Letter 4: Severus urges Solon to act against Musonius and Paul, saying mercy has a time and cutting off has a time.

Severus tells Solon that patience has a limit. Scripture itself shows God stretching out his hands all day to a disobedient people and still judging the refusal to return. That principle frames the entire letter. Musonius has not made a small mistake or stumbled in ignorance. He is driven, Severus says, by shamelessness, dull stubbornness, and love of money. He pretends to be guarding the salvation of others, but he is really disturbing bishops and laypeople across the province, piling burdens on people before they have had time to grow into virtue. The immediate issue is not one offender only. Musonius has become a source of disorder, and Paul, bishop of Olba, has followed the same pattern in another form. Severus blames himself for Paul's appointment. Paul had seemed to be fighting for the faith, so Severus thought there was something good in him. Instead Paul turned to a mad dispute about a place subject to tribute to Hilarian, claiming it for himself and creating public confusion around a monastery. Hilarian endured him for a long time, but when Paul would not move toward settlement, Hilarian finally acted and established an altar there. Severus' regret is sharp because he sees how ecclesiastical office can magnify a bad character. A stubborn monk or private person may trouble a circle; a bad bishop can unsettle a province. Paul not only made disorder but also reviled Severus. Severus therefore tells Solon to inform him if Paul comes to the region. He is ready to come with Hilarian and settle the matter in person. The aim is not revenge. It is to stop a sickness before it spreads through more churches. Musonius receives an equally severe judgment. Severus describes him as greedy, suspicious, and proud, using sacred language while chasing gifts and advantage. The man's claims about protecting order are exposed by the fruit of his behavior: burdens, quarrels, and delay in the work of the church. Severus will not let him hide behind religious vocabulary. A person who uses the church's language to feed avarice is more dangerous than someone who simply admits his desire for gain. The letter moves from diagnosis to command. Solon and the other responsible bishops must visit the sheep who have been scattered in storm and darkness. Severus quotes Ezekiel's image of God seeking out the flock and then places that duty on the shepherds who now have power to act. Their delay would make them participants in the damage. Mercy has a time, but so does cutting off. Ecclesiastes says there is a time to plant and a time to pull up, a time to heal and a time to kill, a time to build and a time to break down. Severus does not quote those lines to indulge cruelty; he quotes them to show that judgment belongs inside pastoral care. His final warning is aimed directly at Solon. Negligence is not neutral when people are being harmed. A shepherd who refuses to use the sword of discipline may think he is gentle, but he is really leaving the flock exposed. Severus therefore asks Solon to act with judgment, not with anger, and with firmness, not with hesitation. The divine words must be handled carefully, but careful handling does not mean endless postponement. In this case, the time for tolerated disorder has ended. Severus also treats delayed discipline as a public teaching. If Musonius and Paul keep disturbing churches without consequence, ordinary believers learn that the church's officers cannot protect them. If greedy or violent behavior is allowed to wear the costume of zeal, people who genuinely need patience and instruction will be crushed by men using office for private ends. This is why Severus moves from personal fault to provincial order. The problem is not merely that Musonius and Paul have sinned. It is that their sins now organize other people's lives. The warning about gradual progress matters here. Severus does not expect all people to reach excellence at once. He knows that bishops and monks must be guided step by step. Musonius' cruelty is partly that he refuses this rhythm for others while demanding indulgence for himself. He loads people with demands they cannot yet carry, then uses their weakness as evidence against them. Severus answers that real discipline strengthens the weak; false discipline manufactures failure. Solon therefore must distinguish between patience and evasion. He should not strike because he is irritated, and he should not delay because action is unpleasant. The divine words require judgment, which means timing, measure, and purpose. In this case the purpose is protection: protect Hilarian's rights, protect the monastery, protect the laity, protect the province, and protect the church's language from becoming a mask for greed. Severus' severity is a form of repair. He wants the diseased part cut off so the body can recover. That is why the letter feels so urgent. Severus is not creating a theory of harshness; he is trying to prevent a theory of patience from becoming cover for damage. Solon must act while action can still gather the scattered sheep, because a shepherd who waits until every controversy is easy has already abandoned the hardest part of shepherding.

