Polemical Works 6

It would indeed have been fitting, Constantius, emperor, no longer to dispute anything with you concerning the divine Scriptures, since we have found you to be a corrupter of the truth, and have caught you out over those very deeds of yours on account of which such men are called 'wise in their own eyes' — for in fact they are men who hold to the road of foolishness. It would have been fitting, as I said, after all the great charges we have already heaped up, to keep silence, especially since we remember it is written: 'Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him,' and again: 'Do not speak in the ears of a fool, lest, when he hears, he mock your wise words.'

But because up to now I have gathered that you applaud yourself over the power of your arms and the empty dominion of your rule — namely, that you are able to do violence to those whom by reason you ought to have established in what you had decreed — in all these matters, in which you think yourself great, I have willed, especially in this book, to make you wretched and to make known to your mind, defiled by sacrilege, that I despise all the frenzy of your butchery, wielded by God's servants. For we wish you to hold it fixed and manifest that you, together with your temporal, fleeting, frail, and corruptible kingdom, will pass away and come to eternal punishment, unless you provide for yourself while there is yet place; whereas the Christians will come to eternal rest and will attain an incorruptible kingdom.

Or will you attempt to argue that through this heresy of yours you are about to lay hold of the kingdom of heaven — you who, together with your plague-ridden Arians, being afraid lest, refuted by us Christians when the truth itself cries out, you might one day be forced to surrender, rejected disputation and judged that you must take refuge in the strength of your frail arms? As though, an enemy of the divine religion, you could by your frail forces overcome men who will attain immortal gifts! You, a forerunner of Antichrist, oppose the religious servants of Christ, the soldiers of God, whom the only-begotten Son of God has deigned to invite to enjoy the eternal friendships of his divinity, saying:

'Blessed are you when men hate you and persecute you with curses, and reproach you and speak all evil against you. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven; for so they persecuted the prophets also who were before you.' You supposed that you, powerless in all things, could drive these men from their standing, and lay low those whom you see to be ready to be slain for the sole-begotten Son of God, precisely because they have chosen not to be tortured with you deniers among the dead below, but to obtain the heavenly kingdom;

these men, who by the very confession of their faith shine forth as being temples of God, you had judged that you would overcome by the empty authority of your kingdom. For just as you Arians, by denying the Son of God, are designated by the voices of the prophets, the apostles, and the sacred Gospels as being houses of the unclean spirit, so we who confess the Son of God show ourselves to be temples of God. Your cruel and sacrilegious mind, favoring the promptings of your fellow-heretics, had presumed that the soldiers of God could succumb to your butchery — we whom God calls his own temples thus: 'For I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.'

You had judged that you could conquer these whom the Apostle exhorts to bear God and to carry him in their bodies; you had indeed supposed that you could subdue by the futile years of your kingdom those whom the Apostle so exhorts. But you perceive — even as you stand within the veil in your palace — that you have received an answer from me, that, trampling underfoot your worthless authority, all God's servants agree with mind, will, zeal, courage, and voice to preserve their salvation. You notice how your fleeting dominion, however greatly it deigns to rage against us, is thereby judged the more to be weak, contemptible, empty, feeble, and abject; for as often as your hand, stirred by fury and crime, has prevailed to destroy us, so often we remember that we have grown and have stood forth ever more and more as victors.

You slaughtered very many in Alexandria, you butchered certain ones throughout the whole world, you destroyed those who resisted you in various places; but all these — what you least wish to hear — are martyrs; all those most blessed men, slain by your sword, we believe to be assuredly in paradise. Believe me, that we would count it better to be killed by you — because we have seen it is better to have God as a lover for all ages than to be punished with you, an imitator of Judas Iscariot and of the Jews. Hence at last, Constantius, we are prepared, not fearing them, to undergo the gnashings of the viper inflicted through you and every destruction. It can never repent us of our counsels, if, slain through you, we who up to now are seen to have resisted your cruel hands should perish.

For the death that you threaten to inflict upon us is prepared for all men; but so great a blessedness as the holy martyrs have attained, no one, as we see, has obtained except those who by dying have conquered death for the sake of the sole-begotten Son of God. You torture, kill, and destroy men consecrated to God, and why you do these things you are unable to give the causes of your hatreds. Because you go astray, you are angry even with us because we hold the true way; and though by our wholesome admonition you could correct yourself, you heap up your errors moreover with cruel deeds, wrenching out the disemboweled bodies of minds consecrated to God — of those who have resolved to keep faith with God even to the last stretches of life.

You perceive that these things are so, and indeed not without the greatest grief to yourself, since you notice that you have no power to turn us aside from this which is the only religion, nor to draw us back from that course in which we press on toward the prize of the upward calling — neither when you openly make yourself an enemy, nor when you feign yourself a friend (for it is evident that there is in you the one who deceived Eve), nor when you compose your word, through which you creep like a cancer with a false, painted swelling of knowledge — proving yourself, by your rescinding edict stained with all your outrages, to be the harvest of all errors; since you are yourself the fount of all error, you affirm that you are the bearer of light, though you are beset by all darkness.

You are able at last to see, most savage Emperor Constantius, that by no means can we be turned aside from the way of truth, and that — though you are wholly devoid of understanding — you are nevertheless, at least in part, despised, as you observe. For we Christians have learned that this is the first business of faith: to be moved from our standing neither by prosperity nor by adversity, and never to be drawn from our purpose once vigorously undertaken. We discern that by this one religious utterance — 'I am a Christian; I do not wish to be as you are, Constantius, an apostate' — every crime is shut out; that by this one utterance the protection of salvation, the bond of liberty and honor, is granted; we behold that by this confession there is granted to you all the shield of protection, the weapon against the devil who rages against us through you. And you say: 'Deny that you are Christians.'

