On Not Assembling with Heretics

When you had perceived that all your pernicious endeavors had met resistance, and when you had found all your machinations against the Church of God revealed to all the people of God, you said that we were and are enemies of peace, foes of unity, and even adversaries of brotherly charity. If there ought to be nothing in common between worshippers of God and enemies of his religion, why did Moses, at the time when he saw that carnal Jewish people—whose wisdom you hold—incur the guilt of idolatry, after he had certain ones struck by the sword, wish that his own station be kept separate? That this is so, receive the text: And the Lord said to Moses: Say to the children of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people, take heed lest, bringing on another plague upon you, I destroy you. Now therefore put off your robes of glory and your ornament, and I will show what I shall do to you.

And the children of Israel put off their ornament and their robes from Mount Horeb, and Moses, taking the tabernacle, pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and it was called the tabernacle of the testimony, and it came to pass that whoever sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of the testimony outside the camp. And when Moses went out to the tabernacle, all the people stood watching, each at the door of his own tent. They watched Moses going until he entered the tabernacle; but as soon as Moses had entered the tabernacle, the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and it spoke with Moses, and all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tabernacle, and all the people stood and worshipped, each at the door of his own tent, and the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. But his minister Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.

By this deed it was shown that those who sin against God are to be avoided, and one must withdraw from you. But you say: Behold, Moses, though he had his tabernacle in another place, yet did not desert the people, but exhorted them to correct the ways of their errors, God being propitious; nor are those who have refused to be mixed with your sacrilege lacking in these duties: for you know it is said to you, that unless you correct your ways, you will perish forever. That, then, which we had begun to intend—to what point can we carry it through to proof? As often as the people murmured against God, and rose up against Moses, you have read that God said to Moses and Aaron: Separate yourselves from the midst of this undisciplined and contumacious people, and I will destroy them. What then does he wish us to do, except to flee you, the undisciplined and contumacious, lest, along with you, we perish as those who were joined together with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram?

Or will you deny that you are undisciplined and contumacious? Look at your acts committed against the Lord's church, and you will find how undisciplined and contumacious you are. In Deuteronomy Moses says: You shall not make a covenant with them, nor have mercy on them, nor give your daughters to them in marriage, nor take their daughter for your son: for she will turn away your son from me, and he will serve strange gods, and the wrath of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will destroy you quickly. Since he commands these things to be done, how can we come together with you, have peace with you, with deniers of the only Son of God? How could we have fulfilled this desire of yours? Since you see that God said through Moses concerning the Moabites and Ammonites: You shall not greet them peaceably all the days of your life for ever.

How could Arians and Christians be together, when you hear Moses say: There shall be no adulteress among the daughters of Israel; and everywhere he admonishes that every adulterer be put to death, brought to the gate, with stones: And you shall take away, he says, the wicked from among yourselves.

If he says that God so abhors carnal adultery that he commanded all adulterers to be punished, how much more must the Lord necessarily abhor your spiritual adultery, on account of which you had been and are to be shunned: we could not, as Christians, come together with apostolic people, when we find the Holy Spirit saying through Moses: God will open to you his excellent heavenly treasure, to give rain to your land in its season, he will bless all the work of your hands; you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow; and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you; the Lord your God will make you the head, and not the tail, and you shall be above only, and not beneath, if you hear the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today to keep and to do, and do not turn aside from any word which I command you today, to the right hand or to the left.

How could we come together with the pseudo-bishops of your Arian sect, when you see that we could not have been blessed unless we had not gone after your idolatry? Unless we had abhorred your heresy of the Arians, just as we abhor all heresies? Unless we had judged and held you to be such as the pagans, that is, worshippers of all demons? Unless we had held you in abomination just as we do the Jews, who are found to be without God, since they have denied the only Son of God?

In Joshua it is said: But when the people heard the sound of the trumpets, all the people shouted with a great shout, and all the walls of the city fell down round about, and all the people went up into the city, each before his own adversaries, and they took the city and put it under the ban, and whatever was in the city, from man to woman, from young to old, and even the ox and the ass, they slew with the edge of the sword; and to the two young men who had spied out the land, Joshua said: Go into the woman's house and bring her out, and all that is hers; and the two young men who had spied the city went into the woman's house, and brought out Rahab the harlot, and her father, and her mother, and her brothers, and all that was hers, and all her kindred, and brought her outside the camp of Israel, and the city was burned with fire, with all that was in it.

And further: Rahab the harlot, and all her father's house, Joshua saved alive, and she has dwelt in Israel to this day. Since, therefore, you see that all the inhabitants of the city of Jericho were punished by the edge of the sword, and the whole city burned, how did you suppose that we could come together with you, a heretic, when indeed we perceived you and yours to be more deserving of anathema than they were? How could we come together with the pseudo-bishops of your Arian sect, when you see that no one was preserved alive in that city where idolaters dwelt, except Rahab alone, because she believed our Lord to be all-powerful; whereas the idolatry in which the people established in Jericho trusted had been discovered by human error? How could we come together with you, when it is written in the third book of Kings that neither your houses were to be trodden, nor food to be taken with you, nor water to be received from you?

