Letter 94: Severus tells the bishops on Marde to receive the repentant without second baptism while condemning unlawful statements.

Severus answers John, Philoxenus, and Thomas as confessing bishops living on the hill of Marde. Their letter makes him think of Elijah on Horeb: a persecuted servant of God brought to a mountain, exhausted by zeal, and met there by divine consolation. Severus turns the comparison into praise. Their hill can become a new Horeb if it gathers orthodox monks, heals those swept away by pressure, and teaches repentance without surrendering the faith. The question they ask concerns people baptized by the heresy now dominant in public power. Some in overheated zeal think such people must be baptized again or anointed again. Severus rejects that. He had already written on the matter while at Antioch, and he repeats the rule: the church receives such people through canonical repentance and confession, not through a second baptism. The precedent of the fathers, especially the reception of those entangled in Nestorian doctrine, must govern the case. At the same time, Severus does not want easy reception. Those who return must condemn the unlawful teaching and be instructed in the fathers' doctrine. The bishops on Marde are shepherds, not gatekeepers of despair. They must heal the wounded, but they must not confuse healing with pretending nothing happened. Their authority is strongest when it is both lawful and fatherly: firm enough to name error, gentle enough to call the fallen home. The end of the letter turns practical. Severus has heard that some unstable people twist his words, just as the unlearned distort Paul's letters. He asks the three bishops to write a common letter to all who have been driven from the holy cloisters, condemning unlawful statements and warning them to hold to the fathers' teaching. The mountain of confession must become a center of clear instruction. In exile, words may travel farther than bodies, so the bishops' written witness matters. The bishops' task is delicate because both extremes are tempting. If they receive the fallen carelessly, they make the confession meaningless; if they demand a second baptism, they imply that the church's one baptism can be repeated and that repentance is not enough. Severus wants them to stand where the canons stand. Let returning believers renounce the false teaching plainly, let them be instructed, and let the bishops restore them as wounded members of Christ rather than as outsiders who must be born again a second time.

On reading your sanctities' letter I thought of Elijah the Tishbite prophet, who when persecuted by impiety betook himself to the hill of Horeb, and as a reward for his tribulation gained the privilege of seeing and conversing with God, so far as is possible 1 Mi. Hi. 9. 2 De. xxv. 13 (?); Pr. xx. 17 (?). V. I4. for men. When He that knows all things before they are as it is written ^ approached him like a father, and assumed the appearance of ignorance in order to comfort him, like a father who comforts his beloved son by playing with him, and in order to lighten the weariness and distress that he had incurred from the long journey, and said to him, " What doest thou here, Elijah? '', he stirred up the zeal that was blazing in him and answered very hotly (and that though speaking to Him who knows all things and whom nothing escapes), " I have been zealous for the Lord the All- Ruler, because the sons of Israel have forsaken thee. Thine altars they have thrown down: and thy!'• 390. prophets they have slain with the sword. And I only am left: and they seek my life to take it away."-^ And He put fresh heart in him by revealing Himself to him in mightier fashion and initiating him in more perfect knowledge. Therefore I am convinced and assured that your love of God also, who have imitated the same pattern of zeal, and walk in the footsteps of a like mode of life,^ who engage as combatants not only in the contest of confession after the manner of martyrs, but also in the patient labours of the ascetic life, will also be gratified with the conversation and sight of God, and that you will render the hill called in the tongue of the country Marde no meaner than the hill of Horeb, but even more glorious than that. For by drawing to you companies of holy monks, and 1 Sir. xxiii. 