Letter 2012: Your Eminence fulfills the prophetic oracles with your own conduct and wages war against the authority of ancient...

Your Eminence renders obedience to prophetic oracles and, by novel transgressions, does battle on behalf of fidelity to the old ordinances. You took care that an admonition should not, made the more sluggish by its strength being withdrawn, remain neglected. For it is written, by those who worship God, through whose ears the teaching of the wise ought to pass, whom the savor of seasoned speech may draw on, alleging that those counsels perish which are bestowed upon men set in another deliberation. I, however, lowly in station, a beggar in tongue, formerly granted words only under the goads of our bond, and, to attest my diligence, set forth in my earlier letters a reply made with the frankness of kinship. Now my mind is ill at ease, because, devoid of the fruit of injuries, you have perhaps, with a courtesy feigned toward yourself, taken up a vaunting, not knowing that weapons seek again their author, weapons which an untaught hand has loosed against another; who would reckon as an affront a thing that wounds only the conscience of him who aims it? It is the nature of the wicked to feel this about all men, that they deserve it, and amid their evils never to see innocence as a solace. It is the torment of a stained way of life not to believe that there are partners to it. These things I have written with that mind by which, mindful of my purpose, I am compelled to owe hatred to crimes. My tooth has touched no one save him who confesses about himself: while we assail vices, wrath makes the guilty man manifest. For I should be doing injury, if in place of the stylus I should feel a plowshare, or should reckon as mine writings which, on rereading, I do not recognize. For the Lord knows that, had the letter not been marked with our name, I would not know to whom it had been directed. Keep your witticisms for yourself, or reserve them for those with whom, without the service of the lips, through the fellowship of a clandestine intimacy, the clamor is one of deeds. Behold, discharging the honor of a greeting, I beg that, in dispatching letters, you attend to the places, the times, the persons, lest what I do not reckon as written to me should perhaps wound another, since I judge that you have aimed the form of this letter at very many, and, by the mere changing of names, transmit it to each one without consideration of their deserts.

XII. ENNODIVS ASTVRIO. Propheticis oraculis sublimitas tua praestat obsequium et ad fidem ueterum sanctionum militat nouellis excessibus. prouidisti ne segnior admonitio remaneret ualitudine subtracta neglectui. scriptum enim est per dei cultores, quorum aures prudentum debeat doctrina transire, quos salsi sermonis sapore pertrahere, allegans perire monita, quae in alia constitutis deliberatione praestantur. ego tamen loco humilis, lingua mendicus solis antea necessitudinis stimulis uerba concessi et ad contestationem diligentiae prioribus litteris exhibuisub sanguinis libertate responsum. nunc male est animo, quod iniuriarum a 1 hostrum BLPTV nobilitas L hac actenus B 2 locutuset (et fort. eras.) L 3 perdere B, pendere LPTVb perlatorS B \' add. corr . 6 hominabos L1 7 miscere scripei, mieceri BLPTVb dico illo dico T 8 nec credo fort . 9 inscicia T in ras . m. 2 meo B 10 mihi BL V reuerentie ur ̃ ę (ę ur ̃ ę in ras.) V 11 neque Bb, om. LPTV negligentia B1T; mea add. T Md m.2 exp . nec Pb XII. 14 astirio T 15 profoticis BLPV 17 ne] me PlTl senior B nalitndine sabtracta T tn ras. m. 2 18 neolectui Bl ut uid. est enim T 19 prudentium Tb debaeat L h falsi PTlb 20 pertraere B alligans B moneta B 2& exibui B 4* fructu carens sumpsisti forsitan mentita apud te urbanitate iactantiam, nesciens quod auctorem repetunt tela, quae indocilis aduersus alterum manus emiserit, quis putet contumeliam, quae solam conscientiam destinantis adfligit? inproborum natura est, hoc sentire de omnibus quod merentur et in malis solacium nusquam uidere innocentiam. tormenta sunt maculatae conuersationis non sibi credere esse participes. haec illa mente descripsi, qua memor propositi odium conpellor debere criminibus. nullum dens meus nisi de se tetigit confitentem: dum uitia incessimus, reum ira manifestat. nam iniurius sim, si stili loco uomerem sentiam aut mihi scripta conputem quae relegens non agnosco. scit enim dominus quia, si non nostro nomine notata fuisset epistula, ad quem fuisset directa nescirem. tibi habe facetias tuas aut illis reserua, cum quibus uobis sine oris officio per clandestinae familiaritatis communionem clamor est actuum. ecce salutationis honorificentiam soluens deprecor, ut in dirigendis epistulis loca tempora personas adtendas, ne quod ego ad me scriptum non conputo alterum forsitan laedat, quia aestimo te huius epistulae formulam ad plurimos destinasse et sola nominum conmutatione eam per singulos sine meritorum consideratione transmittere.