Letter 1605: There were once two full brothers who had quarreled so violently with each other that they regarded as enemies even...

You risk overturning the things you once praised so highly by writing to ask why Zosimus, Eustathius, and Maron — men who distinguish themselves neither in speech nor in life, but who suffer from the utmost ignorance in both respects, and who are a comedy and a laughingstock to everyone — seem to hold the priesthood. But I will make my defense simply and clearly. If I had made my argument on their behalf, preferring virtue over learning, you would rightly have put me in the position of having to defend myself. But if the discussion was not about particular persons at all, and the matter itself was being examined on its own merits — so much so that you yourself, as you said, were struck by the beauty and truth of what was written, and wove praises greater than I deserved — why have you now brought forward men of whatever sort of life into the middle of the argument, attempting to refute what was previously written? For even if those men are full of countless evils and have surpassed everyone, as you have written, in their lawlessness, the argument we made, fortified by truth, will not thereby be overturned. Rather, those men are already what they are, and in addition to being ridiculed they will pay an unbearable penalty. But the truth will shine forth all the more greatly — not refuted by a few wicked men, but made all the more brilliant precisely because, while rendering those who do not love her inglorious, she makes those who do love her most glorious of all.