Three Letters to Sympronianus 1.0–3.0

On the name Catholic. Pacian to his brother Sympronian, greeting.

If it is not a carnal purpose but, as I suppose, a spiritual calling that leads you, sir, to examine us about the faith of catholic truth, you ought first of all to have indicated what you follow, and how different it is, since you, having set out, so far as appears, from a stream far off, do not hold the fountain and source of the principal church. You ought to have disclosed what cause in particular had loosed you from the unity of our body; for the parts for which medicine is sought must be laid bare. As it is, with the fold of your letter closed, so to speak, we cannot see which members we most need to treat. For so many heresies have arisen from the Christian head that their very names would fill a huge volume. To pass over the heretics of the Jews, Dositheus the Samaritan, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, it would take very long to count how many sprang up in the times of the apostles: Simon Magus, and Menander, and Nicolaus, and the others whom dim report keeps hidden. What of the later times: Ebion, and Apelles, and Marcion, and Valentinus, and Cerdo, and not long after them the Cataphrygians and the Novatians, to pass over the young swarms? Whom, then, must I refute first by letter? The paper itself, if you like, will not hold the names of them all; except that in your writings, which condemn penance altogether, you declare that you have agreed with the Phrygians. But among these very people, dearest sir, the error is so manifold and varied that it is not only this one thing in them, that they think against penance, but as it were several heads of the Hydra of Lerna that must be cut off.

And first, these people rely on very many authorities. For I think the Greek Blastus is theirs; Theodotus too and Praxeas once taught your people; those more notable Phrygians themselves, who falsely claim to have been inspired by Leucius and boast that they were instructed by Proculus, followed Montanus and Maximilla and Priscilla. How many controversies they stirred up about the day of Easter, about the Paraclete, about apostles, about prophets, and much else, as also this about the name Catholic and about the pardon of penance! So if we wished to discuss all these things, we would need your presence and a teachable spirit. Even if I should not adequately instruct you on these things alone that you write about, yet because one must serve those who wonder in whatever way one can, I address briefly, for your instruction, the matters you were pleased to write about. If you wish to know our position more fully, you ought to declare your own more plainly, so that by consulting us obscurely you do not leave us not knowing whether you are asking or provoking. Meanwhile, as regards the present matters, I ask you before all else not to borrow authority for error from this very fact, that, as you say, there was no one within in the whole world who could refute you or persuade you against what you believed. For even if we are unskilled, the Spirit of God is most skilled; and even if we are faithless, God is faithful, who cannot deny himself. Then too, as for resisting: the priests of God were not permitted to dispute long with one who resists. “We,” says the Apostle, “have no such custom, nor has the church of God.” After one rebuke, as you know yourself, the contentious man is let go. And who could persuade anyone of anything against his will? So it is your fault, brother, not theirs, if no one persuaded you of what was best. For even today it is in your power to despise our writings too, if you prefer to defeat them rather than test them. Besides, very many resisted the Lord himself and his apostles; and truth could not be persuaded on anyone unless he agreed with it by his own devotion. So, sir, we too have not written in the confidence that we can persuade someone who resists, but in the good faith by which we would not deny the approach of good peace to one who wishes it; and if this is in your mind and heart, there need be no struggle about the name Catholic. For if our people obtain it through God, there is nothing to ask, since divine authority goes before; if through a man, then it must be shown when it was usurped. Then, if it is a good name, it admits no hatred; if a bad one, it has nothing to envy.

