Tractates 2

The Codex Wirceburgensis (Würzburg manuscript) Mp. th. q. 3, written in the fifth or sixth century. By the sign | I have marked the end of a page, by || that of a folio, and by ||| that of a line. (In the critical apparatus) within | i | I have enclosed those things which exist in an erasure in such a way that what was previously written cannot be determined.

Although our faith, hindered by no stumbling-blocks of life, is free as it journeys on the secure path of catholic order toward God, nevertheless, because it is the more proved when, struck by the devil's slander, it is wounded in that very point, we have judged it glorious for ourselves, most blessed bishops, that—with no accusing conscience, though we have already spoken in frequent treatises declaring our faith and condemned the dogmas of all heretics, and though in the treatise of our brothers Tiberianus, Asarbus and the rest, with whom we share one faith and one mind, all dogmas that seem to be against Christ have been condemned and those for Christ approved—yet even now, because you wish it,

as it is written, being always ready to give an answer to everyone who asks us concerning the faith and hope that is in us, we have not wished to be silent in what you command. For although our confession has been repeated, and though all that we live lies before your eyes, and though, set in the light of faith, we follow no secret things of any dark manner of life, yet we do not refuse—so that satisfaction might be given even to those ignorant of us, lest anyone, believing evil concerning us, should sin against others in inexcusable error—nor do we decline to show with our mouth what we believed in our heart. For although it is not fitting to glory in what we were, nevertheless we were not brought forth into the world in so obscure a station, nor called so foolish, that the faith of Christ and the learning of belief could bring us death rather than salvation.

For to this end, as you yourselves know, having gone through all the trials of human life and having renounced the manners of our evil ways, we entered as into the harbour of secure repose.

For recognizing that no one, unless born again of water and the Holy Spirit, could ascend into the kingdoms of heaven, we purified our souls to the obedience of faith through the Spirit; and renouncing the desires of our former life, of which we were ashamed, we received, for the journey of renewed grace, the symbol of catholic observance, which we hold: that entering the laver, the redemption of our body, and being baptized into Christ, having put on Christ, spurning the empty glory of the world, we might give our life to him alone, as we did give it—to him who, granting remission of sins, himself suffered for us and bestowed upon our souls both redemption and salvation.

For who is there who, reading the Scriptures and believing in one faith, one baptism, one God, does not condemn the foolish dogmas of the heretics—who, while they wish to compare the divine with the human, divide the substance united in the power of God, and through the crime of the Binionites parcel out the greatness of Christ, venerable in the threefold fountain of the Church—since it is written: 'I am God and there is no other besides me; there is no righteous one and saviour besides me'; and: 'I am the first and I am after these, and besides me there is no God; who is like me?' Again elsewhere: 'I am, and before me there was no other, and after me there shall be none like me; I am God and there is none besides me who saves'; and again, when Moses says: 'The Lord our God is one God'; and Jeremiah says:

'This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned besides him, who found out every way of wisdom and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward he was seen upon the earth and conversed with men.' For he it is who was, who is, and who is to come, seen from the ages, the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us; and being crucified, having conquered death, he was made heir of life, and rising on the third day, made the pattern of what is to come, he showed the hope of our resurrection; and ascending into the heavens he built the way for those who come to him, being wholly in the Father and the Father in him, that what is written might be made manifest: 'Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will'; as John says:

'There are three that bear witness on earth: the water, the flesh and the blood, and these three are in one; and there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one in Christ Jesus.' And because you wish us to go through each point, that we may declare what we believe—though it would befit us rather to be taught by you, yet because, according to the ordinance of God (who, while he showed by works who he was, nonetheless willed to hear from his disciples who he was or who he was believed to be), because you wish us also to prove to you what you know—we ask pardon if, both in affirming our faith and in refuting those things which error insinuates for the corrupting of unbelievers' minds, we speak at greater length.

For the fault lies with those who, while they fabricate many things against the humanity of Christ, have caused us at greater length to reject those very things which they bring as charges against themselves. For let him be anathema who, believing the evil of the Patripassian heresy, troubles the catholic faith, since it is written, Peter saying: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'; and elsewhere: 'He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son has not life'; and again, with the Lord himself saying: 'I and the Father are one'; and elsewhere: 'I am in the Father and the Father in me'; to the testimony of which matter there was added even in the Gospel the demoniac's confession, saying: 'You are the Christ, the Son of God; why have you come before the time to destroy us?'

Which we know was set down not because God willed the testimony of demons, but that men, made to the image and likeness of God, might be bound to worse torments if they should not know these things which even the demons confess. But to us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him. To their folly the Novatian heresy draws near, as though, the error of sin ever growing worse, men were to be purged by repeated baptisms—whereas the apostolic Scripture testifies to one baptism, one faith, one God, and we know that, besides that which has been preached to us, not even an angel from heaven is to be heard if he should say anything different.

But we, once baptized in Christ, leaving the things that are past, stretching ourselves forth to the things before, wish to lay hold of that for which we were laid hold of, since, besides the one Christ Jesus, united in faith, we have no other defense than that of the one baptism, knowing that Christ came in the flesh to save sinners and to restore the redeemed in himself to the ordinances of everlasting life. But he who denies that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, this one is antichrist, and his perdition shall not slumber, as the apostle says: 'He who denies the Son has not the Father either; but he who confesses the Son has both the Son and the Father.'

