Letter to Bishop Felix

Furthermore, let no one ever presume to accuse a bishop before secular judges, or other clerics.

And if any bishop, presbyter, or deacon, or any clerics, have been accused before bishops (for it is not fitting that they be accused elsewhere by any person who is rightly to be received), whoever he may be, whether he be a man of high honor, or of any other dignity, who has taken up this kind of blameworthy contention; let him know that he must bring forward proofs of his accusation. If anyone, therefore, has brought forward against such persons matters that cannot be proved, let him understand by the authority of this sanction that he must bear the loss of infamy, so that by the damage to his honor and the loss of his reputation he may learn that it is not lawful for him, at least henceforth, to lay snares against another's good name with impunity.

For as to how one should come to a council, or how those despoiled of their goods, or ejected from their own sees, or who are the accusers to be received, and who are not, or how all things that have been taken from those ejected and despoiled are to be restored to them by law: and because before this has been done, no charge can be brought against them, and how an anniversary respite, or one of six months, is to be granted to them after full restoration, and how they ought to arrange all their affairs freely and peaceably without any grave impediment, and to make use of the counsels of their friends and ecclesiastical fathers—we consider this to have been sufficiently established by the apostles, and their successors, and our predecessors. On these matters, moreover, I do not think there is need for further disputation now, unless such things arise which are not yet manifest.

But if you do not have their statutes, send most trustworthy scribes, who may be able to copy these in the presence of faithful witnesses and bring them back to you under stipulation.

Furthermore, that I may satisfy your inquiries concerning the word of the incarnation and of truth: whoever those persons are who are so blinded and so estranged from the light of truth as to deny the truth of the Word of God from the time of the incarnation, let them show in what respect they claim for themselves the name of Christian, and by what reasoning they agree with the Gospel of truth, if from the birth of the blessed Virgin either flesh was born without deity, or deity without flesh. For just as it cannot be denied, the evangelist saying that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, so it cannot be denied, the blessed apostle Paul proclaiming that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. But what reconciliation could there be by which God would be propitiated toward the human race, if the mediator of God and men did not take up the cause of man?

And by what reasoning would He fulfill the truth of the mediator, unless He who is equal to the Father in the form of God were also a partaker of our nature in the form of a servant, so that the bond of death, contracted by the transgression of one, might be dissolved by the death of one who alone owed nothing to death? For the shedding of the just blood of Christ was so rich in price, that if the whole multitude of captives believed in their Redeemer, no bonds of the devil would hold them: because, as the Apostle says: Where sin abounded, grace did more abound. And since those who were born under the condemnation of sin have received power to be reborn unto righteousness, the gift of freedom has been made more powerful than the debt of servitude. What hope, then, do those leave for themselves in the protection of this mystery, who deny the truth of a human body in our Saviour?

Let them say by what sacrifice they have been reconciled; let them say by what blood they have been redeemed. Who is it, as the Apostle says, who gave Himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor? Or what sacrifice was ever more sacred than that which the true and eternal high priest placed upon the altar of the cross through the immolation of His own flesh? Although in the sight of the Lord the death of the just is precious, yet the slaying of no innocent person was the redemption of the world. The just received crowns; they did not give them. From the fortitude of the faithful, examples of patience were born, not gifts of righteousness.

For the deaths were individual in each case, and no one paid another's debt by his own end, since the Son of man, our one and only Lord Jesus Christ, who was truly the spotless Lamb, stood forth alone, in whom all have been crucified, all have died, all have been buried, all also have been raised. Of whom He Himself said: When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to Myself. For faith justifying the ungodly and creating the just, drawn back to participation in His humanity, acquires salvation in Him in whom alone man finds himself innocent, having through the grace of God the freedom to glory in His power, who, having engaged the enemy of the human race in the humility of our flesh, bestows His victory upon those in whose body He triumphed.

Although, therefore, in our one Lord Jesus Christ, true Son of God and man, there is one person of the Word and of the flesh, which has actions in common inseparably and indivisibly, yet the qualities of those very works are to be understood, and it must be discerned by the contemplation of sincere faith to what the humility of the flesh is raised, and to what the height of the deity is inclined: what it is that the flesh does not do without the Word; and what it is that the Word does not accomplish without the flesh.

For without the power of the Word, neither would the Virgin conceive nor bring forth; and without the truth of the flesh, the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes would not lie there; without the power of the Word, the magi would not adore the child, declared by the guiding star; without the truth of the flesh, the child would not be commanded to be taken into Egypt and withdrawn from the persecution of Herod; without the power of the Word, the voice of the Father, sent from heaven, would not say: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear Him; and without the truth of the flesh, John would not testify: Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Without the power of the Word, there would be no restoration of the infirm and no quickening of the dead; and without the truth of the flesh, neither would food be necessary for one fasting, nor sleep for one wearied.

Finally, without the power of the Word, the Lord would not profess Himself equal to the Father, and without the truth of the flesh, the same would not say that the Father is greater than He, since the catholic faith receives both and defends both, which, according to the confession of the blessed apostle Peter, believes one Christ, the Son of God, to be both man and Word. Although, therefore, from that beginning when in the womb of the Virgin the Word was made flesh, there was never any division between the two forms, and through all the bodily stages of growth the actions of the whole time belonged to one person; yet those very things which, so to speak, were done inseparably, we do not confound by any mixture, but we perceive from the quality of the works what belongs to each form.

