Letter 4: To Hnanishoʿ the solitary on difficult things that happen against faith

To the great and renowned solitary, concerning the difficult events that have happened against the faith. To the holy father in all things, Mār Ḥnanishōʿ. Bless, Īšōʿyahb, in the Lord, peace. For the mystery of iniquity, O father, has already begun to be agitated. And through the constriction of the tight bonds of the birth of evil, it is extended. And it is time, then, as the hope that the rebellion will succeed in everything. For behold, the multitude of the distresses that have come to you is timely: and the zeal, along with the good deeds that establish the monastery of the elect, has begun to dry up the root of Christianity in the neighborhood of the nakedness of the priests who water the shoots of the beloved planting. And that a ruin has remained in the village among the rest of the unfit: along with all this, also the departure of that head who loved the faith, together with the life of the body. When he departed at that very hour, also the coming of that magus, the persecutor of the worship of God, along with the afflictions of many, who did not even from the hope of their lives have a respite from pain; and they were an evil spectacle for the multitude of the separated ones and the rest of the other events that are wrought beneath the separated ones concerning the fracture of the interior. I have had enough of the heralds, as you said concerning the mystery of iniquity and the revelation of iniquity. And more than all, what is grievous for the separated ones: the nation of the faithful that rules over the states of truth. And from what, then, is there left for the weak like me? That in it a small consolation may be transacted. But this, that from now I have wished to do, that to you, the God-loving head, I might send the sounds of the groanings in a letter. So that when the compassion of your fatherhood is stirred by the remembrance of the fracture of the interior, it might quickly find the haste of consolation from the assistance of the grace of God through the request of your prayer. And from the darkness and the thick clouds of the blind, they see. For greatly does the love of God of your fatherhood become fitting, the good labor for the salvation of all.

which, from the height of your days, toward the end of the glory that is to be adorned, I have been humbled. In the end, therefore, of a hand that does not help, so that the foundation of my weakness may not be shaken by the prayer of your fatherhood, that it may be granted that the remainder of my days in a life that is pleasing to the will of God I may accomplish.