Polemical Works 1

When you had perceived that opposition was raised against all your destructive endeavours, and when you had found all your contrivances against the Church of God revealed to the whole people of God, you said that we were and are enemies of peace, foes of unity, opponents even of brotherly love. If between the worshippers of God and the enemies of his religion there ought to be nothing in common, why was it that Moses, at the time when he saw that carnal Jewish people—whose wisdom you hold—had incurred the guilt of idolatry, after he had caused certain ones to be struck down with the sword, also willed that his own station be set apart? Receive how this is so, as it is written: And the Lord said to Moses: Say to the children of Israel, You are a people of stiff neck; take heed lest, bringing another plague upon you, I destroy you.

Now therefore lay aside the robes of your glory and your ornament, and I will show you what I am about to do to you. And the children of Israel took off their adornment and their robes from Mount Horeb; and Moses, taking the tabernacle, pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and it was called the tabernacle of testimony; and it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of testimony, outside the camp. And when Moses went out from the tabernacle, all the people stood, each one gazing toward the door of his own tent. They watched Moses as he went, until he entered the tabernacle.

But as soon as Moses had entered the tabernacle, the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord spoke with Moses; and all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tabernacle, and the whole people rose and worshipped, each one at the door of his own tent. And the Lord spoke to Moses openly, openly, as a man speaks to his friend. But his younger minister, Joshua the son of Nun, did not depart from the tabernacle. By this deed it was shown that you who sin against God must be shunned, and that one must withdraw from you. But, you say: Behold, Moses, though he had the tabernacle in another place, nevertheless did not desert the people, but exhorted them to correct the ways of their errors, God being favourable.

Nor are those lacking in these offices who refused to be mingled with your sacrilege; for you recognize that it is told you that, unless you correct your ways, you shall perish for ever. That, therefore, which we had begun to aim at, that we may carry it through to proof as thoroughly as we can: as often as the people murmured against God and rose up against Moses, you have read that God said to Moses and Aaron: Withdraw from the midst of this undisciplined, defiant people, and I will destroy them. What, then, does he wish us to do, but that we flee from you, the undisciplined and defiant, lest together with you we perish, like those who had been joined with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? Or will you deny that you are undisciplined and defiant?

Look back at your acts displayed against the Church of the Lord, and you will find how undisciplined and defiant you are. In Deuteronomy Moses says: You shall not make a covenant with them, nor show them mercy; nor shall you give your daughters to their sons in marriage, nor shall you take their daughter for your son; for she will seduce your son from me, and he will serve other gods, and the Lord will be angry with wrath against you and will swiftly destroy you. Since he commands these things to be done, how can we be at one with you, have peace with you, who are deniers of the only Son of the one God? How could we have fulfilled this your will? Since you see that God said through Moses concerning the Moabites and Ammonites: You shall not greet them in peace all the days of your life for ever.

How could we Arians and Christians be together? Since you hear Moses say: There shall be no adulteress among the daughters of Israel, and he admonishes in every place that every adulterer brought to the gate be put to death with stones: and you shall remove, he says, the wicked one from among yourselves. If he says that God so detests carnal adultery that he commanded all adulterers to be punished, how much more must the Lord necessarily detest your spiritual adultery, on account of which you both were and are to be fled from. We Christians could not be at one with apostates, since we find that the Holy Spirit said through Moses:

God will open to you his good heavenly treasure, to give you the rain of your land in due season; he will bless all the work of your hands; you shall lend to many nations, but you yourself shall not borrow; and you shall make war on many nations, but they shall not overcome you; the Lord your God will set you at the head and not at the tail, and you shall be above and not beneath, if you hearken to the commandment of the Lord your God, whatever I command you this day to keep and to do, and do not depart from any word that I command you this day, to the right hand or to the left.

How could we be at one with the pseudo-bishops of your sect, the Arians, since you see that we could not have been blessed except because we have not gone after your idolatry, except because we have detested your heresy of the Arians, just as we detest that of all heretics, except because we have judged and hold you to be such as the heathen too, namely worshippers of all the demons, except because we have so abominated you as we do the Jews also, who are found to be without God, since they have denied the only Son of God?

In Joshua the son of Nun: But when, he says, the people heard the sound of the trumpets, the whole people shouted with a great shout, and all the walls of the city round about fell down, and the whole people went up into the city, each one straight before him, and they seized the city and put it under the ban; and whatever was in the city, from man to woman, from young to old, and even to the calf and to the beast of burden, they slew with the edge of the sword; and to the two young men who had spied it out Joshua said: Go into the house of the woman and bring her out, and whatever is hers.

And the two young men who had spied out the city went in to the house of the woman and brought out Rahab the harlot and her father and mother and brothers and whatever was hers and all her kindred, and led her forth outside the camp of Israel; and the city was burned with fire, together with all that was in it. And further on: Joshua preserved alive Rahab the harlot and all her father's house, and she dwelt in Israel to this present day. When, therefore, you see all the inhabitants of the city of Jericho punished by the edge of the sword, and the whole city burned, how did you think we could be at one with you, a heretic, seeing that we perceived you and yours to be more worthy of the ban than even they had been?

