'Her princes roar like lions, her judges are like the wolves of Arabia; they leave nothing over for the morning. Her prophets are windy men, men of scorn; her priests defile themselves and act impiously. But the Lord who is just is in the midst of her, and will do no injustice.' Since these things are so, and it is by no means lawful for us to pronounce an unjust judgment, it remains either that you make yourself to be one of His servants and learn to pronounce judgment, or, if you wish always to be among God's adversaries, then pronounce your unjust judgment alone, and cease to compel us to do what you perceive to be divinely forbidden.
Cease now to accuse Athanasius, or us, on the charge that we destroy the house of God, when you may find in Zechariah that you and your fellow-tyrants are described, namely that you were to be persecutors of God's heritage—you whom he says have usurped power beyond measure over you. For narrating your cruelty, the Lord says: 'I have been jealous for Jerusalem and for Sion with a great jealousy. And with great anger I am angry against the nations that set themselves above you, because I was angry but a little; but they set themselves for evil.' Do you dare, lover of darkness and execrator of light, to say: 'Condemn the innocent,' when God deigns to command us through Zechariah, saying:
'Judge just judgment, and show piety and mercy every man to his brother. And oppress not by your power the widow and the orphan and the stranger and the poor, and let none of you remember the malice of his brother in his heart.' Since these are the heavenly commandments, by whose authority did you say: 'Tear your fellow-servant to pieces'? If you should say that you have brought forth this authority from the commandments of God, you will not be able to prove it, since indeed there cannot be found in the sacred Scriptures any command of God that the innocent be condemned. Since therefore you have done those things which the law of God forbids, it is established that you have brought forth this authority from the will of him whose enmity harms God, the enemy of God; whence too you must needs be reckoned like those to whom it is said through the prophet:
'And they gave counsel that men should not observe it, and they turned their back in folly, and set their ears and their heart to be unpersuadable, that they might not obey; they made themselves stubborn, that they might not obey my law'; and below: 'They did not hearken; if they cry out, I also will not hear them, saith the Lord almighty. O souls, be at rest; these are the words that you shall do: Speak the truth every man to his neighbour, and judge peaceable and just judgment in your gates, and let none of you devise the malice of his neighbour in your hearts, and love not a false oath; for all these things I hate, saith the Lord almighty.' Why do you compel me to do those things which the Lord almighty declares that He hates?
But the Lord, instructing us concerning fasting, says: 'Love peace and truth.' How could we be lovers of peace and truth, if we were to punish an innocent man, weighed down by false charges through you and your men, as though he were guilty? Or what peace would there be, when by doing these things we might have been cast away even from the peace of the Lord? For the peace of the Lord who says: 'My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you'—it would not have been left by Him in us, when we had ourselves borne it unjustly elsewhere. Who does not know that when discipline departs, grace also departs? In Malachi God says: 'The son honoureth the father, and the servant his master. And if I am a father, where is my honour? saith the Lord almighty.'
What fear then and what honour should we have shown to God, had we done the things you commanded to be done? For those commands of yours strive to take away both the fear and the honour of God from those dedicated to His clemency. But below too, making manifest your work in particular, He says: 'You have provoked God by your words, and you have said: Wherein have we provoked him? In that you say: Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of God, and in such he taketh pleasure. And where is the God of justice?' The prophet says: 'Where is the God of justice?'—against those who say: 'He that doeth evil is good in the sight of God, and in them he taketh pleasure'; and you give commands that the blood of the righteous be shed, and still you say you are God's servant, though you are the very scatterer of His law.
Is it just to condemn an absent man—and indeed an innocent one—or unjust? If it is not just, why do you compel us to do that very thing by which we should deserve to be punished by God? Tobit says: 'All the days of your life, my son, keep God in mind, and do not will to sin or to transgress his commandments. Do righteousness all the days of your life, and walk not in the way of iniquity; for if you act in truth, there shall be regard for your works, and for all who do righteousness.' Tell me, Constantius: does he do righteousness who slays the innocent? Who sheds the blood of God's servants? If he does not do righteousness but rather iniquity, it remains that you see yourself to be a lover of iniquity and a fashioner of every unjust work.