That we may endure steadfast against the opposing peril, and not shudder at your tormenting savagery but be encouraged rather than grieved — this that conscience effects which recalls that the sole-begotten Son of God grants the presence of his divinity to protect his own and make them victorious; hence it comes about that we are brought to life by the very penalty by which you believe us to be extinguished. For that which you, punisher, hoped would avail for torment, this we take up for the increase of virtue, we who believe that he for whose sake we suffer is with us; hence it is that we are not broken by your evils that shake us, and the more we are variously vexed by continual cruelty, the more firmly are we strengthened. For with us is he who guarded in the furnace of fire the Hebrew youths who believed in him;

he himself steadies our minds, he himself rules our understanding, he himself kindles our hearts with his divine love and animates them to the endurance of holy suffering, whence not one of us thinks upon the death that you threaten to inflict, but upon immortality — not upon the temporary penalty inflicted through you, but upon everlasting glory. For the sacred Scriptures make plain that God's martyrs are consecrated by torments and are crowned by the very proof of their suffering: 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints'; and: 'If in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. And having been afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself.'

'He tried them as gold in the furnace, and as a whole burnt-offering he received them, and in the time of their visitation they shall shine. They shall judge nations and shall have dominion over peoples, and their Lord shall reign forever.' Those, therefore, who presume from the greatness of God that they shall attain so great a felicity — it is necessary both that they exult and that, pondering the joys to come, they trample underfoot your present evils. Divine is the utterance of the sole-begotten Son of God: 'He who loves his soul in this world shall lose it, and he who hates his soul for my sake shall preserve it unto life eternal.' To this divine precept the Christians cleave.

Though your claw, Constantius, rebounding, should run back into the wounds in our members, we stand and shall stand unmoved, stronger than you the torturer and than all your penalties, revolving in our minds this one thing: that this butchery of your cruelty is useful to us for everlasting glory. By barbarians the conquered are often spared, and there is room for clemency even amid arms, and indeed among those who pass their life in a bestial manner. But this thing that is done against us by you is unspeakable — you against whom we have wished well, and whom we long to be well with us, and whom we do not cease ceaselessly to entreat God for;

you plunder, you proscribe, you slay with the sword, you punish in various ways, you do not permit the bodies that you have decreed to be mangled to be buried, you forbid almsgiving; you have filled all the mines and all the places — thought worthy to be called places of exile — with our number, the number of those who resist your cunning; you do not cease to vex the innocent by banishment, by hunger, thirst, and nakedness. These evils you heap upon us who desire to attain everlasting blessedness. And yet, most cruel emperor, whatever your savagery has inflicted upon us and will yet inflict, mark that it is a lie — since neither is the death inflicted through you upon the holy martyrs who have gone before us a death, nor a loss, nor a damage, but a profitable investment of faith.

Always we Christians are tortured by our tyrants with a perverse interrogation in persecution. For by that same kind by which the guilty are compelled to confess, by that manner we are driven to deny Christ, the sole-begotten, most true Son of God. But as those, according to their deserts, are condemned when they confess, so we, because we do not deny the Son of God, are crowned — for whom the condemnation inflicted by you is a victory; we are taken by you from your midst, we before whom you dare not blaspheme. For by the one voice of Christ's soldier there is laid low the one who speaks against our religious confession while abiding within you — the one who through you thirsts for our blood, the one who has besieged your mind;

he trembles at the presence of God's worshippers and cannot bear it, when we dissent from you who say that the Son of God is from nothing, when we stand against your threats and, aided and protected by his power, trample all the cruelty of your butchery. You truly feel yourself chastised by the steadfastness and endurance of his servants, of him who says: 'Do not fear him who can kill the body; but rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.' We are animated also by the exhortations of his most blessed apostle Paul, to trample you down, tyrant of all tyrants: 'We are the sons of God. But if sons of God, then heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ — if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together with him.' And again:

'I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which shall be revealed in us.' Pondering the glory of that brightness, it is fitting that we, the servants of Christ, endure all pressures and persecutions — not only those inflicted through you by the devil, but also those inflicted through all his men — because, though they be many, yet from all of them we are set free, we who believe that the Son of God is the true Son; and though we remember that there are two persons, the Father and the Son, yet we claim one divinity for the Father and for his sole-begotten Son.

Hearing these just and unconquerable arguments of ours, because he who has besieged your mind cannot bear the truth, he goads your bestial spirit to vex us as bitterly as possible, to torture us with exquisite kinds of penalties, because we are unwilling to abandon the road of salvation. Hence it is that your excessive cruelty mocks our bodies, because we highly esteem the faith and do not deny that we are worshippers of God. You bear down upon us with all the strength of your butchery, judging that you will harm us, ignorant that we rejoice in the occasions of our proving — we, namely, who esteem this our felicity to be the greatest: if in this contest of righteousness it should befall us to be slaughtered by your executioner's hand for the sake of the Son of God.

We persist steadfast with religious mind against your madness — for he for whose sake we suffer conquers in us whatever you, profane one, hurl against the very divine Majesty under the person of us, with empty speech and vain converse, with depraved will; all of which your hard mind and the obstinate ferocity of your breast beget unto the death of your own salvation. While, with dementia leading you, fury seizing you, and every monstrosity vexing you — by which you are alike goaded and borne along — you dissent from the religion of God, we, protected by him whom you deny, resist your monstrosity, beast, as masses set against the sea are wont to resist the hostile deep.

Though the diabolical waves strike through you, and the widely-wandering whirlwinds of the world beat upon us, our courage will be, as it is, more and more immovable; nor shall we, overwhelmed, succumb to the foaming waves of your assaults, but against all perils we shall always be erect — since a Christian spirit is not abject, to be laid low and cast down to vices, but is so noble and high-born that it remains immovable and victorious against all temptations. We are not Christians who think to enjoy the sweetness of this present frail life, but we are men desiring to attain the glory of eternal security and felicity, the possession of perpetual blessedness.

