On the Trinity & Psalm Commentary 5

(BOOK II TO CONSTANTIUS). I am not unaware, most pious Emperor, that those things which are brought forward from certain affairs to the hearing of the public conscience are wont to be esteemed either weighty or trifling according to the dignity of those who speak them, since the ambiguous judgement of differing opinion moves a man to a bent of understanding—by contempt or by favour. But for me, who am about to speak devoutly to you concerning a divine matter, there is no fear of common custom, because, since you are good and religious, and no fault of judgement obtains among those prudent in matters of religion, you would discern not what a man hears from whom, but whether the things he hears are religious.

And because the opportunity of your presence has been granted me by God, not even in this has the office of my conscience ceased—that in the discourse which I hold with you concerning religion, some unworthiness perchance in one speaking with you might give offence. I am a bishop, remaining in the communion of all the churches of the Gauls and of the bishops, though in exile, and still distributing the communion of the Church through my presbyters. I am in exile, however, not for a crime, but by the faction and false reports of a synod to you, the pious Emperor—delated through impious men, not on account of any consciousness of my own crimes.

Nor do I have a light witness of my complaint—my lord, your religious Caesar Julian, who suffered more of insult from evil men in my exile than I did of injury; for the letters of your Piety are ready at hand. But all the falsehoods of those who procured my exile are not in obscurity. He himself too, whether minister or author of all the deeds, is within this city. I shall disclose to you—Augustus who were circumvented, and your Caesar who was mocked—trusting in this condition of my conscience: that if I be shown to have done anything unworthy not only of a bishop's sanctity but even of a layman's integrity, I would no longer, through pardon, look for the priesthood, but would grow old in the penance of a layman.

But these things now, most worthy Emperor, I leave to your judgement—in what measure and manner you bid me speak—and I pursue those matters which above all must be dealt with together with you at this time. You will indeed give this, for the present, as instruction toward the cause: that I may bring the man himself, by whose ministry I am in exile, present here, even to the confession of the falsehoods which he committed. But I shall say nothing of him, except when you have bidden. Now, however, because fear is upon me concerning the peril of the world, concerning the guilt of my silence, concerning the judgement of God, and care is upon me concerning hope, concerning life, concerning immortality—not so much mine as yours and that of all. And because this is shared by me with very many, this is the expectation of the common hope on my part.

Recognize the faith which of old, most excellent and most religious Emperor, you long to hear from the bishops and do not hear. For while those of whom it is required write their own things and do not preach God, they have carried around an eternal world of error and of strife ever returning upon itself. It would have behoved, by the modesty of human weakness, that the whole sacrament of divine knowledge should be contained by those alone within the bounds of their own conscience, in which he believed; nor, after the faith confessed and sworn in baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that anything else should be either doubted or innovated.

But the presumption or the license or the error of certain men has in part fraudulently confessed and in part boldly transgressed the immutable constitution of apostolic doctrine, while in the confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit it evades the truth of the natural signification, lest anything should remain in the sense which is to be confessed in the sacrament of regeneration. For this reason, in the conscience of certain men, neither is the Father Father, nor the Son Son, nor the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit. Under the pretext of this necessity, as though it were an unassailable occasion for writing and innovating the faith, the practice thereafter grew inveterate.

After they began rather to establish new things than to retain what had been received, they neither defended the old nor confirmed the new, and there was made a faith of the times rather than of the Gospels, while it is both written according to the years and not held according to the confession of baptism. It is exceedingly perilous for us, and even pitiable, that there now exist as many faiths as there are wills, and that we have as many doctrines as there are manners, and that as many causes of blasphemies spring up as there are vices, while faiths are either written as we wish, or understood as we do not wish. And since, according to one God and one Lord and one baptism, the faith too is one, we depart from that faith which alone is. And while they have begun to be many, it comes to this—that there be none.

For we are mutually conscious to one another that, since the synod of the Nicene council, nothing else is written but faith. While there is fighting over words, while there is questioning over novelties, while there is occasion over ambiguities, while there is complaint over authors, while there is contention over parties, while there is difficulty in agreement, while one begins to be anathema to another, almost no one now is Christ's. For we wander in the uncertain wind of doctrines, and either, while we teach, we throw into confusion, or, while we are taught, we err. But now what does the faith of the year just past hold concerning change in itself? The first decrees that 'homoousion' be kept silent; the next in turn discerns and preaches 'homoousion'; the third thereafter excuses by indulgence the 'ousia' simply presumed by the fathers;

lastly the fourth, which does not excuse, but condemns. And to what at length has it advanced? That neither with us nor with anyone before us should anything thereafter persevere holy and inviolable. But concerning the likeness of God the Son to God the Father—if the faith of our pitiable time is such that he be not like either wholly or only in part—we, forsooth, excellent arbiters of heavenly mysteries, investigators of invisible mysteries, calumniate God with professions concerning the faith. We decree yearly and monthly faiths concerning God; we repent of our decrees. Repenting, we defend them; having defended, we anathematize them, and either condemn what is another's in our own or what is our own in another's; and while we bite one another, we are now consumed by one another.