I hear that the Novatians are called after Novatus or Novatian; yet it is the sect in them that I accuse, not the name; nor has anyone reproached Montanus or the Phrygians with their name. “But under the apostles,” you will say, “no one was called Catholic.” Granted, let it have been so; grant me this too. When after the apostles heresies had arisen and were striving under various names to tear apart and divide the dove and queen of God, did not the apostolic people require a surname of its own, by which to distinguish the unity of the uncorrupted people, so that the error of some might not tear apart limb by limb the undefiled virgin of God? Was it not fitting that the principal head should be marked by its own name? Suppose I entered a populous city today and found Marcionites, Apollinarians, Cataphrygians, Novatians, and the others of that kind, who call themselves Christians: by what surname would I recognize the congregation of my own people, unless it were called Catholic? Come, who bestowed so many names on the other peoples? Why does each of so many cities, so many nations, have its own designation? The very man who questions the name Catholic will not know the cause of his own name if I ask where mine was handed down to me from. Certainly it was not borrowed from a man, which has not fallen in so many ages. This name Catholic does not sound of Marcion, nor of Apelles, nor of Montanus, nor does it take heretics as its authors. The Holy Spirit has taught us many things, whom God sent from heaven to the apostles as Paraclete and teacher; reason has taught us much, as Paul says, and propriety, and, as he says, nature itself. What then? Is the authority that comes down to us from apostolic men, from the first priests, from the most blessed Cyprian, martyr and teacher, small? Do we wish to teach the teacher? Are we wiser than he, and are we puffed up by the spirit of the flesh against him, whom his noble blood and the crown of a most glorious passion brought forth as a witness of the eternal God? What of the many bishops of those parts, whom one peace bound firmly together with that same Cyprian throughout the whole world? What of so many aged bishops, so many martyrs, so many confessors? Come, if they were not fit authorities for using this name, shall we be fit authorities for denying it? Shall the fathers rather follow our authority, and shall the antiquity of the saints give way to be corrected, and shall times already rotting with vices erase the rules of apostolic antiquity?

But do not be agitated, brother: Christian is my name, Catholic my surname. The one names me, the other shows me; by the one I am approved, by the other I am marked out. And if an account of the word Catholic must finally be given, and the Greek rendered into Latin: “Catholic” means “one everywhere,” or, as the more learned think, “obedience in all things,” that is, of the commandments of God. Hence the Apostle says: “If you are obedient in all things.” And again: “For as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many will be made righteous.” Therefore one who is Catholic is likewise obedient to righteousness; one who is obedient is likewise a Christian: so a Catholic is a Christian. That is why our people are distinguished from the heretical name by this designation, when they are called Catholic. But even if “Catholic” means “one everywhere,” as those mentioned before think, David points to this very thing when he says: “The queen stood by in a golden and many-coloured robe,” that is, one in all. And in the Song of Songs the Bridegroom says this: “My dove, my perfect one, is one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen one of her that bore her.” And again: “Virgins will be brought to the king after her.” And further: “Young maidens without number.” Therefore she is one in all and one above all.

If you ask the reason for the name, it is plain. As for penance, may God grant that it be necessary for none of the faithful; that no one after the help of the sacred font fall into the pit of death; and that priests not be forced to apply or teach its slow consolations, lest, while they soothe the sinner with remedies, they open a road to sinning. But we disclose this indulgence of our God to the wretched, not to the blessed, and not before sin but after sins; and we announce medicine not to the healthy but to those who are ill. If the spiritual forces of wickedness can do nothing against the baptized; if that deceit of the serpent, which first overthrew man and stamped so many marks of condemnation on his descendants, can do nothing; if it has withdrawn from the world; if we have already begun to reign; if no crime creeps upon our eyes, our hands, our minds: then let this gift of God be thrown away, let the help be rejected, let no confession, no groans be heard; let proud righteousness despise every remedy. But if the Lord has provided these things for his own man; if the same one who gave rewards to those who stand gave remedies to those who have fallen: cease to accuse the divine kindness, or to erase so many marks of heavenly mercy by setting severity against them, or to forbid the free gifts of the Lord with an unappeasable harshness. We do not bestow these things from our own store. “Turn to me,” says the Lord, “and at the same time with fasting and weeping and mourning rend your hearts.” And again: “Let the wicked man forsake his ways, and the criminal his thoughts, and let him turn to the Lord, and he will obtain mercy.” And likewise the Prophet cries out in this way: “For God is kind and gentle and patient, and one who turns back the sentence pronounced against wickedness.” Does the serpent have so lasting a poison, and Christ not have a medicine? Does the devil kill in the world, and is Christ unable to help here? Let a man be ashamed to sin, certainly, but not ashamed to repent. Let him be ashamed to be in danger, but not ashamed to be rescued. Who will snatch a plank from a shipwrecked man so that he may not escape? Who will begrudge the healing of wounds? Does not David say: “Every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with tears”? And again: “I acknowledge my sin, and I have not covered my crime.” And further: “I said: I will declare against myself my transgression to my God, and you forgave the wickedness of my heart.” After the guilt of murder and adultery over Bathsheba, did not the Prophet answer him when he repented: “The Lord has taken away your sin from you”? Did not confession free the king of Babylon, condemned after so many crimes of idolatry? And what is it that the Lord says: “Shall not he who falls rise again, and he who has turned away return?” What do so many proofs from the Lord’s parables answer? That a woman finds a drachma and rejoices that it is found; that a shepherd carries back the straying sheep; that a fond father runs to meet his returning son after all his goods had been squandered and wasted on harlots and the sexually immoral, and rebukes the envious brother by showing him the reason: “This my son,” he says, “was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and is found.” What of the man wounded on the road and passed by the Levite and the priest? Is he not cared for? Turn over what the Spirit says to the churches: he accuses the Ephesians of having abandoned love; he charges the Thyatirans with sexual immorality; he rebukes the Sardians for slackness in work and the Pergamenes for teaching other doctrines; he brands the riches of the Laodiceans; and yet he invites them all to repentance with satisfaction. What of the Apostle when he says this to the Corinthians: “Lest when I come I should mourn many of those who sinned before and have not repented of what they did before in sexual immorality and their uncleanness”? What when he writes again to the Galatians: “If anyone is overtaken in any fault,” that is, any whatever, “you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, taking care lest you also be tempted”? Or does the master of a household in a great house keep only vessels of silver and gold? Does he not think fit to keep vessels of earthenware and wood too, and some that are mended and repaired? “Now I rejoice,” says the Apostle, “because you were grieved to repentance.” And again: “For sorrow according to God works repentance unto salvation, a steadfast one.”

