4. So that your dedication might be pleasing to the Lord in all things, we encourage you to take up as well the following effort. Expose to your presbyters any Manichaeans, wherever they might be hiding. It would be a great act of loyalty to betray the hiding places of the ungodly and to vanquish in them the devil whom they serve. Against such as these, dearly beloved, it befits the whole world and the entire Church everywhere to take up the armor of faith. But your dedication in this work ought to stand out, since in your ancestors you have learned the Gospel about the Cross of Christ directly from the mouths of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. Let them not be allowed to hide who believe that the law given through Moses should not be accepted, the law which shows God to be the Creator of the universe. They gainsay the prophets and the Holy Spirit. They have dared to suppress with a damnable impiety the Psalms of David which are chanted with all reverence throughout the universal Church. They deny the Birth of Christ according to the flesh. They say that his Passion and Resurrection were merely appearances and not reality. They strip from the Baptism of regeneration any power of grace whatsoever. With them, nothing remains holy, nothing intact, nothing true. We must beware of them lest they do anyone harm. We must expose them, lest they gain a foothold in any part of our city. This cause that I declare, this request that I make, dearly beloved, will be to your advantage before the tribunal of the Lord. It is fitting that the palm of this work should bejoined to the "sacrifice of alms" Helping you through everything is the grace ofour LordJesus Christ, who lives and reigns with God the Father and with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

 

(trans. Freeland, Conway 1996: 41-42)