Letter 91: Severus rejoices in John and John's letter, then asks them to help Mitras resist false prophecy and deceit.

Severus begins with gratitude because John and John have written after a long silence. Hearing their voice after winter is more pleasant to him than spring. Flowers from the meadows bloom and fade quickly, but words shaped by the Spirit become a better garland. Their letter brought him joy first because the commemoration of Theodore the presbyter had gathered a large festival. For Severus, the memorial of holy people is not nostalgia. It trains believers to think about the resurrection, because the departure of the saints teaches the blessed life Christ has promised. From there he turns to events in the East. He knows only what their letter also reports, yet the pain of impiety forces him to speak. His grief centers on Mitras, a man he plainly loves and respects but also thinks dangerously gullible. Mitras, wise in other ways, has allowed foolish people and false prophecies to take hold of him. Severus cannot watch that without protest. He compares his own speech to Job's: bitterness presses words out of him because silence would be cowardice. The story he tells is almost comic, but the comedy is angry. A certain prophet threatened people with judgment and tried to draw prophecies from his own swollen vanity. When the prophecy failed, he changed roles and became a beggar before the very people he had threatened, kneeling in the road and asking them only to return to communion with him. They laughed and left him there with his prophecies. Severus uses the scene to expose the emptiness of spiritual intimidation when it is not governed by truth. He also recounts a quieter and more painful episode. A man who had been threatened came to the church for counsel and was later struck with painful swellings. The sufferer came to Severus and asked him to touch the afflicted place. Severus wept, prayed, and did what he could, but the point of the story is not that Severus had power. It is that the church's discernment and compassion stand opposite theatrical threats. The faithful need steady help, not spiritual bullying. The letter then widens into a plea for vigilance. Heretics and unstable teachers set traps; wise Christians must remove stones from the royal road so that no one is led aside. Severus wants John and John to help protect Mitras from people who flatter his weakness. They are to take his place if he cannot speak with Mitras himself. Their understanding can say more than Severus has written, and their nearness may succeed where distance delays him. Severus' tone remains humble at the end. If he has misjudged the case, he asks to be taught and promises to be silent. This is not false modesty. He is fierce because he believes a friend is in danger, but he still leaves room for correction. That balance gives the letter its force. Severus does not confuse zeal with infallibility. He is ready to speak in anguish, and he is ready to be corrected if the truth requires it. For John and John, the practical command is clear. They must use their maturity to counsel Mitras, expose false prophecy, and steady those endangered by deceit. They must not let laughter at a failed prophet become indifference to the damage such people do. Severus asks them to fill his absence with pastoral intelligence: speak more fully than he can from afar, heal the confusion, and keep the road open for people who want to walk without stumbling. Severus is especially worried because false prophecy can imitate courage. A man who threatens others in God's name looks fearless until the prediction fails. Then the same person may turn servile and beg forgiveness, not because he loves truth, but because his performance has collapsed. Severus wants John and John to see the pattern clearly. The issue is not only one failed prediction. It is the habit of using spiritual language to control frightened people and then escaping responsibility when the threat proves empty. Mitras matters because he is not a fool. Severus calls him wonderful and wise, which makes the danger more painful. Wise people can suffer fools when they are generous, tired, lonely, or eager for some sign that God is acting. Severus' criticism is therefore affectionate. He wants the two presbyters to protect a valuable person from the false teachers who have learned how to flatter his openness. Their counsel must be direct enough to wake him without humiliating him. The letter also gives a glimpse of Severus' pastoral network under pressure. He cannot be everywhere. He has not yet had the opportunity to speak with Mitras himself. So he turns to John and John as trusted extensions of his care. They know the situation more closely, and they can say what he cannot yet say in person. That delegation is part of the letter's urgency: good people must not wait for the perfect messenger when a soul is already being pulled toward confusion. Severus' final quotations from Job keep the tone from becoming arrogant. He speaks because anguish compels him, but he asks to be taught if he is wrong. That is more than a rhetorical flourish. It models the kind of correction he wants for Mitras. True spiritual authority can warn, rebuke, and expose error while still remaining answerable to truth. False prophecy cannot do that; it must win or collapse. Severus asks John and John to practice the better form of authority. The joy of the opening and the anguish of the middle belong together. Severus can delight in a festival for Theodore and still be angry over Mitras because both responses come from the same hope: the saints teach the resurrection, and the living must not be surrendered to theatrical lies. The work of John and John is to keep that hope sane, truthful, and usable.

