Letter 126: I praised your holiness for leaving the see you were envied for.

To Bishop Sabinianus, I praised your holiness for leaving the see you were envied for. Once it was a venerable office; now it has been turned into something to be bought and sold, and we have made it ridiculous. But I was astonished to hear you had appealed to the very men who ejected you. You should have done the opposite: when invited to take the helm again, you should have refused -- on the grounds that your shipmates have become your enemies. Are you not aware, most godly sir, of what our Savior taught us through His apostles? Do you not know what the heirs of apostolic teaching have now laid down as doctrine? From the time the Gospel was first preached down to this present darkness, which of the ancient teachers ever spoke of "one nature" of flesh and Godhead? Who ever dared to call the nature of the Only-begotten "passible"? Yet in our day some men openly and boldly proclaim these things, while others listen in silence -- and by their silence become participants in the blasphemy. What, then, should be done by those who abhor such doctrines? Two choices remain: they may either engage directly and prove these teachings false, or they may break communion with their opponents as openly impious. As for me, I have received the wrong done to me as a divine blessing. I do not mean I have thanked those who wronged me -- how could I thank fratricides, men who have become followers of Cain? But I praise my Master for counting me worthy of the lot of those who suffer injustice, for separating me from wrongdoers and blasphemers, and for granting me this most welcome rest.

Letter 126