How could we be at one with the pseudo-bishops of your sect, the Arians, since you see that no one was preserved alive in the city in which the idolaters dwelt, except only Rahab, because she believed that our Lord was wholly almighty, whereas the idolatry in which the people stationed in Jericho trusted had been found out by human error? How could we be at one with you, since in the third book of Kings it is written that neither are your houses to be trodden, nor food to be taken with you, nor water to be received from you? That this is so, sacred Scripture makes plain: And it came to pass—it speaks of that fellow-apostate of yours—the word of the man of God; and further on: And he stretched out his hand toward the altar, saying:

Seize him! And the king's hand, which he stretched out against him, withered, and he could not draw it back to himself, and the altar was rent, and its fatness was poured out from the altar, according to what the man of God had said by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said to the man of God: Entreat the face of the Lord your God, that my hand may be restored to me. And the man of God entreated the face of the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him and became as it was at first. And the king spoke to the man of God and said: Come in with me into the house and dine, and I will give you gifts. And the man of God said to the king: Not even if you give me half your house will I go in with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for thus the Lord commanded me by the word, saying:

You shall not eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the way by which you came. How could we be at one with you in worshipping God, since against this man of God, who had been sent by God to rebuke King Jeroboam, because he was deceived through that man who was called a prophet, so grievous a vengeance proceeded? And he went away—says Scripture afterward concerning that man of God—by another way, and did not return by the way by which he had come to Bethel. And his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel and the words that he had spoken to the king; and they turned the face of their father. And their father spoke to them, saying: By what way did he go?

And his sons showed him the way by which the man of God who had come out of Judah had gone. And he said to his sons: Saddle me the ass; and they saddled it for him, and he mounted upon it and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak tree, and said to him: Are you the man of God who came out of Judah? And he said: I am. And he said to him: Come with me and eat bread; and he said: I cannot return with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for thus the Lord commanded me by the word, saying: You shall not eat bread there, nor drink water there, nor return thence by the way by which you went. And he said to him: I too am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying:

Bring him back with you into your house, that he may eat bread and drink water. And he lied to him, and brought him back, and he ate bread in his house and drank water. And it came to pass, as they were sitting at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the false prophet who had brought him back, and he said to the man of God who had come out of Judah: Thus says the Lord: Because you have provoked the word of the Lord and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, but have returned and eaten bread and drunk water in this place, concerning which he spoke to you, saying: You shall not eat bread nor drink water; therefore your body shall not enter into the sepulchre of your fathers.

And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread and drunk water, that they saddled the ass for him, and he turned back and went away. And a lion found him on the way and slew him, and his body was cast out on the way, and the ass stood beside him, and the lion stood beside his body. And the men of that city came and spoke in the city where the elder prophet dwelt; and when those who had brought him back from the way heard it, he said: This is the man of God who provoked the word of the Lord. And he went and found his body cast out on the way, and the ass and the lion stood over his body; and the lion did not eat his body, nor leap upon the ass.

If this was visited upon him, because he had eaten bread and taken a drink of water in a profane place among foreign men, what would have been visited upon us, if, as you desired, we had joined friendships with you—whom we know to be a heretic, whom we know to be a denier of the only Son of God—if we had poured out prayer with you Arians, if, in short, we had suffered ourselves, we priests of the Lord, to celebrate all the things that we celebrate together with your pseudo-bishops the Arians? Meanwhile, that you were sent in to circumvent us, just as that false prophet was sent to that man of God, you ought, on recalling your acts, to recognize as most bitter;

for just as that one, though he was a false prophet, called himself a prophet in order to deceive an innocent man, so you also, though you are not a Christian but an Arian, feigned yourself a Christian in order to ensnare us. Then, since the Church of the Lord has always had peace and has cast out you and the heretics of all sects, you said: I wish peace to be established in my empire—desiring to violate the Lord's peace among us, longing to rend the people of God, providing for your heresy, into which you wish to make us all cross over. Thus you lied that you were a man of God, when you said that you were making this peace for the sake of our salvation, just like that false prophet who said:

Return with me, for I too am a prophet of the Lord, and an angel spoke to me. Thus, I say, you lied, when you said that you undertook to do this in order that you might please God, seeing that you were labouring to join each of the catholic bishops to the communion of the Arians. How could it have been possible for Christians to be at one with you and your fellow-Arians, since you see that God said this to King Jehoshaphat—why he had received Ahab the idolater into friendships, why he had gone out to war with the enemy of the Lord?

