Against Constantius

That Hilary in defending the faith always strove for peace. That he maintained modesty toward his adversaries.—I, brethren, as all who either hear me or know me by acquaintance are my witnesses, foreseeing from far off the gravest peril to the faith, after the exiles of the holy men Paulinus, Eusebius, Lucifer, and Dionysius, five years ago from now, separated myself together with the Gallic bishops from communion with Saturninus and Ursacius and Valens, with the opportunity of repentance granted to the rest of their associates: so that neither should the will for peace be absent, and yet the fetid members of the chief diseases, advancing toward the corruption of the whole body, might be cut away; if at least this very decree, once published by us, had then pleased the most blessed confessors of Christ to remain in force. I, who was afterward compelled by the faction of those pseudo-apostles to the synod of Béziers, offered the examination of this heresy for demonstration.

But they, fearing the public conscience, were unwilling to hear what I had brought forward: thinking they could lie to Christ about their innocence, if they willingly remained ignorant of what they were afterward going to do knowingly. And from that time, detained in exile throughout all this period, I resolved neither to depart from confession of Christ, nor to reject any honorable and acceptable means of entering into unity. In short, from that time I wrote or said nothing slanderous against the times, nothing defamatory against that body which then falsely called itself the Church of Christ but is now the synagogue of antichrist, nor anything worthy of their own impiety; nor did I in the meantime count it a crime for anyone either to converse with these men, or, with communion suspended, to enter the house of prayer, or to hope for a desired peace; while we were preparing, through penitence, indulgence for error and return from antichrist to Christ.

That what he is now about to say proceeds not from impatience but from Christian liberty.—If therefore any prudent person perceives the reason for my silence, he will assuredly judge that I, who until now have been moderate in bearing the bitterness of a fresh injury, am now at last moved to write these things not by any fault of human agitation, but by faithful liberty bearing witness in Christ. For I shall not speak prematurely, having been long silent, nor was I silent without modesty, since I now at length speak; nor do I complain of an injury, having overlooked a recent one, and having applied so much time to silence so that I might not be thought to speak from my own cause. Now I have no other reason for speaking than Christ's: to whom I owed even this, that I was silent until now; and to whom I understand I owe it henceforth, that I be not silent.

He wishes for the times of the persecutors.—Would that rather, almighty God and creator of all things, and Father of our one Lord Jesus Christ, you had granted to my age and time that I might have fulfilled this ministry of my confession in you and in your only-begotten Son in the times of Nero or Decius! Nor would I, through the mercy of the Lord and of your Son God Jesus Christ, burning with the Holy Spirit, have feared the rack, knowing that Isaiah had been sawn asunder; nor would I have dreaded the flames, remembering that the Hebrew children had sung amid them; nor would I have shunned the cross and the breaking of my limbs, after recalling that the thief had been translated into paradise; nor would I have trembled at the deep sea and the swallowing current of the Pontic surge, since through Jonah and Paul you had taught the faithful that there is life in the sea.

For against your open enemies that contest would have been fortunate for me; because no doubt would have been left that those were persecutors who compelled men to deny you by torments, by the sword, by fire: nor would it have been permitted us to offer you more than our deaths in testimony. For we would have fought openly and with confidence against those who denied, who tortured, who slaughtered: and your people would have accompanied us, as their leaders, to the religion of confession, understanding the public nature of the persecution.

Of what kind the persecution of Constantius is.—But now we fight against a persecutor who deceives, against an enemy who flatters, against Constantius the antichrist: who does not beat the back but strokes the belly; who does not proscribe unto life, but enriches unto death; who does not thrust into prison unto freedom, but honors within the palace unto slavery; who does not afflict the sides, but takes possession of the heart; who does not cut off the head with the sword, but kills the soul with gold; who does not publicly threaten with fires, but privately kindles hell. He does not contend, lest he be overcome; but flatters, that he may dominate. He confesses Christ, that he may deny him; he procures unity, that there may be no peace; he suppresses heresies, that there may be no Christians; he honors priests, that there may be no bishops; he builds the roofs of churches, that he may destroy the faith.

