To Pammachius Against John of Jerusalem

³⁹ Your letter goes on to relate that “though he had come hither and had had three separate interviews with us, and had applied to the matter the healing language no less of your divine wisdom than of his own understanding, he found that he could be of no use to any one, nor could any one be of use to him.” The fact is that he who is said to have had “three separate interviews with us,” so that in his coming he might maintain the mystic number, and who talked to us about the command issued by Bishop Theophilus, did not choose to deliver the letters sent to us by him.

And when we said: If you are an envoy, produce your credentials; if you have no letters, how can you prove to us that you are an envoy? He replied that he had, indeed, letters to us but he had been adjured by the bishop of Jerusalem not to give them to us. You see here the true envoy consistent with his proper character; you see how impartial he shows himself to both sides, that he may make peace, and exclude the suspicion of favouring either party. At all events, he had come without a plaster, and had not the physician's instruments at his command, and therefore his medicine was of no avail.

“Jerome and those associated with him,” you continue, “both secretly, and in the presence of all, again and again and with the attestation of an oath, satisfied him that they never had any doubts of our orthodoxy, saying: We have now just the same feeling toward him, as regards matters of faith, that we had when we used to communicate with him.” See what dogmatic agreement can do. Isidore, in order that he might make such a report as this, is taken into close fellowship, and is spoken of as a man of God, and a most devout priest, a man of influence, of holy and venerable gait, and of divine understanding, the Hippocrates of the Christians.

I, a poor wretch, hiding away in solitude, suddenly cut off by this mighty pontiff, have lost the name of priest. This “Jerome,” then, with his ragged herd and shabby following, did he dare to give any answer to Isidore and his thunderbolts? Of course not; and doubtless for no other motive than fear that the envoy would never yield, and might overwhelm them by his presence and gigantic stature. “Not once, nor thrice, but again and again they swore that they knew the individual in question to be orthodox, and that they had never suspected him of heresy.”

What undisguised and shameless lying! A witness borne by a man to himself! Such witness as is not believed even in the mouth of a Cato, for in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. Was there ever a word said, or a message sent to you, to the effect that, without being satisfied as to your orthodoxy, we would endure communion with you? When, through the instrumentality of the Count Archelaus, a most accomplished as well as a most Christian man, who tried to negotiate a peace between us, a place had been appointed where we were to meet, was not one of the first things postulated that the faith should form the basis of future agreement?

He promised to come. Easter was approaching; a great multitude of monks had assembled; you were expected at the appointed place; what to do you did not know. All at once you sent word that some one or other was sick, you could not come that day. Is it a stage-player or a bishop who thus speaks? Suppose what you said was true, to suit the pleasure of one feeble woman who fears that she may have a headache, or may feel sick, or haste a pain in the stomach, while you are away, do you neglect the interests of the Church?

Do you despise so many men, Christians and monks assembled together? We were unwilling to give occasion for breaking off the negotiation; we saw through the artifice of your procrastination, and sought to overcome the wrong you did us by patience. Archelaus wrote again, advising him that he was staying on for two days, in case he should be willing to come. But he was busy; his dear little woman had not ceased to vomit, he could not bestow a thought upon us until she should have escaped from her nausea.

Well, after two months, at last the long-looked for Isidore arrived, and what he heard from us was not as you pretend, a testimony in your behalf, but the reason why we demanded satisfaction. For when he raised the point, “Why, if he were a heretic, did you communicate with him?” he was answered by us all that we communicated without any suspicion of his heresy; but that, after he had been summoned by the Most Reverend Epiphanius, both by word and by letter, and had disdained to answer, documents were addressed to the monks by Epiphanius himself, to the effect that, unless he gave satisfaction respecting the faith, no one should rashly communicate with him.

The letters are in our hands; there can be no doubt about the matter. This, then, was the reply made by the whole body of the brethren: not, as you maintain, that you were not an heretic, because at a former time you were not said to be one. For upon that showing, a man must be said not to be sick, because previous to his sickness he was in good health.