For it was not possible for the household of God to agree with you, foreigners, since we see it said by God to that carnal people, faithless like you: 'Turn back your foot from the rough way and your throat from thirst. But she said: I will be strengthened, because she loved strangers and went after them.' After you strangers therefore, after you foreigners, not only did we not wish to go, but we even pronounced anathema upon you, sons of pestilence and of darkness, lest, if we had departed from the apostolic and evangelical faith and forsaken the way which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob most blessed held, and Abel, Enoch, Noah and all the prophets, apostles and martyrs, these things also should have been said by God of us, which were said of your fellow-blasphemers the Jews:
'As a thief is confounded when he is caught, so shall the sons of Israel be confounded, they and their kings and their princes and their priests and their prophets.' We were unwilling to be among you, lest also that rebuke of the divine voice should convict us together with the Jews and with you heretics: 'Why do you speak to me? You have all acted impiously, and you have all transgressed against me, says the Lord.' How could there be agreement between us and you? When you have read written in the first book of Maccabees: 'Then there gathered to them a company mighty in strength from Israel, everyone who was willing in the law. And all who fled from evils were added to them and became a support to them.'
'And they established a force, and struck down sinners in their anger and wicked men in their indignation. And the rest fled to the nations to save themselves; and Mattathias and his friends went about, and destroyed the altars and circumcised the uncircumcised boys, as many as they found within the borders of Israel, by force, and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hands, and they secured the law from the hands of the nations and of the kings, and they did not give the horn to the sinner.' Could we have been with you, when you see what they did with their whole heart, who are found to have feared God? You say—you, a member cut off from the body of the blessed Church even then, when you were made an Arian out of a Christian—'Be with you.'
And the Lord says in the Gospel: 'But if your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is expedient for you that one of your members perish, rather than that your whole body be cast into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is expedient for you that one of your members perish, rather than that your whole body go into Gehenna.' The Church cries out that it has cut off Arius and cast him away according to the Lord's precepts, and you say: 'Receive your fellow-plagues and pestilences'; you say: 'Allow yourselves to perish by the same disease by which I have perished.'
Thus Sabellius was cut off from the body of the Church, as is also your utterly detestable Arius cut off, whose speech has crept into you like a cancer so mightily that you are now seen to be all cancer; nor will you be able to say that you have not become cancerous with Arius's speech, since the stench of your cancerous state has reached every place of your kingdom, and we have all resolved to shun you, lest we ourselves also be made cancerous by your Arian plague. Thus, I say, your master Arius was cut off and cast away, as also Sabellius was cut off and rejected, who dared to defend that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one person, because he dared to say that the same one is to himself both Father and Son and Holy Spirit;
he was cut off, because he did not hesitate to say that the Father himself was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin and suffered. Thus Marcion cast himself off as one cut off, who would not confess that the Son of God took upon himself a man from the womb of the Virgin and thereby became man. Thus Paul of Samosata, the master of Photinus, was cut off and cast away from the body of the Church, because he saw fit to say that the Son of God was merely a man. Thus also the heretics of all the sects have been cut off, as Arius was cut off, and as you have been—you who, because you say of the only Son of God, 'He was made out of nothing and is not the true Son, there was when he was not,' have deserved to be cut off.
You, therefore, are all cut off and rejected, you blasphemers, by the power of God from the Church of His mercy, because you did not remain in it in the faith in which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs remained. O man cut off with all your fellow-blasphemers from the body of the holy Church, lying in the bilge of the devil, you dare to say to her: 'Be such as I am, that you may be afflicted with such a disease as that by which I too have been consumed.' Thus you had supposed that we could agree with you, as though we did not hold to what the blessed Paul said: 'But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.'
What reasoning could have brought it about that, forsaking the way which leads to the kingdoms of heaven, we should take hold of yours which casts headlong into Gehenna? You thought that you could circumvent us by that subtlety by which the serpent circumvented Adam and Eve, composing an edict with choice words and most beautiful sentiments, in which all the poisons of your heresy are contained. But whence could you have accomplished this? When the blessed Paul had armed us against your poisons and your father's, saying: 'This therefore I say, that no one deceive you by loftiness of words,' and again:
'See that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain seduction, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ, for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.' How could we have been seduced by those Arian, sacrilegious notions of yours—by lofty words though they be—when we have known you to hold an empty philosophy? Whence too could your words be sweet, you whom we have seen holding the tradition of Arius, not of the blessed apostles? To whom he—whom you deny to be the true Son of God—said: 'Go, baptize those who believe, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'
How could we Christians acquiesce to you, the disciple of Arius, forsaking the apostolic tradition, when we find you saying that the Father is not a true Father, but is called Father, when you say that he does not have a true Son, but that he was made out of nothing, when you say that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete equally consists of nothing—whereas, on the contrary, we see that the apostles believed in one God the Father almighty, a true Father, a true Father for this reason, that he truly, not putatively, has a Son, and in his only Son Jesus Christ, that is, in the true Son of God, and in the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, in the true Spirit of God?
