Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom 19

Deacon: Very great thanks, Father, for the visit of your brotherly love; for it has been a blessing to us and a memorial for life.

After Theodore's many praises, one of those present broke out with a remark, saying: ‘How then, adorned with so many excellences, could he have been proud?’

Bishop: Did you know him to be proud from being present yourself, or did someone else tell you?

He answered: ‘I do not know the man,’ he says; ‘but I heard from a certain tanner, who related that it was seldom possible to be with him apart from church, since he was impatient of spending much time with those who wished it. And this is a sign of arrogance and conceit, to avoid the company of those who wish to be with one.’

Bishop: And whose part was it to find fault with John's philosophy, if not a tanner's, a man who accepts even the stench of his own workshop as his familiar companion? If avoiding crowds is a sign of arrogance, then by your argument John the Baptist too will be arrogant, since he withdrew into the deserts; and then the Saviour as well; for it is written that ‘Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain; and when he sat down, his disciples came to him’, and not the crowds. And again: ‘Seeing the crowds, he withdrew privately.’ Imitating him as far as he could, the good John too withdrew from the crowds, taking delight in those who wished to learn something in truth.

Deacon: You persuade well with examples from Scripture. But what do you have to say to the charge that he was insulting, and avoided not only the many but even one or two?

Bishop: Above all, even one useless vagabond is a crowd, like the man who said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Did not the Saviour avoid the crowd when he said, ‘The foxes [have holes]’, and the rest? Can you persuade me that John, from the time he was baptized, ever swore, or made another swear, or spoke evil, or lied, or cursed, or put up with buffoons?

Deacon: I do not say any of these things, only that he was insulting.

Bishop: My good friend, how could one who did none of these things be insulting, not sparing his own tongue? For in small things and great the defilement is equal.

Deacon: What then, I beg you, is it that people say, and when will they stop talking?

Bishop: Hear, then, about everything, and no longer follow such nonsense; for you will never come to an end of it. People who do not live rightly do not hold right opinions; they are always talking at random and spending their leisure on it, especially now, when no one dares to say anything else. For even of the Saviour God, who lived, spoke and acted above man and above a prophet, they said strange things, gathering what concerned him like swine or flies; for that is what those times wanted. Some said, ‘He deceives the world’; others, ‘By Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, you cast out the demons’; others, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard’; others, ‘You are a Samaritan and have a demon.’ And why should I collect all the nonsense? The Saviour himself knew this, and said to the apostles, ‘Who do men say that I am?’ The disciples recounted the more favourable opinions about him, saying, ‘Some say Elijah, others Jeremiah, others John the Baptist’, and kept silent about the words of the many wicked. He then questions them in turn, setting them apart from ‘men’ (for they were no longer men in mind, but sons of God; for ‘the Word gave us authority to become children of God’): ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Not all answer, but only Peter, interpreting the mind of all: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Accepting the rightness of this answer, the Saviour declared: ‘You are Peter, and on this rock’ (that is, on the confession) ‘I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.’ With this same stamp you will find the blame and the praise now too, not only in John's case but in everyone's. And just as at that time evil was spoken of Christ and the apostles, when the Ephesians cried, ‘These are the men who have turned the world upside down’, and yet it has ceased now that they are glorified, so you will find after this generation that John is honoured as a martyr, and his opponents destroyed by the praises of him. Those who are like swine or dogs [say], ‘He deceives the world’, and so on; but all who are disciples, seeking him genuinely and with knowledge, [say], ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ If in the case of Christ the Saviour, among so many tens of thousands of men, only twelve were found at the beginning who recognized Jesus, while the many still chatter even now, why do we inquire so precisely about John, a man not worth spittle beside Christ? Why do I say spittle? [Not even] the hem of his garment. For all the nations, according to Isaiah, will be counted as a drop from a bucket and as spittle.

As for the way in which you said he was insulting, it was like this. First of all, it was impossible for him to jest with an ordinary person, let alone insult him. But if he saw any of his genuine disciples, or clergy, or bishops, proud of some abstinence or some achievement of bodily virtue, he would tease them by calling them the opposite, calling the water-drinker a drunkard, the man without possessions greedy, and the merciful man a thief. For this too is a graceful form of teaching toward genuine disciples, confirming what is present through what is not. In truth he honoured a chaste young man above a licentious old one, a studious old man above an ignorant younger one, a layman without possessions above an educated lover of money, and a virtuous man of the world above an idle monk; which perhaps those who hold the honours … call insults. [Yet Scripture has such words]: John says to those who came to him, ‘[Brood of vipers, who] warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’; Paul again says in Acts to the high priest, ‘God is about to strike you, you whitewashed wall’; the Saviour says sometimes to the Jews, ‘[An evil] and adulterous [generation] seeks a sign’, sometimes to all the apostles, ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart’, and sometimes calls Peter Satan: ‘Get behind me, Satan, for you are a stumbling block to me’; and there was no grave cause for which these insults were spoken. So let us embrace silence [and] love of learning, since we are not able to judge spiritual men. For [they are] neither [insulting from hatred nor solitary from pride], but practise all that is useful out of love.

