Epistola ad Felicem Episcopum

Letter of Pope Caius to Felix the Bishop. That pagans cannot accuse Christians. I. On the accusation of a bishop, and his accusers, on despoliation or expulsion, and on the Incarnation of the Lord. I. That pagans and heretics cannot accuse Christians. II. That a bishop is not to be accused before secular judges. III. On a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, or the remaining clerics, to be accused before bishops. IV. On those who deny the Incarnation of the Word of God. V. That the hope of eternal life cannot be attained except through the mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus. VI. On ecclesiastical orders. To his most beloved brother Felix the bishop, Caius. The letters of your charity, directed to us, full of the solicitude of Catholic inquiry, we have gratefully received, blessing the clemency of our Lord: because He deigns to provide such shepherds for His sheep from the remotest parts of the world, through whom they may both abound in salutary pastures and be preserved from the rapacity of the iniquitous wolf, so that they cannot fall into the snares of its stealthy attack. Whence it is certain that the grace of promised blessedness follows you, when the perfection of heavenly doctrines is sought by you with such a votive eagerness. For it is written: Blessed are those who scrutinize His testimonies and seek Him with their whole heart (Ps. 118). This therefore.

Most dear brother, considering with all our mind the purpose of your consultation, we trust that it proceeds from you as well, who strive to hold to the rule of the Catholic faith by the same footsteps by which you know it to be founded in the apostolic see. And although the sound of them has been spread throughout the whole world, and their words have been stretched to the ends of the earth (Psalm 18, from Jerome’s version), the hearts of your love have proven faithful to Christ; nevertheless, if anything in the Church, which has been committed to your governance, with the Lord’s help, has not yet been fully clarified, you have recourse to the same fountain from which the pious and salutary water flowed—that is, we have embraced this with due charity, because you have confidently wished that our response confirm those matters concerning which you said observance among you was ambiguous. Therefore, greeting your love in the Lord, we believe it necessary to instruct you on each point, according to what the authority of the apostolic see holds in accordance with Catholic discipline, by also subjoining some capital rules of the saints.

First, know that pagans and heretics cannot accuse Christians, nor bring against them a charge of defamation. Next, 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 (since it is not permitted for them to be accused by any person who is not properly admissible), whoever it may be, whether he be a man of high rank or of any other dignity, who has taken up this kind of blameworthy intention, let him know that he must bring forward proofs of the accusation. If anyone, therefore, brings charges against such persons without proving them, let him understand by the authority of this sanction that he will suffer the loss of his good name, so that by the damage to his honor, the loss of his reputation, he may learn that it is not permitted to him to plot against another's modesty with impunity, at least from now on. For how one comes to a council, or how those despoiled of their own goods...

A bishop despoiled of his goods, or cast out from his own sees, or who accusers are to be received, or who are not, or how those cast out and despoiled are to have everything restored to them by law, which has been taken from them: and because before this has been done, no crime can be objected to them, and how after full restoration, annual or six-monthly delays are to be granted to them, and how they are to be permitted to arrange all their affairs freely and peacefully without any serious hindrance, and to avail themselves of the counsels of their friends and of ecclesiastical fathers, we think has been sufficiently established by the apostles, their successors, and our predecessors. Concerning these matters, however, I do not think it should be further debated now, unless such things arise as are not yet manifest. But if you do not have their statutes, send most faithful scribes, who may take these down before faithful witnesses, and report them back to you with a subscription.

IV. Moreover, to satisfy your inquiries concerning the word of the incarnation and of truth, whoever they are who are so blinded and alienated from the light of truth that they deny the truth of the Word of God from the time of the incarnation, let them show in what respect they usurp the Christian name for themselves, and by what reasoning they agree with the Gospel of truth, if by the birth of the blessed Virgin either flesh arose without divinity, or divinity arose without flesh. For just as it cannot be denied, the evangelist saying, that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1), so it cannot be denied, the blessed apostle Paul preaching, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. 5). But what reconciliation could there be by which God might be propitiated to 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 (Phil. 2) were also a participant in the form of a servant and of our own, so that the bond of death, contracted by the transgression of one, might be loosed by the death of one (who alone owed nothing to death)? For the outpouring of the just blood of Christ was so rich in price that if the whole multitude of captives believed in their redeemer, no chains of the devil would hold them; because, as the Apostle says: (Rom. 5) Where sin abounded, grace abounded even more.

