That Pardon Is Not to Be Granted to Those Who Sin Against God

When you saw yourself, Emperor, overcome on every side by the servants of God, you said that you had suffered, and were suffering from us, insult contrary to the warnings of the sacred scriptures: you say that we have shown ourselves insolent toward you, whom it would have been fitting to honor. If any worshipper of God has ever spared apostates, then let what you say of us be true. From what point shall we begin, so that we may prove whether all who have erred have ever been spared by the worshippers of God, just as you are now being reproved by us? From what source, but from the deeds of Moses, the servant of God? We read in Exodus that Moses went up the mountain after the covenant had been given to him, and slew very many of them for the guilt of idolatry. Moses, it says, stood at the gate of the camp, and said: Whoever is for the Lord, let him come to me.

And all the sons of Levi gathered to him, and he said to them: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Let every man put his sword upon his thigh, and go through and return from gate to gate through the camp, and let every man slay his brother, and every man his kinsman, and every man his neighbor. And the sons of Levi did as Moses had told them. And there fell of the people on that day about three thousand men. And Moses said to them: You have today filled your hands for the Lord, every man in his son or in his brother, that a blessing might be given among you.

We are to you as offensive as Moses was to that senseless people: nor did those things which were said please them, or were wept over by Moses, when they had already chosen not to serve God, who had rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, but rather to serve that calf which fire had cast for them: so also you, no longer devoted to God but to the idolatry of Arius, in which you are convicted of having erred, take it ill, cry out that we are contumacious, say that we have perpetrated an unworthy crime against you, in that we have dared to say to an emperor of the Roman realm: You do wrong, Constantius, to bring idolatry into the church. Moses, that first of the prophets, most beloved of God, pursued with the sword those men whose imitator you have made yourself, and am I marked as contumacious by you, because I have said that God has forsaken you, and that you have given yourself over to idolatry?

Furthermore the sacred scripture cries out that the sons of Israel committed fornication with the daughters of the Moabites, and that being invited by them they ate things sacrificed to idols, and worshipped those same idols; against whom, because Phinees the priest burned with such zeal of devotion, chiefly because he slew the idolaters with the sword in the midst of the assembly, it so pleased God that it is written that by this deed the wrath of the indignant Lord was appeased, and that he himself was made exceedingly distinguished before the Lord: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Phinees the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned away my wrath from the sons of Israel, in that he was zealous with my zeal among them, so that I did not destroy the sons of Israel in my zeal: and behold, I give him my covenant, a covenant of peace, and to his seed after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the sons of Israel.

And do you reckon us contumacious, because we speak the truth to you in your error? Do you think that when we displease you, we are not then pleasing God? But I beg you to tell me, Constantius, by what authority you have wished us to abandon the way of the just patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and to embrace this new way of yours which the devil instituted through Arius. Were you perhaps admonished in a dream, and told not to allow us to hold the way of Christ, which Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchisedech, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua the son of Nun, Job, the Judges, and the rest of the kings—that is, David, Josaphat, Ezechias, Josias—held, which all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs held, which all who are found to have pleased God have held?

If this was told you by the prince of demons, hear what God has determined shall be done to you through the glorious prophet Moses: But if there arise in the midst of you a prophet, or one who dreams a dream, and gives a sign or a wonder, and comes performing signs or wonders, and says to you: Let us go and serve strange gods, whom you know not; you shall not listen to the word of that prophet, or of the dreamer, because the Lord your God is testing you to see whether you love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul: you shall walk after the Lord your God, and you shall fear him, and keep his commandments, and hear his voice, and you shall cling to him: and that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death. For they have spoken to seduce you from the Lord your God. Do you understand what you have been commanded to suffer?

For whether you say you were admonished by a dream, or wish to establish yourself as a prophet to us, you are an enemy of God, since you wish us to abandon the apostolic faith and to receive that faith which denies the only Son of God. For it is plain that all those whom I have recited became such and so great precisely because they believed in the only Son of God: since he who does not believe in the Son does not have the Father either; but he who believes in the Son has both the Father and the Son. Since this is the voice of blessed John, with whom the chorus of the holy apostles is in accord, you ought certainly to understand that just as the apostles believed, so had the patriarchs and prophets believed before them, and so did all who are known to have been honored for the merit of their faith.

