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; n