he also sends the book of the sacred law delivered through the glorious Moses, that they should do nothing beyond what God had commanded to be done. You, on the contrary, are found not only to have assailed the law of the Lord, which commanded that the innocent and the just should not be slain, but even to have forsaken God Himself, since you do not hold the apostolic faith, but the perfidy of Arius. He turned an erring people from idols to God; you have tried to make a people dedicated to God into an apostate — which is what you are, that is, a sacrilegious man. You have persecuted and still persecute Athanasius, thirsting for his blood. But see what the Holy Spirit says in the ninth psalm, in which you seem to me to be specially described: 'He said in his heart: I shall not be moved from generation to generation, without evil.'
'His mouth is full of cursing and bitterness and deceit; under his tongue are toil and pain. He sits in ambush with the rich in secret places, that he may slay the innocent. His eyes are set upon the poor man. He lies in wait in secret like a lion in his den. He lies in wait to seize the poor, to seize the poor while he draws him into his snare. In his net he has humbled him; he has bowed himself down and shall fall, while he lords it over the poor. He said in his heart: God has forgotten, He has turned away His face, that He may not see unto the end.' Now if you persist in this wickedness, will it not be fit to be said of you: 'He has turned away His face, that He may not see unto the end'?
So great are your deadly deeds, Constantius, that when it is said in the tenth psalm, in the person of our people: 'In the Lord I trust; how will you say to my soul: Migrate to the mountain like a sparrow? For behold, the sinners have bent the bow, they have prepared their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart' — you seem to me to be described, together with the sharers of your crimes. For we recognize that you Arians are the antichrists of our time. Or if you are not one who deserves to be numbered among the antichrists, consider — you, denier of the only Son of God. The Holy Spirit says through the prophet: 'The Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord's seat is in heaven.'
'His eyes look upon the poor man, and His eyelids question the sons of men. The Lord questions the just and the wicked, but he who loves iniquity hates his own soul.' And you have decreed that man to be punished whom you yourself did not know to be guilty, except only in this, that he resisted your blasphemy, and thereby became before you guilty of death. Hear the Spirit of God say: 'But he who loves iniquity hates his own soul' — and you compel men to love iniquity rather than justice. If it is not unjust to condemn the unheard, then, when you heretics are the accusers, prove the Catholic guilty. For as long as I still find written:
'Upon the sinners He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone and the spirit of storms shall be the portion of their cup; for the Lord is just and has loved justice, His countenance has beheld equity' — I recognize that you and all who act with you in this matter are of that number. Fire and brimstone and the spirit of storms shall assuredly come upon you, unless you are converted to God, since the portion of your cup is that of deniers of the only Son of God, persecutors of those dedicated to His divine majesty; you who, though you know that the just God loves justice and cherishes equity, have nevertheless resolved to condemn the innocent and to persecute the most faithful priest of the Lord.
'Love the Lord,' says the Holy Spirit in the thirtieth psalm, 'all you His saints, for the Lord requires truth, and He will abundantly repay those who act with pride.' And you had urged us to slay the innocent, to possess pride together with you. For you could not deny that you are proud, since you have both laid deadly hands upon the worshippers of God and have tried to destroy the evangelical faith and to establish the heretical one. Had you not read in the thirty-second psalm: 'The Lord loves mercy and judgment, and the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,' before you ordered the absent to be condemned? Recognize by these your works how thoughtless you are and how great an enemy of your own salvation, you who, though you remember what is written:
'What man is he that desires life, and loves to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips speak no deceit; turn away from evil and do good' — yet you take no rest from doing these things which God has forbidden you to do. This is to be unwilling to see good days, this is to be unwilling to have life, this is to ask that death be granted to oneself. Since therefore you are such a one, who runs to drink in eternal death, you seem to me to have been foreshown even in the thirty-fifth psalm: 'The unjust man said within himself that he would sin, there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he has acted deceitfully in His sight, so that his iniquity may be found and his hatred. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit; he would not understand, that he might do well.'
'He has plotted iniquity upon his bed, he takes his stand on every way that is not good, but he has not hated malice.' Consider what sort of man you are, most just emperor — you on whose account even those things too may be felt to have been spoken which were said against Judas Iscariot and the people of the Jews. How could we, Constantius, condemn the innocent at the bidding of your pride? Since we knew what is written in David: 'Show your mercy to those who know you, and your justice to those who are upright in heart. Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me. There have fallen all who work iniquity, they are driven out and cannot stand.' What do you say?