Religious is the voice of the blessed apostle John, exhorting us to spurn earthly things and to desire to follow the heavenly: 'And the world passes away, and its lust; but he who does the will of God abides forever, even as God abides forever.' Since these things are so, I long for you to know that you, together with all your tricks and frauds and with the most vast cruelty of your savagery, lie beneath the feet of God's servants; that all the glory of your vain dominion is accounted by us and held as nothing; and that, with all the vigor and authority of your empire, you are felt by us to be nothing other than a worthless little breath of gold. That we boast of these things, some one, perchance, of your flatterers may say.

Do you not recall, Constantius, that I said to your judges, while you listened with the curtain drawn, that even if you had decreed to hurl all your soldiery, all the darts of your kingdom, against us — against us, who execrate your blasphemy, as against contemners of your sacrilegious decree — that they should dash all their arms against us, not even so could we withdraw from our purpose? But you, according to that prudence of yours, judged that your soldiers ought to die in every war for you, while you decreed that the Christians ought to prove themselves deniers of God. And to be sure, your men feel the pain of their wounds, they grieve that they have perished, they grieve to lose this light. But we, first of all, cannot feel the torments of the penalties in which Christ suffers, in which Christ works out eternal salvation;

and next, because we count present things as nothing and shall ever be in the future in that everlasting light — how can it be that we would not rather be killed for Christ the Son of God, the bestower of eternal life, by your sacrilege-defiled hands, we who discern that we cannot otherwise please God the Father, unless, when summoned by you to deny the sole-begotten Son of God, we confess through death itself that he is the true Son of God? Your detestable mind takes it ill that we say Christ the Son of God is the Word of God, the Wisdom of God, the Power of God, true God from true God, born of the Father — that is, of the substance of the Father — light from light, born not made.

that he is of one substance with the Father, which in Greek they call homoousion; through whom all things were made, without whom the Father never was. You take it ill, worm of Arius, that we defend that the brightness, power, greatness, eternity, and divinity of the Father and of his sole-begotten Son is one; that it is nothing new which we, as legates, asserted in your palace and do not cease to confirm — that it was always so believed and is believed by Christians, just as at Nicaea against your Arian heresy and against all errors the holy faith is seen to be written down. If at last you would open the eyes of your heart, pierced through by the bites of the serpent, you would find that the Church holds and defends this faith which it knows was handed down to it through the blessed apostles.

If you could in a moment traverse all the nations, you would have found, most stupid emperor, that everywhere the Christians believe just as we do, standing firm in this our defense on behalf of the Son of God, and desiring, like us, to die for him. But your novel preaching and recent religion — a blasphemy brought forth through you under the pretext of faith, unto the ruin of your own salvation — has not only, up to now, been unable to traverse the Roman frontier, though you strive hard enough for it, but even wherever it had attempted to fix its roots, it has withered — since, of course, all God's servants withdraw from you, and only your few remain with you, whom the Lord foretold to be the tares sown over the wheat.

All these things has furnished, and is furnishing, to you that craftsman of fraud and death, who through you allures and deceives very many by his oblique blandishments, who, though he is guilty of every crime, suggests to that most bitter heart of yours that you should punish us as though we were guilty of some crime. But look at last, open the eyes of your heart — in which there is for you no light, but all is fog and vast darkness stirring — and you will find that your death, inflicted by your frail power, restores a more whole life; that this rather leads us to glory through fires, through swords, through chains and wild beasts, through whatever, in short, your rage — the rage of a 'most pious emperor' — should decree to bring upon our slaughter.

With God protecting us, not only are we not extinguished, but we are more and more brought to life, we who remember that there is nothing above us except God; wherefore a soul devoted and given over to God blushes to succumb to you, dead through your own blasphemy — to a dog barking against the truth, teeming with the worms of Arius. As often as the souls of Christ's servants diligently examine the true force of torments, they consider that there is no greater torment than for a servant of Christ to be conquered by you, our adversary, the servant. We recall that the Lord said: 'If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul for my sake shall find it.'

'For what does it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' The dignity of martyrdom compels us, as Christians, to condemn life by death, since through the Son of God a new kind of salvation has been bestowed: to perish, that I may not perish. We know that this discipline has been divinely handed down to us: that without any terror we should guard the force of the warfare of so great a Name, seeing that the desire of eternal remembrance long ago drew us away from the longing for this light, and the fellowship of Christ set us apart to trample all earthly things underfoot. The battle of your cruelty grows, Constantius;

but mark that the glory of Christ's soldiers grows too, nor are we in the end held back from the battle-line by fear of torments, but rather are we summoned to the line by your very torments. That these things are so you will not be able to deny, when you behold the Christians throughout the whole world animated with an equal and like ardor of courage to wage the contest — when you see the incorrupt firmness of the faith of Christ's soldiers, so that neither do your detestable blandishments deceive them, nor do the threats of your fury terrify them, nor do the tortures of your butchery and the torments of your cruelty overcome them — since, of course, he abides in us and is ever established with us, who said to the blessed apostles: 'I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age.'

He is everywhere present, because, being the Son of the Almighty, he is all-powerful, whose eternity and divine power is one with the Father. But how great a fog of unbelief has beset you, and how great a cloud of shadows and errors has overspread your breast, cannot be told — you who, though you feign yourself a Christian, nevertheless strive to remove the Christian name from the midst. Amid these things, you ought to see that our readers will grant pardon for this: that, in proportion to the merit of your impiety, the eloquence of my mediocre talent was not able to describe you fully so as to execrate you; for they saw that I had given a model to all who fear God and had furnished matter to those who will treat of it, by what order they might cut you down, set as you are without the roots of eternal life.