For since the sacred law exhorts us to do righteousness at all times, and you compel us to do injustice, whom else would you have me hold you to be, save both a lover and a perpetrator of injustice? 'All the days of your life,' he says, 'keep God in mind'—whereas you have forsaken Him by clinging to the Arians. For we who hold the apostolic faith do not forsake Him. How do you not transgress His commandments, you who slay His servants dedicated to His name and majesty, when you are compelling them to forsake Him and to become your fellow-serpents and fellow-apostates? We labour under hatred with you, because we speak the truth to you, because we wish you to live with us for ever;
but you love those who have crossed over to you, those who, though at first they contradicted you, afterward preferred to serve your nefarious designs rather than to obey God's commandments. You rejoice because, enticing these same men by your cunning, you have led them to take up your heresy, so that you have them subject to you in all things—those men whom you had long since seen to count you as nothing, whom you perceived to trample by the truth upon the authority of your kingdom. But we do not wish you to be ignorant that this is no new deed, but that it has often been done thus by the perfidious and the inconsiderate, by those whom, foreknowing what was to come, He has foreshown through the most holy mouth of the prophet Malachi: 'You have made your counsels grievous against me, saith the Lord almighty, and you have said:
Wherein have we spoken against thee? Because you have said: Vain is everyone that serveth God. And what more, that we have kept his commandments and have walked entreating before the presence of the Lord almighty? And now we call strangers blessed, and all that do wickedly are built up, and they have resisted God and are saved.' These things they spoke who fear God, every man to his neighbour; 'and the Lord gave heed and hearkened, and wrote a book of remembrance before him for them that fear the Lord and dread his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord almighty, in the day when I make them my possession; and I will choose them, even as a man chooseth his son that serveth him well.'
'And being converted, you shall see the difference between the just and the unjust, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. For behold, the day of the Lord cometh, burning like an oven, and it shall consume them; and all the strangers and all that work wickedness shall be as stubble, and the day of the Lord that cometh shall set them ablaze, saith the Lord almighty, and there shall not be left of them root nor branch.' Hearing God say these things, since you deign still to abide in your evils, I judge that you rejoice even in this: that with the transgressors, with those who forsake God, you are about to receive those very things from Him. Woe to you, murderer and sacrilegious man, since, unless you do penance for your deeds, you shall be, as you now are, among those whom by the mouth of Isaiah He rebukes, saying:
'Woe, sinful nation, a people laden with sins, an evil seed, lawless children! You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the holy One of Israel.' You shall ever be one of those who, on account of the wickedness of their pursuits, are likened to the princes of Sodom and the peoples of Gomorrah, when it is said: 'Hear the word of the Lord, ye princes of Sodom; give ear to the law of God, ye people of Gomorrah.' With those shall you be, unless you correct yourself, of whom you have read it written: 'If you multiply prayers, I will not hear you; for your hands are full of blood.' Woe to you, Constantius, who have incurred so great an offence against God, that you could not see what you ought to have guarded against. For since He says by the mouth of Isaiah, to those slayers of the holy prophets and of all the righteous:
'Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evils from your enemies before my eyes; cease from your evils, learn to do good, seek judgment, relieve him that suffers wrong, judge for the fatherless and justify the widow'—was it, contrary to these, to command the worshippers of God to be slaughtered, God Himself to be forsaken, and idolatry to be taken up—was this to have heard God's admonitions and to have been corrected? For what reason then do you compel us to do this, save that you desire us to be destroyed together with you by the sword? 'And if you be willing,' says God, 'and hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the land. But if you will not, neither hearken to me, the sword shall devour you; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken these things.' To whom shall we incline—to God who says these things, or to you His enemy?
God tells the Jews to forsake their errors now, to cast away their evils from their hearts, to learn to do good, to pronounce just judgment. You say: 'Condemn unjustly.' For what reason do you urge me to do this, save that you wish me to be made a man of such a kind? Of what kind those men are, to whom God has said: 'But you'—says God—'why do you set fire to my vineyard, and why is the plunder of the poor in your houses? Why do you wrong my people and confound the face of the needy?' And you are doing these very things, carrying out all these things thus.
