathers are despised; apostolic traditions are set at nought; the devices of innovators are in vogue in the Churches; now men are rather contrivers of cunning systems than theologians; the wisdom of this world wins the highest prizes and has rejected the glory of the cross. Shepherds are banished, and in their places are introduced grievous wolves hurrying the flock of Christ. Houses of prayer have none to assemble in them; desert places are full of lamenting crowds. The elders lament when they compare the present with the past. The younger are yet more to be compassionated, for they do not know of what they have been deprived. All this is enough to stir the pity of men who have learnt the love of Christ; but, compared with the actual state of things, words fall very far short. If then there be any consolation of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any bowels of mercy, be stirred to help us. Be zealous for true religion, and rescue us from this storm. Ever be spoken among us with boldness that famous dogma⁷ of the Fathers, which destroys the ill-famed heresy of Arius, and builds up the Churches in the sound doctrine wherein the Son is confessed to be of one substance with the Father, and the Holy Ghost is ranked and worshipped as of equal honour, to the end that through your prayers and co-operation the Lord may grant to us that same boldness for the truth and glorying in the confession of the divine and saving Trinity which He has given you. But the aforenamed deacon will tell you every thing in detail. We have welcomed your apostolic zeal for orthodoxy and have agreed to all that has been canonically done by your reverences.