He carries you on his lips, he carries you in his mouth; and does absolutely everything so that you may not be believed to be God in such a way as the Father.

Hilary clears himself from the suspicion of slander.—Let the opinion of slander therefore cease, and the suspicion of falsehood. For it befits the ministers of truth to bring forth true things. If we say false things, let the speech be infamous as slanderous: but if we show all these things to be manifest, we are not outside apostolic liberty and modesty in making these accusations after long silence. But perhaps someone will think me rash, because I say that Constantius is antichrist.

Whoever shall judge this to be insolence rather than constancy, let him first read that John said to Herod, It is not lawful for you to do this: let him know that it was said by a Martyr to King Antiochus, You indeed destroy us from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, who die for his laws, in the resurrection of eternal life: and again that another rebuked him with a blessed and faithful voice, saying, You have power among men, though you are corruptible, and you do what you will: but think not that our nation is forsaken by God. Patiently endure, and see how his great power will torment you and your seed. And indeed thus spoke the young men. But truly a woman spoke no less than the perfect and blessed men, saying: But you, who have been the author of all mischief against the Hebrews, shall not escape the hand of God.

For if our Lord was angry with us for a little while for our chastening and correction, yet shall he be reconciled again with his servants. This is not rashness, but faith; not thoughtlessness, but reason; not fury, but confidence.

Constantius is compared with Nero, Decius—I proclaim to you, Constantius, what I would have said to Nero, what Decius and Maximian would have heard from me: You fight against God, you rage against the Church, you persecute the saints, you hate the preachers of Christ, you abolish religion, you are a tyrant not now of human things but of divine. These things are shared and common between you and them: but now receive what is properly your own. You falsely claim to be a Christian, you are a new enemy of Christ: you anticipate antichrist, and you carry out the mysteries of his secrets. You establish creeds while living against the faith. You are a teacher of the profane, untaught in piety; you bestow bishoprics on your own men, you exchange the good for the wicked.

You commit priests to custody, you deploy your armies to terrorize the Church, you convene synods, and you compel the faith of the Westerners into impiety; you terrify those shut up in a single city (Ariminum) with threats, you weaken them with hunger, you wear them down with cold, you corrupt them with dissimulation. Among the Easterners, however, you skillfully nurture dissensions, you draw out the compliant, you incite the partisans: you are a disturber of the old, you are a profaner of the new. You carry out all the most savage deeds without the glory of glorious deaths. By a new and unheard-of triumph of cunning you surpass the devil, and you persecute without martyrdom.

The relics of the martyrs are to be venerated: their power.—We owe more to your cruelty, Nero, Decius, Maximian. For through you we conquered the devil. The holy blood of the blessed Martyrs was received everywhere, and their venerable bones are a daily testimony: while in them demons bellow, while diseases are driven away, while bodies are raised without ropes, and the garments of women hung by the foot do not fall down over their faces, while spirits are burned without fires, while the tormented confess without being questioned, while all things are done no less to the profit of the examiner than to the increase of faith. But you, most cruel of all the cruel, rage against us with greater harm and lesser excuse. You creep in by name, you kill by flattery, you carry out impiety under the appearance of religion, you extinguish the faith of Christ as a lying preacher of Christ.

You do not even leave to the wretched any excuses, so that they might bring before their eternal judge at least some scars of lacerated bodies as their punishment, so that weakness might plead necessity. Most wicked of mortals, you so temper all the evils of persecution as to exclude both pardon in sin and martyrdom in confession. But that father of yours, the craftsman of human deaths, taught all this: to conquer without contumacy, to slaughter without the sword, to persecute without infamy, to plot without suspicion, to lie without being understood, to profess without faith, to flatter without goodness, to do what you will, and not to make manifest what you will.

