The Eastern Church to Symmachus, Bishop of Rome.

Chapter I: Christ the Good Shepherd Seeks the Lost Sheep; The Chair of the Prince of the Apostles Christ Entrusted to Your Beatitude

That good Lord and lover of mankind, our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of His kindness toward us bowed the heavens and descended to the earth, daily proclaims this through His spotless Gospels: It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick (Matt. 9:12); I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matt. 9:13). And wishing to disclose the works of His clemency more fully, He added in what follows, saying: Which of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until he finds it? And finding it, he places it joyfully on his shoulders, and coming home, calls together his friends and neighbors, saying: ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep’ (Luke 15:4–6). And to make clearer what is being said, He soon added the parable of the woman who had found her lost drachma, joining both [parables] together and saying: Amen I say to you, thus shall there be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance (Luke 15:7).

I say these things,1 most holy [father], daring to supplicate not for the loss of one sheep nor for the loss of one drachma, but for a salvation dear to us — not of the Eastern parts only, but of nearly the three regions2 of the inhabited world, redeemed not by corruptible silver or gold from the vain conversation handed down by [our] forebears, but by the precious blood of the Lamb of God (1 Pet. 1:18–19), as the blessed prince of the glorious apostles taught — whose chair Christ the best Shepherd entrusted to your beatitude3 — He who came seeking and freeing what had perished, and laying down His life as a ransom for many (Matt. 18:11; 20:28).

Chapter II: Power Has Been Given to You Not Only in Binding But Also in Loosing; You Are Daily Taught by Your Sacred Teacher Peter to Feed Christ’s Sheep Throughout the Inhabited World

Imitating Him, most holy and most blessed [father], hasten to aid us, as the blessed Paul, your teacher, once hastened to the aid of the Macedonians. And he indeed, knowing in a vision that the Macedonians were imperiled, hastened to aid them in truth (Acts 16:9); but you, an affectionate father toward [your] sons, seeing not in vision but in truth with spiritual eyes those perishing in the prevarication of our father Acacius, do not delay; rather, as I may say with the prophet, do not slumber, but hasten to deliver us (Ps. 121:4): because power has been given to you not only in binding but also in loosing those long bound, in imitation of the Master; nor only in uprooting and destroying, but in planting and building, according to the blessed Jeremiah (Jer. 1:10) — or rather according to Christ the Savior of the world, of whom Jeremiah was a type; nor only in delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh (1 Cor. 5:5), but also in reforming in charity those long since cast down: lest, which God forbid, when we have been swallowed up by Satan in greater sorrow, you should appear to have suffered loss (2 Cor. 2:7). For you are not ignorant of his cunning — you who are daily taught by your sacred teacher Peter to feed Christ’s sheep entrusted to you throughout the inhabited world, not by force but by their own willingness — you who cry out with the most learned Paul to us [your] subjects4 and say: For we do not lord it over your faith, but are co-workers in [your] joy (2 Cor. 1:24).

Chapter III: Tear Up Our New Chirograph; If One Man Sinned, Why Does Anathema Fall on the Whole World? Why Are We Deemed Heretics for Embracing the Tome of Leo?

Therefore we beg that our new chirograph be torn up, just as our Savior and Leader Christ tore up that old one on the cross (Col. 2:14); that we may no longer, after the laver of regeneration, lie subject to the offenses of our evils, but rather that the unripe grape may have bound the teeth only of him who ate it,5 according to the prophecy of blessed Ezekiel (Ezek. 18:2). Since therefore the Savior has truly fulfilled this parable by His saving advent, why, most holy and most blessed [father], have the teeth of us — that is, of the sons of him [Acacius] who ate the unripe grape of disobedience — been bound through such a long course of years? If one man sinned, why does divine fury through anathema fall upon the whole synagogue, or rather upon the whole inhabited world? Where then is God’s promise, which says: The sons shall not bear the sins of the parents, nor the parents the sins of their sons; but each shall die in his own sin (Ezek. 18:20; Deut. 24:16)?

