7.—Pope Zosimus Kindly Excuses Him.

The bishop, however, who presides over this See, upon seeing him hurrying headlong in so great presumption like a madman, chose in his great compassion, with a view to the man’s repentance, if it might be, rather to bind him tightly by eliciting from him answers to questions proposed by himself, than by the stroke of a severe condemnation to drive him over the precipice, down which he seemed to be even now ready to fall. I say advisedly, “down which he seemed to be ready to fall,” rather than “over which he had actually fallen,” because he had already in this same book of his forecast the subject with an intended reference to questions of this sort in the following words: “If it should so happen that any error of ignorance has stolen over us human beings, let it be corrected by your decisive sentence.”

7. Sed multum misericors memoratae Sedis antistes, ubi eum vidit ferri tanta praesumptione praecipitem, tanquam furentem, donec si posset fieri resipisceret, maluit eum sensim suis interrogationibus et illius responsionibus colligare, quam districta feriendo sententia, in illud abruptum, quo jam propendere videbatur, impellere. Ideo autem non dixi, Aperte ceciderat, sed, propendere videbatur; quia superius in eodem libello suo de hujusmodi quaestionibus locuturus ante praedixerat: «Si forte ut hominibus quispiam ignorantiae error obrepsit, vestra sententia corrigatur.»