Letter 1013: I received your letter, and it caused me no small distress.

Ruricius to Celsus, the lord of his own heart. I have received the letter of your brotherly affection, which brought me no small uneasiness. For I fear that you have understood my little letter otherwise than as it was sent by me, and that for this reason you seem to mark me as guilty of a kind of reckless presumption, when you ask that I should pray for you and admonish you more often. Should I, best of brothers, dare to chastise you, I who am unable to chastise myself? Should I dare it toward you, who look back upon me as though from a loftier watchtower or a more eminent hill, while I am still tossing about amid the whirlwinds of the world as in the surges of the sea in an unsteady skiff? Should I dare it toward you, who, with the Lord as your pilot, through the indulgence of penitence [have already reached?] the harbor of pardon ****? I by no means, beloved brother, wrote in such a way as to bite you with a malicious tooth while flattering myself in some respect, nor in order to wound you, but in order to bind you to myself by the intimacy of a letter. For if you consider it well, those words belong to wishes, not to deeds, and to one expressing a hope rather than to one admonishing, since I set forth not what we were doing, but in what manner I would wish that we should live. But for the rest, if you examine the conduct of my life, both past and present, you will be ashamed to bring forward, with an inmost and most secret brother as witness, the things which I was not ashamed to promise with God as witness; and on account of these, my misdeeds, I hope that you will rather make supplication to the Lord for me, so that those whom He willed to be sharers of friendship and kinship in this world He may command to be partakers of good things in the world to come.

XIII. DOMNO PECTORIS SUI CELSO RURICIUS. Recepi apices germanitatis tuae, qui mihi non parum scrupuli retulerunt. uereor enim, ne secus de litterulis meis, quam a me missae sunt, senseritis et idcirco quasi temerariae praesumptionis me notare uideamini, dum, ut pro uobis orem ac saepius commoneam, postulatis. egone, frater optime, castigare uos audeam, qui me nequeo castigare? egone uos, qui me adhuc in saeculi turbinibus tamquam in maris aestibus cumba instabili fluctuantem quasi iam de sublimiori specula uel eminentiori colle respicitis? egone uos, qui ad portum ueniae per paenitentiae indulgentiam domino gubernatore ****? non ego penitus, frater dilecte, sic scripsi, ut mihi aliquid blandiens uos inprobo dente morderem nec ut uos laederem, sed mihi epistulae familiaritate uincirem. nam si bene consideretis, uotorum sunt illa uerba, non actuum, et optantis potius quam monentis, quia non, quid ageremus, sed, qualiter uellem, ut uiueremus, exposui. ceterum si actus uitae meae praeteritae praesentisque discutias, pudebit te intimo et secretissimo fratre teste ferre, quae non puduit deo teste promittere, pro quibus 8 quamquam scripsi, qua S, cum v, quamuis Kr . 4 adrideat r, adreddat S 5 planicie S 6 nequaquam Kr., nequam S, neque c 7 saluat S 8 dimergat S 12 litteris v 13 a me ammiss? S, corr. e senseritis Luetjolumn, inseritis S, censueritis v timerariae S presuptionis S 14 me notare Kr., menostrae S, memores v 17 saeculi adhuc in v 18 fructuante S 19 respecitis S 20 gubernatore;l S lacunam uerbis iam appulistis expleri iubet Kr . 21 paenitus S delicta S 23 uincerem S 25 uellim S 27 presentisque S 28 committere coni. v facinoribus meis spero uos potius domino supplicetis, ut, quos in hoc saeculo amicitiarum et propinquitatis uoluit esse consortes, in futuro bonorum iubeat esse participes.