For after that fellow-sacrilegist of yours, Ahab, had been struck according to the word of God with a deadly wound in the battle, and Jehoshaphat, because he had cried out to God with his whole heart, had been restored to his own house, holy Scripture relates that Jehu the son of Hanani, who was a seer, went out before his face and said such things as these: If you help that sinner and are a friend of those who hate the Lord, in this is wrath upon you from the face of the Lord; but good words have been found in you, because you have removed the groves from the land and have prepared your heart to seek the Lord. If these things are said to him, what would be said to us, if we had preferred to be friends with you, a heretic and an enemy of God? Or will you perhaps dare to say:

Am I not an enemy of God, as Ahab king of Israel once was? How are you not an enemy, you who do the very same things that Ahab did? Since you thus assail the religion of God, just as he assailed it, and thus persecute His house, just as he persecuted it. How could we have come to agreement with you and with your followers, when even a king devoted to God, Jehoshaphat, was rebuked by God through a prophet because he had joined himself in friendship to Ahaziah king of Israel? 'And Jehoshaphat king of Judah,' it says, 'joined friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel; he himself began to act wickedly, and made common cause with him to build ships to go to Tarshish. And he built ships at Ezion-geber, and Eliezer the son of Uzziah from Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying:'

'Because you have made common cause with Ahaziah, the Lord has broken your work, and your ships are shattered and shall not be able to go to Tarshish.' If these things are spoken to him by the Lord, because in the building of ships he had taken as companion of the way of perdition a king, what could be said of us, if we, the priests of God, held as friend the destroyer of His house, the persecutor of the catholic faith? If God broke his work because he had joined himself to an unrighteous man, then we ourselves, I believe, would already have been scattered by the thunderbolt, had we joined ourselves to you, a blasphemer.

How could we, who are servants of God, and you who are servants of the devil, come together into one, when God has willed that there be such a separation between us and you as between light and darkness, between life and death, between sweet and bitter, as between the holy angels of God who are ever magnifying His mercy and those apostates whom you shall see tormented together with you for eternity, unless you snatch yourself away from them? How, I say, could we, the servants of God, be together with you, the servants of Antichrist? When it was said to King Amaziah by God in the second book of Chronicles:

'The army of Israel shall not go with you, for God is not with Israel, with all the sons of Ephraim; for if you think to prevail with them, the Lord will turn you to flight before your enemies, for strength is from the Lord.' By what means could we resist the devil, if we were to run together with you in so great a crime of yours, together with the enemies of God, together with men found without knowledge of God, together with those who do not have God, among whom we know there is a whole host of demons? For you cannot be deniers of the only Son of God without demons, since none make you blaspheme but those who have blinded your hearts, so that the truth cannot be grasped by you.

Could we in any way linger on your side, and consent to your most shameful schemes, when through the glorious David the Holy Spirit declares that none are blessed except those who have withdrawn themselves from you, the deniers of the only Son of God, that only those shall remain blessed who have not mingled themselves with your serpentine thoughts? 'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence.' How could there be for you and for us a meeting-place in one spot? When you hear David likewise say in the sixth psalm: 'Depart from me, all you who work iniquity.'

If you Arians do not work iniquity, then judge yourself, O prince, in the sacrilege of the Arians, you who persecute us with horrible animosity when we call ourselves Christians. Rightly then know that we have acted well in withdrawing from you who are hateful to God. For how would it have been fitting for us to remain in your assembly, tainted with every crime, and not to flee you who are plagues and pestilences? Since he says, in the person of our people, in the twenty-fifth psalm: 'For your mercy is before my eyes, and I have been well pleased in your truth. I have not sat in the council of vanity, and with those who do iniquity I will not go in; I have hated the church of the malignant, and I will not sit with the ungodly.' If your council is not one of vanity, refute me.

Is that not a council of vanity, in which the whole design is nothing other than that the Son of God be denied, that God the Father be defended as not being a true Father, that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete be asserted not to be the true Spirit of God, that the apostolic and evangelical tradition be destroyed, that the tradition of Arius be established? In which council nothing else is established except what can procure great joy for all heretics and pagans and Jews; all the execrators of the religion of God rejoice, indeed because they see you, the emperor, carrying out the object of their desire, indeed because they perceive that you have shown yourself a denier of the only Son of God and a persecutor of His servants.

This is the council which you have been accustomed to assemble with the utmost force of your empire, indeed for this end: that all the authority of the sacred Scriptures be dissolved by the authority of your empire, that all truth may be buried, that the lies of your detestable fabrication may seem true. These are the aims of your scheming in that notable council assembled through your power. Therefore you hate us, because we execrate your council of the malignant; therefore we are in exile, therefore we are being done to death in prison, therefore to us alone is the sight of men forbidden; for this reason, shut up in darkness, we are guarded under a huge guard.

For this reason no man is admitted to visit us, namely because we would not have any fellowship in your crimes with you, the ungodly and sacrilegious, from whom, in our person, a supplication has been directed to God, that we might not, dwelling with you, perish together, but might be separated from your wicked council, from your unrighteous conspiracy. For he says in the twenty-seventh psalm: 'Hear, O Lord, the voice of my supplication, when I pray to you, when I lift up my hands to your holy temple; do not draw away my soul together with sinners, and do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their hearts.'

'Give them according to their works and according to the wickedness of their pursuits; according to the work of their hands render to them, repay them their recompense.' Therefore we are hated by you, Constantius, because we would not have those things said of us which are spoken by the mouth of the prophet concerning you and your followers on account of your wicked work, which are spoken concerning the Jews whose imitator you have become.