If, on account of the friendship of the Alexandrians or rather of the Eutychians — who reject and anathematize the most holy and most blessed Pope Leo and the synod held at Chalcedon — Acacius has been anathematized: why are we esteemed heretics by you, and we are in anathema, we who embrace that very letter and the things said in the holy synod, who are daily attacked on account of preaching your right dogma, and are anathematized as heretics by those who consent to Eutyches? Do not give judgment through Him who judges all the earth, lest you destroy the just with the impious, nor let the just become as the impious before you, nor let the orthodox and the heretics be judged equally by you — both those who anathematize the aforesaid holy letter and your right holy synod, and those of us who are anathematized along with you by them, and who pray to die daily for the right faith preached by you.

Chapter IV: As Joshua Spared the Gibeonites and Preferred Rahab — Take Us Up; The Doctrine of Two Natures Was Directed by You Through the Letter of Pope Leo

And Jesus the son of Nun [Joshua], when the uncircumcised Gibeonites — idol-worshippers fleeing to him with deceit, when they were attacked by Abimelech and the four princes with him — sought refuge with him, vigorously avenged them with God’s cooperation, lest the name of God be blasphemed as if not able to aid those prevailing (Joshua 10). But you, most holy [men], disciples and imitators of Jesus the great God and Savior of our hope — He who took the form of a servant that He might render us free from the sin which reigned in us — seeing us attacked and put to death, not as uncircumcised like the Gibeonites but circumcised together with you in the circumcision of Christ, neither idolaters and rivals but, even though sinners, yet Christians and with you in all things wise in Christ: do not despise nor contemn us further, pious fathers. But as the most blessed Joshua aforesaid set Rahab the harlot before [the Gibeonites] also on account of her receiving the two spies (Joshua 6:25), so also you, with God’s help, vigilantly take us up on account of the tradition of the two natures, which was directed by you through the letter of Pope Leo, ranked among the saints, against the deliriums of Eutyches. And she indeed, receiving the spies, hid them in the flax-stubble of her own house; but we, receiving the confession of your right faith, do not hide it in our heart, but with God’s mercy proclaim it with authority on the housetops of the churches.6 And she indeed, when asked, denied through fear that she had them; but we pray that we may never deny through human fear the truth of our right doctrine, and we will stand for it even unto blood, if it should so happen.

Chapter V: The Pastoral Dilemma — Why Many Bishops Have Not Broken Communion; Let the Sin Be On Us, But Do Not Abandon the Sheep to the Wolves

Wherefore let it not weary you to help us, nor hold us in hatred on account of communion with adversaries: for many — those hindered in resources and not having care of many souls — have suspended themselves from this; but those to whom the care of many souls has been committed communicate in the churches entrusted to them, having no other [bishop] communicating with them as an alternative, and fearing to leave the sheep to the wolves on account of the Lord’s voice saying: The hireling, who is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches and scatters them, because he is a hireling and has no care for the sheep (John 10:12). Since therefore not captured by love of life, but caring for the salvation of the sheep, many of the priests do this — your paternity will be able to know from what follows, by God’s mercy.

For some of those who are established in the priesthood, seeing orthodox presbyters and holy men sent into exile and wishing — beyond necessity, by their own discretion — to withdraw themselves from the churches and follow them, did not yield to them in this, but adjured them to remain in the holy churches entrusted to them as the orthodox people’s defense — themselves taking on what is reckoned the [act] of their discretion. As Rebecca once said to Jacob: Let your sin be upon me, my son (Gen. 27:13); so they said to those willing to depart spontaneously from the churches entrusted to them: Let the sin of your discretion come upon us, only do not leave the sheep of Christ to the wolves beyond necessity, lest heretics entering into your places, like wolves, scatter the sheep. Or, certainly, [those] driven away from their own sheep on account of the right faith say to those who are not driven out but willingly desire to depart, lest they communicate with any adversary, with such faith: “Do you think they do this for love of life, or for love of souls, in imitation of their Lord, our first shepherd, Jesus Christ the great God and Savior of our hope, who laid down His life for His sheep?”

