Prologue

¹ Your request has reached me, most reverent son in the Lord, and I have recognized it as good, and worthy of a bishop’s regard—though it is one that the present age, like some harsh and thankless doorkeeper, all but turns away. For you asked us to answer, as briefly as possible, the ecclesiastical errors of the Latins, which you said were many and carry no small weight toward splitting the Churches. We, however, while knowing that others think this way, and very nearly everyone does, do not ourselves share that view.

² We do not know that their errors are many, nor such as could split the Churches—except only the one that bears on the very head of our faith. We hesitate to take the opposing position against so many, and to stir up souls so easily troubled,[1] because of the cooling of love that the present age has worked first of all in me, multiplying lawlessness, as we have heard. For we do not receive what a brother brings us in a brotherly spirit, but meet it with opposition, and each of us hurries to seem someone, elbowing aside whoever got there first. We suppose we will be judged first among those wise in divine things if we pin some charge of heresy on the majority, and imagine we will look sharp-sighted if we make out the morning star to be black. For these reasons it seems better not to stay silent, understanding the season, as the old prophecy says.

³ But I have also seen, on the other side, the good sense of your love, which does not think it right that you should suffer loss from another’s ill will—just as I am glad to see, not the Egyptians laboring under a darkness one could feel and finding water turned to blood, but every Israelite enjoying the light for their work and the water for their life; and I simply rejoice to see God’s great wonders serve as punishment to some and salvation to others.