For this reason, then, all who have been zealous among us in the sacred writings are found avoiding and turning away from the company of the uneducated, so that with time, through familiarity, they may not lose something of their virtue or draw something of their wickedness. Sarah first advised her husband Abraham to banish the maidservant's son, who was still quite young, from the common hearth; for she did not think him fit to play with her son Isaac, lest through familiarity [Isaac should be drawn] to his practices and ways. And Jacob too secures his safety by flight, taking the road to Mesopotamia. And Lot is urged by the angels to move out of [Sodom]. … [Moses], having grown great and refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, provides for separation from the tyrant and his guards, and urges those of his mind to depart with him and to see to the exodus. And the prophets too, avoiding the crowd of the wicked, mostly spent their lives in deserts; of whom the Apostle says, ‘wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth’, because of the mingling of the lawless; and besides they knew that familiarity is able to deceive, and to drag those who spend their days together down to the same things. Not only that, but association in itself is blameworthy and harmful, and shameful besides. For it is not natural to put up with spending even a short time with someone in whom one takes no pleasure; for like is always dear to like, as is said, ‘Every animal loves its like’, while the unlike is hostile and alien. Who will ever persuade the seed-picking dove or turtle-dove [to feed with] kites or flesh-eating ravens, or the grass-eating goose [to herd with bone-picking vultures]? [What] fellowship has light with darkness, or virtue with vice, or the wicked with the good?

Deacon: How then does the Apostle say, ‘I became all things to all, to the Jews as a Jew, to win Jews; to the weak as weak, to win the weak; to the lawless as lawless, to win the lawless’?

Bishop: This testimony, my good friend, does not support what you say. For Paul did not say, ‘I became careless to the careless’, or [frivolous to the frivolous], or anything else of the kind; but ‘I became as this or that’, not ‘this’; for ‘as this’ is not the same as ‘this’. Such is what the Apostle says and does: his condescension, even if it produced no great gain, at least did no harm; [for he says,] ‘To the Jews as a Jew, to win Jews.’ Though he was of the Jews, being circumcised, why does he say ‘as a Jew’, and not ‘a Jew’? Because he was often found keeping the Sabbath and fasting with them, without corrupting the doctrines of the Saviour, so that through familiarity and walking together [he might lead] them to more perfect knowledge; as doctors do with the sick, who are not always with them, and do not share the same disease, nor rage with the same desires. For this is the fitting conduct for a teacher: not to linger among crowds, but, living in quiet and searching, to seek the diagnosis of manifold habits, as skilled doctors do. For they, mostly from books, both foretell the causes of diseases and hand down their cures, approaching the sick only so far as is needed to find the ailment and supply the medicine, without playing or lunching with them. For what the excellence of medicine professes is not eating together or playing together, but restoring the sick to health. Stop, then, I beg you, and do not torment yourself about these things; [virtue is never overcome by the cavils] …; accept my judgement rather, and set a doorkeeper on your ears, so that they may not announce every word and admit into the inner chamber what will disturb your mind. And allow me to complete what remains of the story; for I am in a hurry to be on my way.

And Theodore said: Where are the bishops who were sent with ours, Eulysius, Palladius, Cyriacus and Demetrius? For we have heard dimly that they were exiled.

Bishop: If what I first told you about the blessed John has seemed clear to you, suggesting nothing false, and if you remember it, I will tell you also what you ask about.

[Chapter 20] Deacon: I am as fully assured as if I had been present in those places myself. Let my attention to what was said be sufficient proof of my conviction; with the memory of it fresh, perhaps I will even commit it to writing, inscribing it in ink on fresh parchment, as a memorial for our generation and for the benefit of those who aspire to the episcopate, so that they may become like the holy John, or like you who have [walked] the way of the martyrs for the truth; or else stop bearing a weight beyond their stature, and embrace the lay life, which is free of danger. For it is better [to pay one's fare and reach port safely as a passenger, when skilled pilots are at hand, than to take the helm and be wrecked]. Having told us, then, the story of the blessed John, how he lived as an ascetic and how he distinguished himself in the churches of the Antiochenes and of Constantinople,and how he was brought there, and how he was [expelled], and all the bitter things in between that the offenders have so diligently cultivated, and having told also of Porphyrius and of the eunuch of Ephesus, report to us what remains. Who died in prison? Who of John's communion were exiled? For it is right to make mention of such men, for the encouragement of the living. If in these worldly affairs servants who are shut up or beaten or scraped on behalf of their masters enjoy goodwill and freedom from them, how much more are those punished for Christ worthy of the Church's honour and goodwill? Of them the Apostle says: ‘Remember those in bonds as though bound with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves are also in the body.’ ‘For precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones.’

