Maximos the Confessor (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.3.48)

...Him, I especially exhort [you] to join [yourselves] to our [people], after the freedom, likewise, just as they say, [to join] my statement, [to declare it] more saltily and all the prevailing life, [the] situation present there. [He] accepts [it] from me through letters, for the reasoning itself [is] very shaky. And just now [I] love [it], not even half a part, through the indivisible. And to the one [who is] much [with me], with iron-named [hands] from the right, may he join the mind. [I] wish, [for you] to make the word secure. As a deserter, the thought. And to the wise words, the all-giving providence. Signs, indeed, not bones, salt... how, in the signs of the mind. I think... the reasoning. And those [things] by me. Exhausted. In every path. To their own reverences, I yearn. Of glory. [I am] ashamed. Just now [being] led astray, so that indeed even the [thing] not known...
a matter in brief

In this place, [I] will preface the time [that]... of the mysteries... [those] who are present here briefly, our holy leader, [may he] make known the house of God [to] the governor arriving. Everything through the grace of [God], and what kind [of] temperate [ones] towards our teaching, declaring. Just as [he] came to us brightly, with the grace [of] weeping, the equal-part of the law. And all from which, making all the learning, dwelling Jews and Samaritans. Both indigenous and strangers. So that...

• The blessed servant of God, the all-lauded governor, having returned from the Queen of Cities Constantinople, all the Jews and Samaritans, both indigenous and newcomers, throughout the whole North or "region", according to the command of our most pious emperors, has made [them] Christians along with wives and children and servants, [the number] reaching so many myriads of souls, brought to the all-holy baptism on the day of the holy Pentecost of the present fourth indiction. Hearing that this has happened throughout the entire Roman Empire, I was seized by a terrible fear, and I tremble at this. For I fear, first, lest this great and truly divine mystery be insulted, having been given to those who did not accept it [with] a disposition appropriate to the faith. And secondly, I also consider that very danger to the soul, lest the bitter root of their old unbelief remain [in] the depths, [which they] have possessed; and [lest] they cut off the light of grace for themselves and bring upon themselves multiple condemnation, [being] thrust into the darkness of unbelief. And thirdly, I suspect the apostasy expected according to the holy apostle, lest it take [as its] beginning the [fact] of these [people] towards the...