Why Can We Not Differ as Friends?

But before I answer your letter, I must remonstrate with you. You are the eldest among the monks, a good presbyter, a follower of Christ: can you really wish to kill your brother, when even to hate him is to be a murderer? Have you learned from your Savior that if someone strikes you on one cheek you should turn the other to him as well? Did he not answer the man who struck him, “If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness to the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike me?” You threaten me with death, which even snakes can inflict on us. To die is the lot of all; to commit murder belongs only to the weak man. What then? If you do not kill me, will I never die? Perhaps I ought to thank you for turning this necessity into a virtue. [a]

We read of apostles quarreling: Paul and Barnabas were angry with each other on account of John, whose surname was Mark. Men bound together by the gospel of Christ parted company over a voyage; yet they remained friends. Did not the same Paul oppose Peter to his face, because he was not walking uprightly in the gospel? Yet he speaks of him as one who was in the gospel before him and as a pillar of the church, and he lays his way of preaching before him, “in case he was running, or had run, in vain.” Do not children differ from their parents, and wives from their husbands, in matters of religion, while the affection of the household stays whole? If you believe as I do, why should you hate me? Even if you believe differently, why should you want to kill me? Is it the rule that whoever differs from you must be put to death? I call on Jesus, who will judge what I am now writing and your letter too, as a witness on my conscience: when the reverend bishop Chromatius begged me to keep silent, I wanted to do so, and so to make an end of our quarrels and to overcome evil with good. But now that you threaten me with destruction, I am forced to reply. Otherwise my silence will be taken as an admission of the crime, and you will read my restraint as the sign of a guilty conscience.