You would indeed have spoken truly, had it not been protested against me why they preached that before the eternal ages the true only-begotten God was born of the true Father and God, so that his eternity with the Father should be no longer prior to that of angels and human souls, but subsequent to it. You also said that he is 'like according to the Scriptures,' as though a man too were like to God according to the Scriptures, and a grain of mustard-seed and leaven and a dragnet like to the kingdom of heaven. But to run through the falsehoods of your hypocrisy is idle; for the works of your impiety cry out against you. (4). A servant—I will not say a good one, but at least a tolerable one—hears against his will an insult to his master and, if he may, avenges it; the soldier repels the peril of his king even at the exposure of his own body and with contempt of his life;
the very dogs kept to guard the house, understanding by a certain instinct of nature, bark out, and when some scent of those approaching has touched them, they are borne up with all their leaps to the very suspicion. You have heard Christ, the true Son of God and only-begotten God, denied: you are counted as denying, and you keep quiet. What do I say, 'kept quiet'? You strive against those who protest and flock to those who clamour against him. That is too little. From your very library also arms are taken up for the preaching of impiety, and war against God is begun with your defences. Where then is your profession at Nicaea in Thrace, in which you said that all heresies were condemned? Your falsity has been dragged into the light;
the Sun of righteousness has betrayed the night of your profession to his own preachers. For you approve these things and condemn them, and you go over to the heretics. Thus what before you feigned for the deceiving of men, you have now betrayed—professing that very thing—as your hatred against Christ, who is God.