Nor should you say that you are being reviled by us with abusive words, if you hear what you deserve from men who, though rustic, are nevertheless Christians. We know that we must not curse, but rather pray for our enemies; for the Son of God, though he is Lord of all things, yet when he was reviled, did not revile in return. But indeed, if the Lord of all things were to curse, all things would surely fall to pieces at the onset of so great a Majesty. You say to this, no doubt: 'The Lord willed you to be meek, seeing you are his priest, and you show yourself obstinate toward me.' The prophets, the apostles, and the choir of the Gospels teach that we must not kill; you, on the contrary, deign to slay men consecrated to God. We Christians know that, to placate him whom we worship, we have need of those things by which we know he is delighted and rejoices.

If, therefore, it is to be judged that what you do can please God, then all of us ought to be murderers, sacrilegious men, and blasphemers. O Constantius, of how vast a dementia you appear to be! That subtle old schemer, the circumventer of the innocent, is seen to have placed his seat in your mind, and do you suppose that you are not yet made public? Still do you feign yourself a sheep, though you are a wolf — you who by the most holy prophets are named a beast, by the most blessed apostles a dog and a ravening wolf, disguised, though you are a worker of iniquity, as a minister of righteousness; and do you count yourself to be a man, though you bear nothing of a man except the outlines and the outward figure? You grieve to be called a monstrous beast, bearing nothing of a man except the lineaments and the outward figure.

Tell me, I pray, if you can, slayer of the innocent — can you deservedly be called a Christian, and not rather an insane, dull, and senseless enemy of God's religion — that religion in which piety, humanity, and all justice dwell, in which we are taught not even to render evil for evil, in which we are taught not to kill, but to be killed for the sake of the Son of God? You, considering your dominion despised and vain, in your sacrilegious attempt apply torments; but there is a protector of the faith, a helmsman of salvation, a ruler of souls — whom you impel us to deny — ever with us, ever present to our contest, who raises up the warriors and champions of his divine Name.

Hence it is that we stand stronger than the servants of your injustice and its ministers — that is, your fellow-butchers who torture us — and are given courage, so that our joints, though struck and torn, overcome your claw. For how shall a plague, raging long and repeated, be able to overcome an unconquerable faith, when every soldier of Christ knows that he himself, for whose sake he suffers, is present with him and rejoices at the endurance of his servants? We stand, then, as servants of Christ, strengthened by his Majesty, with free voice, with uncorrupt mind, naked indeed of your frail weapons, but clothed in those arms which the blessed apostle prayed that we might put on, saying: 'Finally, be strengthened in the Lord and in the might of his power.' And:

'Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, because our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.'

'Therefore take up the armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day and, having accomplished all things, to stand — having girded your loins with truth, and put on the breastplate of righteousness, and shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in all things taking up the shield of faith, with which you may be able to quench all the flaming darts of the most wicked one; and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God — through all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the Spirit, and watching unto it.'

Therefore, because your cruelty and your father's cannot overcome men armed in such a manner, fortified with such power — as has often been said — we have stood, and we stand, and, until you consume our bodies, we shall stand, fortified by the saving shield of Christ, surrounded by the breastplate of his piety, steered by the Holy Spirit, immovable and more and more in all things authors, driving off every voice of servitude.

For we are certain and confident that by no snares of yours, by no craftiness of yours, by no cavil, by no frauds of yours, can we be drawn from our purposed vigor — since we know that the end of transgressions is death, and thereafter follows a life that is ever-abiding; and we embrace the counsels of his blessed apostle, and desire to be found imitators and partakers of him who declares that, though our old man is corrupted, the man who is within is renewed; and that, though the earthly house of our body is dissolved, a heavenly one is built; and that, placed in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord;

with which apostle we shall not be able to render abundant praises to God in the heavenly kingdoms, unless first, death being vanquished, we come to take up the immortal rewards. Therefore, when through you our bodies shall have been scattered and utterly dissolved, then let us presume that we are most whole; when through you death shall have been inflicted, then we believe that we are the more able to live. How do you still presume, Constantius, emperor meanwhile most tasteless of all, to heap up those things which would extinguish you, but on the contrary bring us to life? You are roused by evil and depraved counsel to extinguish us, you are made swift to pour out the blood of the servants of God's sole-begotten Son, ignorant that by our blood heaven is opened, by our blood the fire of Gehenna is extinguished.

Worldly ambition drives you, but heavenly greatness admonishes us, who fear to lose eternal salvation. We know that we ought to die for God; for just as everlasting fire will hold you fast in Tartarus, unless you make your passage from the camp of the devil to the army set in the heavenly camp, so we, if scorning your threats and your torments we choose rather to be butchered by you, that most savage beast and monstrous brute, for the sake of the Son of God, shall be rejoicing in heaven. For 'blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'; and He did not say: 'Blessed are they who inflict persecution.'

We Christians know that we were made soldiers of Christ for this end: that on the battlefield of the unjust war you have declared, having confessed our Commander, we might die in arms so as to seize the triumphs of victory. Hence the more savage you appear to us, the more merciful you seem, when you deign to slay one who confesses himself a Christian. But in this very thing you are judged most wicked: that under the guise of affection and of one desiring to give counsel you flatter us in order to cast us down, as though it were profitable for us to be spared by you once thrust from our rank, yet be condemned by God. We know that you are afraid lest, amid all these punishments devised by your abominableness, we should die in this perseverance of the faith; and yet you apply your varied and cruel torments.