How could anyone of those who so believe be supplanted by the devil through you, the founder of Arius's blasphemy, when the apostolic faith both confesses a perfect Trinity and acknowledges the one Godhead of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the blasphemy of Arius, that is, your blasphemy, holds nothing except what has pleased your dear devil, since there is as great a difference between the faith of the blessed Church and your heresy as between light and darkness? Rightly meanwhile did I call you thus separated from us, as darkness is separated from light, because you are sons of darkness, whence too you have vomited forth darkness from your viperous hearts.
You hoped to turn us aside from the way of truth, as though we did not know that the Holy Spirit had forewarned us through the blessed Paul, who says: 'Let no one convict you, willing it in humility of mind and religion of angels, which he walks in without cause, puffed up by the sense of his own flesh, and not holding the Head, from whom the whole body, drawn together through connection and conjunction, grows into the increase of faith.' How could we follow you, walking without cause, nourished by the serpent through the mouth of Arius, puffed up by the sense of your own flesh, become an apostate, when the apostle's precept compelled that you be shunned? You said that, desiring to be joined for the sake of peace, you had pseudo-bishops of your sect for us; but how could we do this, so as to hear not God, but you, His enemy?
We are not senseless like you, so as to deny that the Son of God is God, as the Jews deny it, who are partakers of your blindness and leaders of your unbelief, whose example of reprobation the blessed Paul, pointing it out, sets forth to the Hebrews: 'And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, speaking in testimony, but Christ as a Son over his house, which house we are, if only we hold fast the freedom and exultation of hope, on account of which the Holy Spirit says: Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers tempted me in trial; and they saw my works forty years. Therefore that generation was hateful to me, and I said:'
'They always err in heart. But these have not known my ways, as I swore in my wrath: They shall not enter into my rest.' Take heed, brethren, lest perchance in any of you there be an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God; but exhort yourselves daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened in the error of sin. For we have been made partakers of Christ, if indeed we hold firm the beginning of his substance unto the end. While it is said, 'Today, if you hear my voice, do not harden your hearts as in the provocation.' For some, having heard this, did not believe; but not all who went out of Egypt through Moses. But with whom was he displeased for forty years?
Was it not those who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they should not enter into his rest, except to the disobedient? And we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Let us therefore fear, lest perchance, the commandment being forsaken, any of you should seem unable to enter into his rest. For it has been announced to us, just as also to them; but the word of hearing did not profit them, not being tempered with faith in the hearers. For we who have believed shall enter into his rest, as he said: 'As I swore in my wrath: They shall not enter into my rest,' and this though the works were done from the foundation of the world. Yet he said somewhere concerning the seventh day: 'Thus God also rested on the seventh day from all his works.' And in this place again:
'They shall not enter into my rest.' Since therefore it remains that some enter into it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter in because of disobedience, again he fixes a certain day, 'Today,' saying in David, after so long a time, as it was said before: 'Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts,' for if Jesus had given them rest, he would not have spoken of another day afterward. Therefore there remains a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his own. Who is so foolish that, having read these things, having received them from the blessed apostle, forsaking the apostolic faith, would attempt to take up heresy?
Who will dare to deny him, whom he sees able to grant eternal rest to those who believe in him, and be willing to believe in one with whom he shall begin to be punished forever? Who is such a one, unless it be you, Constantius the emperor, who have forsaken the Lord's camp and made a crossing to the house of the devil? We did not choose to burn, as you chose with your lover the devil, but we hasten to enter into perpetual rest. How could we be captured by your cunning and bent aside from the way of truth? When the apostle still exhorts us to lay hold of the eternal rest, saying: 'Let us therefore hasten to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall by the same example of disobedience.'
