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¹ We will not, then, harden ourselves in return, whether over the unleavened bread or over the fasts, against the unbending temper of this people. That would be like gluing potsherd to potsherd without introducing any softer material that might perhaps have had the power to join them. Nor is it worth much effort to dwell on the rest of what we have listed, which they themselves admit to observing—apart from the eating of strangled meat, for not even the name of this is tolerable to Latins of sound mind, just as fornication or theft is not tolerable among us, though even among us there are some brutish, animal-like men who practice these things—matters in which many think they are committing unpardonable errors.

² Not to agree with such charges is, I think, the mark of a man trained in ecclesiastical history, who has learned that not every difference of custom has the power to split the Churches, but only what leads to a difference of doctrine. And these very things that seem to those admirable judges to be errors are, after all, merely customs—some arising from piety, such as kissing the sacred pavement (for we will surely not assent to that satanic slander, as though the Latins did not accept the veneration of holy icons); others by economy, which builds upon weakness—perhaps of soul, but certainly of body—such as allowing the first among the sick to partake of meat, and this in a disciplined and truly spiritual manner. If some coarsen this practice through mere indifference, that is another matter, and no charge against those who first arranged it reasonably, just as other customs, established for other reasons, prevail in the Western Churches—none of which can rightly tear us apart from one another, provided the judges are such as render a verdict in keeping with the Fathers’ laws.