Chapter VI: The East Awaits Your Visitation; Peter and Paul Sent to You for the Illumination of the Whole World — Repay Now with the Light of Right Faith

In every way, both we who appear to communicate as orthodox and those who abstain from communion — we all, after God, look to the light of your visitation and reception. Therefore hasten to help the East, from which the Savior directed to you the two great lights of day, Peter and Paul, for the illumination of the whole world. Render therefore to it the good repayment which it gave to you: illuminate it with the light of right faith, as the same [Savior], through it, once illuminated you with the light of divine knowledge. For just as, when the whole world was sick in sins, wearied by the offense of one man, in the cure of the sickness the disciples of that good Physician — calling Him the heavenly Physician and the chief Shepherd, the Master of this sickness itself — at one time said: Lord, bow Thy heavens and come down (Ps. 144:5); and at another: Thou who rulest Israel, hear; Thou who sittest above the Cherubim, appear; stir up Thy power and come, that Thou mayest deliver us (Ps. 80:1–2): so we now, who have been cast down by the infirmity of the new prevarication of our father [Acacius], cry out to your beatitude, that you also, being an imitator of the Son of God, may come to love at our entreaty. In imitation of your heavenly Father Himself, who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45), hasten to our aid, knowing, most holy [father], as was said in the beginning, that the healthy have no need of a physician, but the sick (Matt. 9:12).

Chapter VII: We Would Run to Receive the Medicine of Our Prevarication, the Loosing of Bonds, and the Remission of Offense from Your Holy Mouth; Hasten to Heal the Dissolved Members of the Church’s Body

If our ailment were small, we might perhaps run to our spiritual Physician — that we might venerate both the sufferings of the good physicians (that is, of the glorious disciples of Christ, your teachers)7 and your holy footsteps — that we might receive from your holy mouth the medicine of our prevarication, the loosing of bonds, and the remission of offense. But because there is not a [mere] sore or stain or swelling wound, but the whole [body] is one ulcer from feet to head (Isa. 1:6), as blessed Isaiah said, lamenting the ancient prevarication: now therefore [you] good physicians, the most certain planters of that true Physician and of His good disciples, hasten to the cure of the dissolved members of the ecclesiastical body, that you may raise our dissolved hands and dissolved knees, and may make straight courses for our feet (Isa. 35:3); lest what is lame should be more distorted, but rather may be cured by your strenuousness and excellent diligence.

Chapter VIII: As the Lord Said to Paul, So He Says to Your Beatitude; If Pope Leo Ran to Attila for Bodily Captivity, How Much More Should You Hasten for the Captivity of Souls

For as to our master, the lord Paul the glorious apostle, on account of certain unbelievers, when he was reluctant to speak the Lord’s word in Corinth, the Lord standing by said: Speak and do not be silent, for I have many people in this city (Acts 18:9–10) — so now to your beatitude, His benignity says: “Hasten, and do not delay to come to the aid of the East,” or rather to the greater parts of the inhabited world, since not only on behalf of the hundred and twenty thousand once established in the great city of Nineveh (Jonah 4:11), but [you should reckon] that your medicine, after God, is awaited by many more. For if Leo the archbishop, ranked among the saints, who preceded your beatitude — when Attila was then a wandering barbarian — did not consider it unworthy to run himself, that he might correct bodily captivity (and not only of Christians, but, as is credible, of Jews and of pagans):8 how much more does it concern your sanctity to hasten — not to the correction and conversion of bodily captivity, which is wrought by war, but of souls, which have been taken captive or are daily being taken captive! And between the two ways of diabolical error, of Eutyches and of Nestorius, may you show us a third — indeed, a middle — way, more clearly: the way of true and right doctrine.