I owe thanks to God that after the winter season I have again through your letter heard your sweet and cheerful voice. For to me to hold communication with you seems more cheerful and joyful than any spring. To delight and adorn ourselves with flowers from the meadows that quickly bloom and wither is not like weaving together blossoms of spiritual words. The first blossom, one very well adapted for giving joy, was contained in your letter in the fact that the celebration of the saintly Theodore the presbyter ^ pro- vided a crowded festival and feast to those who assembled, so that the believers are confirmed in future hope even by what is seen now. For the departure hence of holy men and the remembrance of them on the occasion of this is a means of instruction and of meditation on the blessed life: the life which Christ promised when He revealed to us by actual experience the mystery of the Resurrection. p ^^g^ As to events in the East we also have certain know- ^ The first Saturday in Lent (Sachau Verz. d. syr. Hdschr. zu Berlin, ). V. II. ledge of the same things that were also stated in your letter: and nothing beyond. Nevertheless the pangs caused by the impiety compel us to bring the foul birth out. It rests therefore with you, saintly men, and with all who love God to make supplication and to stir up your fervent prayers like a censer, and cast upon them "fine composite incense"^ which is earnest and laborious supplication, supplication that at the same time reminds the divine ears of their wonders from eternity and is able to stop the corruption so that the Lord's congrega- tion may not utterly perish, and the peoples say, ^' Where is their God? " ^ As to Silvanus who is of heretical ordination, but begs to be received, you ought not to be in difficulty seeing that the regulations of the holy Timothy ^ have marked out the proper course for you, and have laid down for you the method to be followed in this case: so that everything that goes beyond and surpasses him falls outside the limits of what is proper. However it will rest with you who are at hand and know the man to shorten or lengthen his time according to the character of his repentance. If possible therefore, the God-loving Isidore bishop of the city of the Chalcidians will release this man. But, if it is thought that this will stir up affliction to his bonds, as the Apostle says,* it is easy for him to go with a letter from you to the God-loving Epimachus bishop of Rhinocorura, and receive forgiveness. Only beware ^ Ex. XXX. 7. - Ps. Ixxxviii. 10. '^ Cf. pp. 320, 339. ■* Ph. i. 16. lest, when the man is forgiven, he use the freedom as an assistance in causing disturbance in various places, since such is the character that you ascribe to him in your letter. As to John of blessed memory the reader and our scribe, I should perhaps have been sorry that he did not come to see me and was prevented from under- taking the daring journey which would have been in the winter and is full of dangers, had it not been that he met with such an end of life, and a gathering-place for which one might well pray and a holy tabernacle (I will not say grave), it being one that foreshadowed for him rest in the eternal mansions. We pray also that through your holy prayers he may receive the lot of the saints in all its fulness. However both he and the devout Sergius the reader when they came here in- jured many persons more than they edified them. One might hear them relating certain dreams and prophecies, on account of which, as they said, they hesitated to communicate with the holy churches in Egypt. From whom he heard these things I do not wish to say, lest I even seem to certain persons to be a hard man. Who is there who will not (and very rightly) pronounce against us as senseless, if we set our- selves against such prophecies and dreams, and while occupying ecclesiastical thrones forget these things, but, when we are outside and are expelled and driven out, again attend to dreams and repeat dreamy prophecy? However, since it is not my pleasure to make accusations, but to declare and explain to those 22 V. II. who love me what my position is, and proclaim it also to the adversaries, the communion that now prevails in the persecuted church of the East and in all the Egyptian church, and is pure in the proclamation of the faith, and in the rejection of the evil Chalcedonian impiety, and in purging itself of heretics and holding no association with them, this communion I so hold and to it I so draw near, as I drew near in it with the highest assurance ^ and a fixed mind, when our holy father Peter the bishop from Iberia was offering, and was performing the rational sacrifice. We did not by our concession give anything like what we received. We waived the strict observance of names according; to the fathers' ordinances for the sake of the salvation of so many cities, and instead of it we obtained besides the East the whole of Egypt also supporting us and ranging itself on our side with a pure heart, and not bound in a yoke with unbelievers, to speak in the words of the Apostle." Having cast this seed, we gained for fruits banishment of bishops: confession on the part of cities: martyr-like contests, such that men reckon every kind of torture small. This is to be seen not only in men, but also in women and in every sex, and every age: insomuch that the inhabitants of the whole of Egypt are ready to strip themselves for like contests, if the time summon. What manner of man then were we when we had these things granted us, a man deprived of bishops ^ 7rXr]po<f)OpLa. " 2 Co. vi. 14. and sitting in a corner, and resembling a pelican of the wilderness as the prophet sings/ and possessing a fruitless accuracy, insomuch that some were eager to proceed to new and different divisions? But God, knowing clearly that our holy fathers and His true servants always endeavoured to walk in the royal road, cut away these things and made them cease as if they had never begun at all, and instead of them by invisible means bestowed upon us riches that we had never desired or been able to conceive in our mind. He exposed the feebleness of human thoughts and efforts, but by means of facts themselves said, " For what the holy God hath purposed who shall annul.'