The name of the Lord is in the words of Constantius, not in his deeds. He introduces a deceitful God.—But the only-begotten God himself, whom you persecute in me, warned me not to believe you, and that this false and feigned name in you should not deceive me, saying: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Do you not now recognize the truth of the divine prophecy concerning you and the faithfulness of the Lord's sentence, by which not the profession of the name but obedience to the Father's will is admitted into the heavenly kingdom? But see for yourself whether, while putting forward the name of the Lord in words, you accomplish the will of God the Father in deeds.

He cries out: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: and you decree that there is no son, and no father; but as a new persecutor today of the divine religion you introduce adoption as mere names, external appellations, and a God who feigns everything about himself. Formerly your fathers (Nero, Decius) were enemies of Christ alone: but you contend against God the Father, that he is a liar, that he has deceived, that he has professed of himself what he was not, as though he could not even be what he is. The Son cries out: I and the Father are one; and, Believe my works, because the Father is in me, and I in the Father; and, All things that the Father has are mine: you rebuke Christ for his truth, you accuse the Father of his profession.

You, a man, correct God; you, corruption, regulate life; and you, night, illuminate the light; and you, an unbeliever, promulgate the faith; and you, an impious man, falsely claim piety; and you embroil the whole world in profane pretense: denying of God that which he himself has professed of himself.

The sheep's clothing of Constantius.—But besides this correction of falsehood, the Lord taught me another saying, to help me understand you, saying: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves: by their fruits you shall know them. For there is something in the heart which is concealed in the face and veiled in the mind: and thinking they had a sheep, they found a wolf. If they do what belongs to sheep, let them be believed to be sheep also: but if they perform the work of ravening wolves, they are understood to be wolves by their own work; and by the fruit of their deeds, the appearance of their clothing is exposed. We see the sheep's clothing of yours, O ravening wolf. You burden the holy things of God with the gold of the state, and you thrust upon God what has either been stripped from temples, or made public by edicts, or exacted by penalties.

You receive priests with a kiss, with which Christ also was betrayed: you bow your head for a blessing, so that you may trample upon the faith: you deign to invite to a banquet, from which Judas went out to betrayal: you remit the head-tax which Christ paid lest it should be a stumbling-block: you give away Caesar's tribute, so as to invite Christians to denial: you relax what is yours, so that what belongs to God may be lost. These, O false sheep, are your garments.

The deeds of the wolf. What Alexandria suffered, what Trier, what Milan, what Rome, what Toulouse.—But now hear the fruits of your works, O ravening wolf. Nor do I report anything other than what has been done in the Church, nor do I bring forward any tyranny other than that against God. I do not complain because I am ignorant of the cause, but yet the complaint is notorious: that bishops whom no one dared to condemn, who were ordered by you not to be, are even now recorded in ecclesiastical registers under the title of a sentence of condemnation to the mines. Alexandria is with me, shaken by so many wars, trembling at the tumult of so many stirred-up expeditions. For the war waged against the Persian was shorter than that waged against her with arms. Prefects were changed, generals chosen, peoples corrupted, legions set in motion, lest Christ be preached by Athanasius. I say nothing of the lesser peoples and cities, throughout the whole East of which there is either terror or war.

After you had brought all your arms against the faith of the West, and turned your armies against the sheep of Christ: it was permitted me to flee under Nero. Either you banished Paulinus, a man of blessed suffering, after soliciting him with flattery (A.D. 353), and stripped the holy church of Trier of such a priest. You terrified the faith with edicts. You wore him down even to death with exiles and wearied him, and banished him even beyond the Christian name: lest he should take bread either from your granary, or await it profaned from the cave of Montanus and Maximilla. How greatly did you disturb the most devout people of Milan with the fury of your terror! Your tribunes entered the holy of holies, and opening a way for themselves through the people with every cruelty, dragged priests from the altar. Do you think, O criminal, that you have sinned less gravely than the impiety of the Jews?