That this is so, sacred Scripture reveals: And it came to pass, it says concerning that fellow-apostate of yours, the word of the man of God: and further: And he stretched out his hand toward the altar, saying, Seize him, and the king's hand which he stretched out against him withered, and he could not draw it back to himself, and the altar was rent, and its ashes were poured out from the altar, according as the man of God had said by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said to the man of God: Entreat the face of the Lord your God that my hand may be restored to me. And the man of God entreated the face of the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him, and became as it was before. And the king spoke to the man of God and said: Come home with me and dine, and I will give you gifts.

And the man of God said to the king: Even if you gave me half your house, I will not go in with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for so the Lord commanded me by his word, saying: You shall not eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the way that you came. How could we come together with you to worship God? Since this man of God, who had been sent by God to rebuke King Jeroboam, because he was deceived by him who was called a prophet, so grave a vengeance followed upon him.

And he went, this Scripture says afterward concerning that man of God, by another way, and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel; and another prophet dwelt in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel, and the words that he had spoken to the king, and they turned the face of their father, and their father spoke to them, saying: By which way did he go? And his sons showed him the way by which the man of God had gone who had come from Judah, and he said to his sons: Saddle for me the ass; and they saddled it, and he mounted on it and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak, and said to him: Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he said: I am.

And he said to him: Come with me and eat bread; and he said: I cannot return with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for so it was told me by the word of the Lord, saying: You shall not eat bread there, nor drink water there, nor return by the way you went. And he said to him: I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying: Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.

And he lied to him, and brought him back, and he ate bread in his house and drank water; and it came to pass, as they sat at table, that the word of the Lord came to the false prophet who had brought him back, and he said to the man of God who had come from Judah: Thus says the Lord: because you have provoked the word of the Lord, and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, and have returned and eaten bread and drunk water in this place, of which he said to you, You shall not eat bread nor drink water; therefore your body shall not come into the tomb of your fathers.

And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread and drunk water, that they saddled the ass for him, and he returned and went, and a lion met him on the way and killed him, and his body was cast in the way, and the ass stood by him, and the lion stood by the body; and men of that city came and spoke of it in the city where the elder prophet dwelt; and when those who had brought him back from the way heard it, he said: This is the man of God who provoked the word of the Lord; and he went and found his body cast in the way, and the ass and the lion standing by the body, and the lion had not eaten the body, nor torn the ass.

If this was shown to him—why he had eaten bread and taken a drink of water in a profane place among foreigners—what would have been shown to us, if we had joined friendship with you, whom we know to be a heretic, whom we know to be a denier of the only Son of God, as you desired? If we had poured out prayer with you Arians? If, finally, we had allowed ourselves to celebrate with your Arian pseudo-bishops all that we, the priests of the Lord, celebrate? Meanwhile you have been sent to deceive us just as that false prophet was sent to that man of God—you ought to recognize, by reviewing your own most bitter deeds, that as he, though a false prophet, said he was a prophet in order to circumvent the innocent man, so also you, though you are not a Christian but an Arian, have feigned yourself a Christian in order to ensnare us.

Then, since the Lord's church has always had peace, and has cast out you and the heretics of all sects, you said: I wish peace to be established in my empire—wishing to violate the Lord's peace among us, desiring to split the people of God, procuring a passage over to your heresy which you wish all of us to make: thus you lied that you were a man of God, when you said that you were making this peace for the sake of our salvation; just as that false prophet said, Come back with me, for I too am a prophet of the Lord, and an angel spoke to me. Thus, I say, you lied, when you said that what you were undertaking to do was to please God; since you were laboring to join individual Catholic bishops to the communion of the Arians.

How could Christians come together with you and your fellow Arians, when you observe what the Lord said to King Jehoshaphat, why he had taken the idolater Ahab into friendship, why he had gone to war with the enemy of the Lord? For after that Ahab, your fellow in sacrilege, had, according to the word of God, been struck with a mortal wound in battle, and Jehoshaphat, because he had cried out to God with his whole heart, had been brought back to his own house, sacred Scripture says that Jehu the son of Hanani, who was a seer, went out before him and said such things: If you help the sinner, and are a friend of those who hate the Lord, for this there is wrath upon you from before the Lord; but good deeds are found in you, because you have removed the groves from the land, and have prepared your heart to seek the Lord.

If such things are said to him, what would be said to us if we had preferred to be friends with you, a heretic, an adversary of God? Or will you dare to say: I am not an enemy of God, as Ahab king of Israel was? How are you not an enemy, you who do the same things that Ahab did? Since you thus assault the religion of God as he persecuted it, so you persecute his house as he persecuted it. How could we and your people come together, when this God-devoted king, why he had joined in friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel, was rebuked by God through the prophet?

And Jehoshaphat king of Judah, it says, joined friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel; he began to act wickedly, and shared with him to make ships that might go to Tarshish, and he made ships at Ezion-geber, and Eliezer the son of Dodavah of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying: Because you have joined yourself with Ahaziah, the Lord has broken your work, and your ships are broken, and cannot go to Tarshish. If these things are said to him by the Lord because he had a companion in the road to perdition, the king, in the building of ships, what could be said to us, if we, the priests of the Catholic faith, held you, the destroyer of the house of God, the persecutor of the Catholic faith, as a friend of God? If he broke his work because he had joined with the wicked, surely we ourselves would already have been scattered, I believe, by thunderbolt, had we joined ourselves to you, a blasphemer.

