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?
Yet of the wretchedness of these sects — God Christ being my witness — I have come to know only from the gossip of the crowd, not from any direct exchange of disputation, since to have even contended with such men is to sin; knowing this one thing, that those who lay upon themselves the name of a sect lose the name of Christian. Among all these, however, the Manichaeans — now no longer heretics but idolaters and workers of evil, slaves of the Sun and the Moon, demons calling themselves 'unconquered' — we condemn, together with all their founders, sects, customs, institutions, books, teachers, and disciples, because of them it is written: With such a one do not even take food.
For to us, baptized according to the faith of the creed and chosen unto the priesthood in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Christ — God, the Son of God, who suffered in the flesh — is our whole faith, our whole life, our whole veneration. While we, then, were living in this truth of faith and in this simplicity, Hydatius returned from the synod of Caesaraugusta bringing nothing against us — seeing that he himself had dismissed us as still in communion with him in our churches, and no one had condemned us, even in our absence, by any presumptuous accusation. But so that the crown of your venerableness may know whence came the pain of his fury, whence came the raging madness that broke out over the whole world and even into the churches:
having returned from the synod and sitting in the midst of the church, he was charged as a culprit by his own presbyter through ecclesiastical proceedings; moreover, a few days later a written complaint is brought against him in our churches by certain persons, and worse charges are laid against him than the presbyter had previously brought; very many separated themselves from his clergy, declaring that they would not communicate with him unless the priest were cleared. Hereupon, being approached, we sent to the bishops Hyginus and Symposius — whose lives you yourself have known — letters of this kind: that everything had suddenly been thrown into turmoil; that provision ought to be made for how the established peace of the churches might endure. The reply was, to use their very words: that as far as the laity were concerned, if Hydatius were suspect to them, a single sworn declaration concerning the catholic profession before us would suffice;
but as for the rest, a council should be granted for the peace of the churches; and that no one had been condemned in the synod of Caesaraugusta. Who would not have believed his fellow-priests, especially since in that same synod there had been present Symposius, a religious man, the very one who wrote these things? Amid all this, however, we adopted the plan of going to the city of the Emeritenses and seeing Hydatius in person — being, God our witness, authors of peace rather than of strife. For if it was an injury and not a mark of respect to prefer to consult one present, as a brother, rather than to summon him as a defendant, then we are guilty;
but if, on the contrary, when we came and entered the church, with the crowds and the populace stirred up, we were not only refused admission to the presbytery but were even beaten with blows, then we judge that it was rather the one who struck who did the injury, and not those who were struck. We, however, to whom peace was dear, accepting the profession of the laity — which we could not reject, since it was catholic — wrote to nearly all our fellow-bishops about what reverence due to the priesthood had suffered, sending also the record of the events and the substance of the professions, not even keeping silent about this: that many of these, after their profession, were being sought for the priesthood. The reply to us was that a council should be granted concerning these matters;
that credence should be given to the profession that had been made, and that, just as the consecration of a priest rests in the priest, so the election of his calling rests in the choice of the people. Hereupon that man, fearing more than was fitting, contrives prayers falsely, and weaving a fable of the events, with our names suppressed, requests a rescript against pseudo-bishops and Manichaeans — and inevitably obtains it, since there is no one who, hearing of pseudo-bishops and Manichaeans, would not hate them.
To that distinguished man also, your brother Bishop Ambrose, he lies about everything; and when, with the rescript brought to him, he was rushing against all Christians under the guise of a sect which none of us fails to condemn — calling even Hyginus a heretic along with us, as the letters he sent to the churches openly declare — acting, of course, so as not to have judges over him if he had defamed everyone with various slanders, we commended our churches to God, and brought to you their letters of communion, sent under the signatures of the whole clergy and people; and coming to you as best we could, we wished even in absence to make supplication: that, if Hydatius had anything to lay against the priesthood, we, asking for a hearing — yet not refusing public judgment, if he himself should prefer it —
For he who desires to be proved fears to be heard by no one; but whether it was done out of zeal or from an evil wish, God will judge — that the quaestor, when he was speaking just petitions, should delay to answer. We, nonetheless, not failing in a matter of faith to prefer the judgment of the holy ones to that of the world, came to Rome, burdensome to no one, desiring this one thing: that we might first approach you, lest our silence be judged a fear of conscience, but rather, handing over a little book, we might lay open the order of the events and — what is greater than all — the catholic faith in which we live.