But anathema be the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, and let whoever either institutes or follows sacrileges hateful to God have his portion with Sodom and Gomorrah. Anathema be he who, reading of griffins, eagles, asses, elephants, serpents and superfluous beasts, captive to the vanity of a confused observance, sets up as it were the mystery of divine religion—whose works and detestable forms are of the nature of demons, not the truth of divine glories. For these are they whose God is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame;

these are they who overthrow the doubting and lead them to the ruin of their own destruction, and call that a sacrament which, according to the Scriptures of God, they know not to be a mystery of perdition; and going into the precipice, as the prophet says, they have become as a spirit in the wings of flying creatures, and therefore they shall be confounded out of their own shrines, made like the horse and the mule which have no understanding; and worthy are they whose God is the Sun.

But we, instructed by the words of the divine Scriptures, though we know that an idol is nothing in this world, but that what they sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, yet we labor that, as it is written, understanding the subtleties of speeches and the interpretations of parables and doing what we are in God, we may have in us nothing of the figure of beasts, but that the discipline of Christ our God may hold the whole—because there is no fellowship between the table of the Lord and the table of demons, between light and darkness, between Christ and Belial. As John also, speaking of such things, says: 'If anyone worships the beast and its image, this one has received a mark on his forehead and on his hand'; and the same elsewhere:

'I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on its heads ten diadems and a name of blasphemy; and it was like a leopard, and its feet like a bear's, and its mouth like a lion's mouth; and the dragon gave it his seat and his power.' As Daniel also says of this same thing:

'I beheld, and lo, four winds were striving upon the great sea, and four beasts were coming up out of the sea, each surpassing the other in greatness; and the first was like a lioness, and its wings like an eagle's, and it rose from the earth and stood upon a man's feet, and a man's heart was given to it. And behold, another beast like a bear, and it stood on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth, in the midst of its teeth; and it was said to it: Arise, devour the flesh of many. And behold, another beast like a leopard, and it had four wings of a bird and four heads, and power was given to it. And behold, a fourth beast, horrible and wonderful and exceedingly strong, and its teeth were of iron and its claws of bronze.'

All which things, set forth in their visions, the prophets willed to be read by all and, when understood, to be shunned; and therefore those who, while learning these things, did not rightly understand what it was they read, have had their heart given to the beast, and their flesh shall be devoured; for they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; and professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed beasts and of serpents; and conforming themselves to the former desires of a life of ignorance, they fell into those things which they do not understand.

But we, knowing that the law is spiritual and that all prophecy needs interpretation, having Christ our God in our mind as the one who shows it forth—through whom, even if we were to think otherwise, these things were revealed to us—have resolved to serve the righteousness of the Lord unto sanctification; so that, as the prophet says, the names of the Baalim being rooted out of our mouth and their titles exterminated, we may cast away from ourselves, as it is written, the covenant that is with the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven and the creeping things of the earth, recognizing that all these are the wages of sin, whose end is death; but grace and peace and life eternal are in Christ Jesus our Lord. As Solomon also says:

'God gave me the true knowledge of all these things that are, that I might know the disposition of the globe of the earth and the power of the elements, the beginning and the end and the midst of the months, the changes and divisions of the seasons, the courses of the year and the dispositions of the stars, the natures of animals and the rages of beasts, the force of winds and the thoughts of men, the differences of trees and the powers of roots; and all things that are hidden and manifest I came to know.' As he also says: 'Certain men, going astray, worshipped dumb reptiles and serpents and superfluous beasts; and he sent upon them a multitude of dumb animals for vengeance, that they might know that by the things through which a man sins, by these also he is tormented.' As David also says:

'Many bulls have compassed me about; fat oxen have beset me; they opened their mouth against me like a ravening and roaring lion.' Reading which, let the unclean mind of the schismatics take heed, and, if it can be converted and can avoid perishing, let it not perish; for holy David did not fear bulls or oxen, but, as it is written: 'Your adversary the devil, like a ravening and roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour; whom resist, steadfast in faith.' As it is also written elsewhere: 'Be not a lion in your house, overthrowing your household members'; and as it says there: 'Exalt not yourself in the thought of your soul like a bull, lest perhaps your strength be dashed in pieces and through folly it devour your leaves.' As David also says:

'My tongue cleaved to my jaws, and you have brought me down into the dust of death, for many dogs have compassed me about'; in which, however, holy David, to show what he had declared in the earlier outcry, added: 'the assembly of sinners has beset me.' As Isaiah also says: 'They are dogs, souls that know no satiety.' So likewise the Lord our God, speaking to Job the prophet, said: 'Show me whether the lion already submits to you, or whether the unicorn will serve you or sleep in his den.' And elsewhere God to him: 'You shall take Leviathan, and you shall fill the souls of dragons with fear, that they may dread, sitting in their dens within the woods and working deceit.' And again elsewhere the Lord says to him:

'You shall draw out the dragon with a hook, or put a ring in his nostril, or bore through his lips; and he shall speak softly to you, that he may make a covenant with you, and you may have him as a perpetual servant'; in which holy Job, understanding the Lord who spoke, and wishing also to open to us the understanding of the words said: 'Why,' he says, 'am I still judged, O Lord, while I am chastised and reproved? Or what answer, O Lord, shall I give to such words, since I am nothing?' And then the Lord, granting also to us who were to come after the work of the word for understanding himself, set forth the parable of his own saying, saying: 'Do not,' he says, 'set aside my judgment, nor deem that I have decreed otherwise than that you might appear the less unjust;

but take on height and power and brightness, and clothe yourself with honor; leave the angels of wrath, and quench every proud and injurious one within you; break off from yourself the impious, and hide them in the earth, and fill their faces with ignominy, that they may be without honor; and then you shall confess that my right hand is mighty to save you. Even before you the wild beast, made like an ox, eats hay, whose strength is in his loins and his power in the navel of his belly, and his tail erect like a cypress, and his sinews twisted like ropes, and his sides plates of bronze, and his backbone like a wall of iron; and this is the beginning that was made for the angels to mock at my creature.'