And since, born under the prejudice of sin, they have received the power to be reborn to righteousness, the gift of freedom has become stronger than the debt of servitude. What hope, therefore, do those leave for themselves in the protection of this sacrament who deny the truth of the human body in our Savior? Let them say by what sacrifice they are reconciled; let them say by what blood I am redeemed. Who is it, as the Apostle says, who gave himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God as a sweet fragrance (Ephesians 5:2)? 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 righteous was precious (Psalm 115:6), yet the slaying of no innocent was the redemption of the world. The righteous 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 of individuals were singular, 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 immaculate Lamb, stood forth, in whom all are crucified, all are dead, all are buried, all are also raised. Concerning which he himself said: "When I have been lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself" (John 12:32).

For faith, which justifies the impious and creates the just, when drawn back into participation in humanity, acquires salvation in that one in whom alone man finds himself innocent, having the freedom through the grace of God to glory in His power, who, having engaged the enemy of the human race in the humility of our flesh, bestowed His victory upon those in whose body He triumphed. Therefore, although in our one Lord Jesus Christ, true Son of God and of man, there is a single person of Word and flesh, which inseparably and indivisibly holds common actions, yet the qualities of those works themselves must be understood, and by the contemplation of sincere faith it must be discerned to what the humility of flesh is raised and to what the height of divinity is inclined: what it is that flesh does not do without the Word, and what it is that the Word does not effect without flesh. For without the power of the Word, the Virgin would neither conceive nor give birth, and without the truth of flesh, infancy wrapped in swaddling clothes would not lie there; without the power of the Word, the Magi would not adore the boy declared by the guiding Star, and without the truth of flesh, the boy would not be ordered to be taken into Egypt and withdrawn from Herod's persecution; 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, listen to him" (Matthew 3 and 17), and without the truth of flesh, John would not testify: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold the one who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1).

Without the power of the Word, there would be no restoration of the weak and no revivification of the dead, and without the truth of the flesh, neither would food be necessary for the hungry nor sleep for the weary (Matt. 4; John 11; Mark 4; John 14). Finally, without the power of the Word, the Lord would not profess Himself equal to the Father, and without the truth of the flesh, He would not say that the Father is greater than Himself, since the Catholic faith accepts both and defends both, which, according to the confession of the blessed apostle Peter, believes one Christ, Son of God, both man and Word (Matt. 16). Therefore, although from that beginning, when in the womb of the Virgin the Word was made flesh (John 1), there never existed any division between the two forms, and throughout all bodily growth the actions of the whole time belonged to one person, yet we do not confuse by any mixture those things which were, so to speak, inseparably done, but we perceive what belongs to each form from the quality of the works.

Let the hypocrites, then, who in their blind minds refuse to receive the light of truth, declare in what form of the cross the Lord of majesty, Christ, was nailed, what lay in the tomb, and what flesh, after the stone of the monument was rolled away, rose on the third day, and in what form after his resurrection he rebuked certain unbelieving disciples and refuted the hesitation of those who wavered, when he said: “Touch and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me to have” (John 19; Matt. 28); and to the apostle Thomas: “Put your hand into my side, and see my hands and feet, and do not be unbelieving, but faithful” (Luke 24; John 20); by which manifestation of his body, indeed, he was already destroying the lies of heretics, so that the whole Church of Christ, to be renewed by the teachings, would not doubt that what the apostles had received to preach was to be believed. V. But if in such a great light of truth heretical obstinacy does not abandon its darkness, let them show from what source they promise themselves the hope of eternal life, to which, except through the mediator of God and men (1 Tim. 4), the man Jesus Christ, it cannot be attained.

For just as the blessed apostle Peter says: "There is no other name given to men under heaven in which we must be saved" (Acts 4); nor is there any redemption of human captivity except in the blood of him who gave himself as a redemption for all, and who, as the Apostle preaches (1 Tim. 2; Phil. 2), when he was in the form of God, did not consider it a usurpation to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in likeness, and found in habit as a man, humbled himself, becoming obedient to the Father unto death, even death on the cross: on account of which God also exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of the heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Therefore, since there is one Lord Jesus Christ, and true divinity and true humanity in him are one and the same person, nevertheless we understand the exaltation, by which (as the leader of the Gentiles said): "God exalted him, and gave him a name which is above every name" (Phil. 2), to pertain to that form which was to be marked by such an increase of glorification. For in the form of God the Son was equal to the Father (John 1), and.

