Holy Spirit from you: you punish and tyrannise over us with the soldier’s arm of flesh. We, unarmed and undefended, having no earthly and carnal armies, invoke the sovereign ruler of all creation, Christ, whose seat is in heaven, who leads the hosts of the heavenly powers that He may send to you a demon, according to the Apostle’s words, to ‘deliver over such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,’ that the spirit may be saved. See, O emperor, into what a depth of shamelessness and inhumanity you have thrust yourself. You have cast your soul into abysses and precipices, because you would not humble yourself, nor bend your stubborn neck. For, when bishops, by good instruction and teaching, are able to present kings to God blameless, and exempt from errors and faults, they lay up a store of praise and glory before Him for the great Resurrection, when God will make manifest our hidden deeds in the presence of His angels. We, the humble, will then be ashamed, not to have reclaimed you through your disobedience. The pontiffs, before us, who each, in his own time, present their emperors to God, shame our poverty, in that we do not, in our days, present an emperor in honour and glory, but one disgraced and counterfeit. Once again we invite you: repent and be converted: enter into the truth: maintain what you found and received: give honour and glory to our holy and renowned fathers and teachers, who, following God’s guidance, opened the blindness of our hearts and eyes, until they recovered sight. Your letter said, ‘Why was nothing said about images in the six Councils?’ Most true, O emperor, neither was anything said about bread and water, eating or not eating, drinking or not drinking. From the very beginning these things were given for the life of man. So, too, were images handed down. Bishops carried them into councils. No traveller, loving Christ and God, went on a journey without pictures, as men of virtue, and in God’s favour. We pray you become bishop at once, and emperor, as you wrote. If, as emperor, you are ashamed to call yourself to account, write to all the countries which you have scandalised, by saying that Gregory, the Pope of Rome, has erred in the matter of images, and also Germanus, the patriarch of Constantinople. Then we take upon ourselves the guilt of your sin, as those who have received from the Lord authority and warrant to loose and to bind things on earth and things in heaven. And we will make you without charge as to this. You refuse. We, as those who shall give account to Christ our Master, have exhorted, have instructed you, as we were taught by the Lord. You recoiled: you refused to obey us, weak as we are: and Germanus, your bishop: and our fathers, the holy and glorious wonder-workers and teachers. You followed men perverse and rotten, erring from truth of doctrine. Take your portion with them. As we wrote to you before, we, by the grace of God, are following the road to the interior of