All which things, most blessed bishops, searching the Scriptures, we know are written for our sake, that he who understands the natures of beasts spoken of in parables, rejecting the vices of worldly manners that are in him, may chasten himself, as it is written in the Apocalypse: 'Behold, the waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples and crowds and nations and tongues.' As John also says there: 'Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and she is become a habitation of demons, because the nations have drunk of the wrath of her fornication'; and the same there: 'And they shall weep and bewail themselves over her, because they committed fornication with her and lived in her delights.' As the apostle also says:

'For you have no wrestling against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of this world, the rulers of these darknesses, against the spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places.' As John also says: 'I saw, out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs; and these are spirits of demons, which, working signs, go forth to trouble the kings of the earth.' Finally, as those initiated in Christ, we retain the first rudiments of the faith we received: we know that we have believed what we believe in God, and have renounced what we renounced in the devil, and that what is called the wild beast is the one thing, but that what Christ Jesus is, is God. As the apostle also says:

'For God has no care for oxen, but he says it for our sake, since he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes ought to partake of the fruit of his hope.' Let no one therefore ascribe to us the understanding of his own perversity; everyone shall be condemned by his own words and justified by his own words; we confess what we believe, and searching the Scriptures, rejecting the appearance of demons, we understand, as it is written, the deep things of Satan, knowing, as the apostle says, that no one has delivered us from the body of this death save the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ; for it is written: 'Unless you believe, you shall not understand'; and elsewhere: 'A good understanding to all who do it.'

But as for that, most blessed bishops, which they have brought forward—the idolatrous forms, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars and the other gods of the gentiles—even if we lived so idle toward God and instructed by no faith through the Scriptures, yet while we still delighted in the conversation of worldly folly, by worldly wisdom, though still unprofitable to us, we nevertheless recognized these things to be contrary to our faith, and detecting the gods of the gentiles, we laughed at the worldly follies and miseries, whose works we read as it were for the equipping of our wit.

But if even in these things the faith of our profession is sought: anathema be it, and let their table be made a snare and a stumbling-block to those who call gods the Sun and Moon, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus or Saturn and all the host of heaven—whom the gentiles' error, in the rites of their sacred ceremonies and ignorant of God, has taken to itself—and who venerate them, though they are detestable idols, worthy of Gehenna; since it is written: 'Woe to him who says to the wood, Wake and arise, and to the stone, Be exalted; let them perish with their gods, who are spoken of whether in heaven or on earth; may he exterminate the vine of their sense'—as it is written—'the boar out of the wood and the solitary wild beast feed upon it.'

But for us, set free by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ from the body of this death, as it is written, 'a thousand shall fall at our side and ten thousand at our right hand,' so that, according to the Scriptures, clad in the armor of God, ascending upon the basilisk and the asp, we may tread down the lion and the dragon, subject to no likeness of idolatrous wretchedness; concerning which it is written: 'What profits the graven image, because its maker has graven it? They have fashioned it a molten thing, a lying phantasm; and those who shaped it are confounded over their own figment, for the idols were dumb.'

Wherefore either the foolish superstitions of these idols, or the forms of sins, or the names of demons, or the death of vices is shown to us, that, understanding the darknesses, we may desire the light of the Lord, and crying out, 'Know, O nations, God is with us,' we may break their bonds and cast away from us their yoke, and not be defiled, as it is written, in the studies of the Egyptians; for the Lord shall deride them and the Lord shall mock them. Concerning whom John, showing the prince of idolatrous wretchedness, says: 'He is of the seven, and the eighth shall go into perdition.' Concerning whom Solomon also says: 'Sow not in the furrows of iniquity, and you shall not reap them sevenfold'; for so he also says elsewhere: 'Before man are life and death, water and fire;

let him stretch out his hand to whichever he wills.' For these are the seven shepherds and the eight bites of men, according to that which is written, working in the sons of distrust. But to us, to live is Christ, life is Christ, faith is Christ, knowing that we have an anointing from the Holy One, and that we were redeemed not with corruptible silver and gold from our vain conversation of the tradition of the fathers, but with the precious blood, as of a lamb undefiled and unspotted, Jesus Christ; established in whom, no one plunders us according to the philosophy of the world and not according to Christ. Let those who love gold fashion for themselves a golden age of Saturn: to us divine wisdom is more precious than all gold and silver and than the precious stone;

let those whose habitation is the fire of Gehenna call the Sun their god and confess themselves to be of its element—they who will not have Christ as God to be their beginning: to us all things that are under the sun are vanity and the presumption of a perverse spirit, knowing that it shall perish with the world. Let those confess in their evils the Moon to be god who, carried about by every wind of doctrine, set themselves to observe days, seasons, years and months. Let those call Mars their god who have pleased themselves in the adulterous Mars and, given over to the concupiscence of the flesh, are bound in fornications; and, having become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, let them judge Jupiter their god, doomed to perish with their father as with their author:

but to us God is Christ Jesus, who, when we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together, forgiving us all our trespasses and blotting out the handwriting that was against us, which was contrary by its decrees, and took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; the principalities and powers he confidently led across, triumphing over them in himself. For those who worship such demons shall be smitten with the sword of the Lord like their gods, and, not knowing the true Father and Christ the God, the Son of God, made like their idols, they shall appear, as it is written: 'father against son, son against father, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, and a man's enemies shall be those of his own household.' Let them worship.