“But it was not permitted to repent.” No one commands labour without fruit: “for the labourer is worthy of his wages.” God would never threaten the one who does not repent unless he pardoned the one who repents. “God alone,” you will say, “can do this.” That is true; but what he does through his priests is also his own power. For what is it that he says to the apostles: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven”? Why this, if it was not permitted to men to bind and loose? Or is this permitted only to the apostles? Then it is permitted to them alone to baptize, and to them alone to give the Holy Spirit, and to them alone to cleanse the sins of the nations, since all this was commanded to none other than the apostles. But if both the loosing of bonds and the power of the sacrament are given in one place, then either the whole has come down to us from the pattern and power of the apostles, or not even that has been granted by the decrees. “I,” he says, “laid the foundation, and another builds on it.” We then build on what the teaching of the apostles founded. Indeed, bishops too are called apostles, as Paul declares of Epaphroditus: “My brother and fellow soldier,” he says, “but your apostle.” If, then, the power of the washing and of the chrism, gifts far greater, has come down from there to the bishops, the right of binding and loosing was with them too. And although we claim it rashly, because of our sins, God will nevertheless not deny it to them, as to the holy ones who hold the chair of the apostles, he who has granted to bishops even the name of his only Son.

I would write more, brother, if I were not pressed by the haste of the returning servant, and if I were not saving fuller things either for when you are present or for when you have declared your whole position. Let no one despise a bishop on account of the man. Let us remember that the apostle Peter called our Lord a bishop: “But you have now turned,” he says, “to the bishop and shepherd of your souls.” What will be denied to a bishop in whom the name of God works? He will indeed give account to him if he has done anything wrongly, or judged corruptly and impiously. Nor is God prejudged, so that he may not undo the works of a bad builder; meanwhile, if that administration is godly, he remains a helper of God’s works. See, the Apostle writes to lay people: “If you forgive anyone anything, I do too. For what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the person of Christ, so that we may not be overreached by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” If the Apostle says that he has forgiven what lay people forgive, how shall what a bishop has done be rejected? Therefore neither baptism, nor the remission of sins, nor the renewal of the body has been granted to his holy power on the ground that anything was enjoined by his own usurpation; the whole of it has flowed down from apostolic right. I know, brother, that this very pardon of penance is not given to all indiscriminately, nor is it granted before there has been either an interpretation of the divine will or perhaps a visitation. With great weight and great weighing, after many groans and the shedding of tears, after the prayers of the whole church, the pardon of true penance is not denied, in such a way that no one prejudges Christ, who is to judge. If you write more openly what you think, brother, you will be more fully instructed.

On the letter of Sympronian. Bishop Pacian to his brother Sympronian, greeting.

