Letter 2: To the Same.
To the Same.
When people love deeply, I am not sure they can be impartial judges of those they love. Affection overrides justice. A father sees beauty in a homely son. A son overlooks his father's faults. A brother looks at his brother through the lens of feeling, not through the clear light of nature. I am afraid this is how Your Holiness has judged my writing — that your verdict was delivered by warmth of heart, not by a cool assessment of the work.
The power of love is very great, and it often hides the considerable faults of those we care for. Because you are so full of it, you have garlanded what I wrote with your generous praise. All I can do is ask your piety to beseech our gracious Lord to make your commendation come true — to make the man you praised something like the portrait your kind words have painted of him.
Human translation - New Advent (NPNF / ANF series)
Latin / Greek Original
Original text not yet available in this corpus.
This letter still needs a Latin or Greek source-text backfill. The source link, when available, is preserved so the text can be checked and added later.
View sourceRevision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from New Advent / NPNF.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2707002.htm
Related Letters
To Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria [the patriarch of the most powerful see in the eastern church after Constantinople],
Touching on the highest of all subjects — for there is nothing more glorious than leading a wandering soul back to...
The first from Flavian, Bp. of Constantinople to Pope Leo. I.
He asks him to deal with the imposture of a certain Petronianus. Leo the Pope to his well-beloved brother Ravennius. We wish you to be circumspect and careful lest any blameworthy presumption should put forth undue claims: for, when it once finds an entrance by crafty stealth, it spreads itself into greater rashness in the name of the dignity it...
To the Presbyter Basilius.