Thus us, whom you persecute so hatefully, you desire to have mangled in various ways, and indeed at every moment; yet you have determined that we are not to be put to death, as though death alone made the soldiers of Christ blessed, and not rather the torments too, which the graver they are, bring forth the greater glory of virtue. For we who know that the life of righteousness is more abundant and more enduring do not turn our backs on this battlefield, we make no passage over to your camp, O enemy of God; but rather, set amid these destructions brought upon us by you, we long to be presented to the sheepfold of God, from which the devil possesses you as one snatched away. And yet I say these things not that you should spare us;

for you will find that we are Christians, just as those whom you have already slain you found steadfast in the faith, patient in pain, victorious under interrogation, through Him, that is, who does not forsake His confessors; and we, acknowledging ourselves His soldiers, as you perceive, engage bravely and contend steadfastly. For we know it to be a great splendour, an immense sublimity, and a truly singular thing...

...to adorn the life of eternal salvation with the honour of suffering. It is the greatest nobility to despise the torments of your power and not to honour it, to trample upon you and not to dread your fury—you who rage so ravenously against the innocent, who, though you are a teacher of blasphemy and injustice and every cruelty, yet suppose that you can be seen as a Christian, godly, prudent, and just, being blind and dull and ignorant of the truth. Take note, devourer of the innocent: he in whom Christ keeps watch cannot be overcome by your torments. He conquers hunger, spurns thirst, subdues by the vigour of his own strength the squalor of the prison and the horror of the place of punishment, tramples on every penalty, crushes all tortures, and does not fear the death which you threaten with great effort to inflict.

Do you imagine that you overcome him who remembers what is written: 'What shall I render to the Lord for all that He has rendered to me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints'; and: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.' I simply cannot see what of yours could tear us away from these saving precepts.

For although you do not cease, in your impious way, to promote by every office of yours those who consent to your depravity in order to allure us—such as Epictetus and the rest, whom out of servants of God you have made your own and satellites of your father—yet far be it from us to fall into this madness of preferring the false to the true, or of being enticed by any felicity of your kingdom offered through you. Keep your empty glory to yourself, and retain to yourself all the prudence of your most stupid heart, and to your peers whom likeness of morals has joined to you; leave us our folly, since we confess Christ the Son of God to be the true Son, since we maintain that He is of one substance with the Father, since we profess that we desire to be slain for His sake, that we may not deny His divinity.

leave us folly of this kind. Why do you take pains that we should lose it? Why do you think that the truth can be assailed by you, not knowing that it prevails by its own power? For whence do you behold the people of God resisting with unconquered virtue against your fierce roarings and your harsh tortures, save because this is the apostolic and evangelical faith which we defend? These resist your cruelty, these trample your fury, whose hope is of eternal immortality and heavenly life, whose ardour is kindled into a longing for perpetual light, and whose salvation rejoices in the promised blessedness.

So confidently indeed do we, knowing that we shall come to the enjoyment of eternal life, endure all things gladly, since we declare that we think not on our own torments but on your executioner's cruelties. We Christians balance the losses of our bodies against the gains of the soul; we reckon a crown in our wounds; from the torments and pains inflicted by you we, most joyful, triumph in Christ. Recall, Constantius, from the recent memory of your crimes, what you branded upon yourself in the city of the Alexandrians: how many the single stroke of your signature cast headlong over the precipices, how many you caused to be mown down by the sword, how many to be consumed by hunger and thirst or killed in prison, how many, their breath cut off, you caused to be strangled;

and yet, when you have raged with all these cruelties against the holy martyrs whom your gladiatorial spirit has slain, you rage more cruelly against us, in that you hold back the sword, in that you take pains lest the swifter issue of death should come to our relief. We suffer to be torn in our whole body and to be burned, proving that nothing befits the gravity and constancy of the wise so well as to be driven from one's judgment and purpose by no terrors, but that it is most useful to be tortured for God, and that those consecrated to God cannot be made to die, cannot be overcome by perpetual torments, but that rather you are laid low and brought to nothing. Receive what is set down in the twenty-sixth psalm: 'The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defender of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?'

'When the wicked draw near against me to eat my flesh, my enemies who trouble me, they themselves are weakened and have fallen. Though a camp should stand against me, my heart shall not fear; though a battle should rise up against me, in this will I hope. One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of God all the days of my life.' Since, therefore, the virtue of righteousness is perfected in these sufferings, since—because Christ suffers in us—we do not even feel the torment (for the reason that where guilt is absent there is no penalty either), how did you suppose that by these means you could overcome men dedicated and devoted to God, to whom faith supplies unconquered increases of virtue?

I believe indeed—nor does the truth deceive me—that although you still bend to your butchery with all your might, so as to tear apart our limbs and, raging, for a long time to plough up our mangled joints into our blood, you can nevertheless never overcome the family of God, never can you prevail to conquer the army of Christ, nor subject it to pains, nor bend it by anguishing punishments. We Christians refuse no tortures, no death; we cannot tremble at your tyrannical commands, nor at the swords of your judges, because, armed with the sword of God, we resist you. The blessed apostle says, moreover, to the Ephesians: 'Be strengthened in the Lord and in the might of His power.'

'Put on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness.' Since you, through whom all the demons rage for our destruction, cannot overcome those clad in the armour of God, we at last exhort you: surrender yourself to us, lest with those whom the apostle describes you be tortured for all ages. Thus the sons of the darkness of your prison cannot be overcome by the son of darkness from the light, as though those in whom He who is the Author of light deigns to dwell could feel darkness. Virtue must of necessity bear what mortal nature has taught must be borne;

for if you attempt to consume our limbs with fire, we shall feel that you rather are burned into our bodies than we, who, since we run to death for the faith willingly and readily, presume that we do not lose our life but rather gain it, and indeed, after this frail one, an eternal one. The edge of your sword ever stands drawn, ready for the slaughter of Christians; and yet this point of your sword seems to us harsher than any lead, just as does the edge of your soul. We endure all things secure in our suffering, as though we heaped up the punishments we suffer, since he who through you rages against us is laid low by our faith.

