To Bishop Sabinianus

I praised your holiness when you left the much-coveted see. Once it was worthy of reverence; now it is ridiculous, for we have made it a thing to be bought and sold. I was astounded to hear that you had appealed to the men who threw you out. You ought to have done just the opposite. When you were invited to take hold of the tiller, you should have declined, on the ground that your shipmates had become your enemies. Do you not know, most godly sir, what our Savior taught us to preach through his sacred apostles? Do you not know what the heirs of the apostolic doctrines have just now laid down as objects of worship? For which of the old teachers, from the time the message was first preached down to the darkness that now prevails, ever listened to anyone preaching one nature of flesh and Godhead, or ever dared to call the nature of the only Son capable of suffering? In our day some men speak these doctrines openly and boldly, while among others the speaking of them is overlooked, and by their silence men become sharers in the blasphemy. What then, someone may well ask, should those do who detest such doctrines? I would answer that they have two choices before them. They may either come to close quarters and prove the doctrines false, or they may refuse communion with their opponents as men openly impious. [a]

For my part, I have received the wrong done to me as a blessing from God. I do not mean that I have thanked those who wronged me. How could I thank men who have killed their brothers, men who have become followers of Cain? But I praise my Master for counting me worthy of the lot of those who suffer wrong, for separating me from wrongdoers and blasphemers, and for giving me my most delightful rest.