For if a verdict is also being sought from us concerning certain writings — which Hydatius, bringing them out of his cupboard, has cast into slanderous fables — this is, and always has been, our settled conviction: that all things set forth in writings under the authority of any apostle, prophet, or bishop whatsoever, which prophesy or proclaim Christ as God the Son of God and agree with the canon, the Gospels, or the prophets, cannot be condemned; but whatever things think or speak against the canon and against the catholic faith are to be condemned together with all their teachers and disciples, because it is written: Every spirit that confesses Christ is of God, but he who does not confess is not of God; and elsewhere:
No one speaking in the Holy Spirit says 'Anathema to Jesus,' and no one can say 'Lord Jesus' except in the Holy Spirit. Nor indeed ought we, who are catholic, to be condemned if heretics have falsified, to suit themselves, Scriptures that speak of God. Concerning these very things even Hydatius — who, clearing himself too little, prefers to be defamed through these matters rather than to have those whom he fears be heard — said this in the council of Caesaraugusta: 'Let the things to be condemned be condemned; let the superfluous not be read.' In which your crown perceives that it is a mark of that man's character, not of our crime, if the faith of those whose verdict is one and the same is said to be different.
On account of which we entreat your venerable judgment: that if the faith of our profession stands firm in God, according to what you hand down as left to you from the apostles; if the testimonies of our churches, written in letters of peace, are not lacking; if concerning the Scriptures we can neither think nor ought to think otherwise; if none of us has been made a defendant, none heard, none deposed in council, none — even when he was a layman — condemned by proof of an alleged crime (although the priesthood profits a guilty man nothing, and a priest can be deposed who as a layman deserved first to be condemned) — we beg that you grant a hearing, because you are senior to all and first;
have Hydatius summoned; and if he is confident he can prove anything against us, let him not forgo the crown of the eternal priesthood, if he shall have pursued the zeal of the Lord even to the end. Or, if from the affection of the kindness implanted in you, you are unwilling to inflict upon anyone the injury which he laid upon us, we beg you to give letters to your brothers, the bishops of the Spains. For we ask of all of them — lest we have done anyone an injury — that, a council being constituted and Hydatius summoned, those whom they read to have been made defendants in their presence they should not condemn unheard while they are unheard. Yet let no one condemn in such a way except that Hydatius prove everything which he brought forward in the letters he sent, and let him have only the necessity of proving the accusation; let him lay aside the fear of being himself the accused, since no one accuses him concerning us;
for we readily forgive even a sin committed against us, if we are proved wrong, since we know — and learn from our own selves — what befits priests; only let it be that, our faith and life having been proved, we may resist by the writing that was issued against the Manichaeans, with the testimony given of the priests who took part in the council, lest under the name of guilty men, in your days — which you know to be a wickedness — either the churches be widowed of catholic priests or the priests of their churches. ...... let him condemn, since novelty of invention is the mother of contention, learning the author of scandal, the nourishment of schism, the food of heresy, the very form of transgression in sin. For everything that seems to have been spoken or done by God or by the apostles, or approved that it should be done — this is that of which it is written: 'Let your Yea be yea, and your Nay nay';
but whatever is found by new inventions and slanders, hence is shown the testimony of divine power, which says: 'Whatever is more than these is of evil.' Let us see, then, whether the apostles of Christ Jesus, the masters of our conduct and life, read nothing outside the canon. The apostle Jude speaks out — that Didymus of the Lord, that one who, when Christ God is thought to have tested him after the marks of his Passion, believed the more, that one who both saw and touched the pressed traces of the chains and the praises of the divine cross:
'Concerning these,' he says, 'Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: Behold, the Lord comes amid his holy thousands to execute judgment and to convict every one, and concerning all the hard things which sinners have spoken against him.' Who is this Enoch whom the apostle Jude took up as testimony of prophecy? Or, if Enoch had prophesied concerning God, he had no other than to set down this man's prophecy — which, if the things said are true, he himself would have condemned by canonical ordinance?
