From the Eastern Delegates at Constantinople to Bishop Rufus

To our most godly and holy fellow minister Rufus, from John, Himerius, Theodoret and the rest: greetings in the Lord. [a]

True religion and the peace of the church suffer, we think, in no small degree from the absence of your holiness. Had you been on the spot, you might have put a stop to the disturbances that have arisen and the violence that has been dared. You might have fought on our side to put down the heresies brought into the orthodox faith, and for that doctrine of apostles and evangelists which has been handed down from age to age, from father to son, and has at last been passed on to us. We do not say this without ground. We have learned the mind of your holiness from the letter written to the most godly and holy Julian, bishop of Sardica. As was right, that letter charged this most godly bishop to fight for the faith laid down by the blessed Fathers assembled in council at Nicaea, and not to allow any corruption to be brought into those unconquerable definitions, which are enough both to show the truth and to refute falsehood. So your holiness advised rightly, justly and piously, and the one who received the letter followed your counsel. But many of the members of the council, to use the prophet’s words, “have gone aside” and have “altogether become filthy.” They have abandoned the faith they received from the holy Fathers and have signed the twelve Chapters of Cyril of Alexandria. These Chapters teem with the error of Apollinarius, agree with the impiety of Arius and Eunomius, and anathematize all who do not accept their open unorthodoxy. We who have assembled from the East, and others from different dioceses, have offered vigorous resistance to this plague that is striking the church, so as to secure the confirmation of the faith delivered by the blessed Fathers at Nicaea. For in that faith, as your holiness knows, nothing is lacking, whether for teaching the doctrines of the Gospel or for refuting every heresy. [b]

For the sake of this faith we go on struggling, despising alike all the joys and all the sorrows of mortal life, if only we may keep this inheritance from our fathers untouched. That is why we have deposed Cyril and Memnon: Cyril as the prime mover in the heresy, and Memnon as his helper and accomplice in everything that has been done to confirm and uphold the Chapters published to the ruin of the church. We have also excommunicated all who have dared to sign and support these impious doctrines, until they anathematize them and return to the faith of the Fathers at Nicaea. [d] But our patience has done them no good. To this day they go on fighting for those ruinous doctrines, and they have impaled themselves on the law of the canon, which plainly lays down: “If any bishop deposed by a synod, or any presbyter or deacon deposed by his own bishop, performs his sacred office without waiting for the judgment of a synod, he is to have no opportunity to defend himself, not even in another synod; and all who are in communion with him are to be expelled from the church.” Now this law has been broken both by the deposed and by the excommunicated. For as soon as they learned of the deposition and the excommunication, they performed sacred functions, and they still do so, in plain disbelief of him who said, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” [e]

We thought it right to tell your holiness of this at once, but we have waited until now in the hope of some change for the better. We have been disappointed. They have gone on fighting for this impious heresy, and they pay no attention to the counsel of the most pious emperor. On five separate occasions he has met with us, and he has ordered them either to reject the Chapters of Cyril as contrary to the faith, or else to be willing to do battle on their behalf and show in what way they agree with the confession of the Fathers. We have our proofs at hand, by which we would have shown that the Chapters are entirely opposed to the teaching of orthodoxy, and for the most part agree with heresy. For in these very Chapters the author of these harmful writings teaches that the Godhead of the only Son suffered, instead of teaching that the manhood he took on for our salvation suffered, while the indwelling Godhead plainly made the sufferings its own, as those of its own body, but suffered nothing in its own nature. He teaches further that one nature is made of both Godhead and manhood, for that is how he explains “The Word became flesh,” as though the Godhead had undergone some change and been turned into flesh. [g] He also anathematizes those who distinguish between the terms the apostles and evangelists use about the Lord Christ, referring the lowly terms to the manhood and the terms of divine glory to the Godhead of the Lord Christ. It is with these very views that the Arians and Eunomians, attributing the lowly terms to the Godhead, have not shrunk from declaring God the Word to be made and created, of another substance, and unlike the Father. What blasphemy follows from these statements is not hard to see. A confusion of the natures is brought in, and to God the Word are applied the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me”; the hunger, the thirst, and the strengthening by an angel; his saying “Now my soul is troubled,” and “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death”; and all similar passages that belong to the manhood of the Christ. Anyone can see how these statements match the impiety of Arius and Eunomius. For they, finding themselves unable to establish the difference of substance, link the sufferings and the lowly terms, as has been said, with the Godhead of the Christ. [h]

And your reverence may be well assured that the Arian teachers in their churches are now preaching nothing other than this: that those who uphold “of one substance” now hold the same views as Arius, and that after a long time the truth has at last come to light. [i] We, on the contrary, abide in the teaching and follow in the pious footsteps of the blessed Fathers assembled at Nicaea and of their illustrious successors: Eustathius of Antioch, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory, John, Athanasius, Theophilus, Damasus of Rome, and Ambrose of Milan. For all of these, following the words of the apostles, have left us an exact rule of orthodoxy, which all of us in the East earnestly desire to keep unshaken. The same is the wish of the Bithynians, the Paphlagonians, Second Cappadocia, Pisidia, Mysia, Thessaly, Rhodope, and very many more of the different provinces. The Italians too, it is clear, will not put up with this newfangled doctrine. For the most godly and holy Martinus, bishop of Milan, has written a letter to us, and he has sent to the most pious emperor a work of the blessed Ambrose on the incarnation of the Lord, whose teaching is opposed to these heretical Chapters. [j]

And let your holiness know that Cyril and Memnon have not been content with corrupting the orthodox faith; they have trampled all the canons underfoot. They have received into communion men excommunicated in various provinces and dioceses. There are others who lie under charges of heresy and are of the same mind as Celestius and Pelagius, for they are Euchites, or Enthusiasts, and who were therefore excommunicated by their own bishops and metropolitans. These too they have received into communion in defiance of all church discipline. So they have swelled their following from every possible quarter, and have shown that they are eager to enforce their teaching less by piety than by violence. For when they had been stripped bare of piety, they devised in their extremity another kind of force, walls of flesh, thinking that with their showers of bribes they might defeat the faith of the Fathers. But as long as your holiness puts forth your strength and goes on fighting, as you always do, in defense of true religion, none of these schemes will be of the least use. We urge you therefore, most holy sir, to beware of communion with the unscrupulous authors of this heresy. Make known to everyone, near and far, that these are the very points for which the thrice-blessed Damasus deposed the heretics Apollinarius, Vitalius and Timothy. Make known too that the letter in which the writer has hidden his heresy and painted it over with a coat of truth must not be received in simple trust. For in the Chapters he has boldly laid bare his impiety and dared to anathematize all who disagree with him, while in the letter he has basely tried to harm the simpler readers. [l] Your holiness must not neglect this matter, then, or else, when you see this heresy confirmed too late, you will grieve in vain and be distressed at no longer being able to defend the cause of truth.

We have also sent you a copy of the petition we presented to the most pious and Christ-loving emperor. It contains the faith of the holy Fathers at Nicaea, and in it we have rejected the newly invented heresies of Cyril and judged them to be opposed to the orthodox faith. Since by order of the most pious emperor only eight of us traveled to Constantinople, we have added below a copy of the commission the holy synod gave us, so that you may know the provinces included in it. Your holiness will learn them from the signatures of the metropolitans. We greet the brotherhood that is with you.