How could we, who are servants of God, and you, servants of the devil, come together into one, since God has willed such a separation between us and you, as between light and darkness, between life and death, between sweet and bitter, as between the holy angels of God who ever magnify his mercy, and those apostates whom you shall forever see tormented along with you, unless you snatch yourself away from them? How, I say, could we, servants of God, be with the servants of Antichrist, when it was said by God to King Amaziah in the second book of Chronicles: Let not the army of Israel go with you, for God is not with Israel, with all the sons of Ephraim; for if you think to prevail by them, the Lord will put you to flight before your enemies, for the power is of the Lord.

How could we resist against the devil, if we ran together with you in so great a crime, with enemies of God, with men found without knowledge of God, having no God, in whom we know there is a horde of demons? For you cannot be deniers of the only Son of God without demons, since none but those who have blinded your hearts make you blaspheme, so that truth cannot be grasped by us. Could we possibly have remained on your side, and consented to your most wicked designs, when through glorious David the Holy Spirit says that none are blessed except those who have withdrawn themselves from you, the deniers of the only Son of God, those who have not mingled themselves with your serpentine thoughts—these alone shall remain blessed? Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence.

How could there be a common meeting place for you and us, when you hear David also say in Psalm: Depart from me, all you who work iniquity? If you Arians do not work iniquity, judge yourself, prince in the sacrilege of the Arians, you who, though we call ourselves Christians, persecute us with horrible ferocity. Rightly, then, know that we did well in withdrawing from you, hateful to God. For how would it have been fitting for us to remain in your assembly, infected with every crime, and not rather to flee you, a plague and pestilence, since he says, in the person of our people, in Psalm: For your mercy is before my eyes, and I have been well pleased in your truth. I have not sat with the council of vanity, neither will I go in with those who do unjust things; I have hated the assembly of the malignant, and will not sit with the wicked. If your council is not one of vanity, refute me.

There is no vain council in which no counsel is taken except that the Son of God be denied, that God the Father be defended as not being a true father, that the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, be asserted not to be the true Spirit of God, that the apostolic and evangelic tradition be destroyed, that the tradition of Arius be established? In which council nothing else is established except what can procure great rejoicing for all heretics and pagans and Jews. All the execrators of the religion of God rejoice, because they see you, emperor, carrying out the business of their desire, because they perceive you to have become a denier of the only Son of God, and a persecutor of his servants; this is the council which you have been accustomed to gather together with all the powers of your empire, to this end indeed, that all the authority of the sacred Scriptures might be dissolved by the authority of your empire, that all truth might be buried, that the lies of your detestable fabrication might appear true.

These are the objects of your meditation in that notable council assembled by your power. Therefore you hate us, because we abhor your assembly of malignants; therefore we are in exile, therefore we are being killed in prison, therefore alone to us is the sight of others forbidden; therefore, shut up, we are guarded in darkness with a huge guard. For this reason no man is permitted to visit us, because, evidently, we were unwilling to have any fellowship with you, the impious and sacrilegious, in your crimes—concerning which, in our own person, a supplication was addressed to God, that, namely, we might not perish along with you if we lived with you, but might be separated from your wicked council, from your iniquitous conspiracy. For he says in Psalm: Hear, O Lord, the voice of my supplication, when I pray to you, when I lift up my hands to your holy temple; do not draw my soul away together with sinners, and do not destroy me with those who work iniquity.

With those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their hearts. Give them according to their works, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors; according to the work of their hands give to them, render them their recompense. Therefore we are hated by you, Constantius, because we would not have these things said of us which are said by the mouth of the Prophet about you and yours because of your wicked work, which are said of the Jews, whose imitator you have shown yourself to be. Are you not Constantius the Emperor, who feigned to make peace, in such a way that your evil designs were nothing else than that the Son of God be denied, that the apostolic and evangelic faith be destroyed, and your Arian heresy be built up instead; that all who would not agree with you would be deported, proscribed, variously tortured, and finally killed?

And therefore the Holy Spirit, marking you and yours and striking you at the same time, says in the person of our people: Do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their heart. You said to us: I wish peace to be made; and remaining in your heart an adversary of our religion, you thought to make us idolaters through yourself: whence you shall indeed truly receive according to your work, according to the wickedness of your endeavors, unless you provide for yourself. We have avoided and are avoiding your council, which was made and is made against God; foreseeing whose designs already then the Holy Spirit said, through the mouth of David, in Psalm: The Lord has scattered the counsels of the nations; he rejects the thoughts of the peoples, and rejects the counsels of princes.

But your counsels, brought forth against his own church, God rejects; for he cannot hate his own people, his own inheritance, and love you, sons of pestilence, you persecutors of his servants. You said: Make peace with the bishops of my Arian sect, and be one; and the Spirit of God says through Solomon in Proverbs: Do not go in the ways of the ungodly, do not pursue them, nor be envious of the way of the wicked, wherever they set up an army, do not go there: but turn from it, and avoid it; for they will not sleep, unless they have done evil: for sleep is taken from them, and they do not sleep. For these feed on the food of impiety, and are made drunk with the wine of iniquity. But the ways of the just shine like light, they go forward and give light, until the day is perfect. But the ways of the wicked are dark; they do not know how they stumble. How could we have fellowship with you Arians, with spiritual adulterers?