Or perhaps Enoch did not deserve to be a prophet — he whom Paul, in the epistle written to the Hebrews, attests to have had a testimony before his translation? Or whom, at the beginning of the race, when the form of the world and the nature of the age were still raw, still holding the sin of deceived man, God preferred to translate among his own rather than to let perish, when he would not believe in a future conversion to God after his sins? If there is no doubt about him, and it is believed by the apostles that he is a prophet, in what way is it called consultation rather than uproar, counsel rather than rashness, faith rather than faithlessness, where — while the sentence is stretched toward the avenging of grudges — a prophet who proclaims God is condemned?
Or are we dealing with trivial matters? Or are dice and counters in our hands? Or are we treating of the mockeries of the stage, that, while we follow the men of this age, we condemn the sayings of the apostles? Or what grace is there in establishing peace, to let men believe what they will and not hold the apostolic sayings? But perhaps someone will pride himself on this kind of cleverness, so that — although even a single testimony avails to confirm the faith of the holy ones in God — he nevertheless says that one thing alone is not to be believed, but that the account of every matter stands established 'in the mouth of two or three witnesses.' Let whoever is of this sort turn himself, then, and let him, a diligent searcher of the Scriptures, inquire whether we speak the truth.
What is it that holy Tobit, when arranging precepts of the future life for his son, instructing him what he should keep, says: We, my son, are sons of the prophets; Noah was a prophet, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all our fathers who from the beginning of the age prophesied? When in the canon was the book of the prophet Noah read? Who among the prophets of the established canon read the book of Abraham? Who taught that Isaac ever prophesied? Who heard a prophecy of Jacob that might be placed in the canon? If Tobit read these men and earned testimony of prophecy in the canon, in what way is that which is given to them as testimony of merited virtue ascribed to others as an occasion of just condemnation?
Amid which things, let each one pardon us if we prefer to be condemned along with the prophets of God rather than, along with those who rashly presume, to condemn things that are religious. For who, with Noah as his accuser, would not fear in the disputation of divine judgment? Of whom the apostle says: He preserved Noah, a just man, a herald of righteousness, bringing the flood upon the world over the ungodly. Who would not seek the bosom of the prophet Abraham as a testimony of rest? Who would not wish to be reckoned in the seed of Isaac? Who would not love Jacob, who was called by God 'a god to Pharaoh'? Or who, spurning the memorials of the holy ones, would not tremble, when it is written: Verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall offend one of the least of these who have believed in my name, it were good for him that an ass's millstone be bound on him and that he be cast into the depth of the sea?
But if this is said of the least, I wish to know what is pronounced concerning those who are first in faith. In all these books, however, there is no danger in deleting whatever has been inserted by wretched heretics, and in rejecting those things which are found not to agree with the prophets or the Gospels. For not even those holy men of God embrace falsehood mixed in among truths, nor sacrilegious or detestable things in place of holy ones; and it is better to take the tares from the grain than to lose the hope of good fruit because of the tares — which the devil therefore inserted with his own among the holy things, so that, except under a cautious reaper, the grain might perish along with the tares and cause the good to be slain with the worst, one and the same sentence binding him who joins the worst with the good as much as him who loses the good along with the bad.
Finally, in the Gospel according to Luke, the evangelist attests, with God speaking: The blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world shall be required, from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, who was slain between the altar and the temple; and Elijah, in the books of the Kingdoms, says: They have dug down thine altars, they have slain thy prophets, and I am left alone, and they seek my life. Who is this Abel the prophet, from whom the blood of the prophets took its beginning, whose course ends in Zacharias? Who are those in between who are seen to have been slain?
For if everything that is said in the books of the canon is what is sought, and to have read more is to sin, we read of no prophet slain among those established in the canon; and if outside the authority of the canon nothing is either to be received or held, we cannot believe mere fables and not retain the history of the recorded deeds by proof. For perhaps someone will leap up and say that Isaiah was sawn asunder. If there is anyone among such men who would have condemned these things, let him shut his mouth, or else, bringing forward the history of the event, let him say that he believes painters or poets, since they more readily admit what the pursuits of philosophers feign — so that, at any rate, testimony of such a matter and the blood of the prophets slain from the foundation of the world may be required.
