Letter 5
To the Elders
'It is well to trust in God, rather than to trust in man' (Psalm
cxvii.8). Nevertheless, I hear that those who have taken up the godless heresy of Eunomius
are putting forward a certain Quintianus and the boasted influence they themselves possess
at court, to the end that they may again sully the Church; and that certain false teachers
are spreading their nets for the souls of weaker brethren. These are the very ones whom
the acolytes of Quintianus recently landed upon our shores, and for this very purpose.
Their litigation is merely a cloak for their impiety, or even worse, a struggle on behalf
of their impiety. An adulterous generation are these elders, modern apostles of the devil
and Quintianus. Beware lest they privily attack the flock you are shepherding. Beware lest
they privily sow tares amidst your wheat. Their lairs are well known to all. You know well
what estates habour them, you know what houses are open to these bandits. Purse these
brigands, nosing out their trail. Seek eagerly for yourselves the blessing that Moses
invoked on those who armed themselves, heart and hand against traitors in the camp. And
this, my brethren, is a thing worth saying to you: 'Let the honourable be honourably
done.' I counsel you to let all struggle for lucre be put aside, let all be undertaken for
God alone; it were ill indeed that virtue and vice should rest on the same foundation. The
race is for holiness; we must struggle for men's souls, that no one may plunder them from
the Church, as these men have too successfully done in the past. He who governs the Church
only to make his own purse heavier, and who be seeming useful in times which call for
astuteness, builds up power for himself thereby, that man is one that we must sever from
all communion with Christians. God has not made Virtue other than perfect; it needs not
evil as an ally. Soldiers worthy of churches will never be lacking to God. He will find
allies for the cause, unrewarded here below, but fully rewarded in Heaven. Be ye of the
number. It is quite as just to curse evildoers as it is to pray with those that walk
uprightly. Whosoever weakens and betrays his cause, and whosoever comes forward in it only
to lay his hands on another's possessions, may such an one never be sinless in the eyes of
God. Make this alone your cardinal point, therefore, to circumvent these evil bankers who
adulterate the divine decree as if it were coin. Make all see them in their true light,
and thus have them disfranchised and banished from the frontiers of Ptolemais, taking
whatever they brought with them, unweighed. Whosoever shall act contrary to these
instructions, may he be accursed before God.
If perchance some one there may be who has seen a nefarious meeting and
overlooked the matter, or pretends not to have heard what he has heard, or (who) even
allows himself to be corrupted by baser gain at their hands, any one of these men we order
to be put under such ban as was ordained in the case of the Amalekites, from who it is not
lawful to carry of spoils, and of him who takes them God say, 'I repent me that I made
Saul king' (Samuel xv.11). May He never have to repent that any of you are his. Be ye all
devoted to the service of God, that he may care for us.