How shall we receive from the Father whatever we ask in His name, if, as you were compelling us, we not only punished His worshipper, but also denied Himself? Had you not read that the blessed Apostle wrote to Titus, a man dedicated to God, concerning the blameless office of a bishop, what is worthy to be offered to God, that you should desire us to be made murderers? 'For this cause I left you in Crete, that you should set right the things that were lacking, and appoint presbyters in the cities, as I directed you: if any is without crime, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riotous living, or unruly;'
'For a bishop must be without crime, as a steward of God, not stubborn, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, no striker, not greedy for base gain; but hospitable, kindly, sober, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound teaching and to refute those who contradict. For there are many, even the unruly, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whom it is necessary to rebuke, who overthrow whole households, teaching things they ought not, for the sake of base gain.' Since therefore he willed such a bishop to be made, who should live holding to this way of righteousness, by what authority did you deign to give new precepts to shut out the commandments of the blessed Apostle?
Namely such precepts as are known to have arisen from the will of the devil. The Apostle wills that I be made not quick-tempered, no striker; and you will that I be made a murderer. From these things it can be gathered that the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of the blessed Apostle, but the wicked spirit spoke through the mouth of you Arians. Consider meanwhile that the Apostle commanded that you who resist the truth should be rebuked by the intervention of the bishop, so that through sound doctrine your blasphemy might be punished. It was not for this that I brought forward the saying of the blessed Apostle, that a bishop must be without crime, that I might deny myself to be a sinner, since I both know my own conscience and hear that righteous Job say: 'Who indeed is clean from filth?'
'No one, even if his life on earth be but of a single day.' I mark too that blessed John says: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.' Not therefore did I bring forward the Apostle's precept, so that I, mindful that I am a sinner, might proclaim myself to be without filth, but that you might be able to perceive how great an evil it is that you commanded to be done. 'The young men likewise,' he says, 'exhort to be sober-minded in all things, in all things showing yourself a pattern of good works, in doctrine, in integrity, in gravity, in speech sound and beyond reproach, that the adversary may be put to shame, having nothing to say evil of us.'
How could I have shown myself a pattern of good works to others, if I had shed the blood of a servant of God? How could the peoples of God recognize me as preaching the sound doctrine which the apostles handed down, if I had taken up your heresy; if, in short, I communicated even in hypocrisy with your satellites, the false Arian bishops? How could my speech be brought forth sound and beyond reproach, if, forsaking the evangelical and apostolic faith, I had taken up your blasphemy? How could the adversary be put to shame? How could he have nothing evil to say of me, when, if I had judged that I should yield to you, he would have found me made both a murderer and a sacrilegious man?
Again, when he admonished that servants ought to be subject to their masters, he says: 'For the grace of God our Saviour has shone forth to all men, correcting us, that, denying impiety and worldly desires, we may live soberly and piously and justly in this present world, awaiting the blessed hope in the coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and cleanse for Himself an abundant people, zealous of good works.' Since He has commanded us to walk in these good works, what did it seem good to you, that you should lean toward committing murder? For how could we have been seen, denying impiety and living piously and justly, if with you we had shed the blood of an innocent man?
But also when he says that the Lord for this reason delivered Himself up for our sins, that He might snatch us from the works of Satan and establish us to this end, that we should be zealous of good works: if we had perpetrated that work of yours together with you, in what portion should we be, save that in which Cain is? 'For the grace of God our Saviour,' he says, 'has shone forth to all men, correcting us, that, denying impiety and worldly desires, we may live soberly and justly and piously in this present world.' And you, Constantius, do you as emperor deign to say: Let us be impious, wicked, lost, malignant, unjust, unrighteous!
Where shall I find this blessed hope which the blessed Apostle teaches that I ought to await, if I not only slay the servants of Him who is able to bestow all blessedness, but also deny Him? For you do both, Constantius, since you both persecute and kill His servants, and, forsaking Him, have judged that you should hand yourself over to idols. Why do you do these things, unless because the grace of God our Saviour has not shone forth upon you? For if it had shone forth, you would have remembered the Apostle saying in his precepts: 'See therefore how carefully you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not become imprudent, but understanding what is the will of the Lord.'
If it is the will of the Lord to kill the innocent, to abandon the evangelical faith, then not only this passage, but the whole body of the epistles of the blessed Apostle will be able to afford patronage to your prescriptions; but if no part of the sacred Scriptures favours your prescriptions, it is clearer than light and manifest that you pass your life under the power of darkness; whence it has also come about that you have drawn nothing from the sacred fountains of the Scriptures which could have removed you from such great perils. For if the power of darkness had not brought you under its dominion, you would surely retain what the Philippians hear: 'Be imitators of me, brethren, and observe those who so walk, even as you have us for a pattern.'
