brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye think and speak the same thing, and that there be no division among you, and that ye be joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.’
“We[1] have written to you as much as we could of these six excesses; we will hereafter write to thy charity of other things also. For if it be true as we have heard, thou thyself wilt acknowledge with me that the canons of the holy apostles are transgressed by you, as well as the institutes of the seven great councils, at which all your first patriarchs were present, and united in pronouncing your doctrine to be vain. And that you are manifestly wrong, I will now plainly prove. In the first place, with reference to fasting on the Sabbath, you see what the holy apostles, whose doctrine ye hold, taught respecting it, as well as the most blessed Pope Clement, the first after the Apostle St. Peter, who thus writes concerning the Sabbath, from the statutes of the apostles, as it is given in the sixty-fourth canon:—If an ecclesiastic be found to fast on the Lord’s day or the Sabbath, except the great Sabbath, let him be degraded; but if a layman do so, let him be excommunicated and separated from the Church. Secondly, with reference to general fasting, which ye corrupt. It is a heresy of the Jacobites[2] and Armenians, who use sheep’s milk even on the great holy fast, for what true Christian dares so to do or to think? Read the canons of the sixth
- ↑ The indiscriminate use of “we” and “I” in this letter, is literally translated from the original.
- ↑ A religious sect in the east, whose leader was Jacob Zanzale, Bishop of Edessa in Mesopotamia in 541. They still exist in different parts of Asia, particularly in Syria, Ethiopia, and Armenia. Their chief resides at Kara-Amid, capital of Diarbehir. They only recognize one nature in Jesus Christ, namely, the divine nature, a dogma originated by Eutyches (respecting whom, see note at page 64), and of which, after being nearly extinguished by the decision of the Council of Chalcedon and by Imperial edicts, the Jacobites were but the revivers.