Bishop: You have spoken excellently; listen, then. The bishops, according to the report that ran about at first, were drowned in the sea; but as the true account has it, they were sent into exile beyond the frontiers, in the barbarian borderlands, where they are guarded by executioners even now. For [a deacon who had travelled with them] came [and told us that Cyriacus] of Emesa [is] eighty miles further in, at Palmyra, the fortress toward the Persians; Eulysius of Bostra in Arabia three days' journey further in, likewise to a fortress called Misphas, near the Saracens; Palladius to be guarded near the Blemmyes or Ethiopians, at the place called Syene; Demetrius further in, to the Oasis, the neighbour of the Mazices; for there are other Oases too; [Serapion, accused of countless charges], whose body the cruelty of judges outraged with tortures to the point of knocking out his teeth, as the story goes, [was banished to his homeland; Hilarius, an old man,] was sent off to innermost Pontus after blows given not by a judge but by the clergy, he who for eighteen years has not tasted bread, but lives on bare vegetables or pulse. Antonius exiled himself in the caves of Palestine; Timothy of Maroneia and John of Lydia are said to be in Macedonia; Rhodon of Asia went to Mitylene; [Gregory] of Lydia is said to be in Phrygia; [Brison], the brother of Palladius, having withdrawn of his own accord from his Church, lives on his small farm, [working it with his own hands]; [Lampetius], as they say, [is] in a place in Lydia, supported by a certain Eleutherius, gives himself to reading; Eugenius is in his homeland; the great Elpidius of Laodicea in Syria, together with Pappus, has completed three years without coming down the ladder of his own [upper room], [persevering] in prayers. Of the rest of the bishops in communion [with John], some have been transferred to other churches of Thrace, others are not known; Anatolius, they say, is in Gaul. Of the presbyters, some were banished to Arabia and Palestine; Tigrius was banished to Mesopotamia; Philip died after fleeing to Pontus; Theophilus lives in Paphlagonia; John [son of Aethrius founded a monastery at] Caesarea; Stephen, exiled to Arabia, was snatched from his executioners by the Isaurians, who set him free on the Taurus; Sallustius, they say, is in Crete; Philip, the ascetic and presbyter of the Schools, I have heard [is in Campania; Sophronius the deacon is in] prison in the Thebaid; Paul the deacon, the steward's assistant, is said to be in Africa; another Paul, of the church of the Anastasia, is in Jerusalem; Helladius the presbyter, of the palace, lives on his own small farm in Bithynia. More are hiding in Constantinople, and others have gone back to their homelands. The holy bishop Silvanus is in Troas, [fishing] and living [by it]. Stephen the ascetic, who carried the letters of the Romans, was beaten for this very reason in Constantinople and thrown into prison for ten months. When communion was offered him and he would not be persuaded, he was scraped excessively on the sides and the breast (I was an eyewitness of this), and was saved by Christ's care, perhaps for further contests; after ten months of treatment [was exiled to Pelusium; Provincialus, a soldier] of the Schools around the emperor, accused of being a lover of John, was exiled to Petra after blows of every kind and unsparing scraping. A servant of [Elpidius the presbyter, having been given fifty] coins to murder the holy John treacherously, was caught at it with three swords, and wounded seven of those who held him, one after another; four of them were buried at once, and the other three were saved after being cared for a long time; [yet the murderer was let go. The blessed Eutropius, a singer, they flogged, tearing] his sides together with his forehead, so that even his eyebrows were torn away, and finally, with torches burning his sides, he breathes his last on the rack, and was buried at midnight by the clergy who had done this; and God bore witness to his death by a vision [of singers], because of its likeness to the saving Passion.

The deacon who came back from the bishops related that the prefect's soldiers who conducted them, on the orders of certain persons, oppressed them so much that they prayed for death to come and begged to be let off life. For the money for expenses which they had brought for the journey [they took and divided among themselves], and on bony donkeys they made two days' journey into one, bringing them in late in the evening and leading them out in the dark before dawn, so that their stomachs could not hold even the wretched food. Nor did they refrain from pelting them with shameful and indecent [words]. They even took away Palladius's servant, forcing him to give a written statement. One of the conductors so oppressed Demetrius that [they arrived] even late in the evening; [and he was seized with pains and died] forthwith, so that the devout recognized the penalty for insults; for Palladius had foretold it to him, as the fellow soldier who came related: ‘[You will not travel] another road …’ They would not let them come near [a church] at all, but lodged them either in inns, where there was a crowd of harlots, or in the synagogues of Samaritans or Jews, especially from Tarsus on; and there, distressed as they were, they came to think of something else, which they had not foreseen. One of the bishops says: ‘Why are we grieved about the lodgings? It is not in our power where we stay, so that we should incur a penalty for disgracing ourselves by our own choice. Or do you not know that all these things have happened and will happen, God being glorified through all? How many of these harlots, who had forgotten God or never known him at all, seeing us like this, came to the fear of God and to reflection, perhaps turning to the better, or at least not sliding down to the worse? It is no small thing for a rational soul, ill-treated by passion, to [breathe] a little, which is a spark of self-control; as these things made the revealer of mysteries, Paul, say when he had endured them: “We are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing”, since they had become a spectacle to angels and to men.’