And because they do these things, He is indignant with those who do them, as though you knew that you cannot please Him unless you had both set fire to the Lord's vineyard and established the plunder of the poor within your house, and in many ways inflicted injuries upon the servants of God. Or will you attempt to say that you have done none of these things? Have you not set fire to the vineyard of the Lord, when you compelled it no longer to know the Lord of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the apostles, the God of the prophets and martyrs, but idolatry brought in through Arius and exalted through you? Is not this the plunder of the poor—these Christian servants of God in your house, concerning whom you have read it written:
'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'—since you know that you have proscribed those who resist your sacrilege? Will you dare to say: 'I have not done, nor do I do, wrong to the people of God'? And who ever did so great a wrong as you, who cease not from inflicting every kind of torment, nor from punishing in varied ways? We were unwilling to punish the innocent as though guilty, lest this sentence too should strike us, which is still prophesied through the mouth of Isaiah: 'Woe to those that write wickedness; for they that write wickedness write it turning aside the judgment of the poor and snatching away the judgment of the needy of my people, that the widow may be their plunder and the fatherless their prey. And what will they do in the day of visitation?'
'For tribulation shall come upon you from afar, and to whom will you flee?' We did not incline to your poisoned counsel, desiring to flee, in all our tribulations and anxieties, to Him to whom that lover of righteousness, Job, fled in all his trials; we did not obey your cruel command, because we wished to be found imitators of that servant of God, Job, who says: 'I delivered the poor from the hand of the mighty, and to the orphan who had no helper I was a helper. And the mouth of the widow ever blessed me. For I was clothed with righteousness and covered with judgment; and I was the eye of the blind and the father of the weak; and the jaws of the wicked I broke, and from their teeth I plucked away the prey'; and below:
'I was set as the balance of righteousness, and the Lord knows my simplicity, for never did my foot stray from the right way, nor did my eye behold it.' What is the right way, from which the glorious Job declares he never deviated? Surely this: the way that neither slays the innocent nor knows another god, since it knows none but the God of angels and archangels, whom you perceive that we cannot snatch out of your power. For when you say concerning the faith of the blessed Church: 'If the faith drawn up at Nicaea is catholic, let it snatch, out of my power, those who have believed in it,' you are surely saying that God has not strength to snatch us out of your hands, that He cannot stand against you;
you assert that the God of the apostolic Church does not have such great power as could shut out your force. For what else does the faith of the blessed Church confess but that it believes in God the unbegotten Father, and in His only Son, born of the unbegotten and true Father, and in the Holy Spirit the Paraclete? What else does the faith of the catholic Church confess but that the Trinity is perfect and the deity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one? What else does the faith of the blessed Church confess but that neither the Father took up humanity nor the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, but the only Son of God?
What else does the faith of the glorious Church affirm but that the only Son of God is immutable, unchangeable, inestimable, immeasurable, and eternal, even as He is whose Son He is, and as is He of whom He is the Son? The holy Church has believed that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one power and one and the same dominion. This faith, I say, you call heretical, and you set up yours as catholic—that faith which says that God has no true Son, which says that there was a time when He was not, which says that He was made out of nothing; assuredly with those very sentiments with which Rabshakeh, the general of the king of the Assyrians, reproached the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, saying: 'Let not Hezekiah deceive you, that your God should be able to deliver you out of the hands of the king of the Assyrians.'
So you too, general of Antichrist, say through your agents: 'Let not the words of your bishops deceive you, who contradict me, saying that the faith which they preach can deliver you.' For though you vary your speech, yet the matter is brought to this, that it may be established that you thus reproach us with God, namely that He is powerless to snatch us away, just as the king of the Assyrians reproached them: 'Thus saith the king of the Assyrians: If you wish to be blessed, come out rather to me, and you shall each eat the fruit of your vine and your fig tree, and you shall drink water from your own cisterns, until I come and take you into a land such as your own land is, a land of wheat and wine and bread and vineyards. Let not therefore Hezekiah deceive you, saying: God will deliver you'; and below:
'Who shall deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?' But because you have been shown to be such an one, contrary to God, God says through the mouth of Isaiah to Hezekiah: 'There is no cause that you should be afraid of those words which you have heard, wherewith the ambassadors of the Assyrians have reproached me. Behold, I send my spirit, and having heard a report he shall return into his own region, and he shall fall by the sword in his own land.' Those perils, Constantius, we now perceive standing about you—unless you take counsel for yourself—which stood about that one who said: 'Thus shall you say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: Let not your God deceive you, in whom you trust, saying: Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hands of the king of the Assyrians.' So are you in perils, O blasphemer, like him, and you do not see it;
we, the worshippers of God who stand against you, we see standing safe and defended, unharmed. Whence are we safe and defended, save because we hold the holy faith which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs held—this very faith which you have judged heretical? But that we may return once more to Athanasius, in whom you persecute this sacred faith, did you not fear, I pray you, the indignation of the Lord brought forth against those who attempted to reproach Job the most just—when you assailed the high priest of God with false charges? Do you not fear even now, lest God should say to you what He said to that king who spoke against most holy Job: 'You have sinned, both you and your friends; for you have spoken nothing true before me'?
