Letter 199: Theodore Studite, Letter 199; Greek heading: Βασσιανῷ τέκνῳ.

I have learned what befell the brethren, my child, and how you yourself remained behind, not being sought after [for interrogation] - a thing that came about not for your humiliation, but for a dispensation [oikonomia, the providential ordering of affairs by God] on God's part. Nevertheless, be prepared, for you do not know at what hour God will command you to stand before the torturers. Do not, then, lose heart at the fall concerning Lucian and at the cowardly collapse of the others; for both of them, on account of my sins, are pitiable, unprepared, easily taken captive by the devil, having lost what is eternal through sparing the flesh - whom Christ will raise from the dead through a repentance worthy of the name. You, therefore, as a good soldier of Christ, suffer hardship together with your fellow contestants, with whom you were also made secure, with whom you were also enrolled. And who are these? Thaddaeus the holy martyr, Dorotheus and Bessarion and James, of the newly levied army of Christ. There has gone out (a thing both pitiable to say and true to speak) a Judas, and there has come in, in his place, a Matthias. Do not, then, be afraid of the torments of the lawless, because God is the one who helps to lighten the sufferings, the one who is struck together [with the sufferer]. Their blows, as it is written, have become as the arrow of infants to your brethren; are they not of the same flesh as you and subject to the same passions? But, you say, I am not pure as those are; yet for this very reason all the more must it be borne, that through our own blood we may be cleansed, made white as snow and rendered conformed to Christ. May God be your helper, O my good child; remember me, the lowly one, in your sufferings.