We who keep it written: Do not attend to a deceitful woman: for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman, who for a time delights your palate, but afterward you will find her more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword: the feet of fools who use her lead down with death to hell. But you say these things were said concerning carnal adulteries? If you maintain these things are said concerning carnal adulteries, how much more must you spiritual adulterers be fled, lest through your Arian heresy, that spiritual harlot, these things which are said should come upon us? Sweet indeed it seems to some, that they be joined in friendship to you as king by embracing your heresy, but they shall find it more bitter than gall, when they begin to be tormented forever with you in eternal hell, they who chose to be with you, then to say: Woe to us who have preferred the emperor Constantius to God. How could there be agreement between us and you?

When Solomon further says: Cast out the pestilent one from the council, and contention will go out with him; and: Do not imitate evil men, nor desire to be with them; for their heart meditates false things, and their lips speak sorrows. Then: Do not lead the wicked man to the pastures of the just, nor be seduced by the fullness of the belly. For the just falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked shall be weakened in evils. With the proud and the transgressors, with those with whom you would wish to be found in company with Judas Iscariot, rather than with the most blessed prophets, apostles, and martyrs, how could we be? When I hear in Psalm: I walked in the innocence of my heart in the midst of my house.

I did not set before my eyes any wicked thing; I hated transgressions; a perverse heart did not cling to me; I did not acknowledge those who turned away from me, the malignant: him who secretly slandered his neighbor, I persecuted; with a haughty eye and an insatiable heart, I would not eat with him. And in Psalm: I have hated the unjust, and loved your law. Since you are unjust, being deniers of the only Son of God, since it is fitting that you be hated by us, because, leaving the way of truth, you have embraced every error, because, leaving the light, you have chosen to go into outer darkness, how could we have held you dear—you, the wicked head, you, the destroyer of the house of God, the tinder of all those working iniquity? How could we hold as familiar friends such as Valens, Ursacius, Epictetus, Saturninus, and the rest?

From which number, however, even though they should see into what pit they have fallen, they are still certain to perish diligently with you, provided they enjoy together with you the empty beauty of your kingdom. How could we be with you, we who hold in abhorrence these things which they have chosen to enjoy with you? Men who strive after those things which are to remain forever: for which reason there is no agreement between us and you, namely because we were unwilling to take up your heresy, namely because we, Christians, were unwilling to be made Arians. But who is there, unless he be, like you Arians, out of his mind, who would abandon the house of God, and give it over to be a monument of the devil?

Therefore we labor under your hatred because we have feared and do fear that those things might have been said of us which were said of those deserters, that is, the Jews, whom Jeremiah accuses, saying: Hear the word of the Lord, house of Jacob, and all the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and become vain, and did not say, Where is the Lord who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land uninhabited and unknown, and through a land of drought, and without water, and without fruit, through a land through which no man has passed, nor has any son of man dwelt there? And he brought you into Carmel, to eat its fruit and its good things, and you entered, and defiled the land, and made my heritage an abomination; the priests did not say, Where is the Lord?

And those who handle my law did not know me, and the shepherds acted impiously against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit. We did not wish to hear these reproaches; therefore we said that you and yours were to be fled. For neither could there be agreement between us, the household of God, and you, strangers, since we see it said by God concerning that perfidious carnal people of yours: Withhold your foot from a rough way, and your throat from thirst.

But she said: I will take comfort, because she loved strangers, and after them she went—after you, then, strangers, after you, foreigners, we not only were unwilling to go, but we said "anathema" to you, sons of pestilence and darkness, lest, if we had departed from the apostolic and evangelic faith, and had abandoned the way that Abraham, Isaac, and the most blessed Jacob held, and Abel, Enoch, Noah, and all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs, these things also might 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 house of Israel be confounded, they and their kings, and their princes, and their priests, and their prophets. We did not wish to be among you, lest even that rebuke of the divine voice should accuse us along with the Jews, and you along with the heretics: Why do you speak to me? All of you have acted impiously, and all of you have transgressed against me, says the Lord.

When you have read it written in the first book of Maccabees: Then there was gathered to them a strong assembly of the mighty from Israel, everyone that offered himself willingly for the law, and all who fled from evils were added to them, and they became a defense to them, and they gathered strength, and struck sinners in their wrath, and wicked men in their indignation, and the rest fled to the nations to save themselves; and Mattathias and his friends went about, and threw down the altars, and circumcised by force all the uncircumcised children that they found within the borders of Israel, and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hands, and they recovered the law out of the hands of the nations and of the kings, and gave no place to the sinner. Could we have been with you, seeing what those men did who are found to have feared God with their whole heart?