Meanwhile, you Arians, superior as you think yourselves, will be able to be found before God against Athanasius in the very way that those men were found in their time who reproached Job. It is to your advantage, Constantius, that through Athanasius, the Lord's priest, you should be a suppliant to God for your crimes, and that through him you should direct your prayers, just as those men did through Job; that through Athanasius, or through his fellow bishops, you should take pains to obtain saving baptism. But in whatever manner you may choose to torment yourselves against Athanasius, you are found to be sons of that serpent, that apostate and deserting snake, being heretics as you are; whereas Athanasius is one of God's household, as Job was; he is of the sons of light, and holds fast that very way of righteousness which the servant of God, Job, held fast.
He himself is a possessor of the faith, and therefore Athanasius too is of the sons of Abraham. Athanasius confesses the Son of God just as Job confessed Him. And how is Job among the sons of Abraham, except that he believed in the very way that Abraham also was a believer? If you do not know that these things are so, run through the blessed apostle Paul, not only in his letter to the Romans but also to the Galatians, and you will find that what I am defending is true. Or will it perhaps be denied that Job is of the sons of Abraham, merely because the blessed apostle made no special mention of Job's name for its own sake? If it cannot be denied that Job is of the sons of Israel, then there can be no doubt that he became so great and such a man precisely because he believed in God, as the blessed Abraham was a believer.
For the apostle reveals that believers are justified not by works of the law but through faith; nor indeed would the victory of those temptations have been reckoned to him for righteousness, had he not so believed in God as Abraham believed. Or from where would he have overcome the devil, unless it was because he believed in God the unbegotten Father, and in His only-begotten Son, born of the unbegotten and true Father, and in the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete? Or if you suppose that men have not always believed as we believe today, then prove that the blessed apostles and martyrs could have overcome your fellow-executioners, and, having conquered your friend the devil, could have obtained the heavenly kingdoms, without believing in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, if these men conquered by believing—men who believed after the coming of the Lord, God's only Son—then believe also that those who conquered the devil before His coming believed in no other way than as we believe today. For neither would Daniel have overcome the lions, nor the three young men the fires, unless they had been believers, as the Church believes today. Hence, in fine, the apostle appeals to the faith of Abraham, proving by the authority of the sacred Scriptures that Abraham believed in the very way that Paul now was a believer, whereas earlier he had been a straying son of wrath, when together with the Jews he denied the only Son of God.
Since these things are so, I beseech you now to cease waging war against the house of God, and to receive the heavenly exhortations that can lead you to obtain everlasting salvation. Receive from Isaiah's mouth what God says to you: 'Hear me, you who have lost your heart, you who are far from righteousness.' But if your heart is still with you, if you are not far from righteousness, why do you say to us, the priests of God: 'Condemn the absent, punish the innocent'? For if you have not lost your heart and hold to the way of righteousness, why do you not keep what is written: 'Keep judgment, do righteousness. For my salvation is near to come, and my mercy to be revealed. Blessed is the man'
'—the man who does it, and the man who lays hold of it: not to profane my sabbaths, keeping his hands from doing injustices.' And again: 'There is no rejoicing for the wicked, says the Lord. Cry aloud with strength, spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their sins, and to the house of Jacob their iniquities. They seek me from day to day, and desire to know my ways, as a people that had done righteousness and had not forsaken the judgment of God. They ask of me now a just judgment, and desire to draw near to God.' What hope, wretched man, can you have—unless you perform penance for your evil deeds—when you hear God say: 'There is no rejoicing for the wicked'? Or will you deny that you are a wicked worshipper of God, when you do not deny that you are a shedder of blood?
