Approaching the seventh issue our gathering had to deal with a shameless procedure as well as ignoble and distasteful presumption. We have learnt that some people obtained ecclesiastical dignities out of necessity or fear of danger, and because they testify that those offices were imposed on them against their will, they now reject them and try to go back to the previous way of life and marriages, their wretchedness in unbinding the heavenly laws being equal to their longing for the blandishments of secular life. Therefore, we deem it right that the summit of the episcopal eminence regarded the things prohibited to some priests as most important among all the holy things, that is, consecration of the temples of God, benediction of chrism, and institution of the holy orders, that are excellently conferred and, having been conferred, persist divinely because ordaining is uniquely exercised by those for whom it was reserved by the highest summit. Why then is a man who has received the holy orders able to reject them by himself, though he knows that these can be conferred only by bishops? What they have bound cannot be unbound, and what they unbound cannot be bound by another. For the Truth said to Peter: "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." [Matt 16:19]. Let it be then known that whatever exists by the divine order and authority of the apostolic tradition can never, by any means be profaned. Truly as the holy chrism or the honour of an altar cannot be erased, similarly the ornament of the holy honour, which is equal to those two, remains unaltered regardless of the circumstances of its conferment. In order to extirpate radically inutile reasoning of this cunning machination, we give a reasonable argument in response - the priceless gift of the holy baptism is always given not only to the unwilling, but, what is even more, to the unknowing. But no one allows to violate it. Even if they still oppose and are not able to be reasonable enough to accept our argument, they will nevertheless be silent because if the Fathers leave without punishment the fact that children receive [baptism] unknowingly or involuntarily, how much more it is unjust to violate what is known to happen to avoid the dangers of death and punishments out of the secret dispensation of God? Shameless promoters of these desires shall recede, and though they involuntarily received what they did not deserve to have, they should willingly keep a celestial reward that they unwillingly obtained because of some worldly necessity, so that they would strive for love to the goods with which they seem to willingly and insolently fight. Therefore, if someone after the edition of this eternal decision does not sincerely continue to perform the holy duties and rejects the grace that he received, and tries to go back to his marriage or the secular way of life, or actually goes back to them, he shall be immediately deprived of the dignity of the ecclesiastical order, and he shall be considered an apostate from the Church and shall be excluded from the society of the faithful. He shall live in penance to the end of his life imprisoned in a monastery.

 

(trans. M. Szada)