You say, a member already then cut off from the body of the blessed church, when you were made an Arian from a Christian—Be with us. And the Lord says in the Gospel: But if your right eye scandalizes you, 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 hell; and if your right hand scandalizes you, 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 hell. The church condemns to have cut off Arius, and cast him away, according to the Lord's precepts; and you say: Take back your fellow-pestilent ones and plagues; you say: Allow yourselves to perish by the same disease by which I perished.

Thus Sabellius was cut off from the body of the church, as your detestable Arius has also been cut off, whose word has crept so strongly into you, like a cancer, that you already appear to be wholly cancer: nor will you be able to say that you have not been cancered by the word of Arius, since the stench of your cancer has reached every place of your kingdom, and we have all resolved to avoid you, lest we too be cancered by your Arian plague. Thus, I say, your master Arius has been cut off and cast away, as Sabellius was cut off and rejected, who dared to maintain that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one person; because he dared to say that the same one was to himself both Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit; he was cut off because he did not hesitate to say that even the Father himself was incarnate in the Virgin's womb, and suffered.

Thus it cast out and cut off Marcion, who was unwilling to confess that the Son of God had taken a man from the Virgin's womb, and thereby become man. Thus Paul of Samosata, the master of Photinus, was cut off and cast away from the body of the church, because he had presumed to say that the Son of God was only a man. Thus the heretics of all sects have been cut off, as Arius has been cut off, and as you, who because you say of the Son of God that he was made out of nothing, and is not the true Son, that there was a time when he was not, have deserved to be cut off. All of you blasphemers, therefore, have been cut off, and cast out by the power of God from his merciful church, because you did not remain in that faith in which the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and the martyrs remained.

A man cut off, with all your fellow-blasphemers, from the body of the holy church, lying in the sewer of the devil, you dare to say to her: Be such as I am, so that you may be consumed by such a disease as I myself have been consumed by. Thus you had thought that we could have come together with you, as though we did not remember that the blessed Paul said: But we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they received from us. What reasoning could have brought it about that, forsaking the way that leads to the kingdoms of heaven, we should embrace your way that hurls one down to hell? You thought that you could deceive us by that subtlety by which the serpent deceived 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 has this returned as poison: since the stench of your cancer, that is, of your Arian dogma, which like a cancer creeps everywhere and corrupts all, has now spread through nearly the whole of Italy. Could you accomplish? Since blessed Paul has armed us against your poisons, and those of your father, saying: This therefore I say, that no one may deceive you with loftiness of words. And again: See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty 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 divinity bodily. How could we possibly have been deceived by those sacrilegious Arian notions of yours, however lofty the words, when we have known that you possess empty philosophy? Whence also could your speech be sweet, when we saw that you held the tradition of Arius, not of the blessed Apostles?

To whom he, whom you deny to be the true Son of God, said: Going, baptize them believing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. How could we, as Christians, agree with you, a disciple of Arius, deserting the apostolic tradition, when we find you saying that the Father is not truly a father, but is called father? When you say that he does not truly have a Son, but that he was made out of nothing? And that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete likewise consists of nothing? Let us see, on the contrary, that the Apostles believed in one God the Father almighty, a true father, precisely because 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, the true Spirit of God.

How could anyone of such believers be supplanted by the devil through you, the founder of Arius’ blasphemy, when the apostolic faith confesses a perfect Trinity, and professes the one Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; while the blasphemy of Arius, that is, your blasphemy, holds nothing except what pleases your flesh-devil?—when there is as much difference between the faith of the blessed Church and your heresy as between light and darkness? Rightly, then, have I said that you are separated from us, as darkness is separated from light, because you are sons of darkness: whence also you have vomited forth darkness from your viperish 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 blessed Paul, saying: Let no one beguile you, willing in humility of mind and religion of angels, walking in things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by the sense of his flesh, and not holding the Head, from which the whole body, joined together and knit together by joints and bands, grows unto the increase of faith. How could we follow you, walking without cause, fed by the mouth of the serpent, puffed up with Arius’ sense of your flesh, made an apostate, when the Apostle’s precept compelled us to avoid you? You said that you desired, for the sake of peace, to unite the pseudo-bishops of your sect with us: but how could we do this, so as to hear not God, but his enemy—you?

We are not senseless like you, that we should deny the Son of God as God, as the Jews deny him, sharers in your blindness, and leaders of your unbelief: of whose reprobation blessed Paul, showing an example, says to the Hebrews: And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken; but Christ as a Son over his house, which house we are, if indeed we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of hope, wherefore the Holy Spirit says: Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers tempted me, and proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was offended with that generation, and I said, they do always err in heart. And they have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest.

Take heed, brethren, lest perhaps there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if so be that we hold the beginning of our substance steadfast unto the end. While it is said: Today if you shall hear my voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some when they had heard did not believe; but not all who came out of Egypt by Moses. Now with whom was he offended forty years? Was it not with them that sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that were disobedient? And we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Let us therefore fear lest perhaps, a promise being left of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us also it was declared, as well as unto them: but the word of hearing did not profit them, not being tempered with faith in those that heard it. For we who have believed do enter into rest, as he said: As I swore in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest. And this although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he spoke in a certain place of the seventh day thus: And God rested the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again: If they shall enter into my rest. Seeing therefore it remains that some must enter into it, and they to whom it was first preached did not enter in because of disobedience.