If the evangelist, reading this, rightly brought it forward as testimony, saying: Search the Scriptures, he drew me also to read those things which he had read. But I cannot say what I am compelled to say — that to follow the apostle was for me not an erudition of faith but the trap of one deceived. For again in the Gospel according to Matthew it is held written: But Joseph, arising, took the child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: 'Out of Egypt have I called my son.' Who is this prophet, whom we do not read in the canon, the faith of whose prophecy the Lord fulfilled as a guarantor of a promised gift?
Surely it is no small greatness of the work granted, to believe that God would suffer and to prepare, by testimonies of prophecy, as it were a way for the divine journey, from which God would not wish to turn aside, so as to prove that he had spoken in the one who had prophesied. Surely a book cannot be condemned whose testimony fulfills the faith of canonical utterance; nor can it be, as among the choices of mortal banquets, that one thing be chosen and another rejected; nor is the question one of sophistical matters, where what each one has assumed he follows and, while they want a dialectical work of cleverness, they have made sects out of persuasion. The Scripture of God is a solid thing, a true thing, not chosen by man but handed to man from God; if its first-fruits are holy, the whole lump too is holy.
Hence, in short, comes heresy: while each one serves his own ingenuity rather than God, and resolves not to follow the creed but to dispute about the creed — whereas, if they knew the faith, they would hold nothing outside the creed. For the creed is the sealing of a true thing, and to define the creed is to prefer disputing about the creed to believing it. The creed is the work of the Lord in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the faith of one God, from whom Christ — God, the Son of God, the Saviour — was born in the flesh, suffered, and rose again for the love of man; who, handing the creed to his apostles — which was, is, and was to be — showing in himself and in his creed the name of the Father as the Son, and likewise the Son as the Father, taught it, lest the error of the Binionites prevail;
for he who, to the apostles when they inquired, showed himself to be all that was being named, wished himself to be believed as one and undivided, the prophet saying: This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned beside him, who showed the way of discipline and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward he was seen upon earth and conversed with men — the Lord God is his name. But lest, led by love of the faith, we be said to have turned to things other than we had proposed — although, out of abundance, room lies open for vanquishing the various heresies — nevertheless concerning this we want the work undertaken specifically: that we may overcome unbelieving falsehood with a cloud of testimonies.
But now we must return to those matters, so that, if we are found acceptable in that for which we are reproached, we may rightly be seen to have disputed correctly about the rest as well. For thus Paul too says that God said: It is more blessed to give than to receive — and we do not read in the canon that God spoke this. And Daniel attests that God spoke, saying: For iniquity shall go forth from Babylon, from the elders who seemed to govern the people. And while we believed these deeds, sayings, or writings, both in the evangelist's words and in the apostle's discourse and in divine sayings, behold, now the time has come when, while a disputation of superfluous matters is sought, bewilderment is sown among the faithful.
