Letter 93: Severus rejects the idea that association alone can purify an offender without real renunciation.

Severus writes to Proclus and Eusebuna with real sorrow. Their letter has disturbed him, and he turns to the Psalms to describe a heart shaken within him. The problem concerns whether an offender can be purified by association alone, as Cyrus had suggested, without a more serious reckoning with visible offenses. Severus thinks that would make the matter seem small, as if a wound touching the soul's salvation could be healed by proximity. He tells them to ask Gregory the Theologian, whose teaching they already prize, if they need instruction. The church's teachers, he says, are clear that believers must not associate with adversaries who turn communion into an accusation against the faithful. Severus is not ashamed to lean on earlier fathers rather than his own poverty. He wants the bishops to see that his severity is not personal invention but part of the church's inherited discipline. The letter presses for repentance that is visible and truthful. If someone has been entangled in grave communion or doctrine, Severus will not accept a quiet social washing that leaves the underlying offense untouched. The path back must name the wrong, renounce it, and protect the community from learning indifference. His grief for the bishops is therefore bound to his fear for souls: mercy remains possible, but it must be mercy with truth, not a ritual of forgetting.

It was not without sorrow nor with a mind free from affliction that I read the letter of your love of God: but, as is sung in the Psalms, " My heart was dis- turbed within me."^ And after other things. But what? If, even after taking all these offences that are so manifest into account we allow him to be purified by association only as Cyrus said, he will reckon this a 1 I R. xiv. II, 12. - Ps. liv. 5. 3 Cf. V. 13- small thing, and a thing that does not injure the soul on the most important points, and in the matter of its very salvation. Let him therefore, if he likes, ask the Theologian Gregory, and he will answer clearly: for I do not know how it is that, when besides the holy scripture you pride yourselves in the teachings of your countrymen, and can obtain from them instruction in what is right, you have had recourse to my poverty. What therefore says the mouth of Christ, the mouth that at all times instructs the church, and catches souls out of the pit of destruction, upon the principle that we must not associate in any way whatever with the adversaries who make an accusation and a charge out of the fact that those who stand upright are not perish- ing with them? [Here follows the citation from Greg. Naz. given on with the variation "we" for "they".] How is it therefore that the excellent Cyrus asks for association only as he says to be permitted him like a man innocent on the other matters? And how is it that after confirming the impiety in writing he wishes to become an orthodox man not enrolled in writing and in a corner? Or do we not hear the great Basil saying in his letters, " But, if they say that they have repented, let them show their written form of repentance and an anathema of the faith of Constanti- nople, and separation from the heretics, and let them not deceive those that are simple "? Look therefore, I beg, to these columns of the church and your pro- genitors, and emulate their glory. For they are your progenitors, after the true and spiritual family: and 23 3. for you to put their glory to shame Is in truth a deed of great shame, and worthy of the final and endless fire. Cappadocia is in danger of becoming a tale of laughter in our age. For indeed, if, as I pray may not happen, you be caught in those sophistical traps, the enemies of the truth will count the latter as added to the former and will laugh and say, " Cyrus has lapsed: Soteric has fallen: Proclus and Eusebuna after many circuitous courses and useless movements have been cast down into the same ditch: and the whole trap has been spread abroad. Great champions ^ of the faith Cappadocia displays to us." Therefore, even though there were nothing grievous to expect in the world to come, are these things tolerable to the ears of the pious? Will they not seem fraught with lamentations and tears to those that hope in Christ? Will they not mourn and instead of their garments rend their hearts, as the prophetic text says?^ Be not, I beg and pray you, be not the cause of such lamentation. Short is our time: and "yet a very little while and He that cometh will come and will not tarry," ^ and "will reward every man according to his works ": * and, while we are now gaping after the shadowy things of this world, He will come upon us and seize us in the midst of our pleasures: whereas we ought to have o-one while watchino^. For, as the end of the life here finds us, so will He that shall judge us see us on the great effulgent day of the last judgment. May it come about that we are ready when 1 dywvto-Tai. - Joel ii. 12, 13. ^ He. x. 37. ■* Mt. xvi. 27. V. 14- we appear before Him, and that we find Him gentle, and not pronouncing- the sentence that condemns, but that which acquits, and giving us a share in the good things that are prepared for those that have hoped in Him! I have committed these things to writing in fear and trembling, and with caution lest anywhere I should think or utter anything contrary to the divine laws, and be found with those that are accused by the prophet as perverting justice,^ or as possessing two weights contrary to the law,^ and to be weighing the words of the Spirit not worthily nor intelligently, but inclining the balances of truth like a huckster, and making my- self liable to the divine sentence. Pray therefore, saintly men, that I may receive forgiveness from Christ the great God and our Saviour, both for what has been written and for what has been orriitted.