For we know that we cannot be destroyed by death, inflicted for everlasting malignity, we who have believed in Christ, the bestower of eternal life, the only true Son of God; but, believing, we are also rightly presuming that even our bodies shall rise again unto the light and unto eternal life—those bodies which you now burn, torture, and tear. For if, after we are slain by you, we knew that we should be nothing in the future, surely we should be most foolish in not taking counsel for this present life, that it might be as long as possible and full of all comforts; which could have befallen us, had we thought it right to yield to you rather than to the decrees of God.

And now, since—if the present life be taken away by you—an immortal one is received, it is necessary that His servants despise this present life together with its goods for the sake of the Son of God, seeing that every loss of this kind is compensated by immortality. Take note, Constantius, of how great was the virtue, how great the strength of soul, of what kind was the firmness of faith, of those whom you have slain, and is the firmness of these who still resist your sacrilege: that those blessed martyrs, whom we now behold established by the power of God in the heavenly kingdom, stood firm,

or these whom you have not yet been able to slay, against you, the monstrous beast, who do not cease threatening us with things speakable and unspeakable, since you have ever been, and are, one who far more readily desires to hear that rival princes rise up against you than that those confessing Christ the Son of God stand forth as victors. For it had pleased your heart, besieged by the darkness of all errors, and your mind, blinded by deep gloom, to convert us all away from God through your heresy—first to make us your clients, then your fellow-satellites. But the truth, which He who contrived to devise these things had labored against, has conquered both you and that very one in you; for it prevails by its own power. We are, in short, waiting at every moment for these torments which you have already inflicted;

you may still add, by appointing them, more savage executioners, more ferocious avengers, who might be able—against the soldiers devoted to God who resist your deadly edicts, that by the vigour of faith through God's mercy we may trample down threats and tortures and torments—either to attack us with the sword, or to crucify, or to roast with fire, or by any unheard-of kind of punishment to tear our entrails and limbs; yet even now we stand immovable through the Lord, and shall stand forever, since it is not we who conquer your gnashings, but He Himself in us, by whose aid we are governed, by whose power we are preserved. For how great are you, or of what sort, that you could despoil us of these goods which have been conferred on us from heaven?

You seize us, make us destitute, condemn us, bind us, burn us, and slay us even in wretched ways, and yet you cannot conquer the unconquered faith of Christians. By this you ought to have understood the deed done: that both you shall receive the punishments of your error and cruelty, and, on the other hand, that we—because through this difficulty set before us the narrowest path leads loftily to the reward of immortality—shall not be able to yield to your cruelty, we who know that martyrdom is a singular imitation of the Lord's fortitude. Full enough of labour and difficulty, and steep, is the martyrs' way, so that no one could accomplish it by human strength; but we who are helped by the aid of divine support must trample you down always, as we trample you now.

Hence it is that it has pleased us not only not to fear you, the adversary of the religion of God, but even of our own accord to provoke you. You are provoked, since you are always looked to, unmerciful one, not that you may show mercy, but that you may kill. Hence it is that our felicity cannot admit division, because, even when we are killed for the Son of God, He Himself lives in love within us—He who in oppression is our incitement, and in the battles of persecutions our fortitude. For by whatever means you may exert yourself against the worshippers of God, you can never empty out the virtue that is sealed within them, seeing that worldly things do not entice them, nor do torments terrify them.

Since these things are so, what else shall I call you, the persecutor of God's house, than wretched—you who obey the instigations of your plundering demons, by whose goadings, being driven, you have contrived to perpetrate these things, through whom, with sacrilegious persuasion clinging to your heart, you gladly stray? Indulge the folly innate in you. And would that you were willing to err and rave in company only with your fellow-blasphemers the Arians! But you attempt to seize us too into the fellowship of your evils; you proscribe us, you despoil us; yet we know that poverty sought for Christ's sake is a kind of the greatest felicity. You inflict death, O executioner; but we not only do not draw back our neck, but even offer it, that we may be slain for the sake of God's only Son. To what end have I recounted these things?

That you might know your punishments have no power against the servants of Christ, and that we cannot be terrified by that which we always expect to come. You take it ill that you should be called a heretic, and yet you dare to say that the Son cannot be compared or made equal to the Father; whereas we who defend one deity of the Father and the Son say the Son is equal to the Father, we believe it, as the blessed apostle Paul believed, who says of the Son: 'Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.' What is 'who, being in the form of God'? Nothing other than that He is the Son, just as God the Father is: unchangeable, unconvertible, inestimable, ineffable, eternal, perfect. What is 'who, being in the form of God'?

Nothing other than that the Son inhabits that very inaccessible light which the Father also inhabits, than that there is one divine sublimity of the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit, remaining in the blessed apostle, beholding already then all your hearts, you heretics, added an interpretation of what it is for the Son to be in the form of God: 'Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.' The blessed apostle says the Son is equal to the Father, making manifest one deity of the Father and the Son; and you dare, with the satellites of your sacrilegious audacity and the partners of your sacrilege, to say: 'For we cannot equate or compare the Son to the Father.' Or why do you suppose the Lord said: 'He who has seen me has seen the Father also,' and:

'I and the Father are one,' if not because there is one power of the Father and the Son? You say the Son has a beginning; but we say He is without beginning, since everything that has a beginning must of necessity be able to have an end also. Therefore, since we believe the only Son of God to be eternal, that is, coeternal with the Father, and you enemies of God deny it, do we not most rightly call you madmen, and, glutted with all senselessness, sons of pestilence? Concerning whom the blessed apostle cries out, as then concerning the Jews: 'And as they did not approve of having God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting'; and to the Philippians: 'Be imitators of me, brethren, and observe those who so walk, as you have our example.'