Let those hypocrites, therefore, say—who with blind minds refuse to receive the light of truth—in what form the Lord of majesty Christ was fixed to the wood of the cross, what lay in the tomb, and what flesh rose on the third day when the stone of the sepulchre was rolled away, and in what form after His resurrection He rebuked certain disciples who did not believe, and confuted the hesitation of those who wavered, when He said: Handle and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me to have; and to the apostle Thomas: Put your hand into my side, and see my hands and feet, and be not unbelieving but believing; by which manifestation of His body He was already destroying the lies of the heretics, so that the whole Church of Christ, to be renewed from such teachings, might not doubt that it must believe what the apostles had received to preach.

But if in so great a light of truth heretical stubbornness does not abandon its darkness, let them show whence they promise themselves hope of eternal life, to which one cannot arrive except through the mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ.

For as the blessed apostle Peter says: There is no other name given to men under heaven, in which we must be saved; nor is there redemption of human captivity except in the blood of him who gave himself as a ransom for all, and who, as the Apostle proclaims, when he was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in habit as a man, he humbled himself, made obedient to the Father even unto death, and the death of the cross: wherefore also God exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.

Since therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is one, and in him the person of true divinity and true humanity is altogether one and the same, yet the exaltation by which (as the teacher of the Gentiles said): God exalted him, and gave him a name which is above every name, we understand to pertain to that form which was to be enriched by the increase of so great a glorification. For in the form of God the Son was equal to the Father, and between the begetter and the only-begotten there was no distinction in essence, no diversity in majesty: nor had anything been taken away from the Word through the mystery of the Incarnation, which would be restored to him by the gift of the Father.

But the form of a servant, through which the impassible deity fulfilled the sacrament of great piety, is human humility, which, having been raised into the glory of divine power, was so joined from the very conception of the Virgin in so great a unity of divinity and humanity, that neither were divine things transacted without the man, nor human things without God. Wherefore, just as the Lord of majesty is said to have been crucified, so he who from eternity is equal to God is said to have been exalted: because, the unity of person remaining inseparably, one and the same is both wholly the Son of man on account of the flesh and wholly the Son of God on account of the one divinity with the Father. Whatever therefore Christ received in time, he received according to the man, to whom those things which he did not have might be conferred.

For according to the power of divinity, without distinction all things that the Father has, the Son also has: and what in the form of a servant he received from the Father, the same in the form of God he himself also gave. For according to the form of God, he and the Father are one; but according to the form of a servant, he came not to do his own will, but the will of him who sent him. According to the form of God, as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself; according to the form of a servant, His soul is sorrowful even unto death. And the same one is, as the Apostle proclaims, both rich and poor. Rich, because, as the evangelist says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: he was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.

Poor, however, because for our sake the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And what is his emptying, or what his poverty, but the taking on of the servile form, through which, the majesty of the Word being veiled, the dispensation of human redemption was fulfilled? For because the original bonds of our captivity could not be loosed unless there existed a man of our race and our nature, whom the prejudices of sin would not hold, and who with his immaculate blood would wash away the deadly handwriting, as it had been divinely foreordained from the beginning, so was it accomplished in the fullness of time, that the promise signified in many ways might come into the long-awaited effect: nor could that be doubtful which, having been contained in testimonies, had always been announced.

But the impiety of heretics manifests itself to be engaged in great sacrilege, when under the guise of honoring divinity they deny the truth of human flesh in Christ: and they think it religious to believe, if it be said that in our Savior that which saves is not true; whereas, according to the promise running before all ages, the world has been reconciled to God in Christ, so that unless the Word had deigned to become flesh, no flesh could be saved. For the whole sacrament of the Christian faith is, as the heretics would have it, obscured by great darkness, if the light of truth is thought to have lain hidden under the lie of a phantom.

Let no Christian therefore think he ought to be ashamed of the truth of our body in Christ, because all the apostles, and the disciples of the apostles, and all the illustrious doctors of the churches, who merited to attain either the crown of martyrdom or the glory of confession, shone in the light of this faith, thundering everywhere with harmonious voices that in the Lord Jesus Christ one person of divinity and flesh is to be confessed. But by what likeness of reason, by what portion of the divine writings does heretical impiety think itself aided, which denies the truth of the body of Christ, when neither the law ceased to testify to it, nor the prophet to foretell it, nor the Gospels to teach it, nor Christ himself to show it?

Let them search through the entire series of the Scriptures, that they may flee their darkness, not that they may obscure the true light: and through all ages they will find the truth so resplendent, that they will see this great and wondrous sacrament believed from the beginning, which was completed at the end. Since no part of the sacred writings is silent about this, it suffices to have set down certain harmonious signs of truth, by which the diligence of faith may be directed into the most splendid breadth, and by the light of sincere understanding may perceive that in the Son of God, who unceasingly professes himself Son of man and man, Christians ought not to be ashamed, but to glory most steadfastly: since, as the blessed Apostle says: Great is the sacrament of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit, appeared to angels, was preached among the Gentiles, was believed in the world, was taken up in glory.

Concerning the ordinations of bishops, presbyters, deacons, and the clerics of the following ranks, we acknowledge that the holy apostles and their successors, and especially Anacletus, and moreover others, have made sufficient decrees: and therefore it is not necessary to repeat them now, except what they did not establish. This, however, we establishing, command you and all to observe, that those who merit to be ordained should ascend to ecclesiastical orders in the Church in this manner; that is, if anyone merits to be a bishop, let him first be a doorkeeper, then a reader, afterward an exorcist, then let him be consecrated an acolyte, then indeed a subdeacon, then a deacon, and afterward a presbyter, and from thence, if he merits it, let him be ordained bishop. And the regions, as we have done in this city, let them be divided among deacons throughout the individual cities which shall be populous. And whatever difficult questions shall have arisen throughout the individual provinces, let them always be referred to the apostolic see. Fare well, brother, and pray for us.

Given on the kalends of March, in the consulship of the most distinguished men Diocletian for the sixth time and Constantius for the second time.