12. To Rainald

To his revered lord and father, the Abbot Rainald, brother Anselm sendeth greeting.

The little work, which you so earnestly beg me to send you from so far, I certainly should not send you To Rainald. 1 27 at all, could I avoid yielding to your will. But I fear lest, should it fall into the hands of some who are more eager to blame what they hear than to understand it, and they chanced to read there something which they had not before heard or perceived, they would at once declare that I had written things hitherto unheard of and contrary to the truth. And then, since I being so far away could not answer them, not only will they, while rejecting truth, think they are defending it; but they will persuade others who rashly believe before they hear what it is they are censuring, that I am an assertor of that which is false. I have indeed already borne very hasty blame from some such, because of what, following St Augustine, I said about the Person and the Substance of God. These however now know that they blamed inconsiderately, and rejoice to know now, by this means, what formerly they did not perceive. For they did not know that it cannot, in the literal sense, be said that there are in God three Persons, any more than three Substances; but for the same reason, for want of a word literally signifying that plurality which is understood in the most Holy Trinity, the Latins say we must believe there are three Persons in one Substance: while the Greeks no less faithfully confess three Substances in one Essence. Wherefore I earnestly beg of your holiness not to show the little work to worcly and quarrelsome, but to sensible and peaceful, people. And if it should happen that any so find therein any fault as that his argument seem to you worthy of being answered: I beg of you to tell me what the objection is, and with what argument it is sustained, so that the peace of charity and the love of truth being both preserved, either I by his criticism, or he by my answer, may be set right.