'For many walk, of whom I have often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things'; and to Timothy, concerning you, Constantius, and your dearly beloved fellow-perishers: 'Now the Spirit manifestly says that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, in the hypocrisy of those speaking lies, having their conscience seared.' The Holy Spirit still strikes and slays you through the mouth of the same blessed apostle Paul: 'In the last days perilous times shall come.'

'For men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, proud, disdainful, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without faith, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, insolent, puffed up, lovers of pleasures more than of God, having a form of godliness but denying the truth thereof; and these avoid'; and further on: 'And as Jannes and Mambres resisted Moses, so these also resist the truth, men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith; but they shall proceed no further, for their folly shall be manifest to all, as also theirs was'; and further on:

'The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but, itching in their ears, will heap to themselves teachers according to their own desires, and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.' You, deserting the apostolic faith and turned to fables—your word is such that it can creep like a cancer—although the Holy Spirit has foretold it through the mouth of the apostle, you call catholics 'erratics,' and a little later you call blasphemy that very thing which you were calling catholic, and which you were compelling us to accept. Likewise, a little later, that which you had just established at Antioch, acting against Adoxius, to have been blasphemy, you now again confirm as catholic: whence you decreed that Adoxius should be at Constantinople, because you approved him as catholic.

Know therefore from this very thing how great is the difference between the true and the false, when you yourself, though you are—as it seems to you—skilled, and possess an appointed number of orators, can nevertheless persuade none, we observe, except those who feared your butchery; whereas we, for whom nature suffices for speaking, strangers to all knowledge of pagan letters, are able to destroy every heresy, because the matter itself and the truth speak. You and your helpers have increased the full art of pagan letters; we only know the sacred letters. Our speech is common, yours by contrast polished and adorned, such as may even be called eloquent; and yet: your speech, sweet in persuading, sought out through art, can persuade no one!

It can persuade no one of the Christians, except him who is not, but is only called, a Christian—like you, who, though you are a wolf, may be judged by the ignorant to be one of the sheep. Who is so witless, save you who have drained all madness? Who among God's servants is there who would not wish to be honoured by death in the obedience of devotion? Who is there who is not desirous to shed the gore of his own blood for Christ, since a death of this kind makes life more whole and finds eternal glory? We stand, as you perceive, protected by the virtue of God, shod with the precepts of the Gospel, our step fixed and immovable, so that our footprints cannot be swept away by you into headlong ruin. We stand holding the shield of faith, so that the smoking darts hurled by you from the enemy cannot at all take hold, seeing that they are ever driven back against you.

Our heads are fortified with the helmet of salvation; the word of the Lord is in our mouth, so that the enemy lodged in you may be struck down by the spiritual sword, laid low, and likewise scattered. You will perceive that the holy faith which you were compelling us to cast away is our soul's buckler, strong and impenetrable, and a woven breastplate, which no darts of the devil brought by you can pierce through. Beholding so great a perseverance of Christians, you say: 'The Arian dogma, once undertaken by me, must be defended even by me'; you say such things, erring with an upright will. For you feel that there is nothing among human affairs more excellent than religion, and that it ought to be defended with the utmost force;

you defend it with the sword, but we know that religion is to be defended not by killing, but by dying for God and by enduring all these evils which you inflict. Defending religion by such a kind, what shall your cruelty be able to conquer? For if any of your soldiers, in this frail service of your rule, being mortal, keeps faith with you, a mortal, in some notable deed, he becomes both more acceptable and more dear; if he perishes in your service, an empty man, he attains the highest glory, because he died for you, his commander. How much more must faith be kept by us, the soldiers of His clemency, for God, the eternal Emperor. Since the undertaken office of devotion compels us to do these things, you, because you are blind, refuse to believe the true Christ

to be God, the Son of the true God, by not believing so; because you are simply unhappy, in that you have by no means escaped the darkness of eternal death, you wished us also to return to the old blindness, so that we might seem to have lost prudence together with the light, not simply but detestably. For while we recognize that there is one condemnation of death for you, because you refuse to believe, and that the evil would be doubled for us, if, having cast off our belief, we should choose to return to destruction—how did you presume that we could be separated from the love of God by your false compliances (which the more they entice, the more they slay), or by all kinds of cruel torments? Who would spurn so great a felicity offered to him, save one who is more unhappy than you?

when he sees that by the confession of one voice, 'I am a Christian,' adversities succumb, joyful things come forth, kingdoms are laid open, eternal empires are prepared? You say: 'Deny the Son of God, or the power of my kingdom will slay you.' How much better it is to be slain by the enemy of Christ than by Christ! How best it is to be slaughtered by you, the friend of antichrist, and to be given life by Christ! Who would not wish to be found a partaker and companion of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and all the just, rather than of Judas, whose imitator you have shown yourself to be? John the Baptist was punished in prison through your pestilential Herod; the savagery of Herod slew James; the apostle John was banished to an island; the blessed Peter was crucified; the blessed apostle Paul was bound.

He was shut up in prisons, he was scourged and often stoned, and at last he was slain. But all these, by sustaining those things most gratefully, were made friends of God; we who take note of this prefer even to be slaughtered by your cruel hand rather than to yield to your butchery. Why do you hold us hateful, why do you persecute us with so great savagery? Surely because we confess ourselves Christians; and those blessed ones of whom we made mention were slain for the only Son of God by your fellow-tyrants, because they said they were His servants. Through the mouth of the religious David the Holy Spirit says, in the person of our people: 'If we have forgotten the name of our God, and if we have stretched out our hands to a strange god, shall not God require these things? For He knows the hidden things of the heart;'

'for Thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.' And you, Constantius, meanwhile emperor, enslaved to Arian idolatry, say: 'Fear the gnashings of my madness, renewing itself against your destruction, and be apostates along with me.' Hearing these things, you are unwilling to heal your wounds, but rather press on to rage, blind and irrational, at the instigation of those who insinuate themselves into your mind and goad you, unwitting, into fury.