Then a faith is sought, as though there were no faith. A faith is to be written, as though it were not in the heart. Regenerated through faith, we are now taught unto faith, as though that regeneration were without faith. We learn Christ after baptism, as though there could be any baptism without the faith of Christ. We amend, as though there were pardon for having sinned against the Holy Spirit. But the cause of this very impiety is above all perpetual for this reason: that, though we set forth the apostolic faith sevenfold, we ourselves nevertheless are unwilling to confess the evangelical faith, while we defend our impieties among the peoples with much speaking, and, with the vanity of grandiloquence, delude the ears of the simple with deceiving words.

While we shrink from believing about the Lord Christ those things which He taught concerning Himself as objects of belief, and while under the fair-sounding name of peace we creep into a unity of faithlessness, and while, under pretext of rejecting novelties, we ourselves in turn rebel against God with new formulas, and under the label of the Scriptures lie about things not written; we become wanderers, prodigals, impious men, since we both alter what abides, squander what we have received, and presume upon things irreligious.

Just as in winter, on a stormy sea, it is safest for sailors to make sure that, when shipwreck rages, they return to the harbour from which they set sail; or as it befits incautious young men that, when in the keeping of their own household they have transgressed the ways of their fathers' discipline and used their liberty to excess, then, under the very fear of losing their patrimony, their only safe and needful recourse is a return to their fathers' custom: so, amid these shipwrecks of the faith, with the inheritance of our heavenly patrimony now all but squandered, it is safest for us to hold fast the first and only evangelical faith, confessed and understood at baptism, and not to change it; to believe rightly what alone I received and heard. This is not that the things contained in the synod of our fathers should be condemned as written irreligiously and impiously, but that, through human rashness, they are misused for contradiction, so that under the name of novelty the Gospel is denied, as though it were being dangerously renewed under pretext of correction.

What has been corrected always advances further, so that, since every correction gives offence, one correction condemns another that follows upon it; and thus, whatever it be, it ceases to be any correction of a correction and begins to be a condemnation. In this respect I now admire you, lord Constantius the emperor, as a man blessed and devout toward the Only-begotten, desiring the faith only according to what is written — and rightly indeed you hasten to the very oracles of the Only-begotten God, that your breast, capable of imperial solicitude, may also be filled with the awareness of the divine sayings;

— he who repudiates this is antichrist, and he who feigns it is anathema — but this one thing I ask through the sincere hearing of your dignity: that, with the synod present which now disputes about the faith, you would deign to hear me a little concerning the evangelical Scriptures, and let me speak with you in the words of my Lord Jesus Christ, whose exile — or priest — I am. For earthen vessels hold no ignoble treasures, and the weaker parts of the body are the more to be honoured, and among us it was unlettered fishermen who lately spoke of God. According to the prophet, God looks upon the lowly and trembling man who reveres His words. You seek the faith, O emperor: hear it, not from new little papers, but from the books of God.

Know that it can be granted even in the West, whence men shall come and recline in the kingdom of God with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Remember that it lies not in a question of philosophy, but in the teaching of the Gospel. Yet I ask a hearing not so much for myself as for you and for the churches of God. For I have the faith with me and need nothing external: what I received, I hold, and I do not alter what is God's. But remember nonetheless that there is no heretic who does not now lie that he preaches, according to the Scriptures, the very things by which he blasphemes. Thus Marcellus, when he reads 'the Word of God,' does not understand it. Thus Photinus, when he speaks of 'the man Christ Jesus,' is ignorant of Him.

Thus too Sabellius, not understanding that 'I and the Father are one,' is left without God the Father and without God the Son. Thus too Montanus, through his mad women, defends the 'preaching of another.' Thus too Manichaeus and Marcion hate the Law, because 'the letter kills' and 'the prince of this world is the devil.' All of them speak the Scriptures without the sense of Scripture, and hold out a faith without faith. For the Scriptures consist not in the reading but in the understanding, and lie not in transgression but in love. Hear, I pray, the things that are written concerning Christ, lest under them things that are not written be preached. Bend your ears to the things I am about to speak from the books. Lift up your faith to God.

Hear what avails toward faith, toward unity, toward eternity. I shall speak with you, with due honour to your reign and to your faith, of all things conducing to the peace of East and West — before the public conscience, before a divided synod, before a notorious dispute. Meanwhile I offer beforehand a pledge of the discourse I shall address to you. I will defend nothing that leads to scandal, nor anything outside the Gospel;

but you will understand that in the mysteries I preach 'the only true God' and 'Jesus Christ whom He sent': one God the Father, 'of whom are all things,' and one Lord Jesus Christ, 'through whom are all things,' born of God, who is 'before the eternal ages' and was 'in the beginning with God,' God the 'Word,' who is the image of the invisible God, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; who, being in the form of God, humbling Himself for the sake of our salvation, took 'the form of a servant' from the conception of the Holy Spirit out of the Virgin, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; and after the resurrection from death, then sitting 'in the heavenly places,' shall come as 'Judge of the living and the dead' and 'King' of all the eternal 'ages.'

For He is the 'Only-begotten' God and 'true God' and 'great God,' 'God over all,' and every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Thus have I believed in the Holy Spirit, so that beyond this faith concerning the Lord Jesus Christ I cannot be taught anything further; not thereby taking away the religion of the fathers' faith, but according to the creed of my regeneration and the knowledge of evangelical doctrine, in no way dissonant from it in these matters.