Letter 499: The apostle Paul addressed this clearly, Isidoros: Christians who drag their disputes before pagan courts have...

To Isidore. On Compassion. One must, my friend, make a truce even with enemies when they come as suppliants. For he who makes no truce, but takes vengeance on men who are suppliants, men who let forth the cries that necessity wrings from them and who no longer fight him on equal terms; who neither out of pity has shamed his rage into silence, nor has crossed over to the kinship and fellowship of our common nature, and so has not been moved away from his excessive bitterness; such a man will then carry off this as the prize of his victory: that he is reckoned by all to be a savage, untamable beast that has prevailed by force, and he will not escape the divine judgment.

Περὶ φιλανθρωπίας. Χρή, ὦ φίλε, καὶ πρὸς πολεμίους ἱκετεύοντας σπένδεσθαι. Ὁ γὰρ μὴ σπενδόμενος, ἀλλ’ ἀνθρώ- πους ἱκέτας [τὰς] τῆς ἀνάγκης ἀφιέντας φωνὰς, καὶ μηκέτι ἐκ τοῦ ἴσου μαχομένους τιμωρούμενος, καὶ μήτε οἴκτῳ καταϊδέσας τὸν θυμὸν, μήτε ἐπὶ τὸ τῆς φύσεως χωρήσας συγγενὲς τε καὶ οἰκεῖον, καὶ ἀπὸ προπικρότητος μετακινηθῇ, τότε νίκης λήψεται βραβεῖον, καὶ παρὰ πάντων, ὡς ἀτίθασσον κατισχῦσαι θηρίον, καὶ τὴν θείαν οὐ διαφεύξεται δίκην.