Послание 34. К нему же

Equal-angel, most blessed and apostolic father, Leo, Pope of Rome, Plato the Prisoner and Theodore the Presbyter and Abbot of Studium. It is truly a great thing for us, humble ones, and worthy of the highest gratitude, that we have been honored to receive from your apostolic beatitude an affectionate greeting and an exposition of your sacred sayings inspired by the Spirit through Epiphanius, our co-servant and beloved son. And this is at a time when we are imprisoned by false teachers, and, moreover, in such a way that we personally saw the one who delivered the message. Therefore, we rejoiced, rejoiced, praised the Lord, who in a wondrous manner bestowed upon us, unworthy, the unexpected, through your divine prayers, so that we almost saw your holy features through these sayings. Following the example of Christ, you called to us, the humble, and revived our spirit, strengthened our weakness, confirmed our weakness, as if anointing us with your comforting and edifying speeches, exceeding our unworthiness, exhorting us to stand in the Orthodox faith unyieldingly to the end, that may it be for us through your merciful prayers! We, insignificant ones, again considered it good, as before, through our most faithful deliverer of letters, and then through Eustathius, our other son, to convey to you what you need now. We, most blessed, held a national council, at which dignitaries sat and presided, a council for the violation of the Gospel of Christ, the keys of which you received from Him through the supreme of the apostles and his successors to the predecessor of your most holy head. And how will your godlike meekness endure when it hears about this? Let's start with the law and the prophets. This is what the law says: “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex. 20:13, 14, 16, 7). And Solomon: “He who keeps an adulteress is foolish and wicked” (Prov. 18:23). And Malachi: “The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and the law shall be sought at his mouth, because he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts” (Mal.2:7). Let's move on to the Gospel. “Whoever divorces his wife,” it says, “and marries another, commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9); and again: “what God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). And what is the difference between law and grace, we know from the words of the Lord Himself, Who says: “here is He who is greater than the church” (Matthew 12:6); then from the words of the Apostle, who says: “If he who rejects the law of Moses, in the presence of two or three witnesses, is punished without mercy with death, then how much more severe punishment do you think the one who tramples on the Son of God and does not consider holy the Blood of the Covenant and insults the Spirit of grace will be subject to” (Heb. 10:28-29). That's true. Those who did not obey the Lord’s word with their ungodly tongue called the violation of the law and the Gospel, that is, the adultery of the former emperor, who rejected his lawful wife and took an adulteress, and even greater than this and the gravest iniquity, that is, the marriage of adulterers, as salvation for the Church, because during this sacred act false witness was uttered against God, and His name was used in an illegal act, and crowns of victory in Christ were placed on the adulterers with the communion of the Divine Gifts, which were desecrated by the one who combined the adulterers, turning out to be truly a messenger not of the Almighty God, but of the world ruler Satan. And all those who assisted and sympathized took part in this crime together with the adulterer and those who combined adulterers and called oikonomia so thorough and godly that those who did not yield and did not form friendship with them were collectively anathematized with imprisonment and other torments, as those who did not recognize this oikonomia as a holy cause. “Hear, O heavens,” says Isaiah, “and give ear, O earth, for the Lord speaks” (Isaiah 1:2). We, the humble ones, now appeal to you: hear, great head of God, and heed what Satan has arranged. So, if this gathering and this anathematizing sentence took place according to the will and permission of God, then it is obvious that not according to the law of God, not according to the prophets, including the Forerunner, who denounced adulterers; further - not according to the Gospel, contrary to which they organized their kind economy. For if they say that this is from Him, then one of two things: either they declare Christ to be a false teacher, Who in ancient times spoke through the prophets and gave the law, and now from Himself - in the Gospel; or He is True, as in reality He is the Truth, and they lie and undoubtedly turn out to be blasphemers, and therefore are subject to the anathema that was pronounced against Christ and His saints, as those who recognized adultery, the combination of adulterers and the promotion of adultery by the wise deed of God and the saints. It cannot be otherwise, “for there is no partiality with God” (Rom. 2:11), and not as these adulterers explain, claiming that His laws do not apply equally to everyone, but recede before kings and receive a new meaning. Where is the Gospel of Kings? Truly, they fell into extreme wickedness, not understanding that “God