Let three others be added to Sophronius. Since they are unknown, I have nothing else to say about them. In the Bibliotheca of Photius mention is made of Theodore the Presbyter, when he lived and what else he did or wrote I do not know. Photius says that he had read a book of his in which he had solved four objections of adversaries, as you have above in chapter 7, and had proved these monuments to be genuine works of the divine and great Dionysius. Let the Calvinists believe Photius, a heretic as learned as he was impious, a most bitter adversary of the Roman see.
In the Lateran Council under Martin I, in the third consultation, Sergius, Bishop of Tempsa, acknowledges the said Letter to Gaius the devotee, about which I spoke in chapter 15, and admits that those very words which Cyrus was putting forward in the seventh chapter belonged to Dionysius the Areopagite.
A certain monk Antonius, whose book called Melissa is extant, often cites our Dionysius. In book 1, sermon 19, at the end, he produces these words from him: “It cannot be that those who do not repent of their sins obtain pardon.” And in sermon 21: “Truth is God, since according to nature it is one, not many. For the true is one; but falsehood is multiple. For Christ too says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’” In sermon 73: “That silence is held as consent is taught also by a proverb.” I could find none of these passages in the books which we have. It may be that they escaped my diligence.
In book 2, sermon 3, he cites these words: “Those who approach the most pure Sacrifice must be thoroughly purified even in the remotest images and likenesses of the soul, and thus, according to their powers, approach it.” This is extant in On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter 3. And so that you may not doubt that these things belong to the Areopagite, know that this Antonius was accustomed to attribute the name of Dionysius simply to our man; but in the case of other Dionysiuses he was accustomed to add their country. Thus, in book 2, sermon 45, he adduces this from Dionysius of Alexandria: “A strong and exact discourse says that bitter things also are causes of sweet things, and pleasures are fruits of labors. For without labor nothing beautiful can happen.” And in sermon 72 he produces from the same Dionysius of Alexandria: “To be angry among us extends only so far as sin sits present. ‘Be angry,’ he says, ‘and do not sin.’ And the strictest justice is to be avoided, since Ecclesiastes says: ‘Do not be just overmuch.’”
Finally, it is a settled matter among theologians that, under the designation Dionysius par excellence, the Areopagite is understood.