How will you be able to be called wise, you who not only did not try to resist the descending rains, the flooding rivers, the blowing winds, lest they utterly ruin you — who are found to be the house — but who yourself turned into rains, rivers and winds for this purpose, that you, a diabolical whirlwind and tempest, might drag us together with you into the outer darkness? 'Now the works of the flesh,' says the apostle, 'are manifest, which are: adulteries, fornications, uncleanness, shamelessness, luxury, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, wraths, brawls, dissensions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkennesses, revellings, and the like — of which I foretell you, as I have foretold, that those who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.'
And does your mind, flourishing with wisdom, rage after the slaughter of an innocent man? The apostle cries out that murderers shall not possess the kingdom of heaven, and you, Constantius, most prudent emperor, say: Butcher the absent, slay the unheard, kill the innocent, and yours shall be the kingdom of God. Hence it is given to understand how wise you are, if indeed you are that man who built your house upon the rock. For you will not be able to deny that you said: I therefore desire to condemn Athanasius, because I long to please God. So indeed you desired us also to please God, in the very way that you yourself have pleased him — namely, from the time that you deemed fit to plan the killing of Athanasius in the conscience of all of us who are the Lord's priests.
Thus in the beginning did Cain please God, as soon as he plotted to slay his brother. Whence it appears, Constantius, what your root is, from what stock you have descended. Can you after this deny that you are in that company which the apostle recounts to the Romans: 'And as they did not approve of having God in their knowledge,
God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all iniquity, malice, shamelessness, covetousness, wickedness, full of envy, murders, contention, deceit, evil habits — whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, proud, self-pleasing, boastful, inventors of evils, disobedient to parents, foolish, disorderly, without natural affection, without mercy; who, though they knew the righteousness of God, did not understand that those who do such things are worthy of death — not only those who do them, but also those who consent to those who do them.' Behold, this excessive love toward us that suddenly arose in you — what would it have gained us, had we dared to fall in with you? We would have drunk down everlasting death.
Likewise he says below: 'Rendering to no one evil for evil, providing good things not only before God, but also before men. If it be possible, so far as in you lies, having peace with all men.' Thirsting to trample underfoot these saving admonitions, you urged us to punish an innocent man. For how would we have been found providing good things not only before God but also among men, if we had condemned an innocent man, we who would have given a pattern for the shedding of the blood of the just? How would I have been found desiring to have peace with all men, I who, stirred up by your false suggestion, would have extinguished the peace of my fellow priest as a heretic? Tell me, Constantius: did you bring a true charge against Athanasius to the Church of God, or a false one?
If you are sure that you brought a true charge, prove it to me, I who have already come to know you as the bearer of a false charge. Do you suppose that you have done no evil in the sight of God? What reasoning drove you to become a false witness? Why did you stand forth a lying emperor? Why did you not fear lest you be struck down after the example of Ananias and Sapphira? The Scripture in the Acts of the Apostles says that blessed Peter said to Ananias: 'Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, that you should withhold part of the price of the estate? Did it not, while it remained, remain yours, and when sold, was it not in your own power? What is it that you have conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God.' And Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and expired.
'And great fear came upon all who heard. And the young men arose, took him up, and going out they buried him. And there was an interval of about three hours, and his wife, not knowing what had been done, came in. And Peter said to her: Tell me whether you sold the estate for so much? And she said: For so much. What agreement was there between you to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who buried your husband are at the door, and they shall carry you out. And immediately she fell down before his feet and expired.' I believe you have read these things, and yet you did not fear to contrive a lie before the sight of the Lord. Why did you do this, unless because you are wise?
What do you think will happen to you, who are not only a liar but a murderer, not only a murderer but a heretic as well? Do you believe that such great crimes will pass unpunished for you? Do you believe you can escape eternal torments? To Ananias it is said: 'Why has Satan filled your heart, that you should lie to the Holy Spirit?' And you, emperor Constantius, will say: Because Satan did not fill the heart of you Arians, that you should lie to the Holy Spirit that abides in the Church of God? For you approached the Church, saying: Athanasius has sinned against God; and the Holy Spirit saw your lying souls, just as he saw both Ananias and Sapphira.
