Letter 202: (An important letter on the Apollinarian controversy has already been given above.) 7. To Theodore, Bishop of Tyana (Theodore, a native of Arianzus, and an intimate friend of Gregory, accompanied him to Constantinople a.d. 379, and shared his persecution by the Arians, who broke into their church during the celebration of the divine liturgy, and...

I said it almost like a prophecy, when I found you so open to every request and was making such free and insatiable use of your patience: I feared I would exhaust your kindness on the affairs of others. And now, you see, a contest of my own has come — if one can call one's own what concerns one's close companions — and I find I cannot speak with the same freedom. First, because it is my own matter. To petition on one's own behalf, though it may be more necessary, is more humiliating. And second, I am afraid that excess will destroy the pleasure of asking — that I have drawn too deeply already from the well of your goodness. But I must say this: when those men threw stones at our celebration, at our clergy, at the sacred rites themselves, they did something monstrous. I do not minimize it. Yet I urge you not to prosecute them. Not because what they did was small — it was not — but because what you can do is greater. To forgive is more noble than to punish. It is more worthy of your character, your office, and your God. Think of what a prosecution will cost: the spectacle, the bitterness, the hardening of those who are not yet entirely lost. Think instead of what forgiveness might accomplish — not a forgiveness that ignores the wrong, but one that names it clearly and then, from the height of undeniable moral authority, lets it go. That is the thing I am asking of you. I am asking it knowing that you are capable of it.

Ep. CCII. (An important letter on the Apollinarian controversy has already been given above.) 7. To Theodore, Bishop of Tyana (Theodore, a native of Arianzus, and an intimate friend of Gregory, accompanied him to Constantinople a.d. 379, and shared his persecution by the Arians, who broke into their church during the celebration of the divine liturgy, and pelted the clergy with stones. Theodore could not bring himself to put up with this, and declared his intention of prosecuting the aggressors. Gregory wrote the following letter to dissuade him from this course, by showing him how much more noble it is to forgive than to revenge.)