The bishops of Theophilus's communion in the various places throughout the East reached such a pitch of cruelty, as the ascetic who came related, that some of them not only failed to show due moderation, but even persuaded the prefect's soldiers with gifts to drive them out of the cities more quickly. Those who did this most were [the bishop] of Tarsus and [of Antioch, Eulogius of Caesarea in Pale]stine, and above all the bishop of Ancyra, and Ammonius of Pelusium, partly with gifts, partly with threats, making the soldiers who conducted them more savage toward them, so that they would not let them receive [the hospitality] of laymen who wished to offer it; as the blessed John writes in the catholic letters to Gaius against a certain bishop, approving Gaius's hospitality and urging him not to imitate the wicked among the bishops. The passage runs thus: ‘To Gaius the beloved, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that in all things you may prosper and be in health, as your soul prospers. For I rejoiced greatly when brothers came, and at how you refreshed the saints. I have no greater joy than this.’ After this he adds: ‘… prating against us with evil words; and not content with that, he himself does not receive the brothers, and he hinders those who wish to, and [casts them] out of the church.’ Then afterwards he exhorts, saying: ‘Beloved, do not imitate what is evil; he who does good is of God; he who does evil has not seen God.’ We have recalled the whole passage on the wickedness of old so that we might set before you the mind of the Diotrepheses of today. But he praised and admired the bishops of Cappadocia Secunda, since they grieved much, with tears, with the exiled bishops; above all the most gentle Theodore of Tyana, and Bosporius of Colonia, who is in his forty-[eighth] year in the [episcopate, and Serapion of Ostracine, in his forty]-fifth year in the ministry of the episcopate.

Theodore, after being speechless for a long time, said: What then shall we say to this, Father? Is it not the last hour, and is not the apostasy, as Paul says, finding its entrance through these things, so that the son of perdition, the adversary, may be revealed? For that the wicked prosper and accomplish these things, and last and are strong, while the good are oppressed and plundered, makes me shudder at his approach.