Is such the mercy and justice of God, that the absent and unheard should be condemned — and indeed the innocent, whom it is not lawful to punish even when present? But what wonder is it if you commanded these things to be done, a man not knowing God? What wonder, if, ignorant of His mercy and justice, you commanded perverse, iniquitous, unjust things to be done? Could not the word of the psalmist restrain you from so great a crime, when he says: 'There have fallen all who work iniquity, they are driven out and could not stand'? Nor that word in the thirty-sixth psalm: 'Cease from anger and forsake wrath; be not envious so as to do evil, for those who do evil shall be utterly destroyed'?
Reading these things, therefore, since you have judged the ordinances of the Lord to be reckoned as nothing, on that account I judge you to be that man of whom it is said: 'The sinner shall watch the just man and gnash his teeth over him; but the Lord shall laugh at him, for He foresees that his day shall come.' Among those we count you of whom I perceive it said: 'The sinners have drawn the sword, they have bent their bow, to cast down the needy and the poor and to slay the upright in heart. Let their sword enter into their own hearts, and let their bow be broken. Better is the little that the just man has than the great riches of sinners, for the arms of sinners shall be broken.' You are set among these enemies of the Lord, whom the Spirit of God describes yet further below:
'The enemies of the Lord, as soon as they are honoured and exalted, failing shall fail like smoke.' Consider at length yourself, with all your loftiness — unless you correct yourself — as smoke about to pass away, being indeed an enemy of God. I see it yet further written of you, that unless you turn and repent, you shall come to nothing: 'I saw the ungodly highly exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon. And I passed by, and behold, he was not. And I sought him, and his place was not found.' You are, I say, that man, Constantius, of whom I also see these things spoken: 'The sinner watches the just man and seeks to put him to death; but the Lord will not forsake him into his hands.' The prophet, full of the Holy Spirit, says:
'Do not be envious among the malicious, nor be jealous of those who work iniquity, for like grass they shall quickly wither and like the green herbs shall soon fall.' But it is said by you, Constantius, destroyer of God's religion: 'Whom do you imitate?' — for who would imitate you, save one who wishes to wither with you like the green herbs? Who, save one who wishes to be blotted out by the indignation of God, if indeed it is truly said: 'Speak justice, judge justly, O sons of men,' while you rise up for the murder of the innocent? It cannot, therefore, be doubted that you are of those to whom the Holy Spirit says: 'For in your heart you work iniquities, on the earth your hands frame injustice. The sinners are estranged from the womb, they have gone astray from the belly, they have spoken false things.'
'Their fury is after the likeness of a serpent, like the deaf asp that stops up its ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers, though the charmer be skillfully charming. God shall crush their teeth in their mouth, the Lord shall break the jaw-teeth of the lions. They shall come to nothing, they shall flow away like water; He has bent His bow until they be weakened. Like wax that is melted they shall be taken away; fire has fallen upon them, they have not seen the sun.' You hear that you, with your followers, shall come to nothing, as those have already come to nothing whose imitator you have chosen to be. You behold yourselves, persecutors of the servants of God, deniers of the only Son of God, compared to serpents and asps; and do you not at length fear to transfer yourself to the house of God?
Do you not, you who are shown to be one guilty as those asps, so shape yourself for treading down the head of the devil, that you may be made worthy to reign among those whose glory John recounts: 'He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but as many as received Him, He gave them power to become the sons of God, to those who believe in His name'? Had you not read what is written in the fifty-eighth psalm: 'God of Israel, attend to visit all the nations, have no mercy on all who work iniquity,' before you ordered sentence to be passed upon the absent? Nor had you recognized the Holy Spirit alike admonishing and rebuking in the sixty-first psalm through these words: 'How long do you rush upon a man? Do you slay him all together?' 'The fear of the Lord,' says Solomon, 'is the beginning of understanding;'
'but the ungodly despise wisdom and discipline.' Hence you despise discipline and wisdom, because you are without the fear of God; hence you are described in the sacred writings as ungodly — ungodly indeed, because you have not only deserted God yourself, but also so bitterly persecute those who worship Him. Woe to you, because you are found to be with those of whom I read in the Proverbs: 'My son, let not ungodly men seduce you, neither consent, if they entreat you, saying: Come, share with us in blood, let us unjustly hide the just man in the earth, let us swallow him up alive like the grave.' What had delighted you, Constantius, imitator of the Arians and the Jews, that hearing these their ungodly voices you followed them in shedding the blood of God's servants?