between the begetter and the only-begotten there was no distinction in essence, no diversity in majesty: nor through the mystery of the Incarnation had anything departed from the Word which would be restored to him by the Father's gift. But the form of a servant, through which the impassible divinity fulfilled the sacrament of great piety, is human humility, which, conquered into the glory of divine power, is so united, from the very conception of the Virgin, by the joining together of divinity and humanity, that neither were divine things done without the man, nor human things without God. On account of which, just as the Lord of majesty is said to have been crucified, so he who is equal to God from eternity is said to have been exalted: because, with the unity of person remaining inseparably, one and the same is 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. Therefore, whatever Christ received in time, he received according to the man, to whom things which he did not have were conferred. For according to the power of divinity, the Son indifferently has everything which the Father has (John 5): and what he received from the Father in the form of a servant, the same he himself also gave in the form of God. For according to the form of God, he and the Father are one (John 10); but according to the form of a servant, he did not come to do his own will, but the will of him who sent him (John 4, 5, 6).

According to the form of God, just as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself (John 5); according to the form of a servant, his soul is sad unto death (Matthew 26). And he is the same one, as the Apostle preaches, both rich and poor (2 Corinthians 8). Rich, because the evangelist says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made (John 1). Poor, however, because for us the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (ibid.). But what is his emptying, what is his poverty, if not the assumption of a servant's form, through which, with the majesty of the Word veiled, the dispensation of human redemption was fulfilled? For since the original bonds of our captivity could not be loosened unless there existed a man of our kind and our nature, whom the prejudgments of sin did not hold, and who with his immaculate blood would wash away the lethal bond, just as it had been divinely preordained from the beginning, so it was perfected in the fullness of time, that the promise signified in many ways would come to its long-awaited effect; nor could it be ambiguous, what the continuity of testimonies had always announced.

Those who, under the guise of honoring the divinity, deny the truth of the human flesh in Christ show themselves to be mired in the great sacrilege of heretical impiety; and they think it religious to believe that what saves is not true in our Savior, since according to the promise that runs before all ages, the world has been reconciled to God in Christ (1 Cor. 5), so that unless the Word deigned to become flesh, no flesh could be saved. For the whole sacrament of the Christian faith is discolored by a great darkness (as the heretics would have it) if the light of truth is thought to have lain hidden under the falsehood of a phantom. Therefore, let no Christian think he should blush for the truth of our body in Christ, because all the apostles, the disciples of the apostles, and the distinguished teachers of the churches who have merited to attain the crown of martyrdom or the glory of confession have shone in the light of this faith, thundering with unanimous sentiments everywhere that in the Lord Jesus Christ one person of divinity and flesh is to be confessed. By what likeness of reason, by what portion of the divine volumes does heretical impiety think itself aided, which denies the truth of Christ's body, when neither the law testifies to this, nor the prophet foretells it, nor the Gospels teach it, nor did Christ himself cease to show it?

Let them search through the entire series of the Scriptures, not to find shadows to flee into, but not to obscure the true light; and through all the ages they will find the truth shining so brightly that this great and wonderful mystery, which is fulfilled at the end, is seen to have been believed from the beginning. Concerning this, since no part of the sacred writings is silent, it suffices to have set forth certain consonant signs of the 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 the Son of Man and a man, Christians ought not to blush, but to glory most steadfastly: because, as the blessed Apostle says (1 Tim. 3): "Great is the mystery of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, appeared to the angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed in the world, assumed into glory." VI. Concerning the ordinations of bishops, and of presbyters, deacons, and the subsequent clerics, we know that the holy apostles and their successors, and especially Anacletus (Epistles i. Of no authority among the learned), and besides others, have sufficiently decreed: and therefore it is not necessary now to repeat them, except what they did not decree.

We, however, decree and command you and all to observe this, that those who are worthy of ordination should ascend to ecclesiastical orders in the Church in this manner: if someone deserves to be a bishop, let him first be a doorkeeper, then a reader, afterwards an exorcist, then let him be consecrated an acolyte, then indeed a subdeacon, then a deacon, and afterwards a presbyter, and thereafter, if he deserves it, let him be ordained a bishop. And let the regions, as we have done in this city, be divided among deacons in each city that is populous. And whatever difficult questions arise in individual provinces (Innocentius, ep. II), let them always be referred to the apostolic see (S. Leo, ep. LXXXIV, c. 7; Vigilius, ep. II). Farewell, brother, and pray for us. Given on the kalends of March, in the consulship of Diocletian for the sixth time and Constantius for the second time, most illustrious men.