Nor will you be able to prove to me that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob believed otherwise than John or all his fellow apostles believed. For if the apostles did not believe as the patriarchs believed, why does blessed Paul summon all to embrace the faith of Abraham? But you say: I accuse you of why you are insolent, why you have shown yourself contumelious toward the emperor; and you unfold a matter of faith. Yes, a matter of faith indeed; that I may prove you to be sacrilegious, that I may prove that you have strayed from the way of truth—on this account I seem contumelious to you, because I say that you have deserted the path of all the worshippers of God, and have taken up that path which those have held and are holding who have served, and are serving, not God but a phantasm.

Concerning you, then, who persuade me to depart from God, hear what God has decreed shall be done, through Moses: But if your brother, the son of your father or your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife who lies in your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying: Let us go and serve strange gods, whom you know not, neither you nor your fathers, gods of the nations round about you, whether near or far, do not consent to go with him, nor listen to him; your eye shall not spare him, nor shall you love him, nor conceal him: you shall surely denounce him: your hands shall be first upon him to kill him, and afterward the hands of all the people. And you shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God. You say, not knowing, that you have been commanded to be slain, indeed by me who invites you to forsake God—Lucifer does me wrong!

Or will you deny that you invited us to embrace idolatry? If you think it should be denied, the expositions of the bishops of your sect—your fellow blasphemers, that is—will convict you; the pamphlets which you recited and gave to the bishops at Rome, even to the Catholic ones, for this very purpose, that your blasphemy might be strengthened in every place, will convict you. Do you not perceive into what darkness of errors you have fallen? Do you not see by what means you may perish? When you consider why Achar, one of the people, acted against the divine commands, why he stole by theft from Jericho a certain portion of clothing, of silver, and of gold, and thus was punished with death.

Consider what is to become of you, who deny the eternal divine majesty of the only Son of God; learn what was carried out concerning Achar; and at last take counsel for your salvation, return to the church of God, from which that fugitive serpent, who once perverted Adam and Eve also, has driven you away through the Arians: And the Lord, it says, was with Joshua, and his name was over all the earth. And the sons of Israel committed a trespass of neglect, and defrauded by fraud concerning the accursed thing, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the sons of Israel. And Joshua sent men to Ai, which is near Bethel, saying: Reconnoiter Ai. And the men went up, and reconnoitered Ai: and they returned to Joshua, and said to him: Let not all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and destroy the city; do not bring up the whole people, for they are few.

And about three thousand men went up with him, and they fled before the men of Ai: and the men of Ai slew of them about thirty-six men, and pursued them from the gate, and struck them down on the slope, and the heart of the people melted, and became as water. And Joshua tore his garments, and Joshua fell on his face before God until evening, he and the elders of Israel, and they put dust upon their heads, and Joshua said: I beseech you, Lord, why have you brought this people across the Jordan at all, to deliver them into the hand of the Amorite, to destroy us? Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan. And what shall I say, since Israel has turned its back before its enemy? The Canaanite will hear of it, and all who dwell in the land, and they will surround us, and cut us off from the earth: and what will you do for your great name?

And the Lord said to Joshua: Rise up; why have you fallen upon your face? The people has sinned, and transgressed my covenant which I made with them, and they have stolen from the accursed thing, and put it among their own goods. The sons of Israel will not be able to stand before the face of their enemies; they will turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become accursed. I will not be with you any more, unless you take away the accursed thing from among you. Rise up, sanctify the people, and say to them: Be sanctified for tomorrow. For thus says the Lord God of Israel: There is an accursed thing in the midst of you, O Israel; you shall not be able to stand against your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you.

And gather yourselves together in the morning, tribe by tribe, and the tribe which the Lord shall point out in the morning shall come forward family by family; bring forward the family which the Lord shall point out, man by man; and whoever shall be pointed out by the Lord shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and has done wickedness in Israel. And Joshua rose early in the morning, and brought the people forward tribe by tribe, and the tribe of Judah was pointed out: and they were brought forward family by family, and the family of Zara was pointed out: and he brought forward the family of Zara house by house, and the house of Zambri was pointed out: and the house was brought forward man by man, and Achar the son of Charmi, son of Zambri, was pointed out.