* and His high hand who shall turn away? " ^ How then shall we be found speaking in a contrary sense, we whose duty it is to exhort those who com- municate with us to show freedom of speech regarding these things.'* Indeed according to my information the wonderful Mitras showed himself more irrational even than irrational things by continually saying that he is not in communion with the holy churches here, and gave ground for laughter to those who have no soundness of their own, but apply themselves to find for themselves lines of defence and discoveries of methods of support from the weaker brethren among us, because he could not give a reason for this irration- ality (I will not say " doubt "). Who is there who will not be disgusted with men who like Abimelech the ^ Ps. ci. 7. " Is. xiv. 27. V. II. offspring of Gideon's concubine, who illegally became king in Shechem by gathering round him depraved and profligate men, as the God-inspired scripture somewhere narrates/ illegally receive bishops who have been canonically repudiated and received de- privation, and make prayers over them, and crucify Christ afresh, as it is said,' and think that they are practising religion: men whom God has rendered more naked than a pebble as the text of Proverbs says, as their evil disposition deserves: men who have fallen so far into conflict with God as to presume to anathematize the Edict, under which, as those men say in so many words, the followers of Julian the presbyter,^ whose soul is at rest, continued joined in communion with Peter, who became bishop of the city of the Alexandrines after Timothy, unto this day, and went into the church with him; not knowing that they are laying under an anathema men whom, as they think, they ascribe to themselves as their fathers. For how is it that, the right confession being contained in the Edict, they sought to have that which is wanting added, i.e. a rejection of the Synod of Chalcedon, and when this was not added withdrew from communion? If the Edict deserved an anathema, they ought never to have assented to this at the beginning: but have demanded that it also be repudiated, like one of the repudiated doctrines. So great is the lack of in- struction and the desire of amassing money: an object 1 Judg. ix. 1-6. - He. vi. 6. 2 Cf. Zach. Rh. vi. i, 2, 4. that " blinds " even " the eyes of the wise," as the sacred text says,^ not to speak of men who turn their attention to their belly only: which they fatten every day and carry about like some honoured sister, making their cheeks red by constant feastings, and presenting them swollen with fat to those that meet them, and not hiding themselves at all. The good Anatolius also is one of these, who foretold death to some men who had in full assurance " communicated with the holy church in Alexandria, claiming to draw prophecies - from that fat belly of his: but, when the prophecy failed to be fulfilled, he changed his tack and acted as a suppliant to those who had received his menaces. Having fallen in with them on the road, he knelt down and kept begging those who had been threatened to give him forgiveness, and only to return to com- munion with him. But they after laughing for a long time left him lying on the ground his prophecies and all. I pray your sanctities to be assured that a certain quiet man who had received such a threat from him, after communicating the knowledge to the holy church and accepting its help in considering what was best to do, by God's permission was smitten with bright tumours on the side, which many are in the habit of naming carbuncles. He, coming up to me (for he was one of those who know our affairs), begged me to touch the afflicted part: and I, beginning to weep, applied to it the chrism of the holy cross, and its ^ De. xvi, 19. 2 TrX-qpofjiopia. V. II. venerated sign; and I sent this man away expecting to die. And on the next day the Lord of hosts made the swelling caused by the tumours to disappear, and he did not keep his bed tor one single hour: but, going about and following his usual pursuits, he was delivered from the affliction, " walking and leaping and praising God "; ^ for the sacred scripture will again express this also. But, if I have become a fool by relating this, Anatolius the false prophet compelled - me, even as the false apostles did Paul; ^ though I am not Paul, and am a sinner, yet not a breaker of the law or the canons, but an observer of the law of Christ.^ Many other things also might have been related, which expose the foolishness of those men, but confirm the power of the truth: but the limits of a letter are not suited for such stories, seeing that they need the extended range of oral conversation. For the same Anatolius thought fit to say to certain men, " Hosius an old man, in whom alone I had confidence, who also" (he says) "gave me the monastic garb, used to urge me, when I came to Palestine, to communicate with the bishop of the city of the Antiochenes, saying that he placed confidence in him. But, when " {he says) "I for my part went on to ask him whether I ought also to communicate with the bishop of the city of the Alexandrines, he answered that I ought not to do this. But I " (he says), " laughing at the contrariety and inconsistency of the words, declined 1 Ac. iii. 8. 