That there are limits even to long-suffering the sacred scripture clearly teaches us, in that it speaks thus in the person of God over all, " All the day I have spread out my hands unto a gainsaying and diso- bedient people":^ and again: "Thus saith the Lord, ' Have I become a wilderness to them of the house of Israel, or a desert land } Because my people said, " We will not be brought into subjection, and we will come no more unto thee."' "" What therefore is one to say about Musonius. who was known to us for im- pudence and rustic denseness, and for love of money which is greater than all evil things, which Paul who had Christ speaking in him said is "the root of all evil? " ^ Being excited by these same passions, he did not notice that he was blinded by beams and searching for other men's motes through love of fault-finding and not in order to guard the salvation of the brethren; insomuch as to upset the whole province * as far as his power extends, disturbing both bishops and laity, and on his own authority adding burdens to burdens, and 1 Is. Ixv. 2; Ro. X. 21. - Jer. ii. 31. ^ I Ti. vi. 10. * iTTapYia, not allowing them to arrive at excellence by gradual advance, but by his arrogance to cause those who were standing rightly to go over to the adversaries: inso- much that yet another prophecy is adapted for quoting against him which says, "My sheep fed upon the trampling of your feet, and drank the water that was fouled by your feet; and ye thrust them with your sides and with your shoulders, and ye pushed them with your horns; everyone that was sick ye oppressed, till ye had driven them out, and my sheep were scat- tered upon every crossway "; ^ and again, " That which was weak ye did not strengthen, and that which was sick ye did not heal, and that which was broken ye did not bind up, and that which was in evil plight ye did not comfort, and that which was wandering ye did not bring again, and that which was lost ye did not seek, and that which was sound ye subjected by force." ^ Of all these things he has been guilty, and as far as in him lies he has made havoc of the province.^ To the orthodox he is burdensome and hostile, and is always kicking his neighbours and push- ing them with his horns and gnashing his teeth, like unbroken asses or bulls or wild boars which feed in bestial fashion; but against the adversaries he has never dared to speak so much as a word, but sits inside his house and lives in fear; for such is the boldness which in face of those against whom it is right to be bold shrinks and draws back, but in committing illegal ^ Eze. xxxiv. 19, 21. ~ Ibid. 4. 3 fTrap)^La, deeds is precipitous and easily moved to action, and turns everything upside down. Finally, saying that he had become a man according to the saying of the prophet,^ because he loved strange men and went after them, he went away and found those who could satisfy his avarice and fill his hand. And he did not even think it wrong to exact interest: but, when the God- loving bishops were assembled here, he piteously alleged poverty and want, and openly confessed that for this reason he followed the avaricious practice of taking interest. And, though we gave him many admonitions, he did not even promise to withhold his hand from the unconsecrated means of gain for the future, and that though we ourselves gave him twelve gold pieces and promised to pay him that sum every year, and to relieve the needs of the church that had been entrusted to him; for this he used, so to speak, to bewail every day, going so far as to speak to one of our religious presbyters, whose name is Hesychius, in so many words thus, with the rusticity that is natural to him, " By God! what do you care, you who receive the stipend" of the clergy of Antioch, while I possess nothing in my city, not so much as six denarii? " When I wrote to you before also, I quoted in the letter his abominable, unholy words, full of sacrilege, which he dared to write in an epistle to our religious pres- byter Longinus; and they also are word for word as follows:^ — "But you remember that I said to you, ^ Job xxxiii. 25 (?). - Sidpia, ^ Cf. * He Quofht to have sent somethinor to our church as treasures.^ By this means not only do the men them- selves become more enthusiastic, but the other cities also which are in error, as if they were jealous of us, would have come over and entered into accord with us. In this way Flavian also acted to the bishop of Germanicupolis, when he gave both robes and trea- sures^ to the unholy Bisula, and he drew the inhabi- tants of his country to him.' And your holiness also reported these words to the same holy patriarch, and you told me that you told him and he did not help you at all." What are we to say of a man who from such passions left his flock and would not submit to be poor with Christ, who, while as God He was rich, be- came poor of His own accord for our sake? This I say, because the money-lover called moderate means poverty, and because, now that he has reached this incurable depth of wickedness, it is absolutely necessary to strip him of the priestly functions, and to subject him to the punishment prescribed by the holy canons.