Chapter IX: Show Us the Middle Path Between Eutyches and Nestorius; The Confession Handed Down by Pope Leo and the Holy Fathers at Chalcedon, His Disciples

Our sins have made it doubtful, with some reckoning that no path of salvation can be found in the middle between Nestorius and Eutyches, but [thinking] it altogether necessary that one be either of the one or of the other. For this reason hasten, after God, to help us; and as between Arius dividing and separating the one nature and substance of the Godhead, and Sabellius confounding the persons and diminishing the number of the Trinity, the most holy fathers showed the middle way of truth — demonstrating in the confession of the Divinity one substance, nature, and power [against Arius]; on account of Sabellius, three persons and one truth of equal power: so also you now, most holy and most blessed, illuminate us with the light of your spiritual knowledge — which is, between Eutyches who in imitation of Sabellius confounds the natures and substances, and Nestorius who in imitation of Arius divides the persons and substances, the true confession of the right faith handed down to us by Pope Leo, ranked among the saints, and by the disciples [of Leo], the holy Fathers at Chalcedon9 — the unity of the two substances, or natures, in one and the same person and one substance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. For they themselves taught us by the divine Scriptures that one nature is visible and palpable and passible — the nature of the flesh — and the other invisible, impassible, and incomprehensible, in one person and substance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ; one [nature] coming from the substance and nature of the mother, born according to the flesh from the seed of David, of Abraham, and of Adam; the other indeed begotten from the womb before the morning star (Ps. 110:3), from the substance and nature of the Father. But lest, taking occasion from the two natures and substances of the immaculate birth, those who think according to Nestorius should wickedly introduce two persons or two sons or two Christs, those holy and blessed fathers taught [us] to know one person and the inseparable unity of the substances — out of two substances and natures, and in two substances and natures, of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Chapter X: Ex Duabus and In Duabus Naturis; Most Holy Father in All Things

For we, O most holy and most blessed Symmachus, hold Him to be the same both from two natures and in two natures, and not — as they say — that out of two natures, after the union, one nature [must be confessed], and that He does not suffer in two subsisting natures with unity: so as to show themselves imitators of the Arians, who say that the Father is glorified through the Son, but [deny] that He is glorified together with the Son. But as your brothers, the most holy fathers, taught against them10 — that we should say “through whom” and “with whom” as equally [appropriate to use], because “through whom” signifies the humanity, and “with whom” signifies the divinity of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ: so also now to those saying “out of two natures” but not confessing “in two,” we say “out of two” and “in two” equally. For saying “out of two” — out of which the unity subsists — and “in two” — in which He was seen and palpated and assumed after the passion and resurrection — we confess; and in which He shall come to judge the living and the dead. For neither could the bare Divinity be palpated or crucified for the life of the world, nor could simple humanity, subject to death, by death confound him who held death — that is, the devil. Whence the Word of God and our God, seen in His own immaculate flesh after His resurrection, said to all His disciples: See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see Me have (Luke 24:39). He said “have,” that He might not be thought to have been changed in [His humanity], but might be believed truly to have assumed it. To Thomas, doubting, He cries: Bring your finger here and see My hands, and bring your hand and put it in My side, and be not unbelieving but believing (John 20:27). When He was being assumed [into heaven], two men were seen by the disciples in white garments, crying out and saying: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, shall come thus, as you saw Him going into heaven (Acts 1:11): so that when He shall come altogether in the glory of the Father with the holy angels on the terrible day of just judgment, the unbelieving Jews shall see Him whom they pierced; my fellow-sinners shall see Him who had pity on them and freed them, but was neglected by them. But the holy and just, after you, shall see Him whom their soul loved, and shall rejoice with ineffable and glorious joy, receiving the consummation of their faith in the salvation of their souls, and hearing His most sweet voice saying: Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world (Matt. 25:34). May Christ our Lord deem also us, unworthy, [worthy] of that blessed voice with your beatitude, most holy father in all things!