You resolved to kill the herald of truth, desiring to be placed in that same honour in which are those whom the Lord in the Gospel designates as killers of the prophets, and whom he reveals as about to stretch out impious hands even against himself, saying: 'There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went away to a far country. But when the time of the fruits drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that he might receive of its fruits; and the husbandmen, seizing his servants, beat one, stoned another, and killed yet another. Again he sent to them more servants, and they did to them likewise. But last of all he sent to them his only son, saying:'
'They will reverence my son. But the husbandmen, seeing the son, said among themselves: This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and we shall have his inheritance. And they seized him and killed him and cast him out of the vineyard. When therefore the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those husbandmen? They say to him: He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out the vineyard to other husbandmen who will render him the fruit in their seasons.' From these things, since you have so greatly desired to be one of that number, you were even urging us to become partners in your crimes;
for your counsels are no different from the nefarious counsels of those who are found to have slain the prophets, who finally stretched out impious hands against the only Son of God—especially since you are reducing to nothing the sufferings of those blessed ones sent to the husbandmen, by asserting that they were killed on account of one who existed only at some time when he did not exist, whereas the sacred Scriptures cry out that the only Son of God has always reigned and reigns with the Father. The dominical writings make plain that the Father and his only Son have one deity; and yet you say that he, for whom the glorious prophets were killed, was made out of nothing. For if the things you say were true, it would stand established that the blessed prophets were killed on account of a creature.
And where then will that be, that the Lord is angry with immense indignation against those who serve the creature rather than the Creator? If the blessed prophets were killed for a creature, how does God hold them most dear? How is it that, because the Jews did not believe their words, they are to this day enemies of God? Whence are the Jews enemies of God? Whence are they found set outside the Lord's vineyard—except because they had shown themselves slayers of the prophets, except because the prophets proclaimed the eternal God's eternal Son, and those fellow-blasphemers of yours not only did not believe their prophecy, but even slew those same prophets? For what do you suppose the Jews were persecuting in the prophets, if not the only Son of God, just as also in the apostles and martyrs?
Learn at least from yourself that what I say is true, since you too persecute in Athanasius, and indeed in us, the true Son of God. Since these things are so, you had judged that we must be joined to the slayers of the prophets, to the shedders of the blood of the righteous, to your fellow-sacrilegious ones—that is, to the Jews—being, of course, an imitator of those very men. For you did not for any other reason say that we must condemn Athanasius, and did not command that we should also receive the faith of Arius, than that we should be made equal to the Jews both in the shedding of the blood of the righteous and in denying the only Son of God—the Jews, in all of whose deeds you are now a sharer. For if they slew the prophets, those who spoke of the coming of the only Son of God, you too kill those who believe as the prophets believed.
But how long shall I deal with these things with an unbeliever, when I have set out to make plain to you that you are one of those to whom the Lord says: 'Therefore I say to you that the kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a people bringing forth the fruits thereof'? For you are not in that people which is found to bring forth the fruits of righteousness, so that you may not be pronounced one of those whom you hear to have been driven from the kingdom of God because of the murder of the righteous and their own unbelief. Consider that, by acting thus, you are among those whose wickednesses the Lord lays bare, saying: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a king who made a marriage feast for his son, and sent his servants to those invited to the wedding,' and below: 'and they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying: Tell those invited:'
'Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatlings are killed, and everything is ready; come to the wedding. But they made light of it and went off, some to their own farm, others to their business; and the rest seized his servants and, having treated them shamefully, killed them. When that king heard, he was angry, and sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their cities. Then he said to his servants: The wedding indeed is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy; go therefore to the outlets of the roads, and whomsoever you find, call to the wedding. And those servants, going out into the roads, gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding was filled with those reclining at table.'
'Now the king came in to see those reclining, and he saw there a man not clothed with a wedding garment, and he said to him: Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment? But he was struck dumb. Then the king said to the attendants: Take him by the feet and hands and cast him into the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' Since therefore you are without the garment of the wedding, Constantius, you will be forever—unless you convert—such a one as he to whom it is said: 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?' Thus you will come into the outer darkness. And do not doubt that you will come to the outer darkness, since you are already wholly turned into darkness.
For those who shed the blood of the righteous prophets, who denied the only Son of God, are called both darkness and sons of the devil. Since you yourself also do these things, you will assuredly go on being a son both of darkness and of the devil, unless you take counsel for yourself. 'How,' you say, 'can I take counsel for myself?' That you cease to persecute us and receive the apostolic faith; and unless you do this, being as you now are, you will forever be among those to whom it is said: 'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have left the weightier matters of the law—judgement and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, and not to have left the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat but swallow down a camel.'