^ For the seventeenth canon runs thus: — " Since many, while enrolled in the canon, by pursuing after cove- tousness and base ofains have forg-otten the divine text that says, ' He hath not put out his money upon interest,' and exact hekatostai or one per cent, when they lend, the holy synod has decided, that, if after this ordinance anyone be found receiving interest, contrivinof the matter bv commerce or otherwise, and ^ Ketfxtjkta. - Cf, i. 23. exacting hemioliai or half the whole, or contriving' anything else for the sake of filthy lucre, his deposi- tion from the clergy shall follow, and that he shall be an alien to the canon." ^ The hundred and seventh law also, laying down the same principles, says plainly as follows: — " Priests must not lend and receive in- terest, and what are called Jiemioliaiy^ But as to Paul, who I would had never become bishop of the city of the Olbians, who because of a provocation that deserves to be treated with contempt left his flock, and was often admonished by me and calmed his savaofeness, and said that he would be calm and remain at peace and stay in his church, and "re- turned again to his vomit," ^ it is necessary for us to use the prophetic words and say, "We healed Babylon, and she was not healed. Let us leave her." * Having a dispute with the religious Hilarian, bishop of Diocaesarea, about a certain monastery,^ an unhallowed and unseemly dispute, but still a dispute, he closed his ears to the apostolic statutes, and would not give them any admission, the statutes that say, " Behold! already ye are utterly in fault that ye go to law with one another; why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? but ye wrong and defraud and that your brethren; or know ye not that unrighteous persons shall not inherit the kingdom of God? " *^; and often, when he argued in a childish and rustic manner about this, I persuaded 1 Mansi ii. 676. - Ibid. 563. '^ Pr. xxvi. ir. 4 Jer. xxviii. 9. ^ Cf. pp. 69, 86. '^ i Co. vi. 7-9. him and restored him to a proper state of mind. For he used always to swear and say that he had great faith in me, and that he revered my labours and struggles on behalf of the orthodox faith (I am even compelled to become a fool ^ by quoting words in my own praise in order to show his disposition). And he would depart from our presence, as if he had been de- livered from thoughts that wallow on the earth. But, being bound up in earthly things and infected with the perversity of strife, he would again abandon him- - self to the same contentiousness. And, being wholly swayed by anger, and swelling with contentious strifes, he would at one time go up to the royal city, and at another hasten to other countries. And at last, out of love of base gains, he went over to the schism of Musonius, the same Musonius who in his letter to the religious presbyter Longinus, which I mentioned a short time aero, with reofard to the same Paul made, sentence for sentence and word for word, such state- ments as these: " But I will make yet another small addition to the letter. In everything I blame myself. I caused him to be made bishop of Olba, because I thought that there was some good in him, since he displayed an appearance of undergoing a struggle for the faith. And it turned out contrary to my expecta- tions. For he had a mad and wicked strife about a place which was subject to pay tribute to the lord Hilarian the bishop, while he wished to make this Co. xii. II. 1. 4- subject to himself; and the afore-mentioned saintly- bishop Hilarian bore with him as long as possible, but, not finding- in him any advance towards settling the affair/ at last appropriated the place to himself by setting up an altar there. For it was a monastery. But Paul - went out of his mind and became like a demon and wroucrht every kind of disorder, reviling" me also. He says he will come there to you. If this happens, write to me and I will come with the lord Hilarian also, and expose all his conduct. God forgive me and be merciful to me! he is not worthy to set foot even on the doorway of the church owing to the deeds done by him. I tremble and am afraid to repeat in the letter the facts regarding him, lest I pollute your ears which are benevolent and God-loving. May the holy God himself grant your holiness to me! For you are always our refreshment and consolation, whenever we remember your name." What mercy therefore can one admit in the case of men who are so foolish, and have unreasonably abandoned their flock on account of base and unhallowed passions, while the sacred canons do not give them any forgiveness, but the eighty-first canon plainly says: "If any presbyter or deacon or generally anyone of the sacred order should leave his own parish and pass to another, and after- wards, completely removing, try to live in another parish for a long time, he shall not minister any more; and especially if when his own bishop calls him and ^ KaTaorao-t?. admonishes him to return to his own parish he should P- 33- not obey; and, if he should continue in the same dis- orderly conduct, his complete deposition from the ministry shall follow, so that he shall not again have a chance of returning to his place; but, if when his deposition takes place for this reason, another bishop should receive him, he also shall receive punishment from a general synod, as breaking the church laws." ^ And moreover the purport of the eighty-seventh canon also is the same, and it says thus: "The bishops in each of the provinces must know that the bishop who stands at their head in the metro- polis is himself entrusted with the care of the whole province, because those who have business meet in the metropolis from every place; wherefore it has seemed o-ood that he shall also be the first in honour, and the other bishops shall do nothing outside the ordinary course without him, in accordance with the canon that has prevailed from the beginning from the time of the fathers, but only those things which belong to each man's province" and to the districts under this; for each of the bishops has authority to administer his own parish, in proportion to the devoutness that has fallen to the lot of each, and to undertake the care of all the district that is under his city, in so far as to ordain presbyters and deacons, and to administer each matter - with judgment or examination, but not to do anything outside the course, or even try to do so, without the 1 Mansi ii. 1309. - eVapx'a (Gk. irapoLKLa). bishop of the metropolis. Neither shall he again do this without the consent of the other bishops."