Bishop: Indeed, most intelligent man, the end is near, according to him who said, ‘Children, it is the last hour’, and according to the saying, ‘The householder went out about the eleventh hour to hire workers for the vineyard’; and the last is the final one of the twelve. If the Apostle spoke of the last hour four hundred years ago, much more now, for every reason. Then again, these things have been so from the beginning by the Lord's permission, for the training of the saints, when the devil demands them, as the saving word says: ‘Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to have you, to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.’ And Jesus did not pray for Peter alone, but for all who have Peter's faith. The sieve hints at nothing else than the earthly circle, full of pleasures and pains, through which, as through holes, the earthy fall from the nourishing wheat into Hades, as though sifted through the perforations: some run out through the hole of gluttony, ‘whose god is the belly’; others through love of pleasure, of whom the prophet says, ‘By a spirit of sexual immorality they went astray’, and [the Apostle], ‘neither the sexually immoral nor the effeminate will inherit the kingdom of God’; others through love of money, all who have courted the yoke-fellow of idolatry; others through anger and wrath, all who have loved the darkness of beasts, of whom John says, ‘He who hates his brother is in darkness until now’; for ‘anger’, says the Proverbialist, ‘destroys even the prudent’; others through listlessness and forgetfulness, not persevering in the watchfulness of memory, and needing the saying, ‘My soul slumbered from listlessness’, whom the word bewails, saying, ‘Woe to you who have lost endurance; and what will you do when the Lord visits you?’; others through irrational love of glory, of whom the singer proclaimed, ‘For God has scattered the bones of men-pleasers’; others through boastfulness or conceit, that is, arrogance, whom the prophet blames as deserters: ‘The proud transgressed exceedingly, but I did not turn aside from your law.’ Each of these vices brings several others in its train: envy follows conceit; hatred, meanness and falsehood follow greed; wrath, grudges, insults and envies follow anger; forgetfulness, fearlessness, sluggishness, lack of zeal and useless sleeplessness follow sexual immorality; busybodying follows vainglory; folly and heartlessness follow arrogance; … I need not say more and burden the discourse, since what has been said is easy to grasp. To each of these vices God [opposed] a virtue: to lust self-control, to gluttony continence, to greed justice, to anger gentleness, to grief joy, to forgetfulness memory, to listlessness endurance, to folly prudence, to cowardice courage, to vainglory humility, and another to another; and to all of them the divine Scripture. But to conceit alone he gave no opposing virtue, because of its surpassing wickedness, keeping that task for himself, as he has said, ‘God opposes the proud’; as the same prophet prays, saying, ‘Lift up your hands against their arrogance to the end’; and again, ‘Render a recompense to the proud.’And as the tree is known from its fruit, as the Lord said, ‘By their fruits you will know them’, so is each person, whether they are saints or only called so. And so the [prosperity of the wicked] always [lasts long, God bearing with them] patiently. This is fitting for him, and so the saints proclaimed this very thing beforehand in the person of the afflicted, for the comfort of us who suffer now. First Job, the son of endurance; what does he say? Why many words? ‘Is my reproof from man?’, hinting at his blamelessness. ‘Or why should I not [be angry? Look at me and be amazed,] laying your hand on your cheek. For if I remember, I am [troubled], and pains take hold of my flesh. Why do the ungodly live, and grow old in wealth? Their seed is as they desire, and their children before their eyes; their houses prosper, and there is no fear anywhere; the scourge of the Lord is not upon them. Their cow did not miscarry; she was kept safe from the heat; when pregnant she did not [fail; they remain like an everlasting flock], and their children play, [taking up] psaltery and lyre, and they rejoice at the sound of song; they ended their life in good things, and fell asleep in the rest of Hades. And he says to the Lord: Depart from me; I do not want to know your ways.’ In agreement with this the forbearing David, the singer of the divine judgements, as in ‘Of mercy and judgement I will sing to you, O Lord’, says: ‘How good is God to Israel, to the upright in heart! But as for me, my feet almost slipped; my steps had nearly been poured out. Why? Because I was envious of the lawless, seeing the peace of sinners.’ And again elsewhere, disparaging their wealth, he says: ‘Their oxen are fat; [their sheep abound] in their goings out; their storehouses are full, overflowing from one kind to another; their daughters like the likeness of a temple.’ And, marvelling also at their evil concord and peace, he adds: ‘There is no outcry in their streets, nor falling of [a wall] in their houses.’ Then, disparaging the corrupted opinion of the many, he says: ‘They called the people blessed who have these things’, and he adds: ‘Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord; … whose helper is the God of Jacob.’ And lest I stop the testimonies there and make the argument dangerous by leaving it incomplete, listen again to [Habakkuk] with a certain beating of the breast at such things: ‘How long, O Lord, shall I cry out, being wronged, and you will not hear? I will cry out to you, being wronged, and you will not save. Why have you shown me labours and toils, to look on misery and ungodliness? Judgement has gone against me, and the judge takes [bribes]. Therefore the law is scattered, and justice does not go forth to the end, because the ungodly oppresses the righteous.’ In the same spirit Jeremiah, the most compassionate of the saints, perplexed on behalf of others, cries out: ‘You are righteous, O Lord, so that I will make my defence to you; yet I will speak of judgements to you, O Lord. Why does the way of the ungodly prosper? All who deal treacherously have flourished; you planted them, and they took root’ (meaning, they live unhindered), ‘and they bore fruit’ (not at all of the Spirit). ‘You are near their mouth and far from their kidneys.’ Exactly equivalent to these is what the wise prophet Zephaniah says in the person of the Lord, disparaging men as evil-speakers who blame providence and bewail the saints: ‘You have made your words heavy against me, says the Lord, and you said, How have we spoken against you? You said, He who serves God is vain; and what profit is it that we kept his ordinances, and that we went as suppliants before the Lord Almighty? And now we call the strangers blessed, and [those who do] lawless deeds [are built up], and they withstood God and were saved. These things those who fear the Lord spoke against him, each to his neighbour.’ To these Paul, the herald of piety, adds the same: ‘But evil men and impostors will go on to worse, deceiving and being deceived.’ Then he indicates the lowliness of the saints, saying: ‘For I think that God has exhibited us apostles last, as men condemned to death; for we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. To this present hour we both hunger and thirst, we are naked and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands’, listing the bodily hardships; ‘[being reviled, we bless; being persecuted,] we endure; being blasphemed, we entreat; we have become like the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things, until now.’ For the good and just God, for certain unspeakable reasons, has stretched out the world like a stadium and made us free, so that, applying ourselves to deeds by our own choice, we may render just accounts, as the law says: ‘I have set before your face life and death; choose what you will.’ Why he set them there it is not for the present occasion to say, only that he did. For it would not have been wise for us to be made unchangeable, with no contests set before us and no … of the will.