Again he limits a certain day, saying today, in David, saying after so long a time (as it is said above): Today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts; for if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that has entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Who is so foolish, that when he has read these things, that he has received these things from the blessed Apostle, would abandon the apostolic faith and attempt to take up heresy? Who will dare deny him whom he sees able to give eternal rest to those who believe in him, and yet wish to believe in one with whom he would begin to be punished forever? Who is such a one, except you, Emperor Constantius, who have abandoned the camp of the Lord, and have gone over to the house of the devil?

We have not chosen to burn, as you have chosen with your lover the devil, but we hasten to enter into everlasting rest, from which your cunning might have been able to capture us, and turn us aside from the way of truth—since the Apostle still exhorts us to lay hold of the eternal rest, saying: Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the word of God is living, and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword, reaching even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart: and there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Since these things are so, how could any of us have gone over to you, remaining in the perfidy of the Jews?

What reason of things could have joined us Christians to you Arians, when we saw that you were imitators of the perfidy of that nation? From which, how could those fleeing to the house of God escape? In the Acts of the Apostles, most blessed Peter spoke thus, saying: Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying: Save yourselves from this perverse generation.

Nor will you be able to say that you Arians are not a perverse generation, just as the Jews were and are, when you consider that the scribes, Pharisees, and rulers of the Jews were then called a perverse generation for this reason: because they both denied the Son of God, and persecuted all who believed in his divine majesty: you will not be able to say, I say, that you and all the Arians are not a perverse and depraved generation, when you are doing the same things they did: if they denied the only Son of God, so do you; if they persecuted the servants of his eternal clemency, so do you also. What then ought we to have done, except, according to the precept of blessed Peter, to withdraw from you, sacrilegious ones? For how could there be agreement with you, when the Lord says in the Gospel: Take heed to yourselves of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy?

How could we have been one, when blessed Paul, writing to the Corinthians, said: It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife, and you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that has done this deed might be taken away from among you. If then the Apostle commanded that one doing such a work be removed from among them, lest indeed through his company the whole church be corrupted, how much more fitting was it that we should flee from you, blasphemers? If he says that he delivered that man to Satan, how much more ought you now to know that you have already been delivered, since you have begun to deny the Son of God?

For I indeed, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged, as though present, him that has so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your glorying is not good; know you not that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. Since the Apostle rebukes in this way, could Christians be joined to the servants of Antichrist? For how would one not be corrupted by the poisons of so great a blasphemy of yours, since whether in hypocrisy or in truth, whoever communicates with you is in great peril, seeing that because of your heresy we are cut off from you? How again could we adhere to you?

Since it is the voice of the Apostle saying: I wrote to you in an epistle not to keep company with fornicators; not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, for then you must needs go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company, 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 eat. If we are commanded not to eat with you, did you think that Catholics could come together with heretics to celebrate all the solemnities? Could we, with you erring ones, with you brought by the devil's poison into every drunkenness, still be worshippers of God? How could this be, that among the dead we should stand as living men?

Since it would be more fitting that you, sons of our adversary, gathered together into one, and we, soldiers of Christ, gathered together against you into one, so that you might, without any doubt, be called by all who love God the members and body of the harlot; by which name we too might be called, if we surrendered ourselves to you: Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. Or know you not that he who is joined to a harlot is one body? For, he says, the two shall be in one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit; flee fornication.

What sort of fornication do you wish that we ought to flee? For whoever seeks another besides his own wife is called a fornicator. Likewise, whoever has served idols is said to have committed fornication, since indeed, having forsaken God, he has worshipped idols; similarly, whoever is a heretic is called a fornicator. Consider which of these you judge to be the graver crime: to become a heretic, to serve idols, or to commit adultery according to the flesh? Since therefore either the pagans or you heretics are called idolaters, it is necessary that both sides be committing idolatry; and yet you shall understand that those two crimes are as much more monstrous than carnal fornication as cannot be told. Behold with what evils you have slain yourself. The most holy Apostle still cries out, saying: Every sin that a man commits 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 could you bear God, Constantius, in your body, when, rejecting the apostolic faith and taking up the heretical one, you would no longer say that you belong to Him whom our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob declared themselves to belong to, and also all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs? Then, if one who fornicates sins against his own body, how much more you, who accomplish that work of the serpent not only through the flesh but through the soul itself? 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? With sacrilegious men, lest we ourselves also, having been made one body with a harlot, should fail to deserve to be servants of the Lord, but should now, like you, become slaves of the devil, we judged that we ought to withdraw from you. Woe to you, who have refused to be joined to the Lord, but have wished to be joined to the devil.

And again, when he says: Be not deceived; 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 with you? How could we have been in your malignant council, when we find that the blessed Apostle said to Timothy: Lay hands hastily on no one, neither be partaker of other men's sins. Keep yourself chaste? But how could we have been chaste, if, by clinging to you, we had been torn apart, as you have been, by those most dear friends of yours—namely, the unclean spirits—away from the chastity of the faith? How could we not have shared in others' sins? For if we had judged it right to remain with you, we would have become what you are, that is, members of a harlot.

