roughly knows with what
distinguished zeal I defended your conspicuous innocence against
Silvester, who tried to stain it. Indeed, the published opinion of so
many great men and the repute of your blameless life are too widely
famed and too much reverenced throughout the world to be assailable by
any man, of however great name, or by any arts. I am not so foolish as
to attack one whom everybody praises; nay, it has been and always will
be my desire not to attack even those whom public repute disgraces. I am
not delighted at the faults of any man, since I am very conscious myself
of the great beam in my own eye, nor can I be the first to cast a stone
at the adulteress.

I have indeed inveighed sharply against impious doctrines, and I have
not been slack to censure my adversaries on account, not of their bad
morals, but of their impiety. And for this I am so far from being sorry
that I have brought my mind to despise the judgments of men and to
persevere in this vehement zeal, according to the example of Christ,
who, in His zeal, calls His adversaries a generation of vipers, blind,
hypocrites, and children of the devil. Paul, too, charges the sorcerer
with being a child of the devil, full of all subtlety and all malice;
and defames certain persons as evil workers, dogs, and deceivers. In the
opinion of those delicate-eared persons, nothing could be more bitter or
intemperate than Paul's language. What can be more bitter than the words
of the prophets? The ears of our generation have been made so delicate
by the senseless multitude of flatterers that, as soon as we perceive
that anything of ours is not approved of, we cry out that we are being
bitterly assailed; and when we can repel the truth by no other pretence,
we escape by attributing bitterness, impatience, intemperance, to our
adversaries. What would be the use of salt if it were not pungent, or of
the edge of the sword if it did not slay? Accursed is the man who does
the work of the Lord deceitfully.

Wherefore, most excellent Leo, I beseech you to accept my vindication,
made in this letter, and to persuade yourself that I have never thought
any evil concerning your person; further, that I am one who desires that
eternal blessing may fall to your lot, and that I have no dispute with
any man concerning morals, but only concerning the word of truth. In all
other things I will yield to any one, but I neither can nor will forsake
and deny the word. He who thinks other