20. R- xix. 13, 14. ^ TroAtrcta. V. 14- of men who are living- the aunobitic life^ while cleav- ing to orthodoxy, and by recalling and healing like shepherds and fathers at the same time those who have transofressed or otherwise become remiss and been swept away to follow the violence of the time you have also appropriated to your hill the glory of another higher and holier hill that is situated in Jerusalem, I mean on the corner-stone of Zion, the watch-house that is higher than all the earth, which you have surpassed by making more peculiar to yourselves in a higher sense the grace and title of the episcopate also, which were given you already by the Spirit, but are confirmed by works every day, as the Apostle says. Indeed I see many running and hastening to the summit of your hill also, even as to that hill, and saying the words of the prophecy that have been carried out in actual deeds, " Come let us go up to the hill of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will show us His way and we will walk in it," " And I have confidence in saying that they will not be disappointed of their hope. For you teach those who stand to keep the orthodox faith, and to practise a devout and just life: while to those who have been led away to error you teach the way of repentance by orivino- them forgiveness canonical and legfal. Where- fore also, showing humility in this point too, you ask ^ The letter therefore seems to have been written after the expulsion of the monks {cf. n. i). The terminus ad quern is fixed by the date of v. 15: see and note. 2IS. ii. 3. 4. our meanness how those who have been baptized by this heresy that now prevails ought to be recgived. To this I made answer in writing" at an earher time also when I was living in the city of the Antiochenes/ because certain persons in unthinking fervour had supposed that these ought to be perfected by chrism, just as the custom is for Arians and Fighters against the Spirit to be recgived. I think that the religious presbyter and archimandrite John also, who sent me your revered letter, has with him the tgreatise that was written by me on this point. But I will now also in the same way tell your sanctities in a few words a thing of which you too are not unaware: that at the holy oecumenical synod that assembled at Ephesus -^^^ effected the deposition of Nestorius, who raised the heresy of this Diphysite man-worship to a higher position, when Charisius a presbyter who came from the province " of the Lydians, and registered his fathers' house at Philadelphia, with many others who had been swept into the error of that heresy, presented petitions to it and exposed the creed previously con- cocted by the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia, it both recgived him and admitted him to clemency, not making any canonical pronouncement in their case about chrism or about anything else of this kind: ^ but it lawfully decided that they were to renounce the heresy itself in writing and condemn it by anathema, and so be recgived and become members of Christ's flock. ^v. 6. - iirapxia. ^ Mansi iv. 1344; c/. V. 14- SELECT LKTTliRS OF THE HOLY SEVKRUS. 349 And all from that time to the present day have been recgived on these terms by the orthodox bishops who lived at different times; who did not do anything further with rec^ard to them, nor abrogate the covenant ^ confirmed by the fathers, or lay down any additional commandment beyond what were laid down, as Paul somewhere says in writing to the Galatians,^ Whence also a certain Theodotus, one of the bishops of Palestine,^ because he presumed to anoint certain persons, was repudiated and expelled, both by Timothy of holy memory, archbishop of the city of the - Alexandrines, and by all who shared his opinions and were zealous with zeal that is "according to know- ledge " ^ and is pleasing to God. To remove in any matter whatsoever the landmarks that our fathers set up is wholly unlawful,^' even if a man is decgived by considerations that seem to be rather on the right side. Upon this point these things are sufficient for your perfection in Christ. But I beg you also to extend your diligent watchfulness which becomes shepherds to the God-loving archimandrites and devout solitaries, those that are near you and those that are geographi- cally far from you, and not allow anyone to disturb those that are more simple, in the matter of the question about the incorruptibility of the body of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which was stirred up among us by Julian who wantonly became impious, and has departed from the life here, but ^ Btadi^Kr]. ^ Ga. i. 8, 9. ^Qf- P- 185. •iRo. X. 2. 5pr_ xxii. 28. 5. shall answer for his blasphemy and evil belief to the Judge of all, and shall then regret that he was not converted to a right state of mind by the warnings that he recgived, and this though he was admonished in a gentle and brotherly manner, as your sanctities also who saw what was written will bear witness/ It has come to my knowledge that certain men who do not perform any service as is written except things - that are vain '^ have torn away an occasional line or two from what I wrote, and have tried to lead astray those that are easily cheated. And no wonder, when even about the wise Paul's epistles Peter the divine, who was instigated by the same Spirit of concord and apostleship, wrote, "which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their destruction, as they do also tke other scriptures."^ Therefore you will do an act worthy of you if you write a common letter to all who have been driven from the holy cloisters, condemning the unlawful statements, and warning them to adhere to the teachings of the holy fathers which our meanness has cited.