To Adeodatus, Primate of Numidia, on Ordinations and the Council

Gregory to Adeodatus, primate bishop of the province of Numidia. [a]

The wording of your letters has plainly shown how the love of affection has bound your fraternity to us. They have given us great cause for rejoicing, since we have found them written in a spirit of loving-kindness and glowing with an affection pleasing to God. As we have briefly said, then, the letter you sent us has so opened your mind that its writer might be thought not to be absent from us at all. For people are not to be counted absent whose feelings are not at odds with mutual love. And though, as you say in your letter, neither your strength nor your age allows you to come to us, so that we might enjoy your fraternity’s bodily presence, still, since we are one with you and you with us in feeling, we are wholly present to each other, as we see each other in a mind made one by love. Furthermore, greeting your fraternity with the fitting affection of love, we urge you to strive with all your heart to carry yourself so wisely in the office of primacy that you hold under God, that it may profit your soul to have reached this rank, and that you may stand out as a good example for others to imitate in the future.

So be especially careful about ordination. By no means allow anyone to aspire to sacred orders except those somewhat advanced in age and pure in their deeds, lest they cease forever to be what they hurry, unripe, to become. For you must first examine the life and ways of those who are to be placed in any sacred order. And so that you can admit to this office those who are worthy, do not let the influence or pleading of anyone whatever lure you. But above all you must be careful that no buying and selling has any place in ordination, so that the greater danger (God forbid) may not hang over both the ordained and those who ordain them. Whenever there is need, then, to take such things in hand, call serious and experienced men into your counsels, and consider the matter in common with them. And before all others it is right that you should always call in Columbus, our brother and fellow bishop. For we believe that if you have done what is to be done on his advice, no one will find anything at all to fault in you. And know that it will be as acceptable to us as if it had been done on our own advice, since his life and ways have so commended themselves to us in every respect that it is plain to all that whatever is done with his consent will be darkened by no stain of fault. The bearer of this letter, Victorinus, deacon of our fellow bishop named above, has so proclaimed your merits that he has greatly refreshed our spirits about your conduct. And we pray the Almighty Lord to make the good reported of you shine out more fully in action, as pleasing to him. So when the council you are arranging to assemble has been brought to its end, with God’s help, gladden us by telling of its unity and harmony, and inform us on every point. [b]