Flavian’s First Letter to Leo

To the most holy and God-loving father and fellow bishop Leo, Flavian, greeting in the Lord. [a]

Nothing can hold back the devil’s wickedness, that “restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Above and below it “goes about,” seeking “whom it may” strike, dismay and “devour.” That is why we have learned from Holy Scripture to keep watch, to be sober for prayer, to draw near to God, to avoid foolish questions, to follow the fathers, and not to go beyond the eternal boundaries. And so I set aside my excess of grief and my many tears over the capture of one of the clergy under me, whom I could not save or snatch from the wolf, though I was ready to lay down my life for him. How was he caught? How did he spring away, hating the voice of the one who called him, turning his back on the memory of the fathers, and utterly detesting their paths? With this I go on with my account. [b]

There are some who come “in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves,” and we know them by their fruit. At first these men seem to be of us, but they are not of us: “for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us.” But when they have spewed out their impiety, they throw out the guile that is in them. They seize the weaker ones, and those whose senses are untrained in the divine words, and carry them off with themselves to destruction, twisting and insulting the teachings of the fathers, just as they do the Holy Scriptures too, to their own destruction. We must be on our guard against them, and take care that no one is led astray by their wickedness and shaken in his firmness. “For they have sharpened their tongues like serpents; the poison of asps is under their lips,” as the prophet has cried out about them. [c]

Such a man has now shown himself among us: Eutyches, for many years a presbyter and archimandrite. He pretended to hold the same belief as we do, and to have the right faith in him. He does indeed resist the blasphemy of Nestorius, and makes a show of opposing him. But the statement of the faith composed by the 318 holy fathers, the letter that Cyril of holy memory wrote to Nestorius, and another letter by the same author on the same subject to the Easterners — writings to which everyone has given assent — these he has tried to overturn, reviving the old evil doctrines of the blasphemous Valentinus and Apollinaris. He has not feared the warning of the true King: “Whoever causes one of the least of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be sunk in the depth of the sea.” But throwing away all shame, and shaking off the cloak that covered his error, he openly persisted in our holy synod in saying this: that our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be understood by us as having two natures after his incarnation, in one substance and in one person; and that the Lord’s flesh was not of one substance with us, as though taken from us and united hypostatically to God the Word. He said that the Virgin who gave birth to him was indeed of one substance with us according to the flesh, but that the Lord himself did not take from her flesh of one substance with us; that the Lord’s body was not a man’s body, although what came forth from the Virgin was a human body. In this he set himself against all the statements of the holy fathers. [d]

But so as not to make my letter too long by going through everything, we have sent your holiness the record of the proceedings we held in the matter some time ago. In them, since he was convicted on these charges, we deprived him of his priesthood, of the management of his monastery, and of our communion. We have done this so that your holiness too, knowing the facts of his case, may make his wickedness known to all the God-loving bishops under your reverence. Otherwise, if they do not know the views he holds, of which he has been openly convicted, they may perhaps be found corresponding with him by letter or in other ways as a fellow believer. I and those who are with me send many greetings to you and to all the brotherhood in Christ. The Lord keep you safe and praying for us, most God-loving Father. [i]