For we cannot say that God did not say what the apostle said that he said, nor that what Scripture attests a prophet to have said was not prophesied. And while we rightly believe these things unto faith, we do not see them written in the canon; and therefore, if outside the canon all things are to be condemned — or in what way is even the testimony of the condemned received, or in those things which are written is the authority of the writer not held? Thus, in short, the prophet Ezekiel also says: Thus says the Lord to Gog, 'Thou art he of whom I spoke in the days of old by the hands of my servants the prophets.' I believe what he said, nor am I so faithless to myself as to affirm either that the prophet feigned what God said, or that God lied;
yet who that prophet is, through whom God spoke this, I do not see in the canon; and while we have faith in what was said, we do not find in the canon the author of the writing. Thus also in the books of Chronicles we find that the prophet Nathan, Ahijah the Shilonite, the visions of Iddo, the words of Jehu the son of Hanani were set forth unto the faith of truth and the authority of the things they did, Scripture saying: And the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, behold, they are written in the words of Jehu the son of Hanani, who recorded them in the book of the kings of Israel — and these we do not read written in the books of the canon, but accept them as approved by the canon; as also it says there:
And the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, behold, they are written in the words of Nathan the prophet, and in the words of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo, which he saw concerning Jeroboam the son of Nebat; and likewise there: And the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are they not written in the words of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer, and all his acts? And likewise there: And the rest of the acts of Abijah, and his acts and his words, are written in the book of Iddo the prophet; and likewise there: And the rest of the acts of Amaziah, first and last, behold, are they not written in the book of the days of the kings of Judah and Israel? Likewise there: Are not these things written in the book of the days of the kings of Judah? Likewise there:
And the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer which he prayed to the Lord in the name of the God of Israel, behold, they are written in the words of his prayer and in the words of the seers. Who, then, would patiently accept billows of this kind? On the one hand, untaught madness presses, ignorant frenzy demands, saying nothing else but: 'Are the things you say catholic or not? Condemn what I do not know, condemn what I do not read, condemn what I, in the zeal of a slothful idleness, do not look into.' On the other hand, the divine utterance presses: 'Search,' it says, 'the Scriptures,' admonishing particularly that the utterances of those whose blood is required for testimony be not denied.
Placed in the midst of these things, we now want, of necessity, that to be confidence which before we said was caution. I have the testimony of God, I have that of the apostles, I have that of the prophets: if I seek what belongs to a Christian man, what belongs to ecclesiastical order, what belongs to God Christ, I find it in those who proclaim God, I find it in those who prophesy.
It is not fear; it is faith, that we love the better things and reject the worse, keeping among these one thing: that — since in books of this kind, which diligence retained for the labor of reading outside the number of the canonical books, and which were taken up to confirm those things which we read written in the canon, the sense of heretics, invading much of them and preparing a battle against catholics, chose to falsify rather than to hold — we rightly maintain that apostolic sentence: that every spirit which denies Jesus is not of God, and every spirit which confesses Christ Jesus is of God, as it is written: For no one says, in the Holy Spirit, 'Anathema to Jesus,' and no one, except in the Holy Spirit, can say 'Lord Jesus.'
Finally, in the ancient records of the books, when the devil envied the testament of the Scriptures — Jerusalem being captured and the altar of the Lord defiled — it was not enough to destroy the temple; for since it was easy that man should restore in things made by hand what had been made by hand, the ark of the testament was burned, the devil knowing that human nature, bound to the world, would easily lose faith if it had not the testimonies of the Scriptures for the proclamation of the divine name. But the nature of the divine mystery was shrewder than that of the devil, which, that it might show what God could do in man, willed Ezra to be reserved, who rewrote those things which had been burned.
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Quaesiuereincensaetuerecredimusfuisserescribta, quamuisincensumtestamentumlegaturincanone, rescriptumabHesdraincanonenonlegitur, tamen, quiapostincensumtestamentumreddinonpotuitnisifuissetscribtum, recteillilibrofidemdamus, quiHesdraauctoreprolatus, etsiincanonenonponitur, adelogiumredditidiuinitestamentidignarerumuenerationeretinetur;
And if we truly believe these things to have been burned and truly rewritten — although the burning of the testament is read in the canon, the rewriting by Ezra is not read in the canon — nevertheless, since after the burning the testament could not be restored unless it had been written, we rightly give credence to that book which, brought forth on the authority of Ezra, even if it is not placed in the canon, is retained, as a memorial of the restored divine testament, with a veneration befitting the matter;
in which book we nevertheless read it written that the Holy Spirit, who from the beginning of the age retains the deeds of both men and things, entered the heart of the chosen man and — that which the form of writing could scarcely retain for human memory — with order, number, and reckoning rehearsed, while he wrote, speaking by day and not silent by night, established for human memory all the things that are seen to have been done or that we read written. In which one is moved to cry out: It is so! Let it be permitted! In what way, I ask, are we culpable for reading a few of these things, when we are rather guilty for this — that we do not read all the things that have been prophesied concerning God? Yet I do not doubt that someone among those who love slanders rather than faith will say: 'Seek nothing further! It is enough for you to read what is written in the canon.'