How could we, being Christians, remain with you heretics, when we know that the Apostle likewise wrote to Timothy that we should withdraw ourselves from you heretics: Teach these things and exhort; if anyone teaches otherwise, and does not agree to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is puffed up, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and disputes of words, from which arise envies, contentions, blasphemies, evil suspicions, wranglings of men corrupted in mind and destitute of the truth?

From you, therefore, who do not believe as the people of God believe, from you who do not teach as the apostles of Christ, the only Son of God, taught, from you who do not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have wished to live separated—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 upon questions; from you, through whose wicked efforts have been found to arise, especially in our own days, wranglings of words, deadly contentions, malignant strifes—through you, that is, a man corrupt in mind, a falsifier of the truth. We have judged it right to withdraw from you and from your fellow-vipers, according to the Apostle's precept. For he says further on: Men corrupted in mind and destitute of the truth, supposing gain to be godliness: from such withdraw yourself.

How then could we have remained with you, since even at the close of this epistle he exhorts that you must be fled—you who have fallen from the faith: O Timothy, keep that which is committed to your trust, avoiding profane novelties of words, and oppositions of science falsely so called, which some professing concerning the faith have erred? It behooved us to avoid you, who put forth profane novelties of words, since we knew that you had uttered that sacrilegious utterance at the instigation of the devil—that utterance, I say, by which you expressed the poisons of your doctrine, saying: There was a time when he was not, and he was made out of nothing, and the Father and the Son are not of one power. These things the Holy Spirit did not utter through you, but that unclean devil.

How then could we, according to the Apostle's command, have kept the deposit entrusted to us, if we had remained with you in your accursed council, since we have proposed to hold the apostolic faith even unto death—that faith, namely, which we hold as written at Nicaea against your blasphemy and against the execrable efforts of all your heretics? How could we, being Christians, have been Arians in your council, we who read in the book of Maccabees that our predecessors and fellow-servants withdrew from those who, according to the edict of your fellow-tyrant Antiochus, sacrificed to idols: But Judas Maccabeus, who was the tenth, had withdrawn into the desert, and there, with his companions, lived after the manner of beasts in the mountains, feeding on the food of herbs, that they might not be partakers of the pollution? You recognize that by this one testimony we were bound to withdraw from you, lest we too should have become partakers of the pollution.

How could we be joined to you, when the Lord likewise says to the apostles: Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees; and that it might be made clear to us that the unsound doctrine which either the Pharisees and Sadducees then, or you heretics of every sect now, put forth was the leaven, the Scripture continues, saying: Then they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. Which when Jesus perceived, he said: Why do you reason among yourselves, O you of little faith, because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand men, and how many baskets you took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand men, and how many baskets you took up? How is it that you do not understand that I spoke not to you concerning bread, when I said, Take heed of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?

Then they understood that he did not say they should beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Likewise, writing to the Corinthians, when the Apostle deigns to instruct us to withdraw from you heretics and from all aliens, how could your heart, changeable and unstable in all things, but fixed with the mighty strength of your evil will in this malignity, have presumed that we could have peace with you or with yours? Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? And what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has he that believes with an infidel? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as God has said: I will dwell in them, and walk in 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 will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Since your precepts seem to have arisen against these promises of the Lord, how could we, the faithful, have tarried with you, the unfaithful? Could we, running in the way of light, stand still with you, men making your journey in a way filled with all the darkness of error? 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 a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty—who, we say, is so foolish as to be unwilling that God should dwell in him? Who would refuse to be reckoned as received by God among those whom He has deigned to call His sons—so as not to flee from you, made unclean through your heresy? It did not seem right to us that we should be one with you, since it is not right that men should dwell with serpents. Or will you deny that the deniers of the only Son of God are called serpents in the sacred Scriptures? If you cannot deny it, mark that we have rightly acted in fleeing you serpents. You have read the Apostle saying to Timothy: Shun profane novelties of words: for they will increase unto much ungodliness, and their speech will spread like a canker.

Did you suppose that men whose speech is like a canker could be men of God? Likewise, when the blessed John commands that you be fled, saying: I rejoiced greatly that I found of your children walking in truth, as we have received a commandment from the Father. And now I beseech you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto you, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, that, as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it. For many deceivers have entered into the world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh: this is a deceiver and an antichrist. Look to yourselves, that you lose not the things which you have wrought, but that you receive a full reward.

Whoever transgresses, and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, has not God: he who abides in the doctrine, the same has both the Father and the Son. If any one comes to you, and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, neither say to him, God speed: for he who says to him, God speed, is a partaker of his evil deeds. How could it have come to pass that we, and you and yours, could be soldiers of God together with soldiers of Antichrist, since the Holy Spirit has not even permitted you to be greeted, giving these precepts through the blessed Apostle? But perhaps you will dare to say: Do I then deny that the Son of God has come in the flesh, that I should be named one of the Antichrists?

You indeed, Emperor Constantius, do not deny that the Son of God came 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, affirming that He is not the true Son of God. We, on the contrary, who hold the tradition of this blessed Apostle, believe Him to be the true Son of God, we believe that the Father and this His only Son possess one Godhead; and that this is so the Lord manifests 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, yet He says: I and the Father are one; and, He who has seen me has seen the Father; and, I am in the Father, and the Father in me—that He wished us to understand nothing else than that the Father and the Son have one eternity, one glory, one power, one greatness.