Deacon: Well and philosophically have you answered, Father, opening the eyes of the souls of those present, who always stumble over these things through inexperience of the Scriptures, and [showing] that the Church has undergone training for long ages, displaying her own crowned victors, men and women, who did not eat the flesh of Christ for nothing in times past. But your being without a settled place grieves us, and the ruin of the churches.

Bishop: I wonder at you, Theodore, most honoured of men, who so often confess the benefit and then at once say the opposite. For you call us blessed as crowned victors and bewail us as fallen, because we have been deprived of our church positions. You seem to me to be like the rustics who watch the Olympic games: they gape gladly at the prizes, but weep pitifully at the blows the contestants receive. For me it is better to pursue ravines and glens and seas with the truth than to have a great reputation for what is now thought prosperity and be subject to falsehood. For if I have the truth, I shall have all things, since all things are her slaves; but if I possess falsehood, I shall not have even myself, since I shall not be hers. And having the truth, I do not wish to have her simply as a mistress, or a slave, or a neighbour, but as a sister; and, if possible, as a spouse, enjoying her pleasure, and afterwards inheriting her as my own wife. For she is the daughter of the One who truly is Truth, and the zealous man is her bridegroom. He who has this seal grows young again; he is ageless and unfading, with a zeal hotter than fire, a word sharper than a sword, a life lighter than an eagle. He runs unhesitatingly to the study of the Scriptures as to a mother at home; he blossoms continually with freedom from grief; he is not [carried away] by excitement; he hates no one; he pities those who use life badly; he calls blessed those who mind their own business with contentment; he grieves with the grief of the Spirit over the negligence of the clergy, of which the Apostle said, ‘And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption’; and he grieves the Spirit who turns his back on him through negligence. And, to sum it all up, he dies with confidence, having grieved no one except the demons and those who are their neighbours … time is left over for him; he did not traffic away his days in wrongdoing; he doubled the talent he was given, and sent ahead the interest of good works, filling long years in a short time. He writes no will disposing of matter, for he wrestled it down while living and in his right mind. Death knocked at the door of his flesh before he saw it standing outside; he cries out, ‘Let us go hence’, singing, ‘Woe is me, that my sojourning has been prolonged’; and [were it not for the One who sent him, he would have taken death to law for coming late; gladly he leaves the flesh as he would a lodging] that is rotten and threatening to fall; he pricked up his ear toward him who says, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’, about to hear the rest as well. Let the abundance of my words be proof of what I say; ‘for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’ But one who lives with falsehood has a troubled life. Sometimes he rejoices beyond measure at an increase of silver, or a little glory, or a harlot's friendship, or the misfortune of his enemies; sometimes he grieves to the point of death at the reversals …, [suspecting plots even from his] genuine [friends], not confident even in himself, and distrusting everyone as liars. Being such a man himself, he is cowardly as a hare, bold as a pig, deceitful as a chameleon, cheating as a partridge, merciless as a wolf, savage as a mouse; his own enemy, ceaselessly envious, he punishes himself of necessity without perceiving it; for while he plots evil against another, he first suffers evil from himself. When death pricks him, he gives everything to stay a little longer, so much does he love life; the time given him he has trafficked away to no purpose; the denarius he neither doubled nor kept safe. He trembles continually like a leaf; he does not wish to grow old, yet in his babbling he suffers the troubles of old men; he fears death as a god, and the visible world is a god to him. What then? He grows pale, shudders, is in agony; anticipating the judgement of God, he punishes himself, his conscience torturing him mercilessly and [reminding him of each deed], and he suffers [in his soul] as those who are scourged suffer in their bodies under the blows. He submits slavishly to the powers of the day, flatters the world shamefully; instead of one Lord he has countless masters, so as not to be a slave of the truth; he takes pains to be feared, and fears everyone. Let this be said to you by me as best I can. And if anyone, speaking more truly and more elegantly, corrects my weakness, I will gladly accept him too as a corrector and a brother, and will give thanks to the Saviour for all things. But do you in turn give me knowledge of the purpose of the Western synod, and set your seal on my words, if they pleased you as spoken to good purpose.