^ It is a long task to quote the things that are laid down in various places by the holy canons. However it is manifest from the citations made that, since Musonius and Paul have offended against the intention of all church discipline by leaving their country, they have made themselves aliens to the high-priestly office, since they have run counter to Him who said, "The good shepherd layeth down his life for his sheep: but he ■ that is an hireling and is not the shepherd, and whose own the sheep are not, when he hath seen the wolf coming, leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolt seizeth and scattereth them: but the hireling fleeth because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep."" I had nearly omitted yet another fact which also affords a manifest proof of the madness and of the foolish impulses of Musonius. When he was making a charge against the devout archdeacon Callistus on the ground that he had bought the priestly order and status, thereby satisfying his wrathful inclination, and not actuated in any way by religious motives, he wrote to us to the effect that such a man as that ought to retire from the archidiaconate, but minister in the order of deacons.^ And he heard me quote, and with p 35- great justice, the passage of holy scripture that says, " May thine own mouth convict thee and not I! ","* and that also which was spoken by the divine Daniel to the ^ Mansi ii. 1311. - John x. 11-13. ^ Cf. "* Job xv. 6. presumptuous elders, on one occasion, " Rightly hast thou also lied against thine head," and on another, " O thou that hast grown old in evil days, now have thy sins come near which thou usedst to commit aforetime, in judging unjust judgments, and in condemning the inno- cent, and in acquitting the guilty, when the Lord saith, ' The innocent and righteous thou shalt not slay,' " ^ " For, if, as you say, he bought for money the grace that may not be bousfht, such a man ouoht to be re- moved not only from the archidiaconate, but also from the diaconate itself." What then is his ignorant and very rustic defence to this? " Callistus, while arch- deacon, puts a stumbling-block in the others' way by carrying the holy gospel on his breast." " What does he " say then, madman, to the ignorant person who is near him? Do you think that the cup of salvation of the divine blood has less virtue than the book of the holy gospels, and that the onlookers will not strike upon a greater stumbling-block, when a man who has bouofht the ministry carries this?" It seems to me that I am doing a superfluous thing in insisting on speaking words without eloquence to men who have contracted this unholy infection. These words your sanctity ought to speak to those who have remained sound, and to call to you the saintly bishops of your province,^ who confess the orthodox faith, and hold the same communion with us, but strip those men of the priesthood, inasmuch as they did not spare the rational 1 Su. 59, 52, 53. ■^ A 'What shall I.' ' i-n-apxta. sheep, but reckoned the salvation of these secondary to their own passions, and left these as in a night in which is no brightness, and tried to submerge them so deeply in the turbid drink that they should not even have power to rise. However we believe that they will find such efforts vain. For by the mandate of the divine Spirit, and the lawful vote of the citizens through the mediation of your sancity, bishops and high- priest will be ordained for the cities who will feed their flocks with understanding. For he that speaks through Ezekiel says, " Behold! I will seek out my sheep, and will visit them. As the shepherd visiteth his flock on a day of storm and darkness when his sheep are scattered, so will I seek my sheep, and I will deliver them from every place wherein they have been scattered on the day of storm and darkness."^ Therefore visit these sheep with the help of God, and do not show negligence or give any occasion for delay, lest you bring yourself under the condemnation of these men, and draw upon your head the sentence hanging over them. For we may hear yet another sacred utterance p 37- of the prophet which says, " Cursed is he that shall do the works of the Lord negligently, and cursed is he that shall keep back his sword from blood." ^ As there is a time for mercy, so also there is a time for cuttino- off: for we hear the same Spirit saying in Koheleth, " There is a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted: a time to kill, and a time to heal: a ^ Eze. xxxiv. ii, 12. - Jer. xxxi. 10. 3 time to break down and a time to build," ^ and the other passages through which we understand how that it is with judgment that we must handle the divine words and fulfil the ministry of these.