does not respect the face of man,” as the holy Apostle says (Gal. 2:6), and also that He, reproaching them through one of the prophets, says: “You have not kept My ways; you show partiality in the works of the law. Do you not all have one Father? Did not God alone create you” ( Mal. 2:9, 10 )? And Solomon writes: “Hear, O kings, and understand,” and further: “For you, being servants of His kingdom, did not judge justly, did not keep the law, and did not act according to the will of God. He will appear to you fearfully and quickly, and the judgment will be severe on those in authority. The Lord of all will not fear the face” (Wis. 6:1, 4-7). On the other hand, they rejected the entire Gospel with their previous iniquities, the sacred and divine head, for one iniquity is enough to break the whole law. For all commandments are interconnected, so that with the violation of one, the others are necessarily violated, says Basil the Great, 60 declaring this not on his own, but from the words of Christ, Who says in the Gospel: “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven,” that is, he will perish (Matthew 5:19). And blessed James says: “Whoever keeps the whole law and sins in one point, he becomes guilty of everything” (James 2:10). So, blessed one, they violated the Old and New Testaments by transgressing not the small, but the greatest commandments of the Lord, when, unfortunate ones, they opposed their law to the law of the Gospel, wanting to prefer the will of the kings to the will of God. However, everyone wants their own thing, and in different ways at different times. And through this, the destruction of everything occurs, as in the time of the Antichrist, and therefore the word “oikonomia” called by Satan can rightly be called the forerunner of the Antichrist. Is it necessary to talk about breaking the rules? For if they have already turned away from the Gospel, then it is too late to take care of them. God through the prophet says this: “And I will put the key of the house of David on his shoulder; he will open, and no one will forbid; he will forbid, and no one will open” (Is. 22:22). They, as enemies of God, closed what He had opened, deposing the innocent, as it pleased them, and not God, and they opened what He had closed, exalting those who were subject to deposition by the judgment of God; in a word, constantly disposing of the sacred rules at their own discretion and arbitrariness, like masters with servants and slaves. Such are the lawless and wicked enterprises and actions of the adulterous heresy. We, the lowest children of the Catholic Church, considered it necessary to convey this to you, our first apostolic head. However, it is up to you, guided by the Holy Spirit, to judge and do what is pleasing to God, both in other matters and in this. Deign also to deign us to receive your own spoken and God-written message, following the example of the saints who were equally zealous with you, just as now we have received your rich gifts and blessings that exceed our dignity. The same brother Epiphanius informed us, most divine head, that he received from you a remark regarding the heretics Barsanuphius, Isaiah and Dorotheus, whom we supposedly take for Orthodox. We were greatly amazed that we, the humble ones who suffer for Orthodoxy, endure even more because of heretics. Let all mouths that denounce and slander us be stopped! We are Orthodox, although in other respects we are sinners, most blessed, but in this we do not allow any deviation from the apostolic faith, we accept every truly recognized ecumenical and local council, with the holy rules set out on them, we turn away from every heresy and heretic and anathematize them. Anathema to Barsanuphius, Isaiah, Dorotheus and Dositheus, who were anathematized by Saint Sophronius 61. If there is anyone else with the same name, the same heretic, with a similar heresy or another, whether a bishop or an ascetic, no matter who he is, let him be anathema. And whoever, in a timely and necessary manner, does not anathematize every heretic, may a part of him be with them! For we are clean from all heretical wisdom, through your most sacred prayers, most holy one. We also inform you that we - although this was not explained in our letter sent with our brother Eustathius - wrote to your holy head through Epiphanius. Epiphanius did not lie, and it was like this: we really handed him the letter 62, and then, out of fear of the Emperors, we erased it. He, understanding the remaining icons, joyfully brought this to your holy feet after our exile. This is truly the mouth of our humility and the word poured out from our heart. Let not your holy soul suspect anything shameful in this fellow servant of ours, who is very faithful in everything. Our brother and Archbishop of Thessalonica accepted the greeting of your beatitude with open hands of his heart, and through us he respectfully greets your holy head. Creations in Russian translation. T.V. P.75,115. M., 1901. They belonged to the sect of the so-called acephalians, who taught, among other things, that human nature in the person of Jesus Christ is absorbed by the Divine, and were anathematized by Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem. This refers to the third letter to Pope Leo, which preceded the present two. You might be interested in: