Letter 68: Severus praises two benefactors while insisting that gifts support authentic bishops and presbyters.

Severus thanks Ammian and Epagathus for extraordinary generosity. They have already spent money on his behalf, even though he says he is unworthy of such care, and now they have sent even more while he is far away. He is astonished not only by the gifts but by the spirit behind them: they have treated his hardship as an occasion for love of God. Yet Severus refuses to let gratitude become flattery. He redirects their zeal toward the needs of the church and asks them to act with discernment. Gifts should strengthen genuine bishops and presbyters, not create confusion or support adulterated ministry. A name or appearance is not enough; the church needs ministers who are truly what they claim to be. Severus is careful to honor the donors while still guarding the standards by which their gifts should be used. The letter shows Severus in exile as both recipient and regulator of patronage. He accepts help, thanks the benefactors warmly, and names their goodness plainly, but he also insists that money must serve ecclesiastical truth. Their generosity becomes most valuable when it is joined to judgment: support the orthodox, help the genuine clergy, and do not let affection for Severus become an opening for disorder. In that sense he turns a thank-you letter into a rule for faithful benefaction. He also refuses to make his own need the center of the story. Exile has made him dependent on friends, but he still measures every gift by its effect on the church. The best benefactor is not simply the person who gives most, but the person whose giving strengthens a communion that remains truthful, disciplined, and free from counterfeit ministry. Ammian and Epagathus are praised because their help can become that kind of service.

I am astonished at the extent of your admirable goodness, that after such expenses on my behalf, who am not worthy of anything of the kind, expenses which you have incurred from love of God, you have considered it right to bestow these things upon me even when I am at a distance in ofreater abundance and with greater generosity. And after other things, v- 263- But I rejoiced greatly, and offered prayers of thanks- giving to Christ who is God and the giver of all good, who has willed that a male child should be born to you the Christ-loving Ammian beyond all human hope. Since you have submitted the choice of his name to my judgment, out of the abundance of faith that you possess, and make me bold by urging me to say and do things above the measure that belongs to me, I have judged it to be a good and fitting thing that he should be named John: since the holy Baptist and Forerunner also was born to his parents beyond hope and expectation; and I believe that through his intercession he will live and reach the due length of life and advanced old age. Indeed on the very day on which I received your welcome letter that notified 1 This was written two years before iii. 4 ( ), so that, if the inference as to the date of that letter (, note 3) is correct, this must be placed not earlier than 531. his birth to me I placed it on the holy mysteries: and, when I was about to communicate after my custom in the divine communion (for it was a day of assembly), after the other lessons and the sacred song of Alleluia, I began to read the revered gospel: and I found the appointed lesson to be the story of the holy Fore- runner and Baptist, and his divine martyrdom and consummation, when he was beheaded for the sake of God's law; and from the fact that it happened so I concluded that Jesus also the God of the sacred Gospels had sanctioned and approved the method of naming the boy which I had chosen. I beseech you not to delay even for the space of one day: but to seize the favourable opportunity that has been given us by God, and present the boy to the God-loving father Z'ura, for the divine laver of regeneration. But, when you enjoy such freedom from restraint, how can it be anything but a very unreasonable action, and such as to provoke Christ our Redeemer and God, to ask for the communion or oblation to be sent you by my meanness? Those persons to whom it is necessary to send it are those who are wholly deprived of divine communion: for, when the faith is one, the holy communion also is assuredly one, not something different and diverse, even if one of the offering priests have a heavenly and high, and the other a degraded and low character. It is not the man who offers the sacrifice, but Christ completes it through the words uttered by the offerer, and changes the bread into flesh and the cup into blood, by the power, inspiration. and grace of His Spirit. For. this reason too it happened once that, when a famine had extended over the whole land, and Elijah the prophet was living in the torrent-bed called that of Cherith, by God's command ravens brought him every day bread in the mornintr and flesh in the evening- the narrative signifying that, though certain men be unclean like ravens, they are mediators through whom the divine ^ food is given and imparted to us, and they do not inflict any injurious stain on those who partake, nor does the uncleanness and loose character of those who administer the divine grace cause any detriment to those who are fed, provided of course that their faith is orthodox and sound (you are not unaware that the law inserts the raven amono- the unclean kinds of birds)/ Gregory the Theologian also, who was bishop of Nazianzus and teacher of all that is under heaven, in the discourse on holy baptism teaches that there is no difference whatever between the divine laver of regeneration performed by a priest of lax character and that which is given by a priest eminent for asceticism and the other virtues: explaining the matter by the following image and simile. As two v seals, he says, of which one is made of pure unalloyed gold, and the other of lead, if they bear one and the same signet without difference in any point graven upon themselves, will both impress one and the same likeness upon wax without variation in any point, and ^ Le. xi. 14. no one who has not seen them can discern from the wax which is the signet that was made by the golden seal, and which by the leaden, so, though one priest be a man of gold by reason of the purity of his character, and the other one that has the darkness and worthlessness of lead by reason of the remissness of I his life, so long as they possess the one seal of the orthodox faith alike in all points, and in no way adulterated by heretical doctrine, both perform one baptism and one oblation, of the same power and glory, and nothing inferior in any point whatever.^ Therefore your intelligences in the Lord must with all assurance" approach the divine communion of the saintly bishops who are living among you and of the God-loving presbyters who confess the same faith as we in all points and proclaim it with boldness, and do not shrink from fear, nor craftily adulterate it, as the Apostle says: ^ for men such as these one ought to shun as manifest heretics. But, to speak with God's per- mission, you have plenty both of bishops and of presbyters that are genuine and have no adulteration about them.