Are you not Constantius the emperor, who pretended to make peace, when your evil designs were none other than that the Son of God should be denied, that the apostolic and evangelical faith should be destroyed, and your Arian heresy built up instead, that all who did not acquiesce to you should be deported, proscribed, tortured in various ways, and finally killed? And therefore the Holy Spirit, marking you and your followers and smiting you together, says in the person of our people: 'Do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their heart.' You were saying to us:

'I wish peace to be made'; and the adversary of our religion, abiding in your heart, was plotting through you to make us idolaters; whence indeed you will truly receive according to your work, according to the wickedness of your pursuits, unless you provide for yourself in time. We have avoided and are avoiding your counsel, which has been and is being made against God, whose scheming the Holy Spirit, then already seeing, said through the mouth of David in the thirty-second psalm: 'The Lord has scattered the counsels of the nations, and he rejects the thoughts of the peoples, and he rejects the counsels of princes.' But your counsels, brought forth against His Church, God rejects;

for He cannot hate His own people, His inheritance, and love you, the sons of pestilence, you, the persecutors of His servants. You said: 'Make peace with the bishops of my sect, the Arians, and be as one'; and the Spirit of God says through Solomon in the Proverbs: 'The ways of the ungodly do not, do not follow, nor emulate the way of the wicked; in whatever place they have set their army, do not come upon it there. But turn aside from it and pass on; for they do not sleep unless they have done evil; sleep is taken from them, and they do not slumber. For these are fed with the food of impiety, and are made drunk with unrighteous wine. But the ways of the just shall shine like light; they go forth and give light, until the day set right.'

'But the ways of the ungodly are dark; they do not know how they stumble.' How could we have fellowship with you Arians, with spiritual adulterers? We who hold to what is written: 'Do not give heed to a deceitful woman; for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman, who for a time fattens your throat, but at the last you shall find her more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword; but the feet of the foolish, who use her, lead them down with death to the world below.' But do you say that these things were spoken concerning adulteries of the flesh?

If you maintain that these things were said on account of adulteries of the flesh, how much more are you to be fled, you spiritual adulterers, lest through your Arian heresy, the spiritual harlot, these things which are spoken come upon us? For to certain ones it seems sweet that they be joined in friendship with you the king by receiving your heresy, but they shall taste it more bitter than gall, when together with you they begin to be tormented forever, when those who chose to be with you begin to feel it in perpetual Gehenna, then about to say: 'Woe to us who set the emperor Constantius before God.' How could there be agreement for us and for you? When Solomon further says below: 'Cast pestilence out of the council, and strife shall go out with it'; and: 'Do not imitate evil men, nor desire to be with them;'

for their heart devises falsehood, and their lips speak sorrows'; and: 'Do not bring the ungodly near to the pasture of the just, nor be led astray by fullness of the belly. For the just falls seven times and rises again, but the ungodly shall be weakened by evils.' With the proud and the transgressors, with those who wish rather to be found with Judas Iscariot than with the most blessed prophets, apostles, and martyrs—how can we be? When I hear in the hundredth psalm: 'I walked in the innocence of my heart in the midst of your house. I did not set before my eyes an evil thing; I hated those who commit transgressions, a depraved heart did not cleave to me; the malignant, turning from me, I did not acknowledge; the one secretly slandering his neighbors, him I persecuted;'

with the proud eye and insatiable heart, with such a one I would not eat'; and in the hundred and eighteenth psalm: 'I have hated the unrighteous, and I have loved your law.' Since you are unrighteous, being indeed deniers of the only Son of God, since you ought to be hated by us, because, leaving the way of truth, you have taken hold of all errors, because, leaving the light, you have chosen to go into the outer darkness—how could we have been most dear to you, the abominable head, to you, the destroyer of God's house, the kindling of all who work iniquity? How could we be intimate friends, as are Valens, Ursacius, Epictetus, Saturninus and the rest?

Of whose number, even though they have seen into what pit they have fallen, they would nevertheless certainly choose to perish with you, provided only that they enjoy together with you the empty splendor of your kingdom. How could we have been with you, we who hold in abhorrence those things which they chose to enjoy with you, we men who strive after those things which are to remain forever? On what account is there no agreement between us and you? Surely because we would not receive your heresy, surely because, being Christians, we would not become Arians. But who is there, unless he be, as you Arians are, out of his mind, who would forsake the house of God and go to the tomb of the devil?

For this reason we labor under hatred with you, because we were and are fearful lest those things be said of us which were said of those deserters, that is, the Jews, whom Jeremiah accuses, saying: 'Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob and all the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: What fault did your fathers find in me, that they went far from me and went after vanities, and were made vain, and did not say:'

'Where is God who delivered us from the land of Egypt, who led us out, affording guidance in the wilderness, in a land untilled and unknown, and in a land without water and without fruit, in a land in which no man passed through, nor did any son of man dwell there, and he brought you into Carmel, that you might eat its fruit and its good things; and you entered and defiled my land, and made my inheritance an abomination; the priests did not say, Where is the Lord? and those versed in my law did not know me, and the shepherds acted impiously against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after unprofitable things.' We were unwilling to hear these reproaches, whence also we have said that you and your followers must be fled.