If you do not worthily hear these things together with them, where is the just judgement that proceeds from you—you who strive to kill a righteous man because he is preaching the apostolic faith? Where is the just judgement, you who persecute with all the forces of your empire those whom you see are unwilling either to condemn a man unheard or to desert the catholic faith, and yet who love those whom you know to have shed with you the blood of the innocent and to have spurned the evangelic faith? What is the mercy that is set up in you and among you—the mercy which the holy law commands to be shown? Surely that mercy which tortures, proscribes, deports, casts into prison, drives into exiles, consigns to the mines, that mercy which slays with hunger, thirst, scourges, and nakedness, and lastly that mercy which punishes with the sword.
This, Constantius, is your mercy, which comes not from the law of God, but from the presumption of the devil. 'Judgement and mercy and faith'—'these,' he says, 'you ought to have done, and not to have left the others undone.' Where is your faith? You who had condemned the faith which the most blessed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs held, and had decreed that the faith which the devil vomited forth against this catholic faith through your teacher Arius must be received by all worshippers of God. From which things you are understood to be one of those who are recognized as hearing: 'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have left the weightier matters of the law—judgement and mercy and faith.'
'These you ought to have done, and not to have left the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow down a camel.' Or will you deny that you strain out the gnat and gulp down the camel—you, a man who, though sometimes not only when asked but even giving alms unbidden of your own accord, nevertheless, as has often been said, proscribe Christians who confess themselves such, deport them, torture them, and lastly kill them? And for that reason you ought to perceive that you are among those to whom it is said: 'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful to men, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly indeed appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.'
You are of those slayers to whom it is said: 'Serpents, brood of vipers, how shall you flee from the judgement of Gehenna? Therefore behold, I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you will kill and crucify, and some you will persecute from city to city, that upon you may come all the blood of the righteous that has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. Amen I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.' You are proved by your deeds to be of that viper-kind. For you are found to be one of those to whom the things they would perpetrate were foretold. Or if you deny that you are one of those who hear from the mouth of the Lord:
'Serpents, brood of vipers'—prove that it was not you, but the Jews, who dispatched soldiery to Alexandria, that Jewish soldiery besieged the doors of the house of God, that the commander of the Jewish soldiers was Syrianus. Prove that it was Jews who entered the basilica with arms and killed a certain number. If you cannot prove it—since it is established that it was you who sent men to assault the religion of God—we most rightly say that you are one of those to whom it was said: 'Serpents, brood of vipers, how shall you flee the judgement of Gehenna?' Without doubt you will not flee the judgement of Gehenna, but you will forever be burning there with your fellow-serpents, unless you look ahead for yourself.
'Then,' he says, 'they will deliver you up to tribulation and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will be scandalized, and will betray one another, and will hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and will lead many astray. And because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold.' If your sacrilegious mind does not know that I suffer persecution from you for the sake of the only Son of God, you might not be of that kind, might not be of the opinion of those to whom it is said: 'Serpents, brood of vipers, how shall you flee from the judgement of Gehenna? Therefore behold, I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you will kill and crucify, and you will persecute from city to city.'
Since you are doing these very things today, you will not dare to deny that you are of the viper's offspring. For you have killed very many Christians in many places, and others you hold bound in prisons and in workhouses. From this too you will be able to see that you are one of those to whom it is said: 'Serpents, brood of vipers,' and below: 'Behold, I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you will kill'—inasmuch as you do not deign to execrate those whom you see to have withdrawn from the apostolic faith through your abounding iniquity, those whose love has grown cold, but rather those whom you see remaining in that state of faith in which, by abiding, the blessed prophets, apostles, and martyrs merited to attain the eternal friendships of God.
For at Alexandria you do not execrate Achetas and Dydimus from among the presbyters, who are known to have been made Arians out of Christians, but rather those whom you know still to stand with us. Or if it is not so, why do you now not execrate Dydimus and Achetas, whom formerly you used to execrate? Only because then they had been held execrable by you—because, of course, they were still Christians—but now they are most dear to you, because, evidently, they have begun to be, like you an apostate, blasphemers. But now, after so many proofs presented to you, we believe that you are one of those to whom it is said: 'Serpents, brood of vipers, how shall you flee from the judgement of Gehenna?'
You should take pains to be able to heal the wounds inflicted upon you by the devil, wounds so grievous, since you are both a murderer and a sacrilegious man; and if you are unwilling to be freed from these crimes, your blood will be required of you, while we before God shall be clear of your blood in the world to come, we who have laid bare the truth to you in every way. From you not only your own blood, but also the blood of those whom you either led to receive heresy or enticed to butcher the innocent, will be required. But if you should say:
'I thought that the faith of those whom you call Arians was catholic'—if you wavered in the matter of the faith, if you were ignorant that those who say they believe in a creature are heretics, these who say that God does not have a true Son: surely you were not ignorant even of this, that it is not just to persecute an innocent man with the sword? Surely it had not escaped you that the Lord said to blessed Peter: 'Return your sword into its place. For all who take the sword shall perish by the sword.' What, meanwhile, are you going to do, Constantius, you who have slain so great a multitude of the servants of Christ, the only Son of God?
