Letter 255: Theodore Studite, Letter 255; Greek heading: Νικήτᾳ ἡγουμένῳ.

Even before your letter, having long ago learned through the voice of the letter-carrier the things concerning your holiness, I, wretched as I am, praised them; and now, through the reading, I have sung greatly to the Lord, because the father is among the fathers and the lamp among the lamps. For it was necessary, yes necessary, that one who had been led on through proven submission and had become a guide through a lawful life should not remain among those who, by my sins, were dragged away together into this present age, but rather should be swiftly severed by the sword of the Spirit and should make the recovery from the defeat more conspicuous, having run back up to the watchtower of the confession of Christ and acting as a beacon-keeper in the world for the light of the truth. Such are the doings of your fatherly sanctity, which both gladdened the orthodox and struck the adversaries, who received their wounding by what seemed to be their own weapon; for the one who stands his ground from the start does not bite so sharply as the one who, after capture, has wrestled back up again in the Lord. As for our own affairs, they are not as your friendship praises them, by which friendship the truth, as they say, is fond of being stolen away; I, the lowly one, am far from all that is good. But it would belong to your God-inclined prayer that I should be of some use even in the present contest in which we now stand, and that I should not fall away from the portion of you holy ones. And the contest is known to your piety, that it is to struggle on behalf of Christ for the sake of his icon [eikon, the holy image]; for each is in the other inseparable, both confessed and denied. And the confessors of the present moment have been counted worthy by the Lord to hear more than those of old: blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed. He who is with me greets your sanctity, even as I greet the truly Arsenios [a play on the name: 'manly one'], the one manly in prudence and ardent in zeal, your true son and my beloved brother.