For it was not possible for the household of God to agree with you, foreigners, since we see it said by God to that carnal people, faithless like you: 'Turn back your foot from the rough way and your throat from thirst. But she said: I will be strengthened, because she loved strangers and went after them.' After you strangers therefore, after you foreigners, not only did we not wish to go, but we even pronounced anathema upon you, sons of pestilence and of darkness, lest, if we had departed from the apostolic and evangelical faith and forsaken the way which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob most blessed held, and Abel, Enoch, Noah and all the prophets, apostles and martyrs, these things also should have been said by God of us, which were said of your fellow-blasphemers the Jews:

'As a thief is confounded when he is caught, so shall the sons of Israel be confounded, they and their kings and their princes and their priests and their prophets.' We were unwilling to be among you, lest also that rebuke of the divine voice should convict us together with the Jews and with you heretics: 'Why do you speak to me? You have all acted impiously, and you have all transgressed against me, says the Lord.' How could there be agreement between us and you? When you have read written in the first book of Maccabees: 'Then there gathered to them a company mighty in strength from Israel, everyone who was willing in the law. And all who fled from evils were added to them and became a support to them.'

'And they established a force, and struck down sinners in their anger and wicked men in their indignation. And the rest fled to the nations to save themselves; and Mattathias and his friends went about, and destroyed the altars and circumcised the uncircumcised boys, as many as they found within the borders of Israel, by force, and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hands, and they secured the law from the hands of the nations and of the kings, and they did not give the horn to the sinner.' Could we have been with you, when you see what they did with their whole heart, who are found to have feared God? You say—you, a member cut off from the body of the blessed Church even then, when you were made an Arian out of a Christian—'Be with you.'

And the Lord says in the Gospel: 'But if your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is expedient for you that one of your members perish, rather than that your whole body be cast into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is expedient for you that one of your members perish, rather than that your whole body go into Gehenna.' The Church cries out that it has cut off Arius and cast him away according to the Lord's precepts, and you say: 'Receive your fellow-plagues and pestilences'; you say: 'Allow yourselves to perish by the same disease by which I have perished.'

Thus Sabellius was cut off from the body of the Church, as is also your utterly detestable Arius cut off, whose speech has crept into you like a cancer so mightily that you are now seen to be all cancer; nor will you be able to say that you have not become cancerous with Arius's speech, since the stench of your cancerous state has reached every place of your kingdom, and we have all resolved to shun you, lest we ourselves also be made cancerous by your Arian plague. Thus, I say, your master Arius was cut off and cast away, as also Sabellius was cut off and rejected, who dared to defend that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one person, because he dared to say that the same one is to himself both Father and Son and Holy Spirit;

he was cut off, because he did not hesitate to say that the Father himself was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin and suffered. Thus Marcion cast himself off as one cut off, who would not confess that the Son of God took upon himself a man from the womb of the Virgin and thereby became man. Thus Paul of Samosata, the master of Photinus, was cut off and cast away from the body of the Church, because he saw fit to say that the Son of God was merely a man. Thus also the heretics of all the sects have been cut off, as Arius was cut off, and as you have been—you who, because you say of the only Son of God, 'He was made out of nothing and is not the true Son, there was when he was not,' have deserved to be cut off.

You, therefore, are all cut off and rejected, you blasphemers, by the power of God from the Church of His mercy, because you did not remain in it in the faith in which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs remained. O man cut off with all your fellow-blasphemers from the body of the holy Church, lying in the bilge of the devil, you dare to say to her: 'Be such as I am, that you may be afflicted with such a disease as that by which I too have been consumed.' Thus you had supposed that we could agree with you, as though we did not hold to what the blessed Paul said: 'But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.'

What reasoning could have brought it about that, forsaking the way which leads to the kingdoms of heaven, we should take hold of yours which casts headlong into Gehenna? You thought that you could circumvent us by that subtlety by which the serpent circumvented Adam and Eve, composing an edict with choice words and most beautiful sentiments, in which all the poisons of your heresy are contained. But whence could you have accomplished this? When the blessed Paul had armed us against your poisons and your father's, saying: 'This therefore I say, that no one deceive you by loftiness of words,' and again:

'See that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain seduction, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ, for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.' How could we have been seduced by those Arian, sacrilegious notions of yours—by lofty words though they be—when we have known you to hold an empty philosophy? Whence too could your words be sweet, you whom we have seen holding the tradition of Arius, not of the blessed apostles? To whom he—whom you deny to be the true Son of God—said: 'Go, baptize those who believe, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'

How could we Christians acquiesce to you, the disciple of Arius, forsaking the apostolic tradition, when we find you saying that the Father is not a true Father, but is called Father, when you say that he does not have a true Son, but that he was made out of nothing, when you say that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete equally consists of nothing—whereas, on the contrary, we see that the apostles believed in one God the Father almighty, a true Father, a true Father for this reason, that he truly, not putatively, has a Son, and in his only Son Jesus Christ, that is, in the true Son of God, and in the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, in the true Spirit of God?