'For the word of God is living and powerful and sharp, sharper than any sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a searcher of the mind and of the thoughts of the heart; and there is no creature that does not appear before him; but all things are naked and open to his eyes, to whom our account is to be given.' Since these things are so, how could any of us cross over to you who remain in the perfidy of the Jews? What rational ground could join us Christians to you Arians, when we saw that you were imitators of that nation in all perfidy? From which how could those escape who take refuge in the house of God? When in the Acts of the Apostles the most blessed Peter spoke thus, saying:
'Repent, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For to you is this promise, and to your children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call.' And with many other words also he testified and exhorted them, saying: 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation.' Nor will you be able to say that you Arians are not a crooked generation, just as the Jews were and are, since you discern that the scribes, the Pharisees, and the princes of the Jews were then called a crooked generation for this reason, that they both denied the Son of God and persecuted all who believed in his divine majesty.
You will not be able, I say, to deny that you and all the Arians are a crooked and perverse generation, since you do these very things which they also did. If they denied the only Son of God, so do you also; if they persecuted the servants of his eternal mercy, you too persecute them. What then ought we to have done, except that, according to the precept of blessed Peter, we should withdraw from you, the sacrilegious? For whence could there be agreement with you? When the Lord said in the Gospel: 'Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.' How could we be as one? When the blessed apostle, writing to the Corinthians, said:
It is reported everywhere that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even found among the heathen, so that a man has his father's wife; and you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. If, then, the Apostle commanded that one who works such a deed should be taken away from among them, lest, through his fellowship, the whole Church should be corrupted, how much more fitting was it that we should flee from you blasphemers? If he relates that he delivered that man over to Satan, how much more ought you then to know that you have already been delivered over, once you began to deny the Son of God?
For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though present, concerning him who has so acted: in the name of the Lord Jesus, when you are gathered together with my spirit, along with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. Since this is the rebuke of the Apostle, could Christians be joined to the slaves of Antichrist?
For how would we not have been corrupted by the poisons of your so great blasphemy, since anyone who holds communion with you, whether in hypocrisy or in truth, is in enormous peril? Since it was on account of your heresy that I wrote to withdraw from you, how could we again cling to you? Since the Apostle's voice says: I wrote to you in an epistle not to associate with fornicators — not indeed with the fornicators of this world, or the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters; otherwise you would have had to go out of this world. But now I have written to you not to associate, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one not even to take food.
If we are commanded not even to take food with you, did you suppose that Catholics could come together with heretics to celebrate all the solemnities? Could we, worshippers of God, be together with you who go astray, with you who by the devil's poison are led into every drunkenness? How could it have come about that we, the living, should stand among the dead? Since it was more fitting that you, sons of our Adversary, should be seen gathered into one, and we, on the contrary, soldiers of Christ, into one — so that you might, without any doubt, be called by all who love God the members and body of a harlot; by which name we too could be styled, if we should hand ourselves over to you. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? God forbid.
Or do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For, He says, the two shall be one flesh. But he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee fornication. From what kind of fornication do you wish us to flee? For he who desires to seek another woman besides his wife is called a fornicator; likewise he who has served idols is said to have committed fornication, since indeed, forsaking God, he has adored idols; in the same way, he who is a heretic is called a fornicator. From these, know which you please: that it is a graver crime to become a heretic and to serve idols than to commit adultery according to the flesh.
Since, then, whether you Gentiles or you heretics are called idolaters, it is necessary that both parties be practising idolatry; and yet, because — beyond what can be told — those two crimes are far more monstrous than carnal fornication, as you will understand, behold with what evils you have cut your own throat. The most holy Apostle cries out still, saying: Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body. And: You are not your own; for you were bought with a price. Glorify and bear God in your body.
How will you be able to bear God, Constantius, in your body, when, by rejecting the apostolic faith and taking up the heretical one, you have declared yourself not to belong to Him whose our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob declared themselves to be — and so too all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs? Furthermore, if he who fornicates sins against his own body, how much more you, who accomplish that work of the serpent not only through the flesh but also through the very soul? Do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body, but he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit? Lest, being made together with the sacrilegious in the body of a harlot, we ourselves should not deserve to be the servants of the Lord, but rather, like you, slaves of the devil, we judged that we must withdraw from you.
Woe to you, who have refused to be joined to the Lord, but have willed to be joined to the devil! And when he says: Do not be deceived; for evil communications corrupt good manners — what does he bid me do but flee your assembly stained with sacrilege, lest, while I cling to you, I too should perish together with you? How could we have been in your malignant council, when we find the blessed Apostle saying to Timothy: Lay hands hastily on no one, nor share in the sins of others; keep yourself chaste? But how would we be chaste, we who, by clinging to you, would like you have been broken apart through those most dear to you — that is, through unclean spirits — away from the chastity of the faith?
