Letter 162: Writing from Ephesus, I greet your holiness.

To Andreas, Bishop of Samosata, Writing from Ephesus, I greet your holiness. I congratulate you on your illness and count you dear to God, for you have learned of the evil deeds here by report rather than by personal experience. And evil they are -- beyond anything I could have imagined, beyond any precedent in history. They compel a continual downpour of tears. The body of the Church is in danger of being torn apart -- no, I should say it has already received the first cut -- unless the wise Healer restores and reconnects the unsound and severed limbs. Once again the Egyptian [Cyril of Alexandria] is raging against God and warring against Moses and Aaron, His servants [an allusion to Pharaoh]. The greater part of Israel has sided with the enemy, for all too few are the sound-minded who willingly suffer for the sake of true religion. Ancient principles are trampled underfoot. Deposed men perform priestly functions while those who deposed them sit at home sighing. Men excommunicated by the same sentence as the deposed have, on their own authority, lifted the deposition. Such is the mockery of a synod held by Egyptians, Palestinians, men from the Pontic and Asian dioceses, and the Westerners in their company. What pantomime actors in the days of paganism ever held religion up to such ridicule? What farce writer ever staged such a show? What dramatist ever composed so tragic a play? These are the troubles that have beset God's Church -- and I have described only a tiny fraction of them.

Letter 162