And Joshua said to Achar: Give glory this day to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession, and tell me what you have done, and do not hide it from me. And Achar answered Joshua, and said: Truly I have sinned before the sight of the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done: I saw among the spoils a beautiful mantle, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels; and I coveted them, and took them, and behold, they are hidden in my tent, and the silver is hidden underneath. And Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and these things were hidden in the tent, and the silver underneath: and they took them from the tent, and brought them to Joshua, and to the elders of Israel, and laid them before God.

And they took Achar the son of Charmi, and brought him into the Valley of Achor, and his sons and daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that was his: and all Israel was with him, and they brought them to Macachor. And Joshua said to Achar: Why have you troubled us? May the Lord trouble you this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and they raised over him a great heap of stones. And the Lord ceased from the fierceness of his anger. Consider, Constantius, by what an example you are to perish, unless you take heed for yourself, of what punishments you are to suffer forever. Achar, for the transgression of the commandments, met with such an end; what you deserve is given to be understood from this, that you are an apostate.

For if he, because he had part of the accursed thing, was punished with such a destruction, how much more, without doubt, will you be punished more severely, who have become accursed by denying the Son of God! For this we are called criminal by you, for this proud and stubborn, for this insolent, because we say to you, You have committed sacrilege, in being a denier of the only Son of God; because we say, Take counsel for yourself, snatch your soul from the snares of the devil. What new thing do we bishops do, if we say to you those things which you deserve to hear? Since we find that most holy Samuel, the priest of God, said these things to King Saul, which you are about to read below: Pains and groanings shall be brought upon you. Because you have made the word of the Lord of no account, the Lord will make you of no account, that you shall not reign.

And again: Because you have made the word of the Lord of no account, God will reduce you to nothing, that you shall not be king over Israel. And below: The Lord will rend your kingdom from Israel out of your hand this day, and will give it to your neighbor who is better than you. If he said these things to Saul, because he had transgressed the commands of the Lord, why do you think that we ought not… that you could say with free voice that you are sacrilegious, who, unless you convert yourself to God, would be reduced to nothing? If we had not exhorted you, if we did not call you to satisfaction, you would rightly say that you are hated by us.

Or when you hear us say, Repent, emperor, correct your ways, that you may find a place for mercy, I think you ought to have considered, that because you are loved by us, you are loved by us; and in this you curse us; because we remain in the apostolic faith, you return evil for good. We do not wonder if you, since you depart from the will of God, and do not cease to do the desire of the devil, when we ask and desire good things for you from God, you represent evil to us; since it has become ingrained in you to do evil, seeing that you have made the passage from good to evil, that is, to the devil. If you persecute us who love you, wishing every highest good to come to you, it is nothing great nor new, since Saul also persecuted Samuel, the prophet and priest of the Lord.

He persecuted him by whom he had also been anointed king, and whose prayers were directed to the Lord in continual entreaty for the safety of that very persecutor. If you do not believe us that we, the priests of God, grieve for you, because you have drawn in such great darkness of errors, because you thus stain yourself, believe God speaking to Samuel concerning Saul: How long do you mourn for Saul? Behold I reject him, that he may not reign over Israel. And above: And the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying: It repenteth me that I have made Saul king, because he is turned away from me, and hath not performed my words. And Samuel was grieved, and cried unto the Lord all night, and before the light.

Although Samuel the priest did these things for the safety of King Saul, yet Saul afterward persecuted Samuel, not knowing, wretched man, that he was persecuting the prophet and priest of the Lord: so also you, not knowing what you are doing, persecute us, who desire you to please God, and you love those who drag you with themselves to eternal death, to perpetual offense of the Lord: you are indignant that you hear true things, when you see that Samuel, the priest of the Lord, did not flatter the mind of the king. What else ought our predecessors to have done, and what else should we do? Because we tell you true things, we seem proud to you. What have you heard from us? Namely, that you are a murderer: if we lie, then we are rightly called insolent, then proud by you: but if we speak a true thing, we are not insolent, but those who imitate those who, by not flattering those committed to them, but by wholesomely admonishing them, deserved to become most beloved of God.

