To the Presbyter Renatus

We have heard of your holiness’s warm and righteous zeal, and of the just and lawful boldness of speech you used in condemning the brazen proceedings at Ephesus. Nor is this known to us alone. The fame of your orthodoxy has gone out into all lands, and everyone is celebrating your righteousness, your zeal, your boldness, and your denunciation of the unfair treatment I have received. And your holiness took this course after seeing only one massacre. If you had seen the others that took place after you left, you would perhaps have matched the fervor of the famous Phinehas. I am one of those who were condemned afterward. I was forbidden by the imperial order to attend the council, and I was sentenced in my absence. [a]

I have been a bishop for twenty-six years. I have gone through countless labors. I have struggled hard for the truth. I have freed tens of thousands of heretics from their errors and brought them to the Savior. And now they have stripped me of my priesthood, and they are driving me out of the city into exile. They have no respect for my old age, or for hair that has grown gray in the truth. So I beg your sanctity to persuade the most sacred and holy archbishop to bid me hurry to your council. For that holy see has precedence over all the churches in the world, for many reasons, and above all for this: it is free from every taint of heresy. No bishop of false belief has ever sat on its throne. It has kept the grace of the apostles undefiled. Trusting in your justice, I will accept your decisions, whatever they may be, and I ask to be judged by my writings. I have written more than thirty books, against Arius and Eunomius, against Marcion, against Macedonius, against the pagans and against the Jews. I have interpreted the holy Scriptures. Anyone who wishes can easily learn that I have followed in the steps of the apostles. I proclaim the one Son, one Father, and one Holy Spirit; one Godhead of the Trinity, one sovereignty, one power, eternity, changelessness, freedom from suffering, one will. I proclaim that the Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ was perfect, and perfect too the manhood that was taken for our salvation and handed over to death for our sake. I do not know one Son of Man and another Son of God, but one and the same: Son of God and God begotten of God, and Son of Man, through the form of the servant, from the seed of Abraham and David. These doctrines, and others like them, I go on teaching. I have also found them in the writings of the most holy and sacred lord archbishop Leo, and I praise the Lord of all that I agree with his apostolic teaching. I beg you, receive my plea, and do not overlook the wrongs I am suffering. That is why I have sent to your holiness the godly presbyters Hypatius and Abramius, who are country bishops, and Alypius, the exarch of our monks. They are men adorned by good lives, and able to give you exact information by word of mouth about the affairs of my unimportant self. [d]