lied: "Truly that was an old Church rule with our fathers, by whom the
one Catholic and apostolic communion was preserved free from every
pollution by those who desired it. But now, when you prefer strange
companionship before the return to a pure and blameless union with St.
Peter, how should we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? How should we
offer the old bond of the apostolic ordinance to men who belong to another
communion, and prefer to it, according to your own testimony, condemned
heretics." Euphemius, then, is inconsistent: he must either admit to his
own communion all who are in communion with heretics, or remove all. The
excuse of necessity and fear of the people will not stand, and is unworthy
of a bishop, who has to lead his people, not to be led by them; who has to
account to God for his flock, while his flock have not to account for him.
If Euphemius is afraid of men, the Pope is more afraid, but it is of the
judgment of God.

But while, immediately after the death of Acacius, his successors, Fravita
and Euphemius, were renouncing his pretensions, at the same time that they
would not surrender his person, it is well to see how the bishops of
eastern Illyricum, subjects of the emperor Anastasius, addressed the Pope
upon his accession.

"Holy apostolic Lord and most blessed Father of fathers, we have received
with becoming reverence the wholesome precepts of your apostolate, and
return the greatest thanks to Almighty God and your Blessedness that you
have deigned to visit us with pastoral admonition and evangelic teaching.
For it is our desire and prayer to obey your injunctions in all things,
and, as we have received from our fathers, to maintain without stain the
precepts of the Apostolic See, which your life and merits have inherited,
and to keep the orthodox religion, which you preach, with faithful and
blameless devotion, so far as our rude perception allows. For, even before
your injunction, we had avoided the communion of Peter, Acacius, and all
his followers, as pestilent contagion; and much more now, after the
admonition of the Holy See, must we abstain from that pollution. And if
there be any others, who have followed, or shall follow, the sect of
Eutyches or Peter and Acacius, or have anything to do with their
accomplices and associates, they are to be entirely avoided by us, who seek
a blameless obedience to the Apostolic See according to the divine commands
and the statutes of the fathers.