By St. Photios the Great
19. This is the pure and genuine confession of our Christian faith. This is the divinely-wise mystagogy into our pure and undefiled religion and its sacred mysteries. According to it we think, we believe, we live until the sunset of our lives as we press on to the rising of the invisible sun. There we shall enjoy its warmth and glory without any evening, and our pleasure will be more complete and more conscious there than here. This confession you should receive and love with spotless conduct, firm knowledge, and undoubting faith; and regarding our heritage of piety do not deviate from it not even for a moment either to the right or to the left. This is the message of the Apostles; this is the teaching of the Ecumenical Synods.
It is not only a matter of your thoughts and your beliefs. You must also bring your subjects to the same conception of the truth; you must introduce them to the same faith and think nothing more important than your zealous efforts in this matter. A ruler must be concerned with more than his own salvation; he should believe that the people entrusted to him are entitled to the same concern. He should summon and bring them to the same perfect knowledge of God that is his. Do not cheat us of the hopes we have had for you, hopes which were fostered by your inclination to the good and your facility. Do not make fruitless the labors and struggles which I have gladly taken upon myself for the sake of your salvation. Do not show that you received the words of the divine message with zeal at first and then became heedless. Let your end be like your beginning, your life in harmony with your faith. Let your rule be seen and termed a common benefit to your people and your country, as you keep inviolate the joy and happiness that is ours for you.
20. As for the rest, beloved by Christ and our spiritual son or however else we can call you in splendid, noble, and lovecharged names, observe the battles which the devil had contrived against the holy and only true Christian religion: the diverse heresies, the factions and struggles, the wars he has arranged. Observe this, too: the Church has emerged victorious in every one of these battles and has set up glorious trophies after every conflict. You should not marvel when you reflect upon his efforts and schemes. First of all, the Church would never have become as glorious, as powerful, and as renowned for victory, if she had not been engaged in a struggle with a foe. Then, too, it is easy to understand that where the devil fights with greater ardor he shoots the darts of his malice with wilder abandon and elaborates his plots.
Among the other nations he encounters no serious conflict, so he does not arm himself against them. But the Christian people of God, the holy nation, the royal priesthood, since they are daily strengthened in the faith, are a stalwart against his evil deeds and machinations. So he employs manifold schemes and tries in every way to trip up some of them; he strives to harass the Church of Christ, even if his malice and efforts end in his own shame. Then, too, the beliefs of other peoples are imprecise and confused; so among them a perverse belief does not appear. In the faith of Christians, which is most holy and undefiled as well as most certain, beliefs are sound, straight, lofty, and unalloyed. When someone attempts to introduce something that is even a little distorted or novel, immediately the distorted and spurious element is seen and utterly refuted as soon as it is compared with the true and right teaching. Not even for a short time does the nobility of these holy beliefs suffer anything spurious to share their appellation. With bodies that excel in beauty, a blemish, even a little one, is quickly seen and detected when it is compared with the beauty of the rest of the body, while in ugly bodies the elements of deformity are not easily uncovered; they escape notice since they are in the company of similar unloveliness. The same is true of the real beauty of Christians, their glorious religion and faith. If one deviates even the slightest degree from it, he produces an enormous deformity and is immediately refuted.
The beliefs of other nations are replete with disorder and deformity. They do not allow their adherents to understand their ugliness. This same truth can be seen in every art and science. In those that are the most precise even the slightest mistake is obvious, while in those that are not, many things are overlooked and not considered mistakes. If you like, this also holds for those in power, especially those who govern large numbers of men: even a small blunder of theirs is inflated and talked about by everyone. Among those who are ruled, particularly the more humble, many similar mistakes are completely unnoticed; they are hidden by the smallness and cheapness of the error.
21. In greatness and power, then in beauty and certainty, in purity and every other perfection, the Christian faith and religion excel the beliefs of the nations. So the devil ever yearns to war against her and so the mistakes of senseless and evil-intentioned men are swiftly apparent. They have no place to hide, even for an instant, nor do they find any hole to slip in through. But still the catholic and apostolic Church of God, as we were the first to call her, renders all of the devil's schemes idle and useless. She even turns them against their contriver, easily eliminates the blasphemy of the heretics, shames the shameless, receives an all-conquering and invincible power, and prides herself on her beauteous and salvific triumphs forever.
- Excerpt From The Patriarch and the Prince: The Letter of Patriarch Photios of Constantinople to Khan Boris of Bulgaria.