When the king of Israel sent to kill the prophet Elisha, if you had not read that Elisha said to those who were with him, If you have seen, that this son of a murderer has sent to take away my head, you would rightly seek me as guilty of injuries. The prophet, full of the Holy Spirit, called the king of Israel the son of a murderer, that is, the son of the devil, not because he had called his carnal father a murderer, but the devil, whose son he was showing himself to be, as you now openly show by your acts, and he was showing himself to be by persecuting the servants of God, by daring to kill the prophets of that clemency. That you may do all these things, the devil instigates your hearts. That this is so, accept the Lord saying to the Jews in the Gospel: You are born of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you wish to do: for he was a murderer from the beginning.

The prophet of the Lord, I say, full of the Holy Spirit, calls the king of Israel the son of a murderer, that is, of the devil, and do you think that we do you an insult, because we say that you are the killer of the servants of God, that you are the executioner of our bodies, that you are a man of all thought of injustice, a destroyer of religion, a denier of the only Son of God? What we see you doing, this we say; what you are, this we proclaim you to be. You call us insolent, since indeed we say what is true of you. I would like you to say, whence did the king of Israel deserve to hear such things from the Lord? Because you have done good things before me, and have done according to my heart, and according to my soul, to the house of Achab: your sons to the fourth generation shall sit for you on the throne of Israel.

Say, I ask, why did he deserve to hear this from God? Because he spared the enemies of God? Or because he pursued them most fiercely even with the sword? Or because he killed the idolatrous son of Achab and his forty sons? Because he threw Jezebel the queen, when killed, to the dogs, and destroyed all the servants of Baal with all the priests and prophets of confusion by the mouth of the sword, because he destroyed the idols, it is pleasing to God. What ought we to have done concerning you, lest you designate us guilty of insult toward you, whom we see holding the ways of Achab and Jezebel? It is not new that what you do is done against God, to attack his house, to persecute his bishops, those through whom he warns you to take counsel for yourself, that while there is a place for repentance, you may draw yourself away from evil. There were before you those like you in sacrilege, thus serving idols, having abandoned the God of their fathers.

In the second book of Paralipomenon, Amasias king of Judah was warned by God through a prophet, not to have the sons of Israel, whom he had hired for a hundred thousand talents of silver, go with him to war, because indeed God had forsaken Israel, since indeed they had forsaken God, and served idols: the king obeyed the words of the prophet, believed that it was God's threat.

What does he do here? After he subdued his adversaries, he thought that their idols should be carried off and transferred to his own kingdom, and himself adored; and because that man of God had told him that he had not done well, in that, forsaking God, he worshipped the idols of the nations, this king fiercely persecuted the prophet of the Lord. You see that in those of you turned to apostasy there has always been one single mind toward persecuting those who wish well for you. And it came to pass, says holy scripture, after Amasias came to strike Idumea, that he brought from there the gods of mount Seir, and set them up for himself as gods, and worshipped before them, and himself sacrificed to them. And the wrath of the Lord was upon Amasias, and he sent to him the prophet Baneas, and Baneas said to him: Why have you sought the gods of a people, which did not deliver their own people out of your hand?

And it came to pass, as he spoke to him, he said to him: Have I made you the king's counselor? Take heed to yourself, lest you be scourged. You see, Constantius, how insane you become, after it has pleased you to live serving the devil, after it has pleased you not to know the all-powerful God, after you have chosen that you must set up idolatry in contempt of God. For as he said: Have I made you the king's counselor? Take heed to yourself lest you be scourged; so also you: Have I chosen you as my counselors, you say, that I should not do as it pleases me, that I should not hold this way which Arius held? And do you not see by what example Arius perished? How he was avenged by divine power?

Meanwhile, because you say that we are insolent to you, see that this man of God did not spare that co-sacrilegious king of yours, but after it was said to him, Be silent, lest you be scourged, he said to him: I know that the Lord God will destroy you, who have done this, and have not obeyed my counsel. In what matter do you find us insolent? Namely because we say to you: We know, that unless you provide for yourself to be converted to God, the Lord will condemn you to eternal punishment. This is the insult, this is the whole injury, that it is said to you through the bishops of God, that you will perish forever, unless you correct your ways. That king did not believe the man of God. What immediately happened to him, holy scripture says thus: And at the time when Amasias departed from the Lord, they rose up against him in insurrection. And he fled from Jerusalem to Lachis, and they killed him in Lachis.

