"When was it you ever heard, most gracious Emperor, that in a question of faith laymen should be judges of a bishop? What! have courtly manners so bent our backs, that we have forgotten the rights of the priesthood, that I should of myself put into another's hands what God has bestowed upon me? Once grant that a layman may set a bishop right, and see what will follow. The layman in consequence discusses, while the bishop listens; and the bishop is the pupil of the layman. Yet, whether we turn to Scripture or to history, who will venture to deny that in a question of faith, in a question, I say, of faith, it has ever been the bishop's business to judge the Christian Emperor, not the Emperor's to judge the bishop?
"When, through God's blessing, you live to be old, then you will know what to think of the fidelity of that bishop who places the rights of the priesthood at the mercy of laymen. Your father, who arrived, through God's blessing, at maturer years, was in the habit of saying, 'I have no right to judge between bishops;' but now your Majesty says, 'I ought to judge.' He, even though baptized into Christ's body, thought himself unequal to the burden of such a judgment; your Majesty, who still have to earn a title to the sacrament, claims to judge in a matter of faith, though you are a stranger to the sacrament to which that faith belongs.
"But Ambrose is not of such value, that he must degrade the priesthood for his own well-being. One man's life is not so precious as the dignity of all those bishops who have advised me thus to write; and who suggested that Auxentius might be choosing some heathen perhaps or Jew, whose permission to decide about Christ would be a permission to triumph over Him. What would pleasure them but blasphemies against Him? What would satisfy them but the impious denial of His divinity—agreeing, as they do, full well with the Arian, who pronounces Christ to be a creature with the ready concurrence of Jews and heathens?
"I would have come to your Majesty's Court, to offer these remarks in your presence; but neither my bishops nor my people would let me; for they said that, when matters of faith were discussed in the Church, this should be in the presence of the people.
"I could have wished your Majesty had not told me to betake myself to exile somewhere. I was abroad every day; no one guarded me. I was at the mercy of all the world; you should have secured my departure to a place of your own choosing. Now the priests say to me, 'There is little difference between voluntarily leaving and betraying the altar of Christ; for when you leave, you betray it.'
"May it please your Majesty graciously to accept this my declining to appear in the Imperial Court. I am not practised in attending it, except in your behalf; nor have I the skill to strive for victory within the palace, as neither knowing, nor caring to know, its secrets."—Ep. 21.
The reader will observe an allusion in the last sentence of this defence to a service Ambrose had rendered the Emperor and his mother, upon the murder of Gratian; when, at the request of Justina, he undertook the difficult embassy to the usurper Maximus, and was the means of preserving the peace of Italy. This Maximus now interfered to defend him against the parties whom he had on a former occasion defended against Maximus; but other and more remarkable occurrences interposed in his behalf, which shall be mentioned in the next section.