How could anyone of those who so believe be supplanted by the devil through you, the founder of Arius's blasphemy, when the apostolic faith both confesses a perfect Trinity and acknowledges the one Godhead of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the blasphemy of Arius, that is, your blasphemy, holds nothing except what has pleased your dear devil, since there is as great a difference between the faith of the blessed Church and your heresy as between light and darkness? Rightly meanwhile did I call you thus separated from us, as darkness is separated from light, because you are sons of darkness, whence too you have vomited forth darkness from your viperous hearts.

You hoped to turn us aside from the way of truth, as though we did not know that the Holy Spirit had forewarned us through the blessed Paul, who says: 'Let no one convict you, willing it in humility of mind and religion of angels, which he walks in without cause, puffed up by the sense of his own flesh, and not holding the Head, from whom the whole body, drawn together through connection and conjunction, grows into the increase of faith.' How could we follow you, walking without cause, nourished by the serpent through the mouth of Arius, puffed up by the sense of your own flesh, become an apostate, when the apostle's precept compelled that you be shunned? You said that, desiring to be joined for the sake of peace, you had pseudo-bishops of your sect for us; but how could we do this, so as to hear not God, but you, His enemy?

We are not senseless like you, so as to deny that the Son of God is God, as the Jews deny it, who are partakers of your blindness and leaders of your unbelief, whose example of reprobation the blessed Paul, pointing it out, sets forth to the Hebrews: 'And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, speaking in testimony, but Christ as a Son over his house, which house we are, if only we hold fast the freedom and exultation of hope, on account of which the Holy Spirit says: Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers tempted me in trial; and they saw my works forty years. Therefore that generation was hateful to me, and I said:'

'They always err in heart. But these have not known my ways, as I swore in my wrath: They shall not enter into my rest.' Take heed, brethren, lest perchance in any of you there be an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God; but exhort yourselves daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened in the error of sin. For we have been made partakers of Christ, if indeed we hold firm the beginning of his substance unto the end. While it is said, 'Today, if you hear my voice, do not harden your hearts as in the provocation.' For some, having heard this, did not believe; but not all who went out of Egypt through Moses. But with whom was he displeased for forty years?

Was it not those who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they should not enter into his rest, except to the disobedient? And we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Let us therefore fear, lest perchance, the commandment being forsaken, any of you should seem unable to enter into his rest. For it has been announced to us, just as also to them; but the word of hearing did not profit them, not being tempered with faith in the hearers. For we who have believed shall enter into his rest, as he said: 'As I swore in my wrath: They shall not enter into my rest,' and this though the works were done from the foundation of the world. Yet he said somewhere concerning the seventh day: 'Thus God also rested on the seventh day from all his works.' And in this place again:

'They shall not enter into my rest.' Since therefore it remains that some enter into it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter in because of disobedience, again he fixes a certain day, 'Today,' saying in David, after so long a time, as it was said before: 'Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts,' for if Jesus had given them rest, he would not have spoken of another day afterward. Therefore there remains a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his own. Who is so foolish that, having read these things, having received them from the blessed apostle, forsaking the apostolic faith, would attempt to take up heresy?

Who will dare to deny him, whom he sees able to grant eternal rest to those who believe in him, and be willing to believe in one with whom he shall begin to be punished forever? Who is such a one, unless it be you, Constantius the emperor, who have forsaken the Lord's camp and made a crossing to the house of the devil? We did not choose to burn, as you chose with your lover the devil, but we hasten to enter into perpetual rest. How could we be captured by your cunning and bent aside from the way of truth? When the apostle still exhorts us to lay hold of the eternal rest, saying: 'Let us therefore hasten to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall by the same example of disobedience.'

'For the word of God is living and powerful and sharp, sharper than any sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a searcher of the mind and of the thoughts of the heart; and there is no creature that does not appear before him; but all things are naked and open to his eyes, to whom our account is to be given.' Since these things are so, how could any of us cross over to you who remain in the perfidy of the Jews? What rational ground could join us Christians to you Arians, when we saw that you were imitators of that nation in all perfidy? From which how could those escape who take refuge in the house of God? When in the Acts of the Apostles the most blessed Peter spoke thus, saying:

'Repent, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For to you is this promise, and to your children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call.' And with many other words also he testified and exhorted them, saying: 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation.' Nor will you be able to say that you Arians are not a crooked generation, just as the Jews were and are, since you discern that the scribes, the Pharisees, and the princes of the Jews were then called a crooked generation for this reason, that they both denied the Son of God and persecuted all who believed in his divine majesty.

You will not be able, I say, to deny that you and all the Arians are a crooked and perverse generation, since you do these very things which they also did. If they denied the only Son of God, so do you also; if they persecuted the servants of his eternal mercy, you too persecute them. What then ought we to have done, except that, according to the precept of blessed Peter, we should withdraw from you, the sacrilegious? For whence could there be agreement with you? When the Lord said in the Gospel: 'Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.' How could we be as one? When the blessed apostle, writing to the Corinthians, said:

It is reported everywhere that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even found among the heathen, so that a man has his father's wife; and you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. If, then, the Apostle commanded that one who works such a deed should be taken away from among them, lest, through his fellowship, the whole Church should be corrupted, how much more fitting was it that we should flee from you blasphemers? If he relates that he delivered that man over to Satan, how much more ought you then to know that you have already been delivered over, once you began to deny the Son of God?

