ollowing letter addressed to Faustus and
Symmachus, senators of Rome:[87]

"It would have been desirable that we should, in person, visit the city
which the whole world venerates, for the consideration of duties which
affect us both as men and as Christians. But as the state of things has
long made that impossible, we could wish at least to have had the security
that your great body should learn from a report of the assembled bishops of
Gaul the entreaties called forth by a common cause. But since the
separation of our country into different governments deprives us also of
that our desire, I must first entreat that your most illustrious Order may
not take offence at what I write as coming from one person. For, urged not
only by letters, but charges from all my Gallic brethren, I have undertaken
to be the organ of communicating to you what we all ask of you. Whilst we
were all in a state of great anxiety and fear in the cause of the Roman
Church, feeling that our own state was imperilled when our head was
attacked, inasmuch as a single incrimination would have struck us all down
without the odium which attaches to the oppression of a multitude, if it
had overturned the condition of our chief, a copy of the episcopal decree
was brought to us in our anxiety from Italy, which the bishops of Italy,
assembled at Rome, had issued in the case of Pope Symmachus. This
constitution is made respectable by the assent of a large and reverend
council: yet our mind is, that the holy Pope Symmachus, if accused to the
world, had a claim rather to the support than to the judgment of his
brethren the bishops. For as our Ruler in heaven bids us be subject to
earthly powers, foretelling that we shall stand before kings and princes in
every accusation, so is it difficult to understand with what reason, or by
what law, the superior is to be judged by his inferiors. The Apostle's
command is well known, that an accusation against an elder should not be
received. How, then, is it lawful to incriminate the Principate of the
whole Church? The venerable council itself providing against this in its
laudable constitution, has reserved to the divine judgment a cause which, I
may be permitted to say, it had somewhat rashly taken up; mentioning,
however, that the charges objected to the Pope had in no respect been
proved, either to itself or to king Theodorick. In face of all which, I,
myself a Roman senator, and a Christian bishop, adjure you (so may the