They indeed shed the blood of Zacharias; but, as far as in you lay, you severed from Christ those who are incorporated in Christ. Then you turned your war even to Rome, you snatched the bishop (Liberius) from there: and O wretched man that you are, I know not whether you acted with greater impiety in banishing him than in sending him back! What furies did you then exercise upon the church of Toulouse! Clerics beaten with clubs, deacons crushed with lead, and hands laid upon—as the saints understand along with me—upon Christ himself. These things, O Constantius, if I lie, you are a sheep: but if you do them, you are antichrist.

Concerning the synod of Seleucia.—Now because these things, which are held by public knowledge, have been spoken by me no more as slanders than as truths; if anyone has remaining hope in Christ, if anyone fears the day of judgment, if anyone has renounced the devil, if anyone remembers that he has been reborn unto life, let him receive what I say, and judge these things by the judgment by which he is to be judged in himself. For what I am about to say I have not learned from another source: but I myself heard it, and was present when it was done. In Christ therefore I do not lie, for I am a disciple of truth, and now also a witness of truth. I am present (on 27 Sept. A.D. 359) at the synod of the Easterns at Seleucia, where I found as many blasphemers as pleased Constantius.

For at the first session I discovered therein that one hundred and five bishops proclaimed the homoeousion, that is, of like essence, and nineteen professed the anomoeousion, that is, of unlike essence, and the Egyptians alone, apart from the Alexandrian heretic (George), most steadfastly maintained the homousion. When therefore (on the 3rd day of the Council) the Count Leonas compelled it, all were gathered into one. Of those who proclaimed the homoeousion, some set forth certain things piously in words: that the Son both was from God, that is, from the substance of God, and had always existed. But those who defended the anomoeousion asserted nothing but the most profane things: denying that anything could be like the substance of God, and that a generation could proceed from God, but that Christ was a creature; so that what he was created, that was reckoned to him as his birth: and that he was from nothing; and therefore was not the Son, nor like God.

Blasphemies publicly recited.—Now I speak to you of what I myself heard recited publicly in open assembly, what had been taken down as the bishop of Antioch was preaching. These things therefore were recorded as having been said by him: "God was what he is. The Father was not, because neither was the Son his: for if a son, it is necessary that there also be a woman, and intercourse, and discourse, and conjugal union of the word, and endearment, and finally the natural mechanism for begetting." O my wretched ears, which heard the sound of so deadly a voice, that such things should be said about God by a man, and preached about Christ in a church!

After many impieties of this kind, when he had compared the Father and the Son by their names rather than by their nature, he said: "For as much as the Son stretches himself to know the Father, so much does the Father stretch himself beyond so as not to be known by the Son." When these things were recited, an uproar arose.

In what sense those who deny likeness condemn unlikeness.—But when those who say that God is unlike had understood that human ears would not receive the words of such great impiety; again these same men, deceivers rather than bishops of the Church, write a creed, and condemn the homousion and the homoeousion and unlikeness. And since this was contrary to their own meaning in the understanding of those who heard it: I myself questioned one of them, who had happened to approach me as if to test me, pretending ignorance of what had been done, asking what it meant that those who had condemned the Son as being of one substance with the Father, or had denied that he was of like substance, should condemn unlikeness. Then he said to me: "That Christ is not like God, but is like the Father." This again seemed still more obscure to me.

When I asked again about this, he then spoke thus: "I say that he is unlike God, but can be understood to be like the Father; because the Father had willed to create a creature of such a kind as would will things like himself: and therefore he is like the Father, because he is a son of will rather than of divinity; but unlike God, because he is neither God, nor born from God, that is, from the substance of God." Hearing this I was dumbfounded, nor did I believe it, until when the reasoning of this most profane likeness was publicly proclaimed with the consent of all of them.

The condemned again hold sway.—But those who proclaimed the homoeousion condemned all those who were speaking these things most shamelessly without any shame of impiety. The condemned flew off to their king: and being received with honor they confirmed their impieties with as much ambition as they could, denying that the Son is like God, or born from God, or is a natural son. The few dominated the many. Constantius extorted the business of his blasphemy by the fear of exile. Boasting that he had already conquered the Easterns, because he had subjected ten delegates to his will, and having threatened both the people through the prefect and the bishops within the palace, he fortified heretical bishops substituted throughout the greatest cities of the East with heretical communion. He did nothing at all other than to hand over to the devil the whole world, for which Christ suffered.

