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¹ As for what needed to be said to the Westerners by a true disciple and teacher, concerning both the unleavened bread and the Sabbath fast, I have said it to the best of my ability. Someone might also think their practice concerning marriage—in which they seem, at least, to go wrong—worth a word. But I have no leisure to stir up that Camarina, both for other reasons and because it is from those very people that the marriage of our own clergy is held against us, and not this alone, but, as they say, other things too many to number. Such is the nature of rivalry: blind toward what actually exists, sharp-sighted toward what does not—the one it counts achievements, the other defects.

² When the time comes to answer these charges against us, that will also be the time to speak about marriage, and to ask whether it is they who err, or we, or whether both parties act rightly, each with regard to the aim each has set for the matter. For the rest, it remains to admonish the many among our own people too—those who are zealous, but not according to knowledge, and those who, worse still, out of self-love, tear apart the body of Christ. And first I will address the simpler among them.