2 2 Co. xii. ii. ^ i Co. ix. 21. to follow the advice." And many other falsehoods he tells. To women too he was to be seen prophesy- ing, and presumptuously laying threats upon them, while not getting anything else from such practices but laughter only. However he does not perceive things that are of a nature to cause shame, because he takes his pleasure in loaves of bread and cooked dishes and various drinks that are offered him, and feeds his belly only. For this has in fact been his object for a long time. To such an extent did the good and excellent Mitras (for to him I return) use words without sense, that I almost even forgot my caution, and even asked to meet and speak with him, and prevent him from being shaken: but I have not been able to find a way of doing so, since the necessity that surrounds me hinders the accomplishment of my wish. For he put forward one and another counter- argument of contemptible character, swimming and tossing (?) in his own fatuities and driven hither and thither at random. Among these one is this. They used in fact to say of us that we communicated with Simeon who stood on the pillar: and against those who laid down this counter-argument some of our CM supporters brought forward the truth and said, " Accordingly on your principle Timothy also of holy memory will rightly incur blame in this matter, if one does not take into account considerations of expediency concerning the holy churches and the necessity of joining and binding them together. For indeed he also is shown to have sent clergymen to V. I I. the East: who communicated with Peter who at that time held the prelacy of the city of the Antiochenes, bringing with them a synodical letter. And, after all the names had been read, the bearers of this com- municated in the oblation: one among whom was the man called Achillas." Then they out of con- tentiousness falsely disputed and said that Achillas had orders to remove the names, and he did not do as he was ordered, and after his return to Alexandria was visited with punishment and separation. But the fiction was refuted by the fact that Antiochene clergymen had come at that time to the city of the Alexandrines to buy wheat, Syria being afflicted with lack of wheat, and exercised the ministry here and communicated in the sacred oblation. And again those audacious men said, "why did I pronounce a laudatory discourse about him, when I ought to have held my peace, and to have given effect to the considerations of expediency by silence?" In answer to this I said to those who spoke, " The prooimion or preface of the discourse shows the whole truth. Because the unholy Nestorians, whose leader was Theodoret, wished to snatch for themselves the splendour of the man's character, and to attach this to the heresy, I in composing the discourse made the true statement that he actually drove away Theodoret and said that he did not even know the Synod: but that he believed in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I added this argument also, which is very true, that a man who did not know letters did not sign: and those who have grown old in the flock - and yet survive showed this by many proofs. And in order to exclude the impiety I made this manifest in the discourse, and prevented the deception of the believing peoples who by this plea were being brought to what the heretics desired, and were spurning the substance^ of the sound faith." So far said I. But I find that the holy fathers also defend conspicuous men who are capable of attracting many by their reputation,^ and this while knowing that those men did not keep the accuracy of the faith, whom they enthusiastically and with many praises defended. Such was the conduct of Athanasius when he wrote on behalf of Dionysius against the Arians,^ who wished to snatch for themselves the reputation^ of the man in support of their heresy. The purpose of Athanasius that made him compose the defence and the encomium was very plain: and this was, not to give the adversaries a chance of priding themselves upon him, and of putting forward the glory of Dionysius as a covering for their evil belief. Basil the great, as you know, in writing to Maxi- mus the philosopher utters a pronouncement about Dionysius, in which he says these words: "Wherefore also he is many-coloured in his writings: now taking away the co-essentiality, on account of him who uses it in an evil way for the destruction of the substances, now accepting it and making a defence to his name- 1 Kc^aXaiov. ^ vTr6\r]\j/i^. ^ P. G. xxv. 480. V. II. sake. In addition to these things he has regarding the Holy Spirit also left utterances that do not at all beseem a spiritual man, exiling Him from the ador- able Godhead, and reckoning Him with created and ministering nature in some lower place." ^ What then? When we hear these things, shall we bring a just accusation ag-ainst Athanasius on the orround that bv his defence he extolled and praised a man who thus fell from the right standard of accuracy? or shall we accept him the more on account of this high spiritual service of his and the skilful policy by which he did not allow the Arians to pride themselves in such a man and thereby hurl the more simple down into the pit? In all things the methods and actions of the fathers were directed to the end that the orthodox faith might be spread abroad and that this might prevail in the churches, and to the end that they might hinder the plots of the heretics, and might bar every opening for deceit against them, and that they might remove the stones from the royal road that no one might go astray. I have given vent to these utterances, because I have grieved in my spirit as it is somewhere written ' over the wonderful Mitras, who, as was said by the wise Paul to the Corinthians, suffers fools though he is wise.^ For this reason I said like Job, "Wherefore neither will I refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will open my mouth being ^ Ep. 9. 2. 2 Ps. cvi. 7 (?). Co. xi. 19. constrained by the bitterness of my soul."^ I beg and entreat your holinesses, since still even now I have not had an opportunity of speaking with him (if I shall find an opportunity, I will not neglect it), yourselves to fill my place, and suggest to his smallness of soul not only these few things which I have said, but all that it is in the power of your understandings to say. But, if I too "have erred" (I will again quote the words of Job), " and a deceiver dwells with me," ^ " teach me: and I will be dumb "; ^ and "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth: and, having once spoken, I will not go on to speak a second time."*