At the time when your Fraternity was advanced to Sacerdotal dignity, you remember what peace and concord of the churches you found. But, with what daring or with what swelling of
pride I
know not, you have attempted to seize upon a new name, whereby the hearts of all your brethren might have come to take offense. I wonder exceedingly at this, since I remember how you would fain have fled from the episcopal office rather than attain it. And yet, now that you have got it, you desire so to exercise it as if you had run to it with ambitious intent. For, having confessed yourself unworthy to be called a
bishop, you have at length been brought to such a pass as, despising your brethren, to
covet to be named the
only bishop....
Consider, I pray you, that in this rash presumption the peace of the whole
Church is disturbed, and that it is in contradiction to the
grace that is poured out on all in common; in which
grace doubtless you yourself will have power to grow so far as you determine with yourself to do so. And you will become by so much the greater as you restrain yourself from the usurpation of a
proud and foolish title: and y
ou will make advance in proportion as you are not bent on arrogation by derogation of your brethren. Wherefore, dearest brother, with all your heart
love humility, through which the concord of all the brethren and the unity of the
holy universal Church may be preserved. Certainly the
apostle Paul, when he heard some say,
I am of Paul, I of Apollos, but I of Christ 1 Corinthians 1:13, regarded with the utmost horror such dilaceration of the Lord's body, whereby they were joining themselves, as it were, to other heads, and exclaimed, saying,
Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul (ib.)? If then he shunned the subjecting of the members of Christ partially to certain heads, as if beside Christ, though this were to the
apostles themselves,
what will you say to Christ, who is the Head of the universal Church, in the scrutiny of the last judgment, having attempted to put all his members under yourself by the appellation of Universal? Who, I ask, is proposed for imitation in this wrongful title but he who, despising the legions of
angels constituted socially with himself, attempted to start up to an eminence of singularity, that he might seem to be under none and to be alone above all?....
For what are all your brethren, the
bishops of the universal Church, but stars of heaven, whose life and discourse shine together amid the
sins and
errors of
men, as if amid the shades of night?
And when you desire to put yourself above them by this
proud title,
and to tread down their name in comparison with yours, what else do you say but
I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven? Are not all the
bishops together clouds, who both rain in the words of preaching, and glitter in the light of good works? And when your Fraternity despises them, and you would fain press them down under yourself, what else say you but what is said by the ancient foe,
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds?....Certainly Peter, the first of the apostles, himself a member of the holy and universal Church, Paul, Andrew, John, — what were they but heads of particular communities? And yet all were members under one Head. And (to bind all together in a short girth of speech) the saints before the law, the saints under the law, the saints under grace, all these making up the Lord's Body, were constituted as members of the Church, and not one of them has wished himself to be called universal. Now let your Holiness acknowledge to what extent you swell within yourself in desiring to be called by that name by which no one presumed to be called who was truly holy.
Was it not the case, as your Fraternity knows, that the prelates of this Apostolic See which by the providence of God I serve, had the honour offered them of being called universal by the venerable Council of Chalcedon. But yet not one of them has ever wished to be called by such a title, or seized upon this ill-advised name, lest if, in virtue of the rank of the pontificate, he took to himself the glory of singularity, he might seem to have denied it to all his brethren.