For you see him whom you persecute in us saying that all who take the sword shall perish by the sword: what are you going to receive—you who, unless you obtain pardon for your misdeeds by believing in him whom you deny, deserve so often to be struck, and indeed by the sword of God, as often as you have struck those who are consecrated to his clemency? What man of God did you say must have laid upon him the necessity of striking down an absent man, of punishing one unheard, of shedding the blood of the innocent? Why were you unwilling that Athanasius, our fellow priest, should be heard by us? Why did you wish to slaughter God's man secretly after the manner of brigands? Only because you are of those against whose reproach these things were uttered:
'No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Therefore he who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe in him is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light;'
'for their works were evil. Everyone who does wickedly hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be reproved. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God.' If you knew yourself to be a servant of the only Son of God, you would assuredly never deny his majesty, never command his servants to be butchered now secretly, now publicly; but because you are a lover of darkness—indeed, darkness itself, since your works are evil—you were unwilling that the matter you had brought forward be examined most fully by the priests of God. Why were you unwilling? Only because you feared that your serpentine work should be made public. 'While we are in the body,' says the Apostle, 'we are pilgrims away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight.'
'We are confident, I say, and are well pleased rather to be pilgrims away from the body and to be present with the Lord; and so we strive, whether absent or present, to please him. For we must all be made manifest before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may bear away the things proper to the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil.' And you, Constantius the heretic, say: 'Condemn, O Christians, a Christian.' Why do you say this? Only because you have judged it best to shed the blood of the righteous, to forsake God even, and to receive idolatry. But again I beseech you, most pious emperor, know—since you are both a denier of the only Son of God and a persecutor of those who believe in him—whether you are not found equal to those whose wickedness is described in the Acts of the Apostles:
'When there was a great dissension among them, the tribune, fearing lest Paul should be torn to pieces by them, ordered the soldiery to go down and seize him away into the barracks. And on the following night the Lord, standing by him, said: Be steadfast; for as you have testified of me in Jerusalem, so must you also testify at Rome. And when day had come, certain of the Jews banded together and bound themselves with an oath, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul. Now there were about forty who had made this conspiracy, who also went to the chief priests and declared, saying: We have vowed with a vow to taste nothing at all until we kill Paul;'
'now therefore, you and the council, give notice to the tribune to bring him down to you, as though you would inquire more diligently concerning him; but we, before he draws near, are ready to kill him.' If you did not seek out God's priest Athanasius by this same kind of way, if you did not feign to be doing one thing while you had arranged to accomplish another, can you deny that you too are driven by the same hostile spirit by which the Jews were and are driven? For unless you had been stirred up by that spirit against us who serve God, you would without doubt never have commanded that an absent—and indeed an innocent—man be condemned.
But I repeat these things thus often, as if even you yourself, whenever you have leisure for a while from the goads of your frenzy, might not consider that you have in every way so strayed from the rule of justice, that you could not even see in the Acts of the Apostles that, when the Jews demanded Paul to be put to death, Festus—the blessed gentile governor—by no means lent his assent to the assembly of the Jews, but promised that he would hear both them and Paul, set together in one place. The gentile preserved the right of equity; but you have destroyed it. Or is it equity to condemn one unheard, to kill one absent, and to deny a hearing to a righteous man—to that man for whom all the people of God are a witness, since indeed he was falsely accused by you and yours, a Christian by you Arians?
Therefore, as I had begun to say, hear what was done by Festus between the Jews and blessed Paul: 'Now Festus, when he had come as governor into the province, went up to Jerusalem'—the Jews laying snares to kill him on the way. 'Festus therefore answered that Paul indeed was kept at Caesarea, but that he himself would set out shortly. Let those therefore among you who are able go down, and, if there is any crime in the man, let them accuse him. So, having tarried among them not more than eight or ten days, he went down to Caesarea, and on the next day sat on the judgement seat and ordered Paul to be summoned;'
'and when he had been brought, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and grievous charges which they could not prove, while Paul rendered his defence, that he had done no wrong against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar.' A heathen kept the way of equity between blessed Paul and your fellow-murderers, the Jews; and you, wishing to obey the desires of your evil designs, had judged that equity and justice must be removed from our minds. But how could we do this thing which you were forcing to be done contrary to justice, we who remembered that it is written: 'Do not judge according to the person, but judge righteous judgement'?