When the narrator had stopped, Theodore said: To you who have told these things, may the Lord grant that you find mercy on that day, both because you withdrew from the communion of such men and because you have told us everything clearly; and may the Lord remember every sacrifice of John, because until death he did not betray his freedom of speech. The purpose of the Church of the Romans is this: to the end not to communicate with the Eastern bishops, especially Theophilus, until the Lord grants [an ecumenical synod to heal the putrefied] limbs of those who did these things. For even if the blessed John has fallen asleep, the truth is awake, and on its account the inquiry will be made. I would gladly meet face to face those who did these things in the Church and say: Where is the priesthood? Where is holiness? Where is gentleness, and the common bond of nature? Where are the commandments of the Saviour: ‘If you are offering your gift and remember that your brother has something against you, [go, first be reconciled to your brother,] and then offer your gift’? Where is ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also’? Where is the study of the Scriptures: ‘Behold, what is so good or so pleasant as for brothers to dwell together?’ Where is ‘Let brothers be useful in times of need’? Why have you turned ‘A brother helped by a brother is like a strong city’ around into ‘A brother [harmed] by a brother is pitiable and unwalled’? Why did you undertake to pursue the matter as something irreconcilable, thrice and not once wretched as you are? On what reasoning did you not shrink from thirsting for his blood as an enemy's? How did it come over you to grow so savage against one another? From where did you show such a change, as from [gentleness to savagery]? I marvel, and, marvelling at the perversion, I am astonished, seeing everything thrown into such commotion by this. Why, attacking with such great boldness the Church of God, the nurse and rearer of children, is the prophetic word fulfilled in you: ‘Because they pursued their brother with the sword, and destroyed the womb upon the earth’? Being one with that womb, the divine and saving Word sowed both you and him, and [planted you for good works without number]. Instead of helping one another, as was your duty, what possessed you that you did not even judge it right to keep quiet and be at peace among yourselves, at least for the future? Created for the purpose of helping one another, why did you squander the grace, not only not lightening one another's labours, but thrusting one another away and cutting them off from your own kin, while the prophet cries out to you, ‘Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?’ But you will say to me, ‘He has sinned against the law.’ What law? The one which you trampled on and scattered by your wickedness. Where, then, [is the law of nature, which bids us set wrongs right with gentleness]? Or are you, applying the law of enemies, persecuting in your counsels, and doing things contrary to nature and worthy of enmity? How much better it would have been for those who live together and share the same way of life to share with one another common and good counsels, for the [honour] and pleasure of our Father! For the virtue and harmony of children are a joy, and very pleasing to parents, who need nothing else from their own offspring but this. Know this too: the bond of friendship and goodwill is nothing else than to be eager and to do everything in a way pleasing to the Father, [the cause] of our birth and nurture and [preservation]. [But you, despising him,] kindled [wars] in the Church, according to the prophet who said, ‘They fixed madness in the house of the Lord’, instead of encouraging and exhorting one another; and then, against the mind and will of the Father, you waged irreconcilable wars on one another. I add that this greatly disturbs and moves God, and all who belong to him, his sons and your brothers, and does not allow them to keep silent; for he is neither negligent nor careless of his children's good. He is grieved, then, both at your damaged minds and at the oppression of the wronged; that is why he does not judge it right to let you go unpunished, as he has begun; for that would be neither seemly for him nor safe for you. Your disease is not [to be borne], and needs no ordinary care, … and the bruises of correction past counting, he sees you worse. For a great and most unbending insensibility floats on the surface of your minds: brothers, genuine and of the same way of life, and moreover sharers in the same libations, … chosen together, [children] of one and the same [mother], you have [driven] away, so that they are sent out of their own borders and from the common hearth and driven far off, without city or home, and fugitives besides, as far as it lay with you; and this not for some fixed time, but, as far as you could, for ever, because of your savage temper and your utter derangement. Whetting your tongue against them and against the blessed John like a sharpened sword even to this day, you embrace your grudge instead of profitable teaching, pouring out accusation in the church to the defilement of the hearers.

So much for them; the Lord will repay them according to their works, in mercy and love for mankind. But for you, blessed John, what unfading crown of words shall I weave and bring, now that you have left the stadium, not fearing [to borrow] those blessings of Moses which he gave in blessing Joseph the active and Levi the contemplative priest? For in you I see both. ‘His land is from the blessing of the Lord, from the seasons of heaven and the dew, and from the springs of the deep below, and from the seasons of the produce of the sun's turnings, and from the meetings of the months, from the top of the ancient mountains, and from the top of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph’ (and of anyone who is like Joseph) ‘and on the crown of him who led his brothers, glorified among his brothers; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them he shall gore the nations together, even from the end of the earth.’ And to Levi he said (and to anyone who has imitated him): ‘Give to Levi his manifest ones and his truth, to the holy man, whom they tested with testing and reviled at the water of contradiction; who said to his father and mother, “I have not seen you”, and did not acknowledge his own; he kept your oracles and preserved your covenant; he made known your ordinances to Jacob and your law to Israel. He shall put incense continually at your festival upon your altar. Bless his strength, [O Lord], and accept the works of his hands; strike the brow of the enemies who have risen against him, and let those who hate him not rise up.’ And I would add: Let those who love him, Jesus Christ, not be put to shame; for yours is the power for ever. Amen.