In a lengthy question I shall aim at brevity as far as I can. Nor shall I, brother, repay you with any return of malice, although under the appearance of a good question you hurl hidden darts of words and throw out things that you yourself contrive. We are commanded to pray for those who persecute us and to bless those who curse us. For deceit is like the little fox, and violence like the lion; both are utterly foreign to man, but deceit deserves the greater hatred. For when you think you are doing more harm, you ask as if ignorant; when you think you are teaching, you pretend to be instructed. The Pharisees of old called the Lord “Rabbi” when they set riddles of the law before him; they called him “Teacher” when they claimed all teaching for themselves. Whatever you do, brother, you will find everything in me straightforward. I would rather be thought unskilled than malicious; I would rather be judged a fool than crafty. So before I set out the account of our faith, which troubles you, hear a few things about the letter that you placed before your treatise.

You say that you were refreshed by my earlier letter, and at once you add that I answered what I wrote with bitterness. If bitter things refresh, I do not know what sweet things would do; unless, as in the cups of medicine, the bitter usually heals better than the sweet. But I beg you, read my letter again, whether it is sprinkled with any gall, whether I answered anything proud or unpleasant. You say I named several heresies about which no one had asked. Come, what did it matter to you, if you were not a heretic? When you raised a question about our faith and said you wished to be taught, I wrote that the causes of ignorance are manifold, and asked you to disclose which one held you in particular, so that I would not be troubled with unravelling many. About the name Catholic I answered much, and gently. For I said that it made no difference to anyone what another was called. And if you asked for the force of the name, I said that whatever it was, it was wonderful: whether “one in all,” or “one above all,” or, what I did not say before, “the son of the king,” that is, the Christian people. Certainly it was not given to us so that it might not fall in so many ages. And indeed I am glad that, although you have put others before us, you agree with us about the name. What if you denied it? Nature would cry out. Or if you still doubt, let us be silent. We shall both be what we shall be called, with the antiquity of the name as witness. Otherwise, if you press more stubbornly, take care lest that man of power cry out to you: “Why do you ask my name? It is wonderful.” Then you added that one should not consider where the Catholics drew this name from, since it was not usually held against the Valentinians if they were called after Valentinus, nor the Phrygians if after Phrygia, nor the Novatians if after Novatian.

Here you are gravely moved and rise up as though pricked by a goad; for, angry, you cry out: “Does it harm Cyprian, a holy man, that his people bear the name Apostatic, or Capitoline, or Synedrian?” You insult us; and see, I am not moved. Have we been called any of these? Ask the age, brother, and all the years in order, whether this name has stuck to us, whether the people of Cyprian has been called anything but Catholic. I have never heard any of these names. Now see whether anyone could be called by a name that he does not know was imposed on him. What then? These are insults, not names, and the insults of angry men, the insults of the insolent. I too could call you by as many names as you like, if it were permitted to be angry. You call Cyprian holy, and his people apostate? How? If the first portion is holy, so is the lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. Am I an apostate, or Novatus? Novatus, I say, who betrayed his father, abandoned the church, and caused his wife to miscarry? Am I an apostate, or Novatian, whom a letter made a bishop in his absence, whom, with no one consecrating him, a linen-covered seat received? But of this later. Meanwhile, tell us yourselves what you are called. Do you deny that the Novatians are called after Novatian? Whatever name you impose, this one will always stick. Search all the annals, if you please, and trust so many ages: you will answer “Christian.” When I ask the kind of sect, you will not deny “Novatian.” Yet I do not accuse the name of your Novatian, which, so often asked about, you shut up in roundabout lines and a kind of covered fold. Confess it plainly: there is no crime in a name. Why do you hide when asked so often? Why do you blush at the cause of your name? When you first wrote, I thought you a Cataphrygian. Do you admit it in your second letter? Do you envy my name and avoid your own? See what shame there is in a cause that flees what it is called.