Why did you not hear the counsels of Solomon, who says to you: 'Do not go in the ways with them, do not turn aside your foot into their paths. For not in vain are nets spread for the birds. For they themselves who are partakers in murder treasure up evils for themselves; these are the ways of all who accomplish iniquities, for by their own impiety they take away their own soul'; and again: 'As long as the innocent hold fast justice, they shall not blush; but the foolish, while they are greedy of insolence, having become ungodly, hate understanding, and are made subject to reproaches.' You have sought these reproaches for yourself, Constantius, you have condemned yourself, who, despising the commandments of God, have judged it right to cleave to the accursed disciples of the Jews, the Arians, with whom you fittingly still hear these words:
'For because I called, and you would not obey, and I stretched out my words, and you did not attend, but you made void my counsels and did not heed my rebukes — therefore I also will laugh at your destruction; I will rejoice against you when sudden tumult comes upon you, and destruction like a storm, when ruin comes upon you. For it shall be, when you call upon me, that I will not hear; the wicked shall seek me and shall not find me. For they hated wisdom, and did not take up the word of the Lord, neither would they attend to my counsels; for they despised my rebukes. Therefore they shall eat the fruits of their own ways, and shall be filled with their own impiety; for because they deceived the little ones, they shall be slain.'
Assuredly we would have deserved to be slain together with you, and indeed by God, if together with you we had persecuted the man of God. But how could we have done that? We who knew that it is written: 'Devise not evil against your friend, against the stranger and one who trusts in you. Exercise not enmities against a man without cause, lest he work some evil against you.' Or would it not have been without cause, if — just as the insane fury of your fellow-heretics had commanded through you — we had passed sentence of death upon the innocent? Woe to you, because I see it said of you, our persecutor: 'An insolent eye, a wicked tongue, hands that shed the blood of the just, and a heart that frames evil thoughts, and feet that hasten to do evil.' You have read: 'My son, honour the Lord, and you shall be strong;'
Fear no other besides Him; and yet you have willed that you yourself be feared, but God be despised. For whence indeed could we be found fearing God alone, if, succumbing to your threats, we should condemn a man absent and unheard—and indeed one whom we knew to be just? Solomon says: 'A deceitful balance is an abomination before the Lord, but a just weight is acceptable to Him.' You, on the contrary, do not hesitate to command: condemn a man by an unjust judgment—thinking that right which is perverse. Solomon speaks still further of you and of those like you: 'The ways of the foolish are right in their own eyes, but the wise man hearkens to counsel.' Condemn Athanasius, you say; and indeed where you could not prevail by the cleverness of your detestable subtlety, you began to prevail by the forces of your empire. Therefore receive what is written of you:
'The wicked man acts wickedly with insolence'; and again, you have thus already strangled yourself with a noose by clinging to the Arians, just as Judas Iscariot did with the Jews: 'The law is a fountain of life to the wise, but the fool shall die by the snare.' Still further it is said of you: 'A bold king shall fall into evils.' Truly you have fallen into these evils, because you have left yourself nothing of wisdom by denying the only Son of God, but have turned yourself wholly to folly—the very thing that has made you slay those dear to God. It is written: 'The wise man, by fearing, shall turn away from evil, but the fool mingles himself with the unjust, being over-confident.' Had you not read what is written: 'He who does insult to a poor man provokes Him who made him,' that you should drag us to kill the innocent along with you?
For if God is angered at one who does insult, how much more at him who kills His priest! Did you not retain the writing: 'The beginning of a good way is to do just things; and these are accepted with the Lord more than to sacrifice victims'—that you should force us to do unjust things? And in another place: 'He who calls the just unjust, and the unjust as just, is abominable before God.' Without doubt we would be abominable, if we should pronounce you just and judge Athanasius, a man acceptable to God, unjust. 'To admire the person of the impious is not good,' he says, 'nor to turn aside the just in judgment.' You say the contrary, you who seem to be described in the person of the impious: condemn the innocent, imitating my person;
And although you have forced us to do these things which could make God angry at us, yet we exhort you, the enemy of our salvation, to become pious out of impious, whole out of sick, alive out of dead, religious out of sacrilegious. 'Go to,' you say, 'shall I be able to attain these things? By what means?' Cease to persecute the house of God; cease to proscribe, deport, and kill His servants; confess yourself a Christian; execrate with us the band of the Arians, sought out by the device of the devil; believe as we believe, we who are bishops from the succession of the blessed apostles; confess the only Son of God, as they confessed and we confess—and you shall obtain pardon for such great crimes. For you have read in Solomon:
'Death and life are in the hands of the tongue,' and in blessed Paul: 'With the heart one believes unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.' You remember the writing: 'A false witness shall not go unpunished, and he who accuses unjustly shall not escape'; and yet you dared to disavow Athanasius. For we had no cause with the colleagues of your sect, the Arians, since the power of God had long since forestalled those same men together with Arius at Nicaea—at the time when the faith was set down not only against your blasphemy but against all heresies. We had, I say, no question with those pseudo-bishops, enemies of God, your masters, that we should again contend against the same men whom God had once driven from His people.