Constantius wrongly forbids words not written. He himself admits what is not written.—He makes use even now, as before in other matters, of the custom of his art, so as to confirm perverse things under the appearance of right, and to establish insane things under the name of reason. "I do not wish," he says, "words that are not written to be spoken." This I ask, who commands bishops? And who forbids the form of apostolic preaching? Say first, if you think it rightly said: I do not wish new preparations of remedies against new poisons, I do not wish new wars against new enemies, I do not wish fresh counsels against new snares. For if Arian heretics today avoid the homoeousion because they previously denied it; do not you today flee from it, so that these men may now deny it as well? The Apostle commands us to avoid novelties of words, but profane ones: why do you exclude pious ones? Especially since it was said by him: All Scripture divinely inspired is profitable.

You read nowhere that "unbegotten" is written: is it therefore to be denied because it is new? You decree the Son to be like the Father. The Gospels do not proclaim it: why is it that you do not shun this word? In one case novelty is chosen, in the other it is removed. Where an occasion for impiety lies open, novelty is admitted: but where the greatest and sole safeguard of religion exists, it is excluded.

The Scriptures hand down the Son as equal to the Father.—But I will not be silent about the deceiving subtlety of your diabolical mind. You decree that the Son, who is like the Father—which is not written—be proclaimed: so that you may be silent about Christ God being equal—which is written. For this is the cause of the Lord's death: For this reason the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath, but also said that God was his Father, making himself equal to God. This John proclaimed, speaking with a great voice: so that the Son, having professed God as his Father, is understood to have professed himself equal to God.

But if perhaps you say that Christ denied equality to himself and God, because he said: The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: remember that Christ both answered concerning the sabbath, which he was accused of violating, so as in this very matter to set forth the authority of the Father working in him, and claimed equality of power and honor for himself: All things whatsoever the Father doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner; and again, That they may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father: and, He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father who sent him. If the power is the same, if the honor is the same; I ask in what respect equality is lacking?

One in nature.—But likeness pleases you; do you not hear, I and the Father are one? Did the Lord also deny this, that we are one—in which neither union nor diversity was left—when the Jews again slanderously charged that by this saying he made himself God, saying: If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not: but if I do, and you will not believe me, believe the works: that the Father is in me, and I in the Father? What, I ask, is lacking to equality with God? Is it work? Is it nature? Is it confession? For the Father is in me, and I in the Father. It is equality: which expressed the reciprocity of equality, since to be in and to be is common to both. But to do the works of his Father is nothing other than to work in himself the power of the paternal divinity. And that they are one, this is not to deny equality, but to instruct faith in equality by an increase of understanding.

In the same form and glory.—You forbid therefore what is not written to be said: and yet you yourself use what is not written, nor do you speak what is written. You wish the Son to be proclaimed like the Father: lest you hear from the Apostle: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. Christ does not seize what he was, that is, to be in the form of God. To be in the form of God is not equality with God, if to be in the form of a servant is not equality of man. But if Christ as man is in the form of a servant; what else is Christ as God than in the form of God? You therefore wish him to be proclaimed like, lest your faith should contain: And every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.

The profession is deceitful, similar according to the Scriptures.—O how treacherous is your flattery! For you cover the waters with chaff, and hide pits with turf, and place snares beneath the bait. You think you satisfy the ignorant, because you say the Son is similar to the Father according to the Scriptures. Hear now also the craft of your impiety. Do we not piously say that man is similar to God according to the Scriptures; because it was said: Let us make man in our image and likeness? Man therefore is made in the image and likeness of God the Father and God the Son. And what kind of image it is, the Catholics, if asked, will explain. But now man is created in the likeness and image of God: yet a likeness between the Father and the Son is not thereby proclaimed. For that which he says our is a demonstration of equality; since there is no difference in whose mystery both the image and the likeness exist.

