Celestine, Bishop, to the Presbyters, Deacons, Clerics, Servants of God, and the Catholic People Residing in Constantinople, Most Beloved Brothers, Greetings in the Lord

To the Most Beloved Cyril, Celestine

The letter sent by your holiness through our son Possidonius the Deacon, which brought sorrow, has restored joy to us, and we have mingled gladness with grief. For when we consider and recall the words of him who seeks to disturb the Church of Constantinople with perverse teachings, our mind, struck with no small sorrow, was troubled by various stings of thought, pondering how the people might be helped to remain steadfast in the faith. But when we turned our mind to the writings of your fraternity, we found a ready remedy by which the pestilent disease might be avoided through a salutary cure: a stream of pure water flowing from the discourse of your charity, which would wash away all the filth of the evil-flowing river and reveal to all what they ought to believe about our faith.

Therefore, just as we reprehend and mark him, so we have embraced your holiness, as if present in your letter, with the Lord’s charity, seeing that we believe the same about the Lord. Nor is it surprising that the most provident priest of the Lord fights for the love and virtue of the faith, resisting the wicked audacity of adversaries and strengthening those entrusted to him with this admonition. Thus, as much as those things were bitter to us, so these are sweet; as much as those were corrupt, so these are pure. We rejoice that such great vigilance is present in your holiness, that you have already surpassed the examples of your predecessors, who themselves were always defenders of orthodox doctrine. Truly, the evangelical testimony can fittingly apply to you, which says: “The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” (John 10:11). But just as you are a good shepherd, so he cannot be accused as a bad hireling; for he is not blamed for abandoning the sheep, but because he is found to tear them apart.

We would add something, most beloved brother, if we did not see that you believe all the same things we do, and if we had not proven you to be the most steadfast defender in the assertion of the faith. Indeed, all things have been reported to us in order by our son Possidonius the Deacon, everything that your holiness wrote about this matter. You have skillfully uncovered all the snares of his preaching, and you have so strengthened the faith that the heart of those who believe in Christ our God cannot be drawn to another side. Great is the triumph of our faith, both that our teachings have been so strongly asserted and that the opposing arguments have been overcome by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures.

What can he do now, where can he turn, that lover of impious novelty, who, while he wished to serve his own ingenuity rather than Christ, sought to poison the people entrusted to him with the venom of his preaching; when he should have read and held that perverse questions, which do not lead to salvation but strive for the destruction of souls, are to be avoided rather than followed? But we must, if we are useful, recall him who hastens to the precipice—indeed, who is already standing on the edge, about to fall—lest, if we do not help, we hasten his ruin. Christ our God, whose question of nativity is being attacked, taught us to labor for one sheep, desiring that it be brought back on His shoulders, lest it be exposed as prey to the ravenous wolf; and He who taught us to care for the salvation of one sheep, how much more does He wish us to labor for the shepherd of those sheep, who, forgetting his office and name, has turned himself into the rapacity of a wolf, desiring to destroy the flock he ought to have guarded?

We must remove him from the fold of the lambs, and if we cannot correct him as we wish, let there be hope of pardon for the one who corrects. For we prefer that he return and live, rather than that he destroy the life of those entrusted to him. Let there be a certain sentence for the one who persists. For such a wound must be cut off, by which not one member is harmed, but the whole body of the Church is wounded. For what can he do with those who agree with him, when he alone, wise in his own eyes, dissents from our belief? Let those whom he, resisting, has removed from communion be in communion; and let him know that he cannot have our communion if he persists in this path of his perversity, contrary to apostolic doctrine.

Therefore, with the authority of our see joined to you, acting in our place, you shall execute this sentence with strict vigor, that either within ten days, counted from the day of this assembly, he condemns his perverse teachings with a written profession and confirms that he holds this faith concerning the nativity of Christ our God, which the Roman Church, the Church of your holiness, and the universal devotion hold; or if he does not do this, let your holiness, providing for that Church, know that he must be entirely removed from our body in every way, since he refused to accept the care of those who would heal him and hastened, pestilent, to the destruction of both himself and all those entrusted to him.

We have written the same to the holy brothers and fellow bishops John, Rufus, Juvenal, and Flavian, so that our sentence concerning him—indeed, the divine sentence of our Christ—may be known. Given on the fourth day before the Ides of August, in the consulship of Theodosius XIII and Valentinian III.