And so now we have a reckoning with you, because you have set yourself up as the author of it. For as to the charge that Athanasius was guilty—whom, since we were unwilling to punish him unheard—you, a man who knew yourself to be a false witness, like a monstrous wild beast and brute, began to wish to punish us together with Athanasius, as though by your gnashings you could overcome the vigor of the servants of God. For although Solomon says: 'The threats of a king are like the groanings of a lion,' yet your lion-like groanings shall have no power against us. Why? Because you are the forerunner of Antichrist, and we are the soldiers of Christ. Why? Because you, the persecutor of His religion, are not strong enough to conquer the men of God. Again in another place he says: 'There is no difference between the threats of a king and the wrath of a lion.'
What is this to the servants of God, who have determined that none besides God is to be feared, who remember that our souls are placed in the hand of God? Your fellow-Arians can fear your roarings, because they are without knowledge of God, because they are by no means clothed with the armor of God. But we, the rest, the household of God, laugh at your roarings that are like a lion's. Why? Because, recognizing you as a wild beast whose roaring you are described as having, we rather laugh at you—perceiving a raging beast set under the figure of a man—than that we must fear you. But if you are not a beast lurking under the image of a man, say so. You have read in Solomon: 'Mercy and truth are the safeguard of the king, and the just surround his throne.'
Since a band of malignant Arians has hedged you about on the contrary, and we perceive you to be a punisher of mercy and an execrator of truth, what else shall we judge you to be but a wild beast and a brute? You are roused against us like a roaring lion because we love mercy and truth, because we would not punish the innocent and the just; and do you think you are not a monstrous beast and a most savage brute? But what purpose led you to perpetrate these things I am utterly unable to see—that you should persecute with such destruction a catholic bishop of complete justice, a priest of the Lord. Had you not remembered the writing: 'To do justice and to be truthful pleases God more than the blood of victims'?
Athanasius displeases you because he keeps the tradition of the blessed apostles, because he confesses himself a Christian, because he refuses to be a fellow-apostate of yours. No wonder, since we hold the writing: 'But the holy man is unclean to the wicked.' To you malignant ones, he who pleases God is displeasing—to you especially, being rash and proud; you who are understood to be rash and proud from this, that you have stretched out your hand against God's ordinance, that you have thought the apostolic tradition should be destroyed, that you have deemed that bishops, under whose care it behooved you to conduct yourself, should be reduced under your dominion. Understand therefore what you are, hearing through Solomon what name is yours, you proud one: 'The rash and proud man shall be called a pestilence.'
Although you are a pestilent man, yet you shall not be able to afflict us with your disease, because the divine clemency furnishes us protection. You attempted, moreover, pestilent one, to make us your fellow-plague-bearers; but He to whom we live consecrated did not permit your temptations to reach upright hearts; for the writing suggests: 'Deliver those who are led to death, and do not refrain from redeeming those who are being slain. But if you say, I know not this man, know that the Lord knows the hearts of all; and He who formed the spirit for them all knows all things—He who renders to each according to his works.' While to these things you say: condemn the worshiper of God, forsake the apostolic faith, take up my perfidy—you plainly reveal yourself to be a pestilent man.
God wills that we come to the aid of those set in oppressions and straits; and you urge us to do evil to those to whom we ought to do good, indeed applying those things by which you are supposed to be able to make yourself feared. Consider now whether that disease called plague is not in you. It is a disease powerful to this end: that you can make morbid not only bodies but even souls—namely, of those who wish to hear you saying: condemn the bishop of the Lord, repudiate the faith which the Church has always held, and take up mine which Arius handed down. 'To be ashamed of a person in judgment,' says holy Scripture, 'is not good; and he who says the impious man is just shall be cursed among the peoples and hateful to the nations.'