'For many walk, of whom I have often told you, and now tell you even weeping, as enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.' I desire that you tell me, most prudent emperor, in what we ought to be made imitators of the Apostle; teach me, apostate: was the Apostle a murderer? was he a blasphemer? was he a destroyer of the evangelical faith? was he sacrilegious? For all these things he professes that he did before he had believed in the only Son of God.
But you who today do these things which he did before the knowledge of the only Son of God, for what reason did you dare to bid us, the priests of the Lord, that we should condemn an innocent man, that, taking up your heresy, we should spit out the apostolic faith? For what reason did you command these things to be done which are brought forth against the pattern of the Apostle, unless because you are of the enemies of the cross of Christ, of those who even then were designated by the mouth of the holy Apostle? Should we listen to you and yours, whose end the Apostle says is destruction?
Should we listen to those satellites of yours who, forsaking the pattern of discipline handed down and the rule of faith through the apostles, have handed themselves over to you for the sake of base gain; those who have made more of the abundance of your table than of what the Lord promises to His own; those who have chosen to be your table-companions rather than that of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, or martyrs, to whom it is most rightly said: 'Your god is the belly'? 'Examine all things,' says the Apostle, 'hold fast what is good, abstain from every kind of evil.' And because we have seen your accursed work, you Arians', and have avoided it, we labour under your hatred. But how beautiful, how sweet a thing it is to be hated by you, but loved by God!
You have driven us from the charge committed to us, judging that you could destroy what God has built. 'But to each one of us,' he says, writing to the Ephesians, 'grace is given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he says: Ascending on high, He led captivity captive, He gave gifts to men. But that He ascended, what is it save that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth? And He who descended is the same who also ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.'
'And He gave some indeed as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may be no longer little children, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, in cunning craftiness for the contrivance of error.'
'But making the truth in love, let us grow up in Him in all things, who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, framed together and knit together through every joint of supply, according to the measure of each single part, makes increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.' Since you read that these things are so, why did you dare to take away the shepherds whom God willed to be set over His own flock? Why? Unless that with you the shepherds might be carried about by every wind of doctrine over the Lord's flock. Was it lest they be led like little children by every wind of doctrine as they come to the faith? Was it lest, through the cunning of you most wicked men, they should recede from the apostolic and evangelical faith unto the remedies of the devil, your prince?
You have taken away bishops from the peoples over whom we preside by divine favour, for this very purpose, that you might teach not apostolic but heretical doctrine. Woe to you, wretch, through whom Satan works these things! You, a clever man, had found a colour suited to your deceit, by what means you could defend the sheep of God for your father, who, that you might linger in these evils, has already hurled at your heart those darts with which he wounded the minds of Eve and Adam, to this end namely, that he might establish you in this depravity of yours. You had found, I say, clever man, a colour suited to your deceit, by what means you could ravage the Lord's flock, saying: 'Athanasius has sinned, and therefore whoever slays him with me shall be a bishop; whoever judges he should be spared shall not be;'
and those who condemned Athanasius were joined to the false bishops of your Arian dogma. If any, fearing your wrath, had done this, they would incur through you a threefold charge of murder and sacrilege: whether because they condemned an innocent man, or because catholics communicated with heretics, or because they allowed you wolves to enter into the flock of God; whereas the Apostle says that shepherds were given for this reason, that all the doctrine of demons, which is brought forth through you heretics and all the adversaries of the Church, might be shut out, and that the servants of God, running in the truth, might remain unmoved up to this point, until they came to the highest perfection;
and you, darkness, deigned to take away the shepherds appointed by the judgment of God, so that you, a wolf, might turn all into prey for the devil, your beloved. 'That we may now,' he says, 'be no longer little children, tossed and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, in cunning craftiness for the contrivance of error. But making the truth in love, let us grow up in Him in all things, who is the head, Christ.' How could we grow up in Him, if we had followed you, darkness, since you deny Him to be true God, since you say that He was not born of the substance of the Father, but assert that He was made out of nothing? How could we grow up in Him, we who were not going to walk in the truth, from the moment we had followed you, an apostate? Then when he says:
'Making the truth, let us grow in love,' and since it is manifest that the priest of God, Athanasius, was assailed with false charges through you and yours, if we had done what you command, how could we have been seen running either in the truth or in love, we who would have extinguished the very love which we hold with our fellow-bishop Athanasius? And because we had tempered a false charge, we too, joined with you the deceiver in the slaying of an innocent man, would deserve together with you to be struck by divine indignation. Is it thus, then, Constantius, that the house of God is built up, by deceit, by the shedding of the blood of the innocent, by blasphemous preaching? Woe to you who are living for this, that the devil may work all these evils through you! You say to me:
'Punish the innocent, forsake the catholic faith and take up the poison of my heresy'; and the Apostle says: 'This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you walk no longer as also the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.' Which of you shall I obey? You or the Apostle? You, a sacrilegious apostate, or him who is found to have already shed his blood for the only Son of God? Which of you shall I follow? You, the temple of demons, or him, the temple of God? You, who by your works declare yourself to be either a Jew or a heathen, or him who has already attained, through this faith which you execrate, the heavenly kingdoms?
