xious to meet your maledictions with blessing, your insults with honour,
your hatred with charity. But I would beg you to reflect whether He who
says, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' will not exact the more from you
for my forbearance.... I wish, then, that the insults, which you think
proper to bestow on my person, while they are glorious to me, may not press
upon you. To my Lord it was said by some: 'Thou hast a devil; a man that is
a glutton, born of fornication'. Am I to grieve over such things? Divine
and human laws present the condition to him who utters them: 'In the mouth
of two or three witnesses every word shall stand'. O emperor, what will you
do in the divine judgment? Because you are emperor, do you think there is
no judgment of God? I pass over that it becomes not an emperor to be an
accuser. Again, both by divine and human laws, no one can be at once
accuser and judge. Will you plead before another judge? Will you stand by
him as accuser? You say I am a Manichean. Am I an Eutychean, or do I defend
Eutycheans, whose madness is the chief support[77] to the Manichean error?
Rome is my witness, and our records bear testimony, whether I have in any
way deviated from the Catholic faith, which, coming out of paganism, I
received in the See of the Apostle St. Peter.... Is it because I will offer
no acceptance to Eutycheans? Such reproaches do not wound me, but they are
a plain proof that you wished to prevent my advancement, which St. Peter by
his intervention has imposed. Or, because you are emperor, do you struggle
against the power of Peter? And you, who accept the Alexandrian Peter, do
you strive to tread under foot St. Peter the Apostle in the person of his
successor, whoever he may be? Should I be well elected if I favoured the
Eutycheans? if I held communion with the party of Acacius? Your motive in
putting forward such things is obvious. Now, let us compare the rank of the
emperor with that of the pontiff. Between them the difference is as great
as the charge of human and divine things. You, emperor, receive baptism
from the pontiff, accept sacraments, request prayers, hope for blessing,
beg for penitence. In a word, you administer things human, he dispenses to
you things divine. If, then, I do not put his rank superior, it is at least
equal. And do not think that in mundane pomp you are before him, for 'the
weakness of God is stronger than men'. Consider, then, what becomes you.
But when you assume the ac