These are the spirits to whom you are known to sacrifice, in that you deny the only Son of God—who, because through themselves they can do us no harm (for we are protected by the greatness of God), persecute us through you, their satellite, us whom they perceive to be their most hostile enemies; and they exercise through you, their lover, the savagery which they can most violently, supposing that by the intervention of you, the executioner, they will violate our faith. The doctrine of all the sacred Scriptures is to believe in the Son of God as the first and consummate righteousness. Hence it is that, once you the interrogator are conquered, those demons are conquered in you, because it is not the strength of our frail bodies that grants us the victory, but His clemency.

He supplies strength, so that amid all the instruments of your butchery we may endure immovable, so that we may be broken neither by the pains of wounds nor by the blows of interrogation, but rather be lifted up; hence is the true worship of God, in which the minds of the worshippers present themselves to God as unspotted victims. And do you suppose there is any of God's worshippers so sluggish and stupid that the ardour of so great a longing does not rouse him and does not arm, does not incite, does not goad, does not finally inflame him with those torches of love with which the holy prophets, apostles, and martyrs were inflamed? Which of us, I say, does not the spirit press to be slain for Christ amid your cruel hands?

Whom does it not urge to come to the glory and heights of martyrdom, not only through these things which you administer, but even through crueller ones? Since your punishments are easily overcome, if the glory of those very punishments is set before the eyes. For that which lacerates is not considered, where so great a reward of the penalty is bestowed. By incorruptible rewards your torments, Constantius, are conquered, and the torture is worn down, death is subdued—which, when it is inflicted, life is rather restored. The wounds inflicted by you, O emperor, would pain us, if they did not at once make us friends of God; and since we then presume that we shall truly live, if we are struck down by you for the sake of the Son of God, and shall then lose nothing of salvation, how can it be that we should yield to your empty gnashings?

You have supposed that we could be, and can be, subdued by your force, and I believe you still suppose so in vain. How long, at last, Constantius, will you abuse the patience of God? Nay rather, I exhort you: driving these things out from your dark senses, let your foolish mind receive those meditations which can set you upon the way, which lead to the kingdom of God. Lay hold pleasantly on that which may lead you to the banquet of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the friends of God.

You who, a man of all injustice, have dared to esteem yourself just, setting yourself before all who have been established by the judgment of God as bishops of the holy Church, and reproving the holy faith which the Church has always held and holds, have striven to preach the blasphemy uttered by the mouth of your fellow-sacrilegist Arius—now through your satellites, now by your edict, now by your mouth stuffed full of unclean spirits—and you wish yourself to be called a perfect worshipper of God and one doing all things in a holy manner, whereas up to now no one is found to have been either crueller, or more detestable, or greater in blasphemies, of all those kings who are called tyrants, than you.

That these things are so I have already laid open to your folly in the book which is entitled 'On the Apostate Kings'; now I wish you to know this, that unless you are converted in good time, unless you believe, as we do, that the only-begotten Son of God has always reigned together with the Father and that there never was a Father without the Son, and that there is one kingdom of the Father and of his only Son, and that the Father and the Son possess one Godhead, you shall perish for all eternity, seeing that Arius your master has called the Son of God a creature, and you have exalted that man's blasphemy to the very heavens with your praises. We press you, we beg you, we urge you to become most beloved of God, and you complain that you suffer injury at our hands.

Thus you guard the empty censure of your dignity, as though it could snatch you away from perpetual torments; you lift up your proud head above the priests of the Lord, not heeding what is written: Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. The Apostle, speaking of that only Son of God whom you persecute in us, says: Though he was in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man; he humbled himself even unto death, even the death of the cross.

He who in the form of the Father always was and is and shall be, being indeed the true Son, being unchangeable and unconvertible, since as God the Son is wholly powerful, being the Son of the Almighty, nevertheless for the sake of our salvation deigned to humble himself, that he might make us who lay prostrate and cast down to be raised up and exalted;

his holy humility it is that has made you, a rabid dog, bark against his divine majesty, since out of the sacred Scriptures you see only those things that were written on account of the humility he assumed, and pass over those that proclaim his eternal divinity. What do you answer to this, Constantius, to whom your Arian bishops, adherents of that dogma, constantly acclaim that you are the bishop of bishops? Do you believe, or not, that those who die for God's only Son shall possess the kingdom of heaven? If you believe it, why do you drive us to deny his eternity? Why do you not cease persecuting, why do you not leave in peace those who believe in him? Why are you always restless and always hostile toward us, showing yourself a violent persecutor, but under the title of peace a treacherous enemy?

I grieve that you have acquired for yourself so great evils; I mourn over you because you are set in every respect without hope of eternal life. But although you rend us not only with swords but also gnaw us with your teeth, yet hold it for certain that we, protected by God, shall overcome your fury, and do not deign to despise us on that account. For though you see our bodies frail, that which is most powerful, we are strong, upright and fortified by wisdom, having our adornments and defenses in our hearts and minds. Whence now do we see ourselves adorned? Whence do we perceive ourselves fortified and safe? Whence do we know ourselves to be wise?

Only because we both shun your blasphemy and gladly hand over our mortal bodies to your sword for the sake of the Son of God, knowing that, when you have been able to slay our earthly dwelling, the heavenly one which we possess you cannot slay. For to this end we know that good things and evil things have been set before us, that the whole force of our prudence might be exercised in discerning between good and evil. What is more foolish than to fear you and to deny God? What is wiser than to trample upon your abominable head and thereby to please God by that deed? Hence it is that you perceive us standing ready with all our strength in the contest of righteousness, with faith entire, with devoted courage, with mind uncorrupted, to stand in the battle-line which has been declared by you, undismayed soldiers of the living God.