Mere likeness is nowhere predicated of the Son.—But of the Son you will nowhere find likeness predicated. The Apostle says that he is the image of God, but with a qualification of faith: lest you should understand image as meaning conformity. For he says: Who is the image of the invisible God: so that as the image of the invisible God, even by the very fact that he himself is invisible, he is the image of the invisible God. Likeness together with image he assigned to man in relation to God: lest it should be thought to be a property of the truth, to which likeness had been joined alongside image. Finally, where equality is expressed in terms of power, and likeness in the Son is shown in the working: when indeed an advance of understanding is proclaimed, it is then said thus: All things whatsoever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. To do likewise seemed too little, unless the same things were done that were done similarly.

And so the likeness of doing was piously demonstrated in the identity of the same works. There is also a likeness in the Lord of the flesh of sin: but for him it is not a likeness of flesh, but a likeness of the flesh of sin: so that what is in the form of God belongs to man; but what is in the likeness of the flesh of sin belongs to the likeness of man, since he is in the stature of man, and yet outside the sin of man. What therefore is the cunning profession of your religion, to say the Son is like the Father according to the Scriptures; when man alone was made in the image and likeness of God? Why then do you deceive with words? Why do you elude with craft? Why do you not piously say equal to God (for this is according to the Scriptures)?

With equality of the Son set forth, likeness can be predicated.—But do you fear that by saying equal, you might signify unbegotten? But understand the truth, that he was understood to be equal to God from this, that he professed God to be his own; and they contended that in declaring the Father to be his own Son visible, he differed from him in nature.

To have one's own God is a demonstration of birth. For me indeed likeness, lest occasion be given for union, is holy: but it is not to be conceded to you by me: because I will piously confess him to be the same, both equal and similar. Similar to the Father, and similar also to God, I will religiously proclaim; yet similar in such a way that I shall always set this before the word likeness: I and the Father are one: but you contradict all these things, because you defend likeness as an excuse. You deny the Son through birth, you deny God through nature, you deny the similar through equality, you deny the true through unity. And now I ask what likeness you leave to him, to whom you impart nothing of the property by which he is Son.

The inconstancy of Constantius in faith.—This I now require of you, Constantius, in what faith at last you believe. For I proceed now through the periods of your change, in which, descending to the very bottom of the abyss of your blasphemy, you ran headlong down the steps. For after the first truly genuine faith of the Nicene synod, having assembled again a council at Antioch (A.D. 341), you renew your faith. But there befalls you what is wont to befall unskilled builders, who are always displeased with their own work: that you always destroy what you always build. And lest you charge me as an unjust judge of your will, I will declare what displeases you in that same faith of the Encaenia. Unless I am mistaken, it is this phrase of yours, to which these words are closely joined: that he said God was his own Father.

"Who was begotten of the Father, God of God, whole of whole, one of one, perfect of perfect, King of King, the unchangeable image of divinity and essence, of power and glory." In these things indeed, remaining founded in the faith written by the fathers at Nicaea, not I: yet you by amending these things rescind them, and without damage to my faith seek for yourself an occasion of perfidy. Then after the Sardican synod (A.D. 347), you again stir up all your care for Catholic doctrine against Photinus (A.D. 351) at Sirmium. But straightway this, which was contained in both creeds, causes you horror: "But those who say that the Son of God is from non-existence, or from another substance, and not from God, and that there was once a time or age when he was not, the holy and Catholic Church regards as aliens." You are at variance with your own, and rebel as an enemy against your own.

You overturn old things with new, you rescind the new things themselves again by renewed amendment, and what has been amended you condemn again by further amending. You also take up against the ravings of Ossius and the advances of Ursacius and Valens the condemnations of your amendments: but soon you determine that all your things must be amended, or rather condemned. For you are offended by these few words most hostile to you: "And if anyone says that the Father is older in time than the only-begotten Son, and that the Son is younger than the Father, let him be anathema."