Let those worship Mercury as god who, jingling the little purses of earthly treasures, venerate his caduceus or his money-bag in acquiring them: we seek treasures hidden in the heavens and unseen, which neither rust lays hold of nor moth corrupts, knowing that the rich man has not entered into the kingdoms of heaven, as it is written: 'Go to now, you rich, weep and howl over your miseries that come upon your riches; your garments have rotted and become moth-eaten; your gold and your silver, which you have laid up, in the last days shall rust, and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh like fire.' But we know that God has chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, heirs of the kingdom.

But let those venerate Venus as god who work shameful things and look for the reciprocal reward of their error, as is fitting: but we, looking unto Abraham our father and unto Sarah who travailed, we who are brought forth from the Church our mother and produced with wisdom as midwife, press on toward the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ, until we all meet in the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And although no one is sufficient for these things, yet we know our God to be mighty, since he who promised is able also to perform; for he himself said:

'Who has hoped in the Lord and been confounded? Who has remained in his commandments and been forsaken?' Anathema be he who venerates Saclas, Nebroel, Samael, Beelzebub, Nasbodeus, Belial and all such, because they are demons, with the unhappy sanctification of ceremonies, or says they are to be venerated; all of whom, as we read in the Scriptures of God, we condemn, the assertion of demonic wisdom being despised;

for into whatever species and forms the devil may now transform himself, we know that he can be nothing other than the devil; and whether he be called Abaddon in Hebrew, or Apollyon in Greek, or in Latin Exterminans (the Destroyer), whether he be set forth as a beast having seven heads and ten horns, or be put as a serpent or a dragon, we know that he is the devil and the spirit according to the prince of the air of this world, who works in the sons of distrust, among whom we all also once had our conversation in the desires of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and of the thoughts; concerning whom it is written in the Apocalypse:

'And the great dragon was cast out of heaven, that old serpent who is called the devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world; and he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.' And therefore those who believe in such things, or who sanctify themselves by such an author, being by nature children of wrath and of perdition, walking in darkness, it is no wonder if, denying in themselves the image and likeness of God, and made like the devil in vices, they ascribe the creation of man to demons; concerning whom the apostle well says: 'The natural man,' he says, 'does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; nor indeed can he, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot discern it; but the spiritual man discerns all things, while he himself is discerned by no one'; and as it is written:

'Those who are of the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those who are of the Spirit, the things of the Spirit; and the prudence of the flesh is death, but the prudence of the Spirit is life and peace.' And if they wish to know what we think concerning each of the things that are written: rightly to such, united with the earthly Adam who was made a beast, there is a kinship of dark life, as it is written: 'As is the earthly, such are those also that are earthly; as is the heavenly, such are those also that are heavenly.' Worthy are they whom Eve, travailing in the form of Cain and Lamech—she who had been made the mother of all living, but committed adultery against God and, consenting to the devil's seduction, called Saclas her demon and god and husband—as it is written in the prophet:

'Behold, judgment! Plead against your mother, for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband; and I will take away her fornication from before my people, and her adultery from between her breasts.' And there again: 'And I will take away my garments and my fine linen, that she may not cover her shame, and I will lay bare her filthiness in the sight of her lovers.' And in Jeremiah, the Lord rebuking Jerusalem, who became a servant with her sons, says to her: 'How do you say, I am not polluted and I have not gone after Baal? Behold, look upon your ways in the multitude, and see where you have not committed fornication.' And Ezekiel says: 'Thus says the Lord: Your root is of the land of Canaan, your father an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.' As also elsewhere:

'I likened your mother to the night; my people is like one having no knowledge.' As also in the Gospel God says to such: 'You are the sons of the devil, and you have the devil for your father.'

But we have not so learned Christ; rather, being taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, we understand that the law is spiritual, but we are carnal, sold under sin, and comparing spiritual things with spiritual we labor, so that, as we have borne the image of him who is of the clay, when, overcome by our faults, we walked in vices, so we may bear the image of him who is from heaven; and putting off, according to the former manner of life, the old man, which is corrupted according to the desires of error, we may be renewed in the spirit of our mind, putting on the new man, who is created according to God in holiness and righteousness and truth.

For we know and have learned that we are God's workmanship in good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them; as Moses also says: God made man after his own image and likeness, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man was made into a living soul. And we know that Eve, who was deceived and fell into transgression, shall be saved through the bearing of children, if she abide in faith, and acknowledging that she was taken out of her own husband, and bearing children in sorrow, her turning shall be to her husband; as it is written in the prophet: For this cause, behold, I, says the Lord, will close up your mother's way with stakes, and I will not build up her path, and her tracks she shall not find;

she shall pursue her lovers and shall not overtake them, and she shall say: I will return to my former husband, for it was then better with me than now.

