Nilus of Ancyra→Diocletian|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted
To Diocletian.
A man can easily be shifted from the right side over to the left, as the Apostle says: "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" [1 Corinthians 10:12]. For until the last breath human affairs stand in uncertainty. And surely you have seen with your own eyes that Apollinaris [Apollinaris of Laodicea, d. c. 390], a man who had inscribed his name in a chaste and dignified life, honored for his learning and persecuted by the Arian-maddened [the Arians, here called "Arian-maniacs"] for a time, and yet even such a man fell away into heresy, led astray by the devil; and he openly teaches the doctrine that the Son of God took up the flesh from above, having neither soul nor mind, and he says that the divinity of the Word was the divine animating principle. And this came about by the eager striving of the devil, who envies all men; as has been said somewhere by one of those with you, that envy is forever the adversary of great prosperities. So it is that, through persons set forward and greatly admired, he hurls down certain pretexts, in order that he may throw the Church of Christ into uproar, and grieve it, and violently shake it, and throw it into confusion.
A man can easily be shifted from the right side over to the left, as the Apostle says: "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" [1 Corinthians 10:12]. For until the last breath human affairs stand in uncertainty. And surely you have seen with your own eyes that Apollinaris [Apollinaris of Laodicea, d. c. 390], a man who had inscribed his name in a chaste and dignified life, honored for his learning and persecuted by the Arian-maddened [the Arians, here called "Arian-maniacs"] for a time, and yet even such a man fell away into heresy, led astray by the devil; and he openly teaches the doctrine that the Son of God took up the flesh from above, having neither soul nor mind, and he says that the divinity of the Word was the divine animating principle. And this came about by the eager striving of the devil, who envies all men; as has been said somewhere by one of those with you, that envy is forever the adversary of great prosperities. So it is that, through persons set forward and greatly admired, he hurls down certain pretexts, in order that he may throw the Church of Christ into uproar, and grieve it, and violently shake it, and throw it into confusion.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.