Letter 312: Theodore Studite, Letter 312; Greek heading: Ἰωάννῃ Καλχηδόνοσ.

Like a father you have deemed your least child worthy to be addressed, and like a wise man you have taught divine things to us who are unlearned, praising those who deserve no reward, and like a teacher of many kinds you have implanted in us the goad of love. Through humbler words you have come down [to us], and, though unwilling, you have most excellently disclosed the height of your virtue; and that you urged us to write to you yet again and not to hold back, this gave us complete joy and led us to the conviction that we have found you to be such a man as the [office of] the word seeks and as the pastoral character marks out. For no one, it seems, among those of your own rank has spoken or drawn [others] to himself in this way, since they, even when they receive letters, do not think it worth their while to write back; and their pretext is that they have been enjoined by the [civil] authority neither to teach nor to set down any letter. And you will forgive me, most blessed one, for taking offense at this scruple: for if one must guard against the things that the ruler does which are contrary to God, why do we not also break with him altogether, instead of being orthodox by halves? But they themselves, I know not how, conduct themselves in this way; whereas you have both enlightened and strengthened and guided [us], saying all the things that one who is truly a hierarch [chief priest, bishop] may fittingly say. Yet we, O sacred head, are not such as you make us out to be when you deify [us] with praise, but poor and sinful men, who pray not to fall away entirely from the sacred fullness of those who stand fast in the Lord. And the things you have said about the heresy [iconoclasm, the rejection of holy icons] are so: for it does in fact battle against the truth, possessing one weapon only, [the civil] authority; and when that is taken away, it too will be unwearyingly destroyed along with it at that time, whenever the lawlessness should be wiped out, on account of which the scourge [of persecution] also exists. But it grieves me that the body of your Holiness is too weak to endure the sufferings that come from your banishment; yet your strength is in God, in whom you have trusted and for whose sake you have counted all things as refuse [cf. Philippians 3:8], formerly through your taking up of monastic perfection, but now through your confessor's steadfastness. Do not cease, my most holy father, to pray on behalf of your least child.