For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though present, concerning him who has so acted: in the name of the Lord Jesus, when you are gathered together with my spirit, along with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. Since this is the rebuke of the Apostle, could Christians be joined to the slaves of Antichrist?

For how would we not have been corrupted by the poisons of your so great blasphemy, since anyone who holds communion with you, whether in hypocrisy or in truth, is in enormous peril? Since it was on account of your heresy that I wrote to withdraw from you, how could we again cling to you? Since the Apostle's voice says: I wrote to you in an epistle not to associate with fornicators — not indeed with the fornicators of this world, or the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters; otherwise you would have had to go out of this world. But now I have written to you not to associate, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one not even to take food.

If we are commanded not even to take food with you, did you suppose that Catholics could come together with heretics to celebrate all the solemnities? Could we, worshippers of God, be together with you who go astray, with you who by the devil's poison are led into every drunkenness? How could it have come about that we, the living, should stand among the dead? Since it was more fitting that you, sons of our Adversary, should be seen gathered into one, and we, on the contrary, soldiers of Christ, into one — so that you might, without any doubt, be called by all who love God the members and body of a harlot; by which name we too could be styled, if we should hand ourselves over to you. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? God forbid.

Or do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For, He says, the two shall be one flesh. But he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee fornication. From what kind of fornication do you wish us to flee? For he who desires to seek another woman besides his wife is called a fornicator; likewise he who has served idols is said to have committed fornication, since indeed, forsaking God, he has adored idols; in the same way, he who is a heretic is called a fornicator. From these, know which you please: that it is a graver crime to become a heretic and to serve idols than to commit adultery according to the flesh.

Since, then, whether you Gentiles or you heretics are called idolaters, it is necessary that both parties be practising idolatry; and yet, because — beyond what can be told — those two crimes are far more monstrous than carnal fornication, as you will understand, behold with what evils you have cut your own throat. The most holy Apostle cries out still, saying: Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body. And: You are not your own; for you were bought with a price. Glorify and bear God in your body.

How will you be able to bear God, Constantius, in your body, when, by rejecting the apostolic faith and taking up the heretical one, you have declared yourself not to belong to Him whose our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob declared themselves to be — and so too all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs? Furthermore, if he who fornicates sins against his own body, how much more you, who accomplish that work of the serpent not only through the flesh but also through the very soul? Do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body, but he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit? Lest, being made together with the sacrilegious in the body of a harlot, we ourselves should not deserve to be the servants of the Lord, but rather, like you, slaves of the devil, we judged that we must withdraw from you.

Woe to you, who have refused to be joined to the Lord, but have willed to be joined to the devil! And when he says: Do not be deceived; for evil communications corrupt good manners — what does he bid me do but flee your assembly stained with sacrilege, lest, while I cling to you, I too should perish together with you? How could we have been in your malignant council, when we find the blessed Apostle saying to Timothy: Lay hands hastily on no one, nor share in the sins of others; keep yourself chaste? But how would we be chaste, we who, by clinging to you, would like you have been broken apart through those most dear to you — that is, through unclean spirits — away from the chastity of the faith?

How would we not have shared in the sins of others, seeing that, if we had judged that we must remain with you, we would have become the very thing you are — that is, members of a harlot? How could we have been Christians together with you heretics? Since we likewise knew that the Apostle wrote to Timothy, that we should draw ourselves away from you heretics: These things teach and exhort. If any man teaches otherwise and does not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to that doctrine which is according to godliness, he is puffed up, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, from which arise envyings, contentions, blasphemies, evil surmisings, wicked wranglings of men of corrupt mind and destitute of the truth.

From you, therefore, who do not believe as the people of God believes; from you who do not teach as the apostles of Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, taught; from you who do not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, we wished to live set apart; from you, the assailant of the doctrine which is according to godliness; from you, puffed up against us through our Enemy; from you, who know nothing true but dote about questions; from you, through whose unspeakable efforts there are found to have arisen, especially in our days, strifes of words, deadly contentions, malignant wranglings — through you, that is, a man of corrupt mind, an adulterator of the truth. We judged that we must withdraw from you and from your fellow-vipers, according to the Apostle's precept. For he says below:

Of men of corrupt mind and destitute of the truth, supposing that godliness is a means of gain: from such withdraw. Whence could we have been with you? Since even at the close of this epistle he exhorts that you must be fled from — you who have fallen away from the faith: O Timothy, keep the deposit committed to you, avoiding the profane novelties of words and the oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith. It behoved us to avoid you, who bring forth profane novelties of words, seeing that we recognized that you brought forth that sacrilegious utterance at the devil's prompting — that utterance, I say, by which you have expressed the poisons of your dogma, saying: There was a time when He was not, and He was made out of nothing, and there is not one power of the Father and the Son.