The Holy Spirit saw, I say, when you were fabricating these things, that you had devised such things against Athanasius for this reason: that you might be able to introduce your heresy into the Church, that you might be able to destroy the apostolic tradition. Ananias and Sapphira, because in selling their field they defrauded of the price, because they had dared to speak not truthfully before the apostle of God, deserved to be judged in such a manner.
You, who not only laid false charges against the servant of God, but also persecuted the whole house of God, who shed the blood of his worshippers, who sent his priests to the mines and into exile and ordained heretics in their places, who called the evangelical faith heretical and called your blasphemy catholic, who introduced idolatry into the Church, who forsook the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob and of all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and followed the idolatry of Arius — do you suppose that, if you persist in this blasphemy and cruelty, there will not be a most mighty vengeance in store for you? Then, if God deigned to give such vengeance upon the accusers of Susanna, do you think that a heavier one will not proceed against you?
It will proceed, believe me, unless you convert in time. For if those men, because they had attempted to violate the chastity of Susanna, deserved to meet with the things which I shall set forth below, how much more you, who have assailed the Church to violate her chastity? They sought Susanna by a false charge, and you likewise sought not only Athanasius, but also all who resisted you. Can you name even one of those who resisted, to whom a charge was not attached? Thus you were armed to violate the chastity of the Church, just as those men were armed against Susanna's — those who said: 'The doors of the orchard are shut, no one sees us, we are in desire of you;
on account of this, consent to us, and be with us; otherwise we will bear false witness against you, that a young man was with you, and that on this account you sent away your maids from you.' Or will you try to deny that it was said: We Arians desire that you Christians and we be made one body; abandon the faith which you hold written at Nicaea against us, acquiesce to the doctrine of Arius; otherwise, since we can do much, the empire is ours, we will oppress you by whatever means we wish, and you shall all be removed from your sees? You will not be able to deny that these things are so, since your meditations, hateful to God, have been revealed by your deeds.
For why were we being compelled, even if we did not condemn Athanasius, nevertheless to be mingled in communion with the Arians, unless because you, pander of the Arian heresy, longed by any means whatsoever to make us all your fellow-sacrilegists? But I believe you still attempt to deny that you persecute us for this reason — because we were unwilling to become Arian Christians. How will you be able to deny it, since you sent into exile the most holy Dionysius, bishop of the Milanese — who, already believing you as you asserted falsehoods, had condemned Athanasius — because he was unwilling to be an Arian? Or is not Auxentius, whom you, rash and pestilent, ordained in his place, an Arian?
If Auxentius holds the holy faith written down at Nicaea, then neither can you be an Arian, nor can you have done all these things as I assert without also having brought a false charge against Athanasius. Perhaps you may say that hence you are catholics — because Susanna was heard, but we by no means. As far as our conscience is concerned, we knew ourselves to have been vindicated at the very time when you were exposed as a serpent, when all your poisons lay open, when your whole engine was laid bare; for we thus desired vengeance upon you, the enemies of God, that God might reveal to his people that you are heretics. Almost the whole world has now come to know that Athanasius was falsely accused by you, and that you are the author of this iniquity;
for you were seen desiring to accomplish one thing, yet putting forward another. Groaning to the people, Susanna says: 'Anguish is on every side for me; for if I do this, it will be death to me; but if I do it not, I shall not escape your hands. It is better for me not to do it, and to fall into your hands, than to sin in the sight of the Lord.' And we, as soon as we saw the charges laid by you, were about to extinguish our torches, since we would be, as you are, darkness. What Christian would not say that it is better for him to be slain by you, the forerunner of Antichrist, than to go into your Arian darkness, or that of any heretics whatsoever? You caused charges to be brought not only against Athanasius, but also against us, because we were unwilling to be made Arian Christians.
There was no lack of individual charges that could be laid against individuals, so that none of us might seem to have been sent into exile on account of God, but as though on account of our crimes. Since therefore you are guilty of such great crimes, you said that Athanasius was guilty of death because he was unwilling to have God angry along with you. This those priests also did, in whom you have your equals in this wickedness. For the Scripture speaks, saying: 'And it came to pass on the second day, when the people gathered to her husband Joachim, that two elders came, full of an unjust mind, against Susanna, that they might put her to death. And they said before the people: Send for Susanna the daughter of Chelchias, who is the wife of Joachim. And they sent, and she came, and her parents, and all her kindred.'