For if you do not manifest yourself by your works to be a Gentile, you will be able to defend yourself, that these things are not brought forth against you deservedly. First, because you deny the Son of God, you are to us a Gentile or a Jew; then, when you proscribe, banish, torture, load innocent men with false charges, and kill them, you cannot be found a Christian who by his way of life is recognized as a man of God, but rather one of those of whom the Spirit of God says through the Apostle, that they are in the vanity of their mind, senseless, alienated from the life of God through the blindness of their heart. Since therefore these things which you do are manifested by the voice of the Apostle to be done by those blinded in heart, with what face do you dare to say to those sound in heart and mind: 'You have erred'—you, the deceiver, to the truthful—'you are liars'?
The Apostle, as the truth is, says, in Jesus, 'putting off, according to your former manner of life, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of error. But be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who according to God is created in righteousness and holiness and truth. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak the truth every man to his neighbour.' Where have you passed over these salutary admonitions which the Apostle exhorts us to keep? For how could we be found to have put off the old man and to have put on the new man, who is according to God?
How could we have been seen abiding in righteousness and holiness and truth, we who, doing unjust things with you, had extinguished that new man who is created according to God, and had begun again to bear that old man who is corrupted according to the desire of error, as he was corrupted before he had begun to know God? For all these things which you do are done not by the household of God, but by the satellites of Antichrist: 'Putting away lying, speak the truth every man to his neighbour, for we are members one of another.' If you had been of the members of the Church of God, believe me that you would never have brought a lie to the Church;
but because you are the man of him who deceived Adam by deceit, and Eve, therefore you brought a lie, that you might circumvent us in the same way as the devil circumvented the first-formed men. You said: 'Condemn Athanasius, because he has gravely offended, otherwise you shall be in the greatest guilt before God. Take up the faith of Arius, and you shall live for ever.' Receive too what your most beloved one did concerning Adam and Eve, and you will find that you now do these things concerning us which he then did concerning them. 'And they were both,' says Moses in Genesis, 'naked then, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed; but the serpent was wiser than all the beasts that were,' and below: 'and the serpent said to the woman:'
'Why is it that the Lord God said, You shall not eat of every tree that is in paradise? And the woman said to the serpent: Of every tree that is in paradise we shall eat, but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of paradise, God said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.' We say to you, standing in the place of the serpent, persuading us to condemn a man unheard, to slay an innocent man: the Lord has commanded that the innocent and just man is not to be killed. 'And the serpent said to the woman: You shall not die. For God knew that on whatever day you eat of it, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' And so this serpent, speaking through you to us:
'You shall be the more righteous, if you shed righteous blood; you shall be the more blessed, if, anathematizing the apostolic and evangelical faith, you take up the Arian perfidy'—this is trampled, God being propitious to you, by us who already know his deceit in you. But God is witness that we grieve for you, because through you he has set himself to circumvent us; for it is agreed that then, through his own self, he assailed Adam and Eve. I beseech you, do not take grievously these things which are brought forth for the sake of your salvation. For I think you grieve that I have said the serpent assailed us through you, and that I have set you in many places among those who have been called serpents.
Consider your work and theirs, and if you do not recognize that you are one body, tell me that I do not say these things justly. You surely hear your masters in perfidy, the Jews, often called serpents by the Lord in the sacred Gospels: 'Serpents, offspring of vipers.' Whence did they deserve to be called by this name? Surely because of their wicked work, surely because of their unbelief. Hence too John the Baptist says to them: 'Offspring of vipers, who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance.'