In this understanding, set free, as it is written, from our mother's womb, and not yielding to flesh and blood, we labor; and as we were servants of sin unto death, so we are servants of righteousness unto righteousness, knowing that even though our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed; and as the first man is of the earth, of the clay, so the works of the flesh are made manifest, which are adulteries, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, luxury, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, wraths, brawls, dissensions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and the like. Among these let the demons Saclas and Nebroel have their portion among their own; for let them not seek a place among things chaste and religious.

And as the second man is from heaven, heavenly, so the works of the Spirit are made manifest, which are love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, goodness, meekness, faith, continence, chastity, kindness, and love; in which Christ, appearing as God, said that we are his temple, and willed to dwell in us, in that which he himself had made for himself within us, as the prophet Job also says: Thy hands have fashioned me and made me; thereafter, changing, thou didst cast me down; remember that thou didst form me of mud from the earth and didst call me back again, and thou didst milk me like milk and didst curdle me like cheese; with skin and flesh thou didst clothe me, with bones and sinews thou didst frame me; but life and mercy thou didst place with me, and thy visitation kept my spirit.

And therefore, with the word ever repeated: let him be anathema who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, for this is antichrist; let him be anathema who denies that Christ Jesus, God, the Son of God, was crucified for us, as the prophet says: This one bears our sins and grieves for us; and again, Paul testifies that he knows nothing else save Jesus Christ, and him crucified; let him be anathema who denies that our Lord God was fastened with nails, or given vinegar to drink, or gall, since he himself said to his disciples: Put your hands into the rents of the wounds of my hands; and we read it written in the Gospel: And they took a sponge full of vinegar and gall and gave him to drink, and he said, 'It is finished.'

All these things the schismatics or heretics, according to their established practice, corrupting the Scriptures and inserting the sense of their own wickedness into the divine words, have mingled, falsehoods with truths and lies with catholic things. Let him be anathema who does not condemn Manes and his works, doctrines, and institutions; whose foul deeds in particular we would pursue with the sword, if it could be done, and send them down to hell, or to anything worse than Gehenna and its ever-watchful torment, where neither the fire is quenched nor the worm dies. And lest their impurity should lie hidden from the divine judgment, their evils have been exposed even to secular judgments.

For besides those things which, asserting with erratic notions, they have held the Sun and Moon, rulers of the earth's orb, to be gods—though it is written: What is brighter than the sun? yet even this shall fail—so they have enlarged the follies of their wretched sacrileges, that, with minds oppressed by blindness, in order to bind themselves the more impiously, they would say that they consecrate themselves the more religiously. Let him be anathema who does not condemn the fornications of the Nicolaitans and the manifold things shown in the Scriptures—demons with their disciples and teachers—or who follow their works. Let them perish who have received into themselves the perfidy of the Ophites and, having become sons of vipers, confess a god and lord of theirs like to themselves.

And because it would be long to go through each one, all the heresies which men, corrupt in mind and shipwrecked from the faith, have fabricated for themselves, whether out of the canonical Scriptures or out of the apocrypha, beyond the things that are written, one puffed up against another for one or another—and whatever the Saturninian heresy introduced, or the Novatian brought forth, or set forth at the teaching of Basilides, or the Arian collected, or the Patripassian instructed, or the Homuncionite falsely devised, or the Cataphrygian persuaded, or the Borborite seized upon—we, with catholic mouth and believing in God Christ, together with all who follow or teach these things or would wish to assert them, condemn;

all of whose dogmas we dissolve by the light of the divine testimonies among us—not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. Yet among these things there is a new saying—and I will say it is damnable not only in the deed but even in the telling, and brought forth by no heretical author before this—a wicked sacrilege which, reading it, Itacius introduced into our ears: that by magical incantations the first-fruits should be either expiated or consecrated for tasting, and that an ointment should be consecrated for the accursed Sun and Moon, with whom it shall fail. He who read, brought forth, believed, did, held, and introduced this is not only anathema maranatha, but is also to be pursued with the sword, since it is written: You shall not suffer sorcerers to live.

Let them, therefore, keep to themselves the wicked inventions of the heretics and the interpretations worthy of Gehenna; let them hold to themselves the fickle whims of schismatic slanders: the tabernacle of Christ God and the temple which is in us, no one shall pull down. Let them, reading the Scriptures, suppose God to be stony, horny, of stone: to us, in all Scripture, as it is written, God is the unicorn; to us Christ is the rock, to us Jesus is the cornerstone, to us Christ is the man of men. Let them, as sons of perdition and of the devil, believe themselves to be glutted with the devil's rain: to us, God is almighty, who calls the water of the sea and sprinkles it upon the face of the whole earth, and grants the early and the latter rain.

And if these wretched men themselves wish to know what manner of god is theirs, in whom they believe: he is, as it is written in the prophet, the beast that sleeps under every tree, by the wood and the papyrus and the reed; he is, according to what is written in Job, the Lord speaking: In the circle of his teeth is terror, his entrails are brazen asps, and his bond is like the smyris-stone; the spirit shall not pass through him; in his sneezing brightness is opened; his eyes are like the morning star; from his mouth go forth burning lamps and a ball of fire; his nostrils breathe out the smoke of a furnace of burning fire; his soul is the flames of coals, and fires proceed from his tongue; in his neck dwells strength, and before him runs destruction;

he is, as the prophet says elsewhere, who counts the rock as stubble and laughs at the earthquake; his bed is sharp potsherds, and all the gold that is, like the sea, is as mire beneath him; he makes the deep boil like a brazen pot, and esteems the strait like a mirror, and the abyss of Tartarus like an eternal captive; there is nothing made on earth like him, that may be mocked by my angels; he sees everything lofty, and he himself is king of all the things that are in the waters. But to us God is Christ Jesus, who said:

All that is under heaven is mine; and the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, appeared in the midst of the golden candlesticks, like to the Son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet and girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle; and the hairs of his head were white as wool and as snow, and, as it is written, his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass cast forth from a furnace, and his voice as the voice of many waters; and in his right hand he holds seven stars, and out of his mouth goes a sword sharp on both sides, and his face is as the sun shining in his strength. This is he who has the keys of death and of hell; this is he whose name is written on a new white stone, which no one has except him who has received it.