How would we not have shared in the sins of others, seeing that, if we had judged that we must remain with you, we would have become the very thing you are — that is, members of a harlot? How could we have been Christians together with you heretics? Since we likewise knew that the Apostle wrote to Timothy, that we should draw ourselves away from you heretics: These things teach and exhort. If any man teaches otherwise and does not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to that doctrine which is according to godliness, he is puffed up, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, from which arise envyings, contentions, blasphemies, evil surmisings, wicked wranglings of men of corrupt mind and destitute of the truth.
From you, therefore, who do not believe as the people of God believes; from you who do not teach as the apostles of Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, taught; from you who do not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, we wished to live set apart; from you, the assailant of the doctrine which is according to godliness; from you, puffed up against us through our Enemy; from you, who know nothing true but dote about questions; from you, through whose unspeakable efforts there are found to have arisen, especially in our days, strifes of words, deadly contentions, malignant wranglings — through you, that is, a man of corrupt mind, an adulterator of the truth. We judged that we must withdraw from you and from your fellow-vipers, according to the Apostle's precept. For he says below:
Of men of corrupt mind and destitute of the truth, supposing that godliness is a means of gain: from such withdraw. Whence could we have been with you? Since even at the close of this epistle he exhorts that you must be fled from — you who have fallen away from the faith: O Timothy, keep the deposit committed to you, avoiding the profane novelties of words and the oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith. It behoved us to avoid you, who bring forth profane novelties of words, seeing that we recognized that you brought forth that sacrilegious utterance at the devil's prompting — that utterance, I say, by which you have expressed the poisons of your dogma, saying: There was a time when He was not, and He was made out of nothing, and there is not one power of the Father and the Son.
It was not the Holy Spirit that brought this forth through you, but that unclean, devilish one. How, then, could we have kept the deposit according to the Apostle's command, if we had remained with you in your accursed council, seeing that we have resolved to hold the apostolic faith even to the exit of death — that faith, namely, which we retain as written at Nicaea against your blasphemy and against the execrable efforts of all your heretics? How could we Christians have been in your council of Arians? We who have heard in the book of Maccabees that our predecessors, our fellow-servants, were set apart from those who, according to the edict of your fellow-tyrant Antiochus, made supplication to idols:
Now Judas Maccabaeus, who was the tenth, had withdrawn into the wilderness, and there was leading his life in the mountains among the wild beasts with his followers; and they remained, feeding on the food of grass, that they might not be partakers of defilement. You recognize that in this one testimony it behoved us to withdraw from you, lest we too should be partakers of defilement. How could we be joined to you? Since likewise the Lord says to the apostles: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And that He might make manifest to us that the leaven was unsound doctrine — which either then those Pharisees or Sadducees, or now you heretics of all sects, bring forth — the Scripture goes on to say: Then they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.
As they were reasoning thus, Jesus said: Why do you reason among yourselves, O you of little faith, because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand, nor remember the five loaves and the five thousand men, and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves and the four thousand men, and how many hampers you took up? How is it that you do not understand that it was not concerning bread that I said: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees? Then they understood that He had not said they should beware of the leaven, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees.
Likewise, when writing to the Corinthians the Apostle deigns to instruct us that we must withdraw from you heretics and from all who are alien; how had your heart presumed — in all things fickle and changeable, yet in this malignity, to its own great harm, established with enormous firmness — that we could have peace with you or with yours? Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? Or what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as it is written: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people;
Wherefore, Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and I will be to you a Father, and you shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. How, since your precepts appear to have arisen against these promises of the Lord, could we, the faithful, tarry with you unbelievers? Running in the way of light, could we stand together with you men who make your journey in the way filled with darkness, with all the errors? For who is so foolish that, when he has heard God say, I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people —
Wherefore, Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and I will be to you a Father, and you shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty — who, I say, is so foolish that he would not wish God to dwell in him, that he would not wish to be reckoned received by God among those whom He has deigned to call sons, so as not to flee you, made unclean through your heresy? It did not seem right to us that we should be together with you in one place, since indeed it is not right for men to tarry with serpents. Or will you deny that the deniers of the only-begotten Son of God are called serpents in the Sacred Scriptures? If you cannot deny it, take note that we acted rightly in fleeing you serpents.
You have read the Apostle saying to Timothy: Avoid profane novelties of words; for they will make much progress toward impiety, and their word spreads like a cancer. Did you suppose that men of God could be with you, whose word is like a cancer? Likewise, when the blessed John enjoins that you are to be fled, saying: I rejoiced greatly that I found of your children walking in the truth, as we received commandment from the Father. And now I beseech you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is charity, that we walk according to His commandments.