Then, if against those who during the season of fasting struck their subordinates with blows and injured them with other kinds of wrongs, God uttered rebukes of this sort, what a rebuke would He have uttered against us, had we, contrary to the precepts of His divine Majesty, condemned an unheard, absent, and indeed innocent man? 'Not even if you bend your neck round like a hoop, and spread sackcloth and ashes beneath you—not even so will you call the fast acceptable.' We perceive from this threat how great God's wrath against us could be, if we were to condemn the innocent. For if, during the season of fasting, God is thus indignant at those who strike their subordinates with blows, how much more if we were to slaughter His worshippers!
If it is not lawful for me to strike my subordinates with blows during the season of fasting, will it be permitted at any time whatever to strike down my fellow-priest with the sword? 'Not such a fast have I chosen, says the Lord, but loose the bonds of the violent contracts; release the crushed into remission, and break asunder every unjust bond; break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy who are without shelter into your house. If you see the naked, cover him, and do not despise the members of your own household.' What hope, most prudent king, do you hold, when you have turned all these things into their contrary?
For how have you loosed every knot of iniquity, when—far from putting away your unbelief—you remain such against us as you first set yourself to be, and grow more and more in your malevolence toward destroying us; when in your blasphemy you have grown as an author of sacrilege, even by an edict asserting your blasphemy to be the catholic faith—after the manner, indeed, of harlots, who at first fornicate in secret, but afterward become so shameless, so stripped of the grace of chastity, that they are willing to prostitute themselves in the open? How have you dissolved every knot of iniquity, when you still so retain the fury conceived years ago against the blessed Athanasius that you wish his blood to be shed?
How have you released the crushed into rest, when you cease not to torment in various ways the servants of God? And how have you released the crushed into rest, when you see that the prisons, the mines, and the places of exile can now scarcely hold the number of Christians condemned by you? How, even if you break your bread to the hungry, will the Lord accept it, when you kill by starvation the servants dedicated to His eternity? How, if you bring the needy who are without shelter into your house, will God deign to look upon your work, when He sees the servants of His glory cast out from their private homes, made exiles for this cause—that they refused to embrace the idolatry you have established through Arius?
How, if you clothe the naked, will you be able to please God, when you have carried off the very servants' patrimonies and said: 'If you condemn the apostolic faith and embrace the Arian, you will recover all that is yours'? Truly, of all these sacred commandments of the Lord, only one are you found to fulfil: namely, that you do not despise the members of your own seed. Indeed you do not despise your fellow-vipers the Arians, born, of course, of your shameless father the devil; you love your brothers, because you see them nearer to you; you love them with a singular affection, you display to them all the glory of your kingdom, you keep them as allies and partners for blotting out God's inheritance within your realm;
you have made them rich, you have exalted them above all who are set in high place—that is, those who resolved to mingle themselves with your darkness. Therefore, since you are doing these things which God holds in hatred, how do you suppose that you can be heard by God, or that, if you give alms, it can be reckoned to your credit? When you hear Him say: 'Then shall your morning light rise, and your health shall soon arise, and righteousness shall go before you, and the majesty of God shall encompass you. Then shall you cry out, and God shall hear you; while you are yet speaking He shall say: Behold, I am present'—do you suppose you can obtain any of these things, seeing that no morning light has risen for you, but inextricable darkness has beset your mind, and the mists of your errors have overspread it?
What health has arisen for you, when you are set in every mortal wound, when you daily add increases to your wounds, when you are busy about utterly extinguishing your very self? For us, indeed, health comes from nowhere else than, in the first place, from having believed, as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed. How can righteousness go before you, when you remain wholly in unrighteousness, when you are the bilge of the Arian dogma, when you are a shedder of the blood of Christians? How will the majesty of God encompass you, when you are an assailant of that very majesty, which, forsaking it, you have resolved to take up the idolatry of the Arian dogma? How then will you cry out, and God hear you, while you are yet speaking, and He say to you:
'I am present'—when you are denying God the Father, denying His only-begotten Son, denying the Holy Spirit the Paraclete? How will He be able either to hear you, or to say to you: 'Behold, I am present,' when you overturn, as far as lies in you, His religion, when you have removed His catholic prelates and set up heretics? How will He hear you, whom you have thought fit to trample under foot in every way—unless you perform penance for your evil deeds, unless, forsaking your wicked ways, you lay hold of the righteous path of the holy Church? Then indeed you will be able to obtain these promises of God. For it is written concerning those who with their whole heart turn themselves to God: