To Patrophilus, bishop of Ægæ.

There has been some delay in my receiving your answer to my former letter; but it has reached me through the well-beloved Strategius, and I have given thanks to the Lord for your continuance in your love to me.  What you have now been kind enough to write on the same subject proves your good intentions, for you think as you ought, and you counsel me to my gain.  But I see that my words will be extending too far, if I am to reply to everything written to me by your excellency.  I therefore say no more than this, that, if the blessing of peace goes no further than the mere name of peace, it is ridiculous to go on picking out here one and there another, and allow them alone a share in the boon, while others beyond number are excluded from it.  But if agreement with mischievous men, under the appearance of peace, really does the harm an enemy might do to all who consent to it, then only consider who those men are who have been admitted to their companionship, who have conceived an unrighteous hatred against me; who but men of the faction not in communion with me.  There is no need now for me to mention them by name.  They have been invited by them to Sebasteia; they have assumed the charge of the Church; they have performed service at the altar:  they have given of their own bread to all the people, being proclaimed bishops by the clergy there, and escorted through all the district as saints and in communion.  If one must adopt the faction of these men, it is absurd to begin at the extremities, and not rather to hold intercourse with those that are their heads.³⁰⁹⁴

3094 i.e. with Euzoius, Eudoxius, and the more pronounced Arians.

3095 τῶν ἑτεροδιδασκαλούντων.  cf. 1 Tim. i. 3.  The Ben. note compares Greg., Orat. xii. 203.

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