What do you reproach and pursue? As if we had come to a teacher of rhetoric, or as if an art were to be treated, or I were expounding verses of Virgil! When I had named several heretics, I added: “And those whom dim report keeps hidden.” And where do you think this was drawn from, from a verse of Virgil, if you had not known Virgil at all? Yet I did not set down the verse in its order. For I said: “whom dim report keeps hidden,” as is the custom of speakers, saying out of the store of human speech something that has been said before. But you repeated the verse in its own order, in its own structure. Did you love Virgil so much that you thought it an outrage if I broke up his verse? And yet I had learned it from a little boy. What wonder if I fell into what I knew? Is there such toil in you, brother, that you now at last read what you once blushed at when it was read by others? You ought no more to accuse one schooled in Latin and speaking Latin than a Greek speaking Greek, a Parthian speaking Parthian, a Carthaginian speaking Punic. The Medes, the Egyptians, the Hebrews have their own language according to the bounty of the Lord, who tuned it into a hundred and twenty mouths. A bishop has quoted a poet’s verse. What of the apostle Paul? Does he blush when he both quoted and approved that Athenian verse? For in the Acts of the Apostles he says: “As some of your own have said: For we are also his offspring. Since then we are the offspring of God.” And again he said to Titus: “One of them, their own prophet, said: Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies.” And he adds: “This testimony is true.” So we sin by example; we are not rhetoricians, but we believe every word to be from the bounty of God. Latium, Egypt, Athens, the Thracians, the Arabs, the Spaniards confess God; the Holy Spirit understands all languages. Why do you yourself say: “I will smear my letter with lively cedar because of the decaying enemies of the Muses”? Of which Muses, I ask? Those who invented letters and wrote the papers that the moths pursue? Tell me, I ask, brother, did the Muses discover letters? Is not all through the Lord and all to God? Besides those hundred and twenty languages, was there yet another of the Muses? Hesiod told that lie on Helicon, but through the zeal of the Athenians, who, as the Apostle says, had leisure for nothing but talking. We, with the Apostle as witness, hold that the modes of all speech and the kinds of all languages are inspired by God. Yet I forgive you, brother, if you too presume something from your own author, and join the philosophy of Novatian, through which he ran into the shipwreck of religion, with the authority of Hesiod. But you ought to have remembered the Apostle, who says: “See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty seduction.”

Now what is this, that you think it should be charged to the Catholics if kings or authorities have at any time persecuted you? By the same reasoning it ought to have been charged to you whenever Catholics suffered the persecution of kings; and pagan princes did persecute ours. Have you suffered the hatred of Christians? But ours have complained more. Let him who did this see with what mind, in what spirit, whether he sought peace or something else. “But even if some of them did wrong,” he says, “do they destroy the faith of God?” And yet do not think that the complaint came from our people. But when, through our faith, princes had begun to be Christian, the princes themselves, favouring the Catholic, that is, their own party, were moved by their own grief; unless perhaps it will be charged to Daniel that he was vindicated by Darius, or to Esther, a most holy woman, when the king’s chief was put to death for her sake, or to the three youths, that because of them, after the trial of the flames, the king of Babylon threatened the profane and unbelieving. Does not Peter confound Simon with a judge supporting him? Does not Paul blind Elymas with Sergius favouring him? He would have been vindicated in Jerusalem too, if he had had anything of the faith while in chains. Do you not know that the authorities themselves serve the innocent and minister for good to the holy fathers? As the Apostle says: “Rulers are not a terror to good work, but to evil. Do you wish not to fear the authority? Do good, and you will have praise from it through the Lord; for it is a minister to you for good.” And yet I have complained of no one, I have sought vengeance on no one. Nor do I think the Novatians hinder me, over whose smallness and failure I could boast if I wished. See, no one accuses your people to the emperor, and you are alone. Yet we must all stand before the judgment seat of God. This one thing I know: the Novatians would complain if their cause were pleasing to any princes.

“It would be more useful,” you say, “to win than to please.” But those who are led by the passion for winning make progress in contention. The Apostle, however, says: “If anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor has the church of God.” On the other side, of the zeal to please he says: “I please all men in all things, not seeking what is useful to me, but what is useful to many, that they may be saved.” But you, while you consider your own advantage and not your brothers’, would rather crush by winning than revive by pleasing. To have overcome evil with good is a matter of reason; but to wish to prevail in any cause whatever is a matter of insane presumption. This is not from apostolic law but from Greek, among whom it is thought to have been written that the whole character of the Lacedaemonians was inflamed with the desire to win. The muddy pig too, and the mad tigress, what else do they want but to win rather than to please? You write that you have leisure, and that is why contentious things delight you. But I, occupied with catholic business, received your letter after almost thirty days, and it was asked for again after another forty.