For if we cause no stumbling-block to the schismatics, in that we read the name God inscribed on the new stone—who, in every letter, whether Hebrew or Latin or Greek, in everything that is seen or spoken, is King of kings and Lord of lords—in which tongues, even though the title of the cross is set up, yet a divine testimony is lettered to God, as also in the prophets of God; wherein Jeremiah, with the character of the Hebrew letter set before him, wept in lamentations, and David exulted in psalms, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess to God. For he it is of whom it is written: The lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed;

but to us the lion is not God; rather, as it is written, 'What is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?' He is of whom it is written: Let the hart of friendship and the colt of graces speak to you; but to us neither the hart nor the colt is God, but, as it is written: Before you say 'Lord, Lord,' he says, Behold, I am present; and as elsewhere: Out of the mouth of sucklings you have prepared praise. He it is who, as it is written in the prophet, alone is able to bind together the band of the Pleiades and to unloose the enclosures of Orion, knowing the changing of the firmament and destroying the wheel of generation; by the renewal of baptism he has conquered the day of our birth;

he it is whose name made a way in the sea and a most sure path in the floods, to whose name the burning fire of the furnace yielded, overcome. Whom even Balaam, a worshipper of idols and of demons, prophesied as a testimony to his own wretchedness, saying: A man shall go forth from the seed of Judah and shall rule over many nations, and his kingdom shall be exalted; for the Lord God brought him out of Egypt; his horns are as the honor of the unicorn; he shall devour the nations of his enemies, and shall pick clean their elbows, and with his darts he shall shake his enemies, and resting he shall be refreshed like a lion and like a lion's whelp; who shall rouse him up? They that bless him are blessed, and they that curse him are cursed. Although his words, on account of what he was,

—he himself, among the prophecies of the righteous, no one would have received—yet Scripture judged it a wicked thing that anything be barred from the Lord's Scriptures and condemned, whatever they also prophesied of this kind unto the testimony of God Christ, as it is written: Though wickedness be timid, it gives testimony to God, being condemned; and elsewhere: You believe that there is one God; this the demons also do, and they tremble. And if they desire to know what is the name which gives to every power and to every tongue the work of its might, this is it: that it is Christ Jesus, as it is written: Gold and silver I have not; but what I have, this I give you; in the name of Jesus rise and walk; as also elsewhere: I am the Lord God, this is my name; my glory I will not give to another;

and elsewhere, John saying: And his garment was sprinkled with blood, and his name was called the Word of God; and elsewhere: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us. Turn back, therefore, at last, wretched schismatic, turn back, and dread the name of the Lord, which even the whole nature of beasts and wild animals has feared, because it is written: It must needs be that scandals come, but woe to him through whom they shall be wrought; for would that you were either crafty or cold, but because you are lukewarm, you shall be spewed out of the mouth of the Lord;

but, as it is written, take counsel for yourself and do penance, and buy for yourself gold tried in the fire, that what you have bought, having become as gold refined by fire, the name of the Lord, which is Jesus, may be written in you, when in the things you do in penance you show forth the name of the Lord the Savior—because through him you have been saved—since it is written: And his name shall be called Jesus, for this is he who shall save all the people; and understand parables and obscure sayings and the utterances of the prudent and dark things, because he is mighty who said:

When you are converted and groan, then you shall be saved; for our God, who from the beginning, saving his people in manifold and many ways, showed it to our fathers in deed, coming in the flesh, manifested it, being called by name Jesus. But if anyone thinks otherwise, he shall bear judgment, whoever he be; for to them, as is said by the wretched, God is supposed to be male-female: but to us the Spirit of God is both in males and in females, as it is written: God made man after his own image and likeness, male and female; he made them and blessed them; as also the Apostle says of him: Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God;

of whom, since we are men, and he himself is a man and our head, the Apostle promised to present us, betrothed in the faith, to the one husband, a chaste virgin, because there is neither male nor female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus. To them, therefore, let everything they read be confusion; to us, instruction to understand what is written, and to know the power of the living Word. It is no task to estimate the nature of the divine discourse by an erratic and carnal sense, in the confusible figures of carnal luxuries, but, as it is written, the invisible things of God can be known from the creation of the world through the things that are made.

