llenge no one; in
return I wish not to be challenged; but, being challenged, I will not be
dumb in the cause of Christ my Master. For your Blessedness will be able
by one short and easy word to call these controversies before you and
suppress them, and to impose silence and peace on both sides--a word
which I have ever longed to hear.

Therefore, Leo, my Father, beware of listening to those sirens who
make you out to be not simply a man, but partly a god, so that you can
command and require whatever you will. It will not happen so, nor will
you prevail. You are the servant of servants, and more than any other
man, in a most pitiable and perilous position. Let not those men deceive
you who pretend that you are lord of the world; who will not allow any
one to be a Christian without your authority; who babble of your having
power over heaven, hell, and purgatory. These men are your enemies and
are seeking your soul to destroy it, as Isaiah says, "My people, they
that call thee blessed are themselves deceiving thee." They are in error
who raise you above councils and the universal Church; they are in error
who attribute to you alone the right of interpreting Scripture. All
these men are seeking to set up their own impieties in the Church under
your name, and alas! Satan has gained much through them in the time of
your predecessors.

In brief, trust not in any who exalt you, but in those who humiliate
you. For this is the judgment of God: "He hath cast down the mighty from
their seat, and hath exalted the humble." See how unlike Christ was to
His successors, though all will have it that they are His vicars. I fear
that in truth very many of them have been in too serious a sense His
vicars, for a vicar represents a prince who is absent. Now if a pontiff
rules while Christ is absent and does not dwell in his heart, what
else is he but a vicar of Christ? And then what is that Church but a
multitude without Christ? What indeed is such a vicar but antichrist
and an idol? How much more rightly did the Apostles speak, who call
themselves servants of a present Christ, not the vicars of an absent
one!

Perhaps I am shamelessly bold in seeming to teach so great a head, by
whom all men ought to be taught, and from whom, as those plagues of
yours boast, the thrones of judges receive their sentence; but I imitate
St. Bernard in his book concerning Considerations addressed to Eugenius,
a book which ought to be known by heart by every p