Bishop: This too is the practice of your understanding, Theodore, hunter of thoughts: to bring out of the treasure of your mind, as the Saviour said, things new and old; old, the teachings of human wisdom; new, the oracles of the Holy Spirit; and from these treasures you have given to each side what was fitting: from your own prudence, telling the wrongdoers what suited them; from the blessing of Moses, weaving for John too the crown that was his due. He served as priest without passion, and truly knew neither father nor mother nor kin by blood, through the excess of his righteousness, but only the lovers and workers of the word. But the would-be bishops of our time have settled their kin of clay in profits and military posts and dignities, transgressing the law that says, ‘The priests shall not give their sons to be rulers and runners for the king’; and the things of the Spirit they spend on plots and …, having drunk ignorance undiluted, and thinking by these means to dishonour the friends of virtue, of whom the Saviour foretold: ‘[The] days [are coming] in which those who kill you will think they are offering service to God.’ And surely he did not say this of pagans, for then he would have said ‘to the gods’, since they recognize many besides the one. By naming the one and only God, he indicated those who now plunder us under the pretext of the Church. For, [hiding their own wickedness and envy,] they pretend in word to care for [the Church], which they have ruined in deed. But however they sophisticate, the outcome of events will convict them of having served him who boasted, ‘I shall not be shaken from generation [to generation].’ [Unable to devise] a form of newer heresy, the inventor of lawlessness and cultivator of the worst desire, the serpent, drove the leaders of the Church to the madness of killing one another, by the passion of love of seats and of first seats, through which they wrought the schism. For if there had been the harmony of God's Spirit among the bishops, and John ought to have been excluded as guilty of wrongdoing, or unworthy of the priesthood, or, as Theophilus says, for arrogance, the almighty wisdom of God could lawfully have kept him from the priesthood, or found a way by which he would have been removed without disturbance and without tears, by death, or paralysis, or loss of voice, as we know some of those who opposed him have suffered, and some will suffer. But since so many works unworthy of the Saviour followed, and he was not deposed but exiled, it is plain that the drama was the devil's, whose kingdom was being destroyed by John's teaching. I know that John deposed six men, and deservedly, as purchasers of the priestly dignity, of whom I spoke above. Who wept? Whose nose dripped blood? What spider's web was torn? Who left his house? Who was fined an obol? What vagabond of Asia, or craftsman, or farmer, or cobbler, or commoner did not welcome what was done to vindicate the sacred laws, applauding, ‘How great are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have made them all’? For where God works, everything happens in wisdom; but where the demon who hates the good works, everything likewise happens without wisdom. And strange things follow on unwisdom: envies, murders, strife, [jealousy, …, breaches of] divine ordinances, contempt of laws, rejection of self-control, schism of the world, watches set by land and [sea], and the hindering of those who go abroad for the truth. How then do they dare to say, ‘John was thrown out by the dispensation of God’? Let those who invent these things tell me: was the almighty wisdom of God at a loss, as I said before, to stop John by invisible power, if he was unworthy? Or to persuade those who disputed with him to bear the matter calmly, without much compulsion from officials? For if he is the same God who worked with Moses for the freedom and obedience of Israel, when Pharaoh openly cried out, ‘I do not know God, and [I will not let] Israel [go]’, [did he need the help] of earthly rulers in John's case, as though he had grown old, or weak, or were at a loss? Then he who brought to light the adulteries of some, the pederasty of others and the sorceries of others, was he at a loss to convict John? Or again, he who swelled one man's tongue with quinsy, so that he made his confession in writing, and allowed another to fall into a fatal crisis, or who embalmed another voiceless on his bed for almost a whole year while worms bred in him, or who brought forbidden terrors on another together with his familiar gout, or who [burned] the legs [of another, or snatched away another] swiftly, as everyone knows, was he too weak in John's case, if he was a temple-robber as you say, to bring about one of these things, but needed this man and that to dishonour John and thrust him out, thereby glorifying him the more? They are deceived, then, not [knowing] the commandment of the word. For a temple-robber, properly speaking, is not one who distributes gold or silver or silk threads, the food of moths, to the poor, but one who sells for silver and flattery and a good table the doctrines and ordinances of the Saviour; and then one who ruins a holy man, adorned in life and word, through whom the Saviour, as through a bowl or treasure, [pours out] for the lovers of the word what is suited to their [needs]; [Rather, temple-robbers are those who have plundered] the apostolic Church, depriving it of such teachers and selling ordinations for silver. Divine justice will soon pursue them, to correct their misdeeds. For if those who counterfeited the law of Moses by their excessive dishonesty were driven out of the temple by the Saviour with a whip, and that a whip of cords, for selling [doves] inside, what will those suffer who traffic in the priesthood of the New Covenant, except to be broken with a rod by the chief Shepherd? As the Apostle says: ‘Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will he deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, and regarded as common the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. [It is a fearful thing to fall] into the hands of the living God.’ May God, who glorified this holy and saintly shepherd and luminary of righteousness, grant us to find a part or lot with him on the fearful day of his righteous judgement; to whom belong glory, honour, majesty and magnificence, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.