This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it; for many deceivers have gone forth into the world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; these are the deceivers and antichrists. Look to them, lest you lose what you have wrought, but that you may receive a full reward. Whoever departs and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God; but he who abides in His doctrine, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, nor say to him a greeting; for he who says to him a greeting shares in his evil works.
How could it have come about that we should be, together with you and yours, soldiers of God together with the soldiers of Antichrist, seeing that the Holy Spirit has not permitted us even to greet you, giving these precepts through the blessed Apostle? But perhaps you will dare to say: Do I in any way deny that the Son of God has come in the flesh, that I should be styled one of the antichrists? You indeed, Emperor Constantius, do not deny that the Son of God has come in the flesh, but you say that He whom we confess to have come in the flesh is a creature; you say He was made out of nothing; you deny that He is true, while affirming Him to be the Son of God. We, on the contrary, who hold the tradition of that blessed Apostle, believe Him to be the true Son of God; we believe that the Father and this His only Son have one Godhead.
That this is so, the Lord makes manifest in His sacred Gospels, saying: He who has seen Me has seen the Father also; and: I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; and: I and the Father are one. We have often said that, although the Father and the Son are two Persons, and yet He says: I and the Father are one, and: He who has seen Me has seen the Father also, and: I am in the Father, and the Father in Me — He wished us to grasp nothing else than that there is one eternity of the Father and the Son, one brightness, one power, one greatness. For this very reason, too, the Apostle says in this second epistle: Whoever departs and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God;
But he who abides in His doctrine, he has both the Father and the Son — so that, gathering through the doctrine of the sacred Gospels that we should believe the one Godhead of God the Father and of His only Son, whoever so believes has this God; but whoever has departed from this doctrine, that is, I and the Father are one — since indeed it is plural, and shows two Persons and one power of these two Persons, that is, of the Father and the Son — therefore the Apostle says: He who departs and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God; but he who abides in His doctrine, he has both the Father and the Son — so that we should believe the Son of God saying: I and the Father are one, namely that there is one Godhead of the Father and the Son.
It is therefore established that you, who do not hold as the Lord delivered to the apostles and the apostles to the bishops, do not have God, because the Apostle also, wishing to make manifest the one Divinity of both the Father and the Son, said: He who departs from His doctrine has not God; but he who abides in His doctrine, he has the Father and the Son. You, I say, we recognize to have been most rightly fled — you set apart without God, you having neither the Son nor the Father — since indeed it would not have been fitting that we, having God, should tarry with the enemies of the divine greatness. But recognize how hateful you are to God, so that we were not even permitted to say a greeting to you. How could we Christians have been together with you Arians? Since the Apostle Paul says:
Avoid foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. A heretical man, after one admonition, avoid, knowing that such a one is perverted and sins, being condemned by his own self. With heretics condemned by their own selves we could not be gathered together, lest that voice also should strike us, as it strikes the Galatians of blessed Paul: You were running well; who has hindered you from obeying the truth? Recognizing that you are the enemies of the only Son of God, we fled your nefarious counsels, holding fast to the voice of the Apostle who says: Consent to no one; this persuasion is not of God who calls you. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?
We, the servants of Christ, refused to receive into fellowship you, the worms of Arius, lest we should have been consumed by that poison of the devil by which you are consumed. We refused to go with you — that is, with men who still appear to be outside the knowledge of God, who are still set under the power of the devil. We, the living, refused to be joined to the dead, because you are recognized to be such as we ourselves were before we had believed in the only Son of God. That these things are so, the Apostle makes manifest, writing to the Ephesians:
And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and we were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest. Since you are still such as the most holy Apostle relates us to have been before we had believed, assuredly you had to be avoided — men in whom the princes of the power of this air work, and through whom the spirits carry out their every desire.
You were to be fled — sons of disobedience, children by nature of wrath — lest, by clinging to you, we should be brought back to what we were before. We refused to be with you, because you have not yet obtained the mercy of God which we have now already attained. We refused to have fellowship with you, who were being led by the counsel of the flesh, just as that most blessed Paul was led before he had believed, whom we remember to say: Let no one deceive you with vain words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Do not, therefore, become partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light;
for the fruit of light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable to God, and do not have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. We refused — because we had received these commandments — to tarry with you, led by your vain words, lest indeed wrath should come upon us, as it also came and is to come upon you, upon you and yours, upon you sons of disobedience. We refused to be made partakers of the darkness, seeing that, now believing in the only Son of God and desiring to obey the commandments of His majesty, escaping from those shadows we had been made light in the Lord;
wherefore neither would we obey your dark commandments, because it would have been wicked for the sons of light to do your dark work, since the fruit of light is to walk in righteousness and truth and in all goodness. You say that we act unjustly, in that we are unwilling to take up your heresy, in that our friendships have not been eternally fixed with you and yours. Hear what Moses did concerning aliens, at the time when God deigned to command him, that, sending a fixed number of the Israelites, he should have destroyed by the edge of the sword the five kings of Midian and Moab;
these, appointed for battle, having killed all the males, because they had spared the female sex that fell in their way, Moses rebukes the sons of Israel — why they had not destroyed the female sex also — and commands that these same be slain before him, affirming that they could entice the minds of the peoples to the adoration of idols. If, then, we too execrate your heresy as Moses did idolatry; if we desire that all the heresies of you who go astray should be slain, and indeed by the sword of God, just as Moses desired those women handed over to idols; if we so flee you, the adversaries of the religion of God, as he fled the worshippers of idols — judge that we act rightly in drawing ourselves away from you. For how could we have agreed with you, when he said to the Philippians:
Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers. Which of the servants of God would not flee you dogs, you evil workers, save one who did not remember himself to be a Christian? Could we, the servants of Christ, have been joined to you, the adversaries of the religion of God, when the glorious Apostle Jude, brother of the Apostle James, exhorts that we should avoid you and those like you, and remain in the faith we have received even to the exit of death? Jude, servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are beloved in God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ, the called: mercy to you, and peace, and charity be multiplied. Beloved, taking all care to write to you concerning our common salvation, I beseech you that you strive earnestly for the fellowship once delivered.
For certain men have crept in secretly, who long ago were fore-appointed to this judgment: ungodly men, who turn the grace of God into wantonness, and who deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. With you deniers, you blasphemers, it would have been an abomination to agree, since he, setting before us the examples of those who transgressed the commandments of the Lord, urges our hearts to remain in that faith in which he himself is seen to have remained. I wish therefore to admonish you, saying: knowing all things, that God saved His people out of the land of Egypt; but afterward destroyed those who did not believe; the angels also, who kept not their own order, but forsook their own habitation, He has reserved unto the judgment of the great God in chains,
these He has kept under darkness for the judgment of the holy angels. And Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, having in like manner committed adultery and gone after the flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. Likewise these dreamers also defile the flesh, but despise dominion. And below: Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, and for reward have been poured out into the deception of Balaam, and have perished in the contradiction of Korah.
These are spots in your love-feasts, feasting without fear, shepherding themselves; clouds without water, carried about by every wind; autumnal trees without fruit, dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering storms, for whom the season of darkness is reserved forever. And below: But you, brethren, remember the words spoken beforehand by the apostles of Jesus Christ, that they said: in the last days there shall be mockers, walking after their own ungodly desires. These are they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.
Since you have been seen to be in all these evils, Constantius, your friendships that labour to slay have been avoided by us, lest indeed we should have been hurled together with you into those places of torments, into which he relates that all those, whose way you hold, have been cast headlong.