It was not the Holy Spirit that brought this forth through you, but that unclean, devilish one. How, then, could we have kept the deposit according to the Apostle's command, if we had remained with you in your accursed council, seeing that we have resolved to hold the apostolic faith even to the exit of death — that faith, namely, which we retain as written at Nicaea against your blasphemy and against the execrable efforts of all your heretics? How could we Christians have been in your council of Arians? We who have heard in the book of Maccabees that our predecessors, our fellow-servants, were set apart from those who, according to the edict of your fellow-tyrant Antiochus, made supplication to idols:

Now Judas Maccabaeus, who was the tenth, had withdrawn into the wilderness, and there was leading his life in the mountains among the wild beasts with his followers; and they remained, feeding on the food of grass, that they might not be partakers of defilement. You recognize that in this one testimony it behoved us to withdraw from you, lest we too should be partakers of defilement. How could we be joined to you? Since likewise the Lord says to the apostles: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And that He might make manifest to us that the leaven was unsound doctrine — which either then those Pharisees or Sadducees, or now you heretics of all sects, bring forth — the Scripture goes on to say: Then they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.

As they were reasoning thus, Jesus said: Why do you reason among yourselves, O you of little faith, because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand, nor remember the five loaves and the five thousand men, and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves and the four thousand men, and how many hampers you took up? How is it that you do not understand that it was not concerning bread that I said: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees? Then they understood that He had not said they should beware of the leaven, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees.

Likewise, when writing to the Corinthians the Apostle deigns to instruct us that we must withdraw from you heretics and from all who are alien; how had your heart presumed — in all things fickle and changeable, yet in this malignity, to its own great harm, established with enormous firmness — that we could have peace with you or with yours? Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? Or what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as it is written: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people;

Wherefore, Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and I will be to you a Father, and you shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. How, since your precepts appear to have arisen against these promises of the Lord, could we, the faithful, tarry with you unbelievers? Running in the way of light, could we stand together with you men who make your journey in the way filled with darkness, with all the errors? For who is so foolish that, when he has heard God say, I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people —

Wherefore, Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and I will be to you a Father, and you shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty — who, I say, is so foolish that he would not wish God to dwell in him, that he would not wish to be reckoned received by God among those whom He has deigned to call sons, so as not to flee you, made unclean through your heresy? It did not seem right to us that we should be together with you in one place, since indeed it is not right for men to tarry with serpents. Or will you deny that the deniers of the only-begotten Son of God are called serpents in the Sacred Scriptures? If you cannot deny it, take note that we acted rightly in fleeing you serpents.

You have read the Apostle saying to Timothy: Avoid profane novelties of words; for they will make much progress toward impiety, and their word spreads like a cancer. Did you suppose that men of God could be with you, whose word is like a cancer? Likewise, when the blessed John enjoins that you are to be fled, saying: I rejoiced greatly that I found of your children walking in the truth, as we received commandment from the Father. And now I beseech you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is charity, that we walk according to His commandments.

This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it; for many deceivers have gone forth into the world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; these are the deceivers and antichrists. Look to them, lest you lose what you have wrought, but that you may receive a full reward. Whoever departs and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God; but he who abides in His doctrine, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, nor say to him a greeting; for he who says to him a greeting shares in his evil works.

How could it have come about that we should be, together with you and yours, soldiers of God together with the soldiers of Antichrist, seeing that the Holy Spirit has not permitted us even to greet you, giving these precepts through the blessed Apostle? But perhaps you will dare to say: Do I in any way deny that the Son of God has come in the flesh, that I should be styled one of the antichrists? You indeed, Emperor Constantius, do not deny that the Son of God has come in the flesh, but you say that He whom we confess to have come in the flesh is a creature; you say He was made out of nothing; you deny that He is true, while affirming Him to be the Son of God. We, on the contrary, who hold the tradition of that blessed Apostle, believe Him to be the true Son of God; we believe that the Father and this His only Son have one Godhead.

That this is so, the Lord makes manifest in His sacred Gospels, saying: He who has seen Me has seen the Father also; and: I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; and: I and the Father are one. We have often said that, although the Father and the Son are two Persons, and yet He says: I and the Father are one, and: He who has seen Me has seen the Father also, and: I am in the Father, and the Father in Me — He wished us to grasp nothing else than that there is one eternity of the Father and the Son, one brightness, one power, one greatness. For this very reason, too, the Apostle says in this second epistle: Whoever departs and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God;

But he who abides in His doctrine, he has both the Father and the Son — so that, gathering through the doctrine of the sacred Gospels that we should believe the one Godhead of God the Father and of His only Son, whoever so believes has this God; but whoever has departed from this doctrine, that is, I and the Father are one — since indeed it is plural, and shows two Persons and one power of these two Persons, that is, of the Father and the Son — therefore the Apostle says: He who departs and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God; but he who abides in His doctrine, he has both the Father and the Son — so that we should believe the Son of God saying: I and the Father are one, namely that there is one Godhead of the Father and the Son.