Letter from the saint Jacob bishop to Papa

To our holy father, master in the law, and foster-father in Christ, the distinguished priest and honorable elder, our lord Mar Papa the patriarch: From Jacob, your servant and lowly disciple, [formed by] your upbringing in Our Lord. Peace. My lord, when the report of the unregulated novelties committed against your high priesthood by those who worship the enemy of our race was transmitted to us in the writings of our reliable and trustworthy brothers and sons, the believing clergymen who are with you, we were seized with consternation upon reading those writings [and] a great stupor fell upon us. Sadness and sorrow13 reigned upon us, upon the doctor Mar Ephrem, he who is called prophet within the Church of God, and especially upon the believing women who received healing from their disease through your fatherhood, the young women and their brothers who were possessed by that one who [thrust himself] against you but through you was restrained; and the barren women who generated thanks to your prayers and your blessings, and saw choice fruits of their wombs; the other men and women who received the voice14 of your spiritual business and received help by you, and after a time, in due season, whose requests through you were answered. The reading of the writings struck them so powerfully that they could not remain strong enough to endure within their evil afflictions. The mourning and the lamentation in your city became more grievous than the one that was upon Josiah, king of Judah, and they saddened our entire assembly with the voices of their mourning, saying: "Refuge of our prayer, and great harbor of our blessing, why was your voice silent and [why] did your songs stop? Why did your blessed right hand dry up, so that with it (i.e. the right hand) we are not signed with the sign of cross anymore, and you cannot take care of us as you used to do? Who broke off our paths from being with you, and our journey, so that we cannot be led to you anymore? Where will we go, our blessed father, in the time of our sufferings? Whose door will us knock at, as, lo, our generation is deprived of holy fathers like you?". At these voices of your sons and daughters, oh father, thoughts and limbs became paralyzed, and the hearts of many were held close; and like a source of water, tears descended from the pupils of the men's eyes. We desire for this suffering to pass quickly away from our city and for our mourning and lamentations to receive consolation from the holy writings that you send to us. Those sinner priests committed sin and caused to sin with them [some] simple men, those companions of ‘Aqbalaha, Miles and Habib and their associates who were your disciples. You know their ignorance and are acquainted with all their simplicity. In their writings, they greatly pleaded with us to persuade your holiness on their behalf. If you give order and it is useful, may they be absolved, for they are not evil. And as you forgave Mar Shem‘un, [forgive] them as well. You consecrated them to the covenant and brought them to priesthood. Through the prayer and the blessing that they received from you, instruction was dispensed through them. As they came from the world and attained simplicity, according to their education, they were led to that ignorance by those wicked agitators of the church, upon whose heads the fraud against you, oh father, and the disorder upon the entire church will swiftly turn. Upon them, fearful anger will be fully executed through a just punishment. My lord, all these things that those ones did, and also how you, oh father, stretched out your hand against the Gospel, and about the trial that at that very moment befell you, oh father, all these [things] we clearly wrote and sent to our holy Fathers through sons that you requested (lit. sons of your request) and disciples of your education. They brought us a request to have our writings transmitted through them. After them, we also wrote and sent two other times, and they swiftly reached you, with the writings of our Fathers. My lord, we and the entire church that is with us bear your pains and we share your trial that [is] caused by the action of disciples of fraud, because you did not bear the injustice, the calumny and the iniquity that [came] from their mouth; they vomited at the presence of the Gospel; the rage overcame you, and you appeared as bold. You did not withhold from yourself this discipline that, with mercy, was given to you from your Lord, and if it pleases you that those companions of Miles, ‘Aqbalaha and Habib with their associates, if you found mercy before your eyes, my lord, count them to the same things as those who offered to you a mortal poison in the eucharistic chalice and with those ones who gave false witness against you in the time when you were offered to torment before pagan judges, and because of their witness increased your sufferings, oppressions, lacerations and torments. In the end, you forgave them and provided them with the rank of the episcopate. May also they be counted like them and be forgiven. And also may we— my humble self, our city, and our region—who take refuge in your prayers, be forever remembered in your prayers.