As therefore, out of those who believed in the only Son of God, who corrected their ways, some deserved to be made sons of light, while others are called serpents, so also you, unless you bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, unless you correct your ways, shall be called a son of the viper and of the serpent. For what servant of God, seeing you to be a murderer and blasphemer, would not call you by that name by which the Jews are called? Who among those who fear God will doubt to declare you to be what you are, when he sees the scribes, Pharisees, and princes of the Jews called serpents for this reason, that they both shed the blood of the prophets and denied the only Son of God?
Since these things are so, it remains that you do penance for your deeds, considering that God has bestowed the mercy of His clemency upon all who withdraw from their evil ways, having the example of the Ninevites, whom if you shall have imitated, you must needs so obtain the help of mercy. Concerning whom, receive what things were done, and what they themselves did, terrified by the preaching of Jonah. 'Command was given,' says sacred Scripture, 'to the whale, and it cast Jonah out upon the land, and the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying: Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it according to the former preaching which I spoke to you. And Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to what the Lord spoke to him.'
'Now Nineveh was a great city, of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he preached and said: Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and clothed themselves in sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. And the word came even to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his seat and took off his robe from himself, and put sackcloth around himself, and sat upon ashes. And it was proclaimed by the king of Nineveh and by his magistrates, saying: Let neither men nor cattle nor oxen nor sheep taste anything, nor let them feed, nor drink water.'
'And men clothed themselves in sackcloth, and men and cattle cried earnestly to God, and they turned every one from his evil way and from the iniquity of their hands, saying: Who knows whether God will repent and turn away from the wrath of His fury, and we shall not perish? And God saw their work, that they turned every one from his evil way. And God repented of the malice which He had said He would do to them, and did it not. And Jonah was grieved with great grief, and was confounded, and prayed to God, saying: O Lord, are not these my words, when I was still in my own land?'
'Therefore I hastened beforehand to flee to Tarshish, because I knew that You are compassionate and kind, patient and merciful, and repenting of evils'; and below: 'And God said to Jonah: Are you greatly grieved over the gourd? I am grieved even unto death. And the Lord said: You have spared the gourd, over which you did not labour, nor did you nourish it, which was born in a night and perished in a night. But shall I not spare Nineveh, the great city, in which dwell more than a hundred and twenty thousand men who do not know their right hand from their left?'
And your malignant work, Constantius, if God shall have seen that you have cast it away, if He shall have perceived your ruined ways to be corrected and seen you to be reformed in all things, believe me that you shall begin to be in immense felicity among the servants of God. You have besides the example of the most blessed Apostle Paul, lest perchance you do these things through ignorance as he did; because, as soon as you turn yourself to confessing the only Son of God, pardon for your crimes will be granted to you as it was to him. Follow him, lay hold of his way, hear him speaking to the Philippians, both what he was before his knowledge, and how great a blessedness he deserved to attain after his knowledge.
'But if anyone thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; according to the law a Pharisee, according to zeal persecuting the Church, according to the righteousness which is in the law having lived without blame. But what things were gain to me, these I counted loss for Christ; yea doubtless...'
I count all things to be loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them but dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Jesus Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection which is from the dead. As has already been said, imitate this man, follow this man, so that, since [it is so].
And he had once been what you now are, that is, a persecutor of the Church, a denier of the only-begotten Son of God; may you be found to have been converted likewise unto the obtaining of the heavenly kingdoms, turned from faithlessness to the receiving of the catholic faith, and thus to have made your passage from death unto life. That he too had persecuted the Church through ignorance of God, hear yet again as Timothy [i.e., Paul writing to Timothy] discloses concerning himself: But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the unjust and disobed[ient].
[disobed]ient and ungodly and sinners and the wicked and profane, for slayers of fathers and slayers of mothers, for manslayers, for the unchaste, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, which is according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. And I give thanks to Him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who before was a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious; but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.
So you too, from a persecutor, from an injurious man and a blasphemer, can be made blessed and truly most dear to God, if like the blessed Paul you shall have believed Jesus Christ to be the true Son of God; if you confess that He has always reigned with the Father and shall reign, that is, without beginning and without end; if you do not resist the sacred Scriptures when they proclaim that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one eternity; if, in fine, you believe that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one Godhead;
believe me that you shall be in the choir of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs; otherwise it shall be laid to your charge, when you begin to see yourself tormented together with the devil and all his satellites, why you despised these so wholesome admonitions of ours.