Apostles Peter and Paul, that God
who has given you such a desire that you should send a mission in the cause
of the Church and consult his holiness, may bring your wish to full
completion'.

"Should the emperor wish, before he receives your papers, to learn the
scope of your mission, use these words: 'Be pleased to receive our papers'.
If he answer, 'What do they contain?' reply, 'They contain greeting to your
piety, and thanks to God for learning your anxiety for the Church's unity.
Read and you will see this.' And enter absolutely into nothing before the
letters have been received and read. When they have been received and read,
add: 'He has also written to your servant Vitalian, who wrote that he had
received permission from your piety to send a deputation of his own to the
holy Pope, your Father. But as it was just to direct these first to your
majesty, he has done so; that by your command and order, if God please, we
may bear to him the letters which we have brought.'

"If the emperor ask for our letters to Vitalian, answer thus: 'The holy
Pope, your Father, has not so enjoined on us; and without his command we
can do nothing. But that you may know the straightforwardness of the
letters, that they have nothing but entreaties to your piety, to give your
mind to the unity of the Church, assign to us some one in whose presence
these letters may be read to Vitalian.' But if the emperor require to read
them himself, you will answer that you have already intimated not such to
be the command of the holy Pope. If he say, 'They may have also other
charges,' reply, 'Our conscience forbids. That is not our custom. We come
in God's cause. Should we sin against Him? The holy Pope's mission is
straightforward; his request and his prayers known to all: that the
constitutions of the fathers may not be broken; that heretics be removed
from the churches. Beyond that our mission contains nothing.'

"If he say, 'For this purpose I have invited the Pope to a council, that if
there be any doubt, it may be removed,' answer, 'We thank God, and your
piety, that you are so minded, that all may receive what was ordered by the
fathers. For then may there be a true and holy unity among the churches of
Christ, if, by God's help, you choose to preserve what your predecessors
Marcian and Leo maintained.' If he say, 'What mean you by that?' answer,
'That the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope St. Leo, written
against the heretics Nes