So also your evil deeds could preserve you, protect, and defend you, as they did him who said to the man of God who spoke for his own salvation: Have I appointed you counselor to the king?

Be silent, lest you be scourged. It is not a new thing done first by us, if we say to you erring, resisting the ordinance of God, laboring to establish new ways: You do wrong not to go by the way by which all worshippers of God have arrived at the heavenly kingdoms. You have read that Ozias the king was rebuked by the priests of the Lord, for having dared to do unlawful things: And he entered, says Scripture, into the temple of the Lord to place incense upon the altar: and Azarias the priest entered after him, and with him the priests of the Lord, thirty sons of valor, and they rose up against king Ozias, and said to him: It is not lawful for you, Ozias, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are sanctified to burn incense. Go out from the sanctuary, for you have withdrawn from the Lord, and this shall not be for your honor from the Lord God.

Do you say that the priests of the Lord were insolent to that king, or not? If they were not insolent, neither should we seem so to you, since you hear from us words like those he heard: It is not lawful for you, Constantius, an Arian, to come together with the people of God. It is not lawful for you, author of the idolatry of the Arian heresy, denier of the only Son of God, to judge concerning the priests of God, feigning yourself, sacrilegious man, to be a Christian, when you are the forerunner of Antichrist. It shall not be well for you, that removing the priests of God you set up ranks opposed to Him, namely the associates of your sacrilege. When you hear these things, you become angry with us: Ozias the king also was angry then with those priests of the Lord: but observe that those dedicated to God kept the perpetual honor of their state, while Ozias was forthwith marked with the variegated stain of leprosy unto everlasting reproach.

And Ozias was angry, it says, and in his hand was the censer to burn incense upon the altar: and leprosy appeared on his forehead in the sight of the priests in the house of the Lord. These things are so, and do you think that a contumacious transgressor does not incur offense before Him who has commanded us to represent forever the offices of His priesthood to His glory? What pride is this of ours, Constantius, or what arrogance? If, because we see you to be diseased, pestilent, being indeed Arian, that elephantiasis is in you—since we consider it to be that which Arius had—that we urge you to withdraw from the people of God, just as those priests of the Lord compelled Ozias to go out from the temple, because we thus compel you to give honor to God.

For if the priests of God expelled Ozias from the hall of God because they remembered the divine precept that lepers were forbidden to enter the temple before purification, how much more rightly, consider, do we expel you from the church of Christ, from the house of the Lord, since it is not lawful for a heretic to associate with catholics, a madman with donkeys, one full of unclean spirits with those in whom the Spirit of God dwells! What insult is this, if the priests of the Lord, inflamed with that zeal with which our predecessors have always burned, tell you what would benefit both our salvation and yours? You say Lucifer is insolent. Insolent in this, that I urge you to cast off the elephantiasis of Arius, and through this faith which the most blessed apostles preached, and which we, as you see, are holding, that you might obtain health for your mind, and rejoice that you, wholly snatched from the snares of the devil, have been sought forever by God for yourself.

You, who demand that we are of monstrous arrogance, have you found it written what Josias king of Judah did to your co-sacrilegious ones, to such as you are seen to be today, how he persecuted very many of them even after death, consuming their bones with fire? But it was fitting for that king to persecute the enemies of God with such zeal; was it unworthy for us bishops, us priests of God, to resist you who are introducing idolatry into the church? He slew your co-sacrilegious ones with the sword, he pursued even their remains long since buried, desiring to be found the most faithful worshipper of God; should we, on the contrary, not even resist you with a word—you, the friend of the enemy of God, you most dear of all to the angels turned to apostasy, you who through this blasphemy of yours have become an enemy of God?

Receive therefore in the fourth Book of Kings what Josias, servant of the Lord, king of Judah, obtained on account of what he did concerning your defiled ones; and at last cease saying of us, They are proud and insolent. He did, it says, what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.

Likewise below, after he rebuilt the houses of the Lord, and the priest had sent the book of the law to the king: And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his garments: and the king commanded Helchias the priest, and Ahicam the son of Josaphat, and Achbor the son of Micah, and Saphan the scribe, and Asaiah the servant of the king, saying: Go, inquire of the Lord for me and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that is found, for great is the wrath of the Lord kindled against us, because our fathers did not hearken to the words of this book to do according to all that