There is no faith where there is not one faith.—We do not bring false charges concerning things that have been rescinded, about which we complain rather as having been established after the Nicene synod. For even if it were affirmed that no faults underlie any of these things, there would still be no ground for a religious will: because the alteration of good things is the meditation of evil; and unnecessary amendment is an occasion of perversity. I say nothing of why you rescind what was done by our fathers at Nicaea; for you do not agree with them: this only I ask, why do you condemn your own? For the Apostle proclaims one faith and one baptism: now whatever among you is beyond one faith is perfidy, not faith. For you who condemn faith by amending it, establish that the condemnation of faith exists; since among you that which is to be abolished by one is abolished by another, which is again to be abolished by yet another.

According to the Arians, now no one is without guilt.—For what bishop's hand have you left innocent from that time? What tongue have you not compelled to falsehood? What heart have you not changed to the condemnation of a former judgment? You decree that the homousion, the faith of antiquity and the security of piety, be condemned. You have ordained that the homoiusion be anathematized by those very persons by whom it was adopted: which, though it is of no consequence to us for faith, is nevertheless a condemnation of their own faith to those who rescind it. You also condemn the word substance, by which you lied to the Westerners that you were pious both at the Sardican and at the Sirmian synod: which, however, having been received on prophetic authority, contained the understanding of faith. You therefore command that everything which was previously approved be condemned; what has always been disapproved you compel to be sanctified. O you wicked one, who make a mockery of the Church!

Only dogs return to their own vomit: you have compelled the priests of Christ to reabsorb what they had spat out. You command them to prove in themselves by their own confessions what they had previously condemned: in denying, they acquit their own guilty ones, and render themselves guilty. You have thrust everything into impiety and into guilt: since all establish themselves to be guilty and impious, either from present things or confess it from past things. Truth does not admit falsehood, nor does religion suffer impiety.

The violence of Constantius against the Orientals and Africans.—You speak as a Christian: but how little you are one, you yourself bear witness; nor do your deeds agree with your profession. For you have subjected the Eastern bishops to your will; and not only to your will, but also to your violence. You demand that the subscriptions of the Africans be returned to you, by which they had condemned the blasphemy of Ursacius and Valens. You threaten those who resist, and in the end you send men to plunder. What? Do you think that Christ judges only by a letter, and that God needs a little document to convict the will? Or that what has once been written, and violently seized by you, can be abolished from the knowledge of divine power? The documents will indeed follow you into ashes, but the condemnations of the guilty will live before God. You accomplish only this one thing: that posterity, instructed by fear, may know what it ought to decree against them.

The Arians declare war on the dead.—And O with how great advances do you progress toward impiety! And indeed all other mortals have always waged wars with the living, since man has no cause against man beyond death: but for you there is no end of enmities. For you provoke our fathers already received into eternal rest, and perversely break into their decrees. The Apostle taught us to share in the memorials of the saints: you have compelled men to condemn them. Is there anyone today, either living or dead, whose words you have not rescinded? You have utterly abolished the very episcopates which are now seen: because there is no one who has not already been condemned by himself, and who has not himself already condemned the one from whom he received the priesthood. With whom now shall the memorials of the saints be shared? The three hundred and eighteen bishops assembled at Nicaea are anathema to you: then anathema are all who were present at the various expositions made thereafter.

Also your father, who died long ago, is anathema to you, he to whom the Nicene synod was a matter of care, which you disturb, defamed by false opinions. And with a profane judgment you attack it with your few satellites. But it is not permitted to you now, powerful in your reign, to prejudge even for posterity. For there exist letters by which it is taught that what you consider criminal was then piously received. Hear the holy understanding of the words, hear the undisturbed constitution of the Church, hear the professed faith of your father, hear the confident security of human hope, hear the public sense of heretical condemnation, and understand that you are an enemy of divine religion, and an enemy to the memorials of the saints, and a rebellious heir of your father's piety.