For these are they who, wearing the stained tunic of the flesh, have turned the grace of the divine word into lusts, and despise dominions, blaspheme dignities, contemn prophecies, deny the resurrection; as it is written: Going more and more after the desires of the flesh, they contemn godliness, hardened by audacity, and on account of their unanimity, since they are ungodly, they do not fear to blaspheme—those upon whom perdition shall not slumber. But to us, who know that there is no other name under heaven given among men except Christ Jesus, in which it behooves us to be saved, neither Armaziel nor Mariame nor Joel nor Balsamus nor Barbilon is God, but Christ Jesus, of whom it is written:

And let all the angels of God worship him; and he it is who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a burning fire, and all things in all are fulfilled; and he it is the seed which was promised, ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator; he it is who is above all principality and power and might and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; he it is who is our God, nor shall any other be reckoned besides him, who is the head over every church, which is his body and his fullness, who fills all and in all. But whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come:

all are ours, and we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. And this is the one judgment of us all: that whether prophets or apostles or angels—if anything be uttered by anyone, by whatever name—if it prophesies or preaches Christ as God, and according to Moses and the prophets and the gospels, condemning the vices of the world, speaks God, if it consents to the catholic faith, we embrace it;

but if—which is a wicked thing—it denies that Jesus is God, and, dissenting from Moses, the gospels, or the prophets, persuades to the sacrileges of wretched dogmas, which is not lawful, then neither prophet nor apostle nor angel, even though he set before himself a holy name, but he is held by us as anathema and a fugitive, as it is written: that no one in the Holy Spirit says anathema to Jesus, and no one save in the Holy Spirit calls Jesus Lord; as also John says: Every spirit that confesses that Christ Jesus has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that dissolves Jesus is not of God, and this is antichrist; as also he himself says elsewhere: They who do not confess that Christ Jesus has come in the flesh, these are seducers and antichrists.

As also Joshua son of Nun, the Lord's prophet and leader in Israel, when an angel appeared to him, believing not in the mere appearance but in the confessions of words, cried out to the angel: Are you ours or our adversaries'? And he, that faith might be given to his words, confessed himself to be the prince of the host of the Lord; and so it came to pass that Joshua, who would believe nothing apart from God, then gave faith to the words of the angel speaking to him, when that one had not denied that he was of the host of the Lord. As also to John the apostle in the Apocalypse, when he wished to worship the angel speaking to him, it was shown that God, not angels, is to be worshipped, the angel saying to him: Do it not, John; for I am your fellow-servant and of your brethren who have the testimony;

worship Jesus as God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy; as also Isaiah says: Neither a messenger nor an angel, but the Lord himself shall come and shall save us. But if any are puffed up, knowing nothing, and beyond the four gospels either feign or confess some fifth gospel, why is this brought forth to the reproach of us who reject the wretchednesses of such things? For these are they in whom the god of this age has blinded the senses of the unbelieving, that the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine forth in them; and let all the wrath of the Lord come upon him who either writes this in titles or confesses or believes it.

But we, having entered the body of the venerable church of God through the creed, have come to know the indissoluble faith—watered by one threefold fount—in the arrangement of the four gospels, believing that there is no other God except Christ God, the Son of God, who, crucified for us, showed in his own name the baptism of remission, predestining from the beginning of the world in prophecy his elect, from whom Christ according to the flesh—as also the lineage of the Lord in the gospel, arranged and proclaimed through them, is held—through whom the Lord, prophesying himself, prepared the way of his coming, as it is written:

I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and their sons and daughters shall prophesy, and their young men shall see visions, and their old men shall dream dreams; and indeed upon my menservants and maidservants I will pour out of my Spirit, and I will give wonders in heaven above and signs on the earth beneath; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great day of the Lord come; and it shall be: whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Wherein we too do not despair of speaking concerning him, because, prohibiting and intercepting no one's spirit, he has not shut it up with a fixed limit of prophecy, but has granted that all who believe in him may speak freely of him; as it is also written in the gospel:

Blessed be God who has visited and wrought redemption for his people, and has raised up a horn in the house of David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets who have been from of old; as also Tobit the prophet says to his son: We, son, are sons of the prophets; Noah was a prophet, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all our fathers who from the beginning of the world prophesied; as also Jude the apostle says: Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, 'Behold, the Lord comes with his holy thousands to execute judgment'; as also the apostle, shutting the way of speaking about God to no one, when he wrote to the peoples to whom he preached: You can, he says, each one prophesy, that all may learn and all be exhorted; but also elsewhere:

The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, that whoever should believe in God Christ might have no despair of prophesying concerning God, in that which he had promised to all his own. And therefore, most blessed bishops, if, with the heresies and dogmas damned and the faith set forth in a clear declaration, you think satisfaction has been made both to God and to yourselves, then, giving testimony to the truth, absolve us from the envy of malicious detraction, and, reporting to your brethren those things which belong to the slanderers, heal the things harassed by the words of evil-speakers; for it is the fruit of life to be approved by those who seek the faith of the truth, not by those who, under the name of religious men, pursue domestic enmities. And although the catholic faith, possessing the way of the creed given by God,

seeks rather the glory of believing than of speaking, since the things which are brought forth by their own truth do not require an ingenious skill of interpretation, as the Apostle says: Avoid the contentions of the law; yet, compelled by the necessity of the time, which the injury inflicted upon us through Bishop Hydatius imposed—although we have always followed the part of patience, and it has been our endeavor rather to bear with someone than to provoke—we rejoice that the reason of things has so come about that, before you, who are the elder of us all and have come, nourished by the experiences of life, to the glory of the apostolic see, with blessed Peter as exhorter, we may speak what we believe, fulfilling before you the faith of the apostolic word which says: With the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Wherein we also, baptized into Christ, putting on Christ, and—the faith of the truth being lofty indeed in its manifold arrangement, yet venerable in the united power of the one God—as we believe with the heart, so unto the salvation of all who by the false-speaking of words have been sent into stumbling, we confess. For when, several years ago, restored by the regeneration of the living laver, and rejecting the squalid darkness of secular doings, we had given ourselves wholly to God—reading that whoever should love anyone more than God could not be his disciple—some of us, already elected to God in the churches, others laboring in life that we might be elected, we followed the quiet of catholic peace;