'For those who reprove shall hope for better things, and upon them shall come the choicest blessing.' And you thought that we could be ashamed of your person and condemn one whom you yourself also knew to be innocent, whom you held guilty in this alone: that he was unwilling to deny that he was a Christian. Meanwhile, because we reprove you as you hold the road of death, because we rebuke you, behold what reward is promised us: 'Open your mouth,' says the prophet, 'with the word of God, and judge all uprightly; open your mouth and judge just things.' And you say: condemn the innocent. I indeed hold fast, keeping to the sacred Scriptures:
'Be not proud before the king.' But if you had wished to remain within the bounds of your power, and I had stood forth proud against you, in truth I myself would have condemned myself as a transgressor of the law. But now, because we tell the truth to you, a murderer and a sacrilegious man, we shall by no means deserve to be punished as proud men, but shall rather be endowed with heavenly rewards, because we did not spare you in your error. It is written: 'A whip for the horse, and a goad for the ass, but a rod for the foolish nation.' You deniers of the only Son of God we rightly call foolish, whom we see engaged in such great sacrilege.
For when I see it written that 'as a dog which returns to its own vomit and becomes hateful, so is the fool turned by his own malice back to his own sin,' I judge it to be said specially of you. 'How so?' you say. Because by your letters you swore to the Alexandrians that henceforth you would do no evil to Athanasius, and now you seek to kill him. But you say: my father had sent him into exile, and it behooved me to obey my father's decrees. Grant, as you wish, that Athanasius is a heretic; if he had been rightly sent into exile, why did you allow him to receive back—contrary to your father's decrees—the dignity of which your father had judged that he had stripped him? But you say: it was done by the intervention of my brother Constans.
But you could have met Constans, saying: our father, whom he proved a heretic, unless he correct himself, I cannot receive into the regions of my kingdom. But you say: I feared lest wars should arise between us. Therefore, because Saporinus, king of the Persians, now wages battle against you—if he should say to you: take up my religions, and I will be at peace with you—does it behoove you, together with all who dwell in your empire, to make a transition to the religions of demons? For Saporinus is one who sacrifices to demons.
You perceive, therefore, that you did not act as befits receiving a servant of God and recalling to his place one whom you remembered had been deported in the cause of the faith—first, because you judged God powerless, as though He could not protect you who protect the truth and resist the heretics; then, because you wished Constans to be more propitious to you than God. And this King Constans—if you remembered he had become a heretic by favoring Athanasius, whom you already held proven sacrilegious—you ought not only not to have preferred your kingdom to God, but not even your own soul.
For you yourself are a witness to your own conscience, that it was on account of the faith which the Church always held and holds—because he was unwilling to condemn it—that he was sent into exile; namely, because he was unwilling to be an Arian. For this reason indeed it did not escape you that Athanasius was held hateful by your father, since you too deem it fitting to persecute him in that same cause in which your father also was a persecutor. Let him but say that he is not a Christian, let him confess himself an Arian, and he will be with you most wise and great. Fittingly, then, you are compared to a dog which returns to its own vomit; for you were already reckoned a Christian and no Arian, from the time when you presented Athanasius with such letters divinely entrusted to him.
But now, when you are proven an Arian and, desiring your heresy to find a place, you persecute a just man because he opposes that very heresy with all his might, you are rightly compared to a dog returning to its own vomit. Likewise also in that notable deed of yours you are rightly to be compared to a dog which returns to its own vomit: for you received word that Eudoxius of the Germanicians was not truly catholic, and issued letters against that same man to the Antiochenes, and afterward began to defend this same Eudoxius as a teacher of truth, vindicating his heresy as the catholic faith. Why, Constantius, so fickle? Wherefore, in the cause of the faith, are you bent hither and thither like a reed shaken by buffeting winds?
What wonder if you were so ready to condemn Athanasius and even to invite all the priests of God to do likewise, since even in the sphere of religion you did not hesitate to do such great things through your rashness? You boiled over to shed innocent blood, O most pious king, as though you did not remember the writing: 'Of the king who judges the poor in truth, his throne shall rise up in testimony.' But you thought yourself supreme from this: if you went against the divine Scriptures, if you did all the things they forbid. You hate Athanasius because he is a Christian; because he was unwilling to be, as you say, a disciple of Arius, you persecute him with the utmost hatred. But that you would be such toward him, the Holy Spirit had long since shown through the mouth of Solomon, saying: 'The just man is an abomination to the wicked man.'