But since you went on to say in your empty words:
“If he were truly a monk, he would not have committed three ‘murders’ during the Forty Days of Lent,”
calling the pigs and the cow that I slaughtered in the houses of pagans ‘murders.’
For my part, I will answer your repulsive words as follows:
if what I did was not right, because I made an example of idol-worshippers, how much greater is the condemnation against you, since you transgressed during the Forty Days of Lent,
and during the great and holy Pascha, which everyone observes—even the God-loving Emperors.
Yet during it you make your butchers work for you, while you live in luxury and go astray without fear, leading others astray with you.
For you sent to me again, saying:
“Come and search my houses, and see whether you find idols in them.”
When I searched it another time—
your house—I found no idols in it.
Or do you have no others besides those I took?
Or if I take the idols in your house, could I also hide the sun in the sky, the moon, and the stars that you worship?
Or am I going to build walls in the west so that you will not pray toward the west?
Or am I going to keep watch over the river and your canals so that you will not pour libations for Kronos into the floodwaters?
Enough, then, of your speaking these lying and deceitful words,
you man who have fallen into great evils.
For just as you are godless, so too is the way you oppress the poor through your acts of violence.
Or is this not another kind of persecution: that you pursue people, especially the presbyters of the Church,
until you frighten them out of their homes—even at this very time, in the midst of these great troubles upon the land—as you enter their places,
with no son, no father, no one at all there, because they have fled?
You take their animals, their cart, and their hay; you bring them to your vineyards and force them to irrigate them beyond their strength.
And what of the great Pascha? You do not even give them time to celebrate it.
Even the new boats you have built—you make them launch them into the water during Pascha, instead of mourning during it.
You have made them shout in jubilation against their will.
Who could recount all your evils?