For this reason also the Apostle says in this second epistle: Whoever transgresses, and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, has not God: he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son—that, gathering from the doctrine of the sacred Gospels, we should believe the one Godhead of God the Father and His only Son; that he has God who so believes; but he who has withdrawn from this doctrine (that is, from "I and the Father are one", which, since it is plural, shows both two persons and one power of these two persons, that is, of the Father and the Son)—therefore the Apostle says: He who transgresses, and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, has not God: but he who abides in his doctrine has both the Father and the Son—that we should believe the Son of God saying: I and the Father are one; which certainly means that the Godhead of the Father and the Son is one.

It is established, therefore, 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 the Father and the Son, said: He who withdraws from His doctrine has not God: but he who abides in His doctrine has the Father and the Son. You, I say, being established without God, having neither the Son nor the Father, we know that we have most rightly fled, since it would not have been fitting for those who have God to tarry with the enemies of His divine majesty. But recognize how hateful you are to God, that we were not even permitted to say to you, God speed. How could we, being Christians, remain with you Arians, when the Apostle Paul says: Avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain.

A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid, knowing that he who is such is subverted, and sins, being condemned by himself? We could not have gathered with heretics condemned by themselves, lest that same voice should strike us as it struck the Galatians of the blessed Paul: You ran well; who has hindered you, that you should not obey the truth? Recognizing that you are enemies of the Son of God, we fled your wicked counsels, obeying the voice of the Apostle: Whom obey not, he says, this persuasion is not from Him that calls you. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? We, servants of Christ, were unwilling to receive you, worms of Arius, into our fellowship, lest we should be consumed by that poison of the devil by which you are consumed.

We were unwilling to go with you—that is, with men who still seem to be outside the knowledge of God, who are still established under the power of the devil; we, the living, were unwilling to be joined to the dead, because you are recognized to be such as we ourselves were before we believed in the only Son of God. The Apostle manifests that this is so, writing to the Ephesians: And you, when you were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature children of wrath, even as others.

Since you are still such as the most holy Apostle relates that we ourselves were before we believed, surely you were men to be avoided, in whom, and through whom, the princes of the power of the air, this spirit, work out their every desire; you were children of disobedience to be fled, children by nature of wrath, lest by clinging to you we should be brought back to what we had been before. We were unwilling to be with you, because you had not yet obtained the mercy of God which we have already obtained. We were unwilling to have fellowship with you, who were led by the counsel of the flesh, as this most blessed Paul himself was led before he believed—he whom we remember to say: Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things comes the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not therefore partakers with them.

For you were sometimes darkness, but now are you light in the Lord: walk as children of light: for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. We were unwilling, having received these commandments, to tarry with you, being led by your vain words, lest wrath should come upon us, as it has come and shall come upon you, upon you and yours, upon you children of disobedience. We were unwilling to become partakers of darkness; since, already believing in the only Son of God, desiring to obey the commandments of His majesty, escaping from those darknesses we have become light in the Lord: wherefore we have not obeyed your darkened commands, because it would have been a wicked thing to make children of light do the work of one of darkness; because the fruit of light is to walk in righteousness and truth, and in all goodness.

You say that we act unjustly, in that we have refused to take up your heresy, in that eternal friendships have not been fixed between us and you and yours. Consider what Moses did concerning foreigners, at the time when God deigned to command him that, sending a certain number of Israelites, he should destroy by the edge of the sword the five kings of Midian and of Moab; who, having been sent to battle, when all the males had been killed, because they had spared the female sex who met them, Moses rebuked the children of Israel, why they had not also destroyed the female sex, and commanded that they be killed in his presence, affirming that they were able to entice the minds of the people to the worship of idols.

If, then, we so abominate your heresy as Moses abominated idolatry, if indeed we desire that the heresies of all your erring followers be slain by the sword of God, as Moses slew those given over to idols, if we so flee you, adversaries of the religion of God, as he fled the worshippers of idols, do you think that we do not act rightly in withdrawing ourselves from you? For how could we have come to agreement with you, when he said to the Philippians: Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers? You dogs, evil workers—what servant of God would not flee, unless he had forgotten that he was a Christian? Could we, servants of Christ, have been joined to you, adversaries of the religion of God, when Jude, the glorious Apostle, brother of the Apostle James, exhorts us to avoid you and those like you, and to remain in the faith we have received even unto death?

Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are beloved in God the Father, and preserved and called in Jesus Christ: Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of our common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith once delivered. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. It would have been unlawful to be joined with you, deniers and blasphemers, since he still, setting before us the examples of those who transgressed the Lord's commandments, urges our hearts to remain in that faith in which he himself seems to have remained.

I wish therefore to remind you, knowing all things, how the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not: and the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion. And further on: Woe unto them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.

These are spots in your feasts of charity, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withers, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. And further on: But, beloved, remember the words spoken before by the apostles of Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. Since you, Constantius, were seen to be among all these evils, we have shunned your friendship, which labors to destroy us, lest we should have been cast down together with you into those places of torments, into which all those whose path you follow are recounted to have been cast headlong.