You say I am angry; far from it. Stirred, I believe, like the bee, which sometimes defends its honey with its sting. But read both letters again; you will see at once whether we sow the page with darts or with flowers. Of such people indeed the Apostle says that they ought to be silenced. But pay attention. We contend with you like doves, with the beak rather than the tooth. Would that what you say were true, that you wish to be taught: I would myself now apply to you with my own hands the ointments of the Holy Spirit. You love me? I have not hurt you, I know. But you would truly love me only if you did not think differently and came gently to my work. Do you wonder that the letters of Cyprian please me? Why not, those of a blessed martyr and catholic priest? You thrust Novatian upon me? I hear that he was a philosopher of the world, and I do not much wonder that he fell away from the church of the living God. I recognize that he abandoned the root of the ancient law, the fountain of the old people; that, envying Cornelius, he lent himself to the madness of Novatus; that he was made a bishop without lawful consecration, and therefore not made one at all, through the letter of those who pretended to be confessors, who tore apart the members of the one mother. These things, brother, I will prove to you by the letters and the confession of your own people. So this philosopher of yours, seeking to establish his own wisdom, as the Apostle says, was not subject to the wisdom of God; since through its own wisdom the world did not recognize the wisdom of God. As for your thinking that Novatian suffered first, and your adding that Cyprian said, “My adversary has gone before me,” see how plainly I answer. Novatian never underwent martyrdom, nor has this been heard or read in the words of the most blessed Cyprian. You have his letters in which he reports that Cornelius, bishop of the City, whom Novatian then envied, resisted hostile emperors, often confessed, was often harassed, became the leader of very many confessors and very many martyrs, and was most gloriously crowned with very many, while Novatian was then still living and even free from danger. For he had left the church of Christ precisely so that the labour of confession might not press upon him. First, spurred by envy, he could not bear the episcopate of Cornelius; then, mocked by the letters of a few, he gave himself over to Novatus. Cyprian’s letters will teach you all these things about Novatian. Moreover, even if Novatian suffered something, he was not therefore killed; even if killed, not therefore crowned. Why not? He was outside the peace of the church, outside its concord, outside that mother of whom one who is a martyr must be a part. Hear the Apostle: “And if I have all faith so that I could move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my substance for the food of the poor, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” But Cyprian suffered in the concord of all, in the common peace, in the flock of confessors; he often confessed in repeated persecutions, was harassed with much tearing, and at last was given to drink the cup of salvation. This was to be crowned. So let Novatian keep his letters to himself, his swelling, his pride, by which, while he was raised on high, he was dashed down; while he spared no one, he was poured out. Here is the man who would shut the way of salvation to his brothers with an inexorable religion! Here is the man who is confident that he carries the winnowing shovel and cleanses the Lord’s threshing floor!

Have pity on yourself, brother Sympronian, and do not let Novatian deceive you under this face, and be thought more righteous because he despised the rest by comparison with himself. Boldness often counterfeits confidence, and a false image of a good conscience flatters all sorts of desperate sinners. On the contrary, all humility is innocence, even when it is in debt, even when it is a sinner, even when it pleads for its soul together with the sinner. “Blot me out,” says Moses, “from the book that you have written,” so that sinners might not perish. “I could wish,” says the Apostle, “that I myself were accursed in Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” Both, surely, pray for sinners, and for this neither Moses nor Paul offended God. Is Novatian better than they? A corrector of the prophets? A teacher of the apostles? Does he already seem to be with Christ, like Moses himself? Is he already, like Paul, carried up on high to the third heaven? Is he already, all others neglected, the only one to be heard? Let this suffice as an answer to your letter. But since you have argued at length that penance is not to be done, or is to be done before baptism, and have filled the page of your treatise with many headings of examples, I will answer each point beyond what is needed; I will not be silent about what the truer faith holds. As you were pleased to lay generous commands on our hearing, grant in return a kind hearing to our treatise. Perhaps the Lord will grant that we who offered ourselves patiently to you may carry away some fruit from your patience too. May the Lord deign to keep and protect you for ever, and make you live a Christian and a Catholic, and agree with us. Amen.

Against the treatise of the Novatians. Bishop Pacian to his brother Sympronian, greeting.