At what time you commanded that one unheard be condemned, why did you not remember that Nicodemus said: 'Does our law judge a man unless it first hear from him and know what he has done?' Why were you unwilling that one whom you called guilty of death should be heard—unless because you had brought false charges? The Lord says to the Jews: 'He who speaks a lie speaks of his own, for he is a liar and so is his father.' And you, since you have shone forth as a liar, do you reckon that you are not the son of a liar, and do you, the son of a liar, dare to resist—you a deceiver against truthful men, a sacrilegious man against the priests of the Lord? Do you dare—you whom we perceive to be that robber and thief whom the Lord foreshowed, saying:
'Amen, amen I say to you, he who does not enter through the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.' You indeed stretched out your hands to lay claim to Christ's sheep for Antichrist; but, being recognized as a thief and a robber, you have been shunned and rejected. Why did the sheep of God not follow you or your fellow-sacrilegious Georgius? Why do they follow him whom you grieve most fiercely to be bishop of the Alexandrians? Only because God appointed him as their bishop, whereas the devil sent you and Georgius in to slaughter them like robbers and thieves. 'He who enters through the door,' he says, 'is the shepherd of the sheep; to him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out;'
'and when he has led out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice; another they do not follow, but flee from him, because they do not know his voice.' Since therefore you have not entered through the door into the Church, you are seen to be a robber and a thief; for you do not know the Son of God, that you might say you had entered through the door, seeing that he would call those men both thieves and robbers, because they too then were not believing in his divine clemency, nor would they thereafter believe, and otherwise they would have attempted to instruct his sheep. Therefore, since you scatter abroad from here your insane doctrine—because indeed you have not believed in him—you are most manifestly proved from your blasphemies to be that robber and thief who even then was foreshown.
That this is so, the sequel of the pronouncement proves: 'Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out and find pasture; the thief does not come except to steal.' O you therefore, a thief, who are found to have entered God's sheepfold for this very purpose—that you might, of course, steal and kill—by what voice will you still be able to say: Athanasius ought not to be bishop of the Alexandrians, but Georgius, when you see that you and Georgius, indeed all your fellow-sacrilegious ones, are nothing else but thieves and robbers?
God willed His own servants to be shepherds set over the flock, so that, recognizing you and yours to be robbers and thieves, they might drive you off. But you, for this very reason, have judged that you and yours should be set over the Lord's flock in place of those whom God ordained, so that you might freely ravage the flock of God. Since you are such a man, we shall not be able to wonder that you have said the absent worshipper of God must be punished. For you could not have retained in mind that the Lord has said: 'If you love me, keep my commandments.'
'And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, that the Spirit of truth may be with us for ever, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He abides with you and is in you.' But tell me, I pray you, how could the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, dwell in us, if we had done your will or that of your father? And further He says: 'He who hears my precepts and keeps them, he it is who hears me. And he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will show him myself.' Judas, not the Iscariot, says to Him: 'Lord, what has happened, that you will manifest yourself to us and not to this world?' Jesus answered and said to him:
'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and abide with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words.' From these declarations of the Lord it can be gathered how great an enemy of ours you have shown yourself to be: 'He who hears my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.' How could we have shown that we loved Him, if at your bidding we trampled His commandments? For you indeed trample the Lord's commandments, since what He has ordained to be kept, you not only command not to be kept, but even bid Himself to be denied. Or how could His Father love me, because I had kept the commandments of His Son, if I condemned an innocent man? The Son of God says: 'If anyone loves me,'
'he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and abide with him'; and you, fuel of the fire, apostate, say: 'Condemn the innocent!' In what manner could we have been found to love the Son of God, if against His commandments we had slain an innocent man? How could it come to pass that the Father should love us, and that Father and Son should come and deign to abide in us, if, tearing up the Lord's commandments, we kept your sacrilegious precepts?
Consider, Constantius, from what glory that devil, the envious lover of your will, attempted through you, his client, to drive us, had not the Lord's mercy come to our aid; so that, regarding you as no longer a man, whom God made after His own image and likeness, but as the filth of every sewer, we might trample your sacrilegious commands. For who would not wish, unless he were more wretched than you Arians, to be loved by the only Son of God? Who is there who would not wish to be loved by His Father? Who would refuse to be the temple of the Father and of His only Son? Which by no means can he attain who, like you, has been both a murderer and a sacrilegious man; yet you too can indeed attain it, if, being converted, you truly repent. The Lord says further:
'This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no one has, than that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. Now I no longer call you servants, but friends.' And again: 'You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide; that whatever you ask my Father in my name He may give you.' How shall we be able to be friends of the only Son of God, if, against the prohibition of His mercy, we have condemned an absent man and killed an innocent one? How will our fruit be able to produce increase of growth?