To the Emperor Marcian, Against Reopening Questions of Faith

I have already replied to your grace by the hand of the clergy of Constantinople. Yet on receiving a further kindness from your clemency through the illustrious prefect of the city, my son Tatian, I found still greater cause for congratulation, because I have learned how eager you are for the peace of the church. And this holy desire, as it rightly deserves, secures for your empire the same happy condition that you seek for religion. For when the Spirit of God establishes harmony among Christian princes, a twofold confidence arises throughout the world. The growth of love and faith makes the power of their arms unconquerable on both fronts, so that, once God has been propitiated by one confession, the falseness of heretics and the hostility of barbarians are overthrown together, most glorious emperor. So, since the hope of heavenly help is increased through the emperor’s friendship, I venture with all the more confidence to appeal to your grace on behalf of the mystery of man’s salvation: do not allow anyone, in empty and presumptuous craftiness, to inquire into what must be held, as if it were uncertain. We may not dissent by a single word from the teaching of the Gospels and the apostles, nor hold any opinion on the divine Scriptures different from what the blessed apostles and our fathers learned and taught. Yet now, in these latter days, ignorant and blasphemous inquiries are being set on foot, which the Holy Spirit long ago crushed through the disciples of the truth, as soon as the devil stirred them up in hearts suited to his purpose. [a]

But it is most untimely that through the foolishness of a few we should be brought back once more to dangerous opinions and to the warfare of fleshly disputes, as if the quarrel were to be revived and we had to settle whether Eutyches held blasphemous views, and whether Dioscorus judged wrongly. In condemning Flavian of holy memory, Dioscorus struck his own deathblow and drew the simpler people into the same destruction. And now that many, as we have found, have turned to the means of amendment and beg forgiveness for their weak haste, we have to decide not what the faith is, but whose prayers we shall receive, and on what terms. And so the most devout concern which you are pleased to feel for summoning a synod will have set before it, fully and in good time, all that I judge relevant to the needs of the case, through the delegates who, if God permits, will reach your grace with all speed. Dated the 23rd of April, in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (in the year 451). [b]