Letter 361: Theodore Studite, Letter 361; Greek heading: Βασιλείῳ μονάζοντι.

Who is this star of piety that has risen upon us from the West, whose ray of speech shines all around and whose beam of life flashes brightly? Your ascents are ascents like the sun's, and your confessions are the confessions of a martyr, even if, by the dispensation [oikonomia, God's ordering of events] of him who is confessed, it was not yet granted you to share in the contest of being flayed [the suffering of the lash and scourging]; perhaps so that, by the withholding of the gift, the good God might prosper in your honored soul a still greater longing for receiving it, just as it is with mothers toward their offspring, who by the favors bestowed on certain of their kindred kindle in those who have been passed over the love of being given to; or again, so that the blood of the martyrs may not cease to be poured out for the time to come, by which both the age is made bright and the ground is sanctified and the company of the orthodox is made firm. I rejoice, therefore, and rejoice with you in your contribution to the roster of those who confess, and, as though I had seen you with my own eyes, I embrace you closely in spirit and judge you to be of one mind with me, and as a father or rather a brother, not as you yourself say out of much humility. I hold and cherish you, and, with God as witness, I invisibly give you my right hand in pledge of our agreement together and our joint confession even unto blood, not as it may chance, but to the end that we may not deny Christ our God who made us, nor indeed the Theotokos [the God-bearer, the Virgin Mary], nor any of the saints. For it is plain that, by the denial of the icon [eikon, the holy image] of each one, the one represented in the image is denied without any difference, since both the archetype and the icon are the same in honor and in power. And if this is so, as the God-bearing fathers say, then it is plain also as regards confession and denial. For is the life-giving Cross not denied when its figure is spat upon? Rather, it is plainly denied. And is it not rejected, by way of contradiction, in its image? Rather, it is surely rejected. What does the Lord say? "He who rejects you rejects me." And indeed a man is an image of God, yet the art that renders his bodily likeness is more a guarantee of it than the man is, inasmuch as there is a far greater resemblance in the one case to Christ the prototype than there is imitation in the other case of the divinity, which in all existing things is without resemblance, even though in some admissible sense it is said to have been made like. Therefore the Lord himself has spoken, by the force of the consequence of the meaning, "He who rejects my icon rejects me"; and it cannot be otherwise, even if it does not seem so to the deniers of Christ. Let the discourse halt here, not leaping beyond the measure of a letter; and let Your Holiness pray concerning my nothingness, leaving aside the praises directed at me, who have nothing good nor indeed have done anything good. But if it is because our disciple, the brother Hypatius, is praiseworthy to you, the thanks belong to the shoot, not to the root; for many straight-growing shoots come even from bad roots, and especially in the case of those endowed with free choice.