but when suddenly contentions arose, whether from necessary refutation, or from rivalry of life, or from the power of the last time, we, desiring the love of Christ God and peace—even though in conscience we were confident—nevertheless feared lest, as has happened, the contention of minds should bring about something that ecclesiastical peace would not contain. Yet thanks to God, who is one and true in all, that, amid these things, none of us who handed in this booklet has up to this time been able to have either an accuser of a still reprehensible life, or a judge—although to be detracted from is not always the lot of the guilty, but is sometimes the lot of the quiet.

Finally, in the episcopal assembly which was held at Caesaraugusta, none of us is held to have been made a defendant, none accused, none convicted, none condemned; no crime was laid against our name or purpose or life; no one had—I will not say the necessity—but not even the anxiety of being summoned. Some commonitorium, I know not what, was given there by Hydatius, which laid down as it were a discipline for the conduct of life: no one of us was reprehended there amid those proceedings, your letter against the wicked above all prevailing, in which, according to the gospel commands, you had enjoined that nothing should be decreed against the absent and the unheard.

Yet we, although we were absent there, have always admonished, and do admonish, in the churches: that wicked morals and unseemly manners of living, or those things which fight against the faith of Christ God, be condemned by the love of a commendable and Christian life; nor to forbid, if anyone, despising parents, children, possessions, dignity, and even his own soul, has chosen rather to love God

than the world; nor to take away the hope of pardon from those who, if they do not seek the things which are first, yet stand in the middle or third places, since, many mansions being set with God the Father, if the faith of the creed be kept uncorrupted, the hope set before us in Christ ought to be held, even if they have not the means of fulfilling the perfect work, following the apostle Paul, who said that he commanded some according to authority, admonished others according to indulgence, and informed others by counsel without the authority of command, that he might gain all who had come to the faith of Christ by the diverse calling of mercy. But the faith, as we have received it, so also we hold and hand down, believing in one God the Father almighty, as it is written:

From whom are all things, and we through him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, as it is written: Through whom are all things, and we through him; born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, as it is written: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us; and again concerning him: The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you, and therefore also that which shall be born holy shall be called the Son of God; who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, as it is written: And he shall be reckoned among the wicked; was buried, on the third day rose again, as it is written in the prophets:

Wait for me unto the day of my resurrection; ascended into the heavens, sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty, as it is written: Behold, I saw the heavens opened and the Son of man sitting at the right hand of God; from thence to come and to judge the living and the dead, as it is written: So shall he come as you have seen him going into heaven; believing in the holy church, the Holy Spirit, the saving baptism, as it is written: Unless one be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not ascend into the kingdoms of heaven; believing in the remission of sins, as it is written: I say to you, little children, that your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake; believing in the resurrection of the flesh, as it is written:

Moreover, Moses too proclaimed the resurrection to come, when the Lord said, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob'; he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all of them live unto him. Keeping the path of this creed, with catholic lips we condemn all heresies, doctrines, institutions, and dogmas which were made the subject of contention not by talent but by partisan zeal — having been baptized, as it is written, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; yet Scripture does not say 'in the names' as though in many, but in one, because the one God, to be venerated in a threefold power, is Christ, all things and in all, as it is written: To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed.

It does not say 'and to his seeds' as though to many, but as to one: 'and to thy seed,' which is Christ. Speaking of this matter the prophet says: This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned beside him, who received the law and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward he was seen upon earth and conversed with men. And although it would be tedious to go through each point one by one, and abhorrent to Christian sensibilities even to rehearse the doctrines of such miseries, nevertheless we say these things before your venerable crown for this reason: that, if we fall into the things we condemn, we may be condemned by the very profession of our own little book.

For who could believe, with catholic ears, the abomination of the Arian heresy — those who divide what is one and, wishing for a plurality of gods, defile the light of the prophetic word, not reading what Moses says: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God? To this the Lord bore witness in the Gospel, saying: What Moses wrote, he wrote concerning me. Yet of this same wretchedness Photinus, a kinsman to it, refuses to hold what is read: Cursed is the man who places his hope in man. Concerning this, our God himself, speaking to the man whom he had healed of his infirmity, showed whom he wished to be believed, saying: Go and tell how great things God hath done for thee; and this testimony is true. Who would tolerate the Patripassian heretics, when Scripture says:

He who believes in the Son has life; he who does not believe in the Son does not have life. So great is their wretchedness that they are condemned even by the confession of demons, when in the Gospel the demon cried out to God: What have we to do with thee, Jesus, Son of the living God? Hast thou come to destroy us before the time? Who, even were he a fool, would willingly fall in with the Ophites and want to have a serpent for his god, when it is written: I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the house of bondage; thou shalt have no other gods before me; thou shalt not make for thyself an idol nor any likeness of those things which are above in heaven, nor of those which are below upon the earth, nor of those which are under the waters, nor of those which are beneath the earth? Who would want the repeated baptisms of the Novatianists, when it is written: One faith, one baptism, one God?