'Now Susanna was exceedingly delicate and of beautiful form. But the unjust men ordered her to be unveiled (for she was veiled), that they might sate themselves with her beauty. But all her people wept, and the rest who saw her. Then the two elders, rising up in the midst of the people, laid their hands upon her head; but she, weeping, looked up into heaven, for her heart trusted in the Lord. And the elders said: As we were walking in the orchard alone, this woman came in with her maids, and she sent the maids away and shut the doors of the orchard, and there came to her a young man who had been hidden, and he lay with her. But we, being in a corner of the orchard, seeing the iniquity, ran to them and saw them coming together.'
'Him indeed we could not lay hold of, because he was stronger than we and, opening the doors, leapt out; but her, when we had seized her, we asked who the young man was, and she would not tell us. To this we testify. And the whole assembly believed them, as elders of the people and judges, and they condemned her to death.' Consider deeply, Constantius, the accursed devices of you Arians, whether such are not the very things which you meanwhile did concerning Athanasius, as those men did concerning Susanna. For who would not have believed you, the emperor, saying: Athanasius has committed sacrilege? But in this respect, because you were more detestable than those, your ruined false-elders, no credit was given to you by us:
for it was said to you that an absent man could not be condemned. For those elders spoke their criminal allegations against one present, and the whole assembly gave sentence against one present; but you, on the contrary, at the accusation of heretics, when you compelled a catholic, unheard and absent, to be condemned, the engine of your stage-play had already begun to be discerned. But now hear what was granted to chaste Susanna by the defender of the innocent, by the avenger of the oppressed. Hear what the book of Daniel relates concerning the vindication of Susanna. 'Then Susanna cried out with a loud voice and said: Eternal God, who are the knower of hidden things, who know all things before their generation, you know that they have borne false witness against me;
and behold, I die, though I have done none of the things which these wicked men have contrived against me. And the Lord heard her voice. And as she was being led away to perish, God stirred up the holy spirit of a young lad whose name was Daniel, and he cried out with a loud voice: I am clean from the blood of this woman. And all the people turned to him and said: What is this word that you have spoken? But he, standing in their midst, said: Are you so foolish, O sons of Israel? Without examining or knowing the truth, you have condemned a daughter of Israel. Return to the judgement; for they have borne false witness against her.' So even now, as Athanasius cries out to God, God has made all his servants rise up for the truth against you, his adversaries.
These things he granted to his worshippers, which he then granted to his most devoted Daniel, that we might understand you to be a false witness, that you are one of the brood of vipers, that you had composed these falsehoods together with your fellow-sacrilegists. Amid these things all now return to render a just judgement against you who deserve a sentence of death — even those whom, in their ignorance, the devil, the master of your soul, had ensnared through you by his cunning. For there can be no one, besides your fellow-Arians, who would not wish innocence to be vindicated for Athanasius by God, who would not favour the innocence of Athanasius, just as now that of Susanna, after it was established that she was sought by a false charge — chaste from the unchaste, pure from the adulterers, the handmaid of God from the servants of the devil.
Thus by you, the serpentine sons of Satan, was the standing of an innocent man, who faithfully served God, assailed; but you have been laid low. For all your poisons lie dead, put to death by the power of God, since every Christian soul is praying to God that, as he deigned to snatch Susanna from a false charge, so he may deign to snatch Athanasius, to rescue him from your executioner's sword, from your murderer's savagery. Meanwhile again and again I press this, that you may see what madness has seized you Arians, what insanity has laid hold of you, that you should dare to contrive these things for the killing of an innocent man, when you knew that God knows all things before they come to pass. But it is no wonder if this engine was constructed against Athanasius through you and yours, seeing that you did not hesitate to say of God the Father:
He is not a true Father; for he does not have a true Son. For you who say that the Son of God is from nothing — what else do you say but that he is not a true Father? It is no wonder, I say, if you have risen up thus against Athanasius the servant of God, when you did not hesitate to lay your deadly hands upon the one whose servant Athanasius is. For neither can a robber who has not spared the master of the house be able to spare the household that resists him. But now let us return to that which you commanded us to do. You said: Condemn Athanasius. What was to prevent our seeing him face to face? What was to hinder our thoroughly examining every hinge of the matter? Why did you not allow him to be convicted by suitable witnesses?
Did the most holy Daniel — nay rather, the Holy Spirit through Daniel — condemn even these men unheard? For we read that the glorious Daniel said to the people: 'Separate them one from another. And he called one of them and said to him: You who have grown old in evil days, now have your sins come home which you did before, giving unjust judgements, and indeed condemning the innocent but releasing the guilty, though the Lord says: You shall not slay the innocent and just. Now then, if you saw this woman, say under what tree you saw them consorting? And he said: Under a mastic tree. But Daniel said: Rightly have you lied against your own head; for even now the angel of the Lord, having received command from God, shall cut you in two.'
'And when he had removed him, he ordered the other to be brought forward and said to him: Seed of Canaan and not of Judah, beauty has seduced you and lust has perverted your heart; thus you used to do to the daughters of Israel, and they indeed, out of fear, lay with you; but the daughter of Judah did not endure your iniquity. Now then, tell me, under what tree did you catch them consorting together? He answered: Under a holm-oak. And Daniel said to him: Rightly have you also lied against your own head; for the angel of God abides, having a sword to cut you in two, that he may destroy you both. And the whole assembly cried out with a loud voice and blessed God, who saves those who hope in him.'
'And they rose up against the two elders, because Daniel had convicted them out of their own mouth as false witnesses, and they did to them just as they had wickedly sought to do to their neighbour, according to the law of Moses, and they slew them, and the blood of the innocent was saved in that day.' What can your imprudence answer to these things, Constantius? You see that not even those guilty of so great a crime were condemned offhand, but only after all things had been most diligently examined; and yet you did not hesitate to command that the priests of God should pass a sentence of death upon the one whom you knew to be innocent? What should we have heard, had we done it? Surely these very things which those false witnesses, the false-elders, those reefs of lust, hear:
'You who have grown old in evil days, now have your sins come home which you did before, giving unjust judgements, and indeed condemning the innocent but releasing the guilty, though the Lord says: You shall not slay the innocent and just.' Would we not by right and desert have deserved to hear these things, we who by you, the sink of the Arian dogma, would have been either enticed or terrified into the condemnation of an innocent man? And it is for this reason that all these evils have come upon you.
You, together with your followers, are about to hear what those men heard through Daniel — whether because you are guilty of a false charge laid, or because you invited the whole company of bishops to the killing of an innocent man, and because you wished the whole people of God to receive your heresy. And you will hear something even heavier, because your crimes are heavier: inasmuch as you have stood forth a destroyer of the religion of God, you who have slain a huge multitude of those calling themselves Christians, who have introduced your Arian heresy into the Church, who have condemned the catholic faith, who have denied that God the Father is a true Father, who have said that his only Son is not a true Son, and have asserted that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete also is not the true Spirit of God.
For against you and against all the enemies of God the faith of the holy Church cries out that she believes in the one true God, the unbegotten Father, and in his only-begotten Son, begotten of the unbegotten and true Father—that is, of the substance of the Father—God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, which in Greek they call 'homoousion,' through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, and in the Spirit, the Paraclete, the true Spirit of God. To you, therefore, false witness, spiritual adulterer, sacrilegious murderer, still graver things shall deservedly be said, since by such and so great crimes you are worthy to be counted greater than those false elders, the enemies of Susanna. For if it is said to them who lied, 'You have rightly lied against your own head,'
'for even now an angel of the Lord, receiving a command from God, shall cut you in two,' and 'you have rightly lied against your own head'—the angel of God stands ready with a sword to cut you in two, that he may destroy the vessel—how much more, unless you look to yourself, shall such things be said to you! That it is written, 'Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it,' had fallen from that heart of yours, covered over by the darkness of your errors. That you should order the innocent to be condemned? For unless I am mistaken, in every place the sacred law declares that the innocent and the just are not to be condemned. And therefore you who commanded these things to be done against God's command, we count you as one with those whom the Lord strikes in the Gospel:
'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you are like tombs that do not appear, and men who walk over them do not know it.' Indeed those men whom you enticed to love you, sacrilegious one, did not know—those who through your efforts had not considered that you are a tomb full of all uncleanness; they supposed you to be a man. But as for us, as soon as you began to impose upon the bishops the necessity of condemning an absent man, we at once declared you a devotee of injustice and a persecutor of justice. Likewise, when we, the legates of the blessed Church, pressed you that the sect of Arius ought to be condemned, and you said rather that it was catholic, we foretold that you had been the forerunner of Antichrist.
When you deign to persecute Christians, when you slay them, you make yourself, Constantius, like those to whom the Lord says: 'Woe to you who build the tombs of the prophets, but your fathers killed them. Therefore you bear witness that you consent to the works of your fathers, for they indeed killed them, but you build their sepulchres. For this reason I send prophets and apostles, and of these they will kill and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets which has been shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias, who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you: it shall be required of this generation.'
That you are of their number is understood from this: that although you are restoring the memorials of the blessed martyrs, yet you shed the blood of the servants of the only-begotten Son of God. Return, Constantius, to the house of God; be a Christian, lest you be found forever outside the Church, as you are today, among those whom you strike, of whom the Lord says: 'Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for I say to you, many will seek to enter and will not be able. When the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us, he will answer and say, I do not know where you are from. Then you will begin to say, We ate before you and drank, and you taught in our streets. And he will say to you:
I do not know where you are from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets entering into the kingdom of God, but yourselves cast out.' Do not so hate yourself as to allow yourself to hear these things among those men, especially since you see that you have been more wicked than one to whom it might deservedly be said: 'Depart from me, worker of iniquity.' You will be, Constantius, if you choose to remain in this malice of yours, among that carnal people to whom it is said: 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you;'
you will be, I say, among them, since you are such a persecutor of those who exhort you to make yourself pleasing to God, just as they persecuted the prophets and apostles. Again the defence of truth presses that it be asked of you why you ordered an absent man to be condemned. Say, I beg you, do you command this to be done well or ill? If you say 'well,' I believe you take refuge in the deed of blessed Paul—that he wrote to the Corinthians that he had already punished that sinner whom he had found to have gravely transgressed. Let us now see whether you, beast, have only the members and body of a man but a bestial mind, whether you have acted as the Apostle acted, whether you have carried out the matter in such an order as he who said thus:
'It is commonly reported that there is fornication among you, such as is not even among the Gentiles, so that one has his father's wife. And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned, that he who did this deed might be taken from your midst. I indeed, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though present, him who has so done this, in the name of the Lord Jesus—you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ—to deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.' You say, I suppose: 'And I too had therefore commanded you to condemn the absent, because the Apostle also condemned.'
First of all, catholic men reported to the blessed Apostle—men whom he knew to be faithful, whom he had proved devoted to God, and he knew the whole holy Church of the Corinthians to be a witness. You, on the contrary, O darkness, with your fellow-sacrilegious ones accusing—heretics hateful to God—deigned to press us to the condemnation of an absent man. Then, when you hear the Apostle say, 'you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus, to deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,' why, O darkness, when we said, 'we will proceed to him at our own expense, and among the people over whom he has been divinely appointed we will hear him, only supply catholic accusers according to the command of the sacred law,' why did you refuse?
Why, as though we were gladiators and not bishops, did you give your efforts only that, according to your wishes, we might kill him whose blood you had long thirsted for? Meanwhile you ought to know that you, wretched one, have been delivered to Satan for your murders and for your sacrilege, just as was that man who was found guilty among the Corinthians. For these deeds which you have done and do are no lesser slaughters, so that, if the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the blessed Apostle says that he delivered that man to Satan for destruction, He would not also have delivered you, as soon as you committed such grave crimes. For if it were not so, you would surely have remembered that the Apostle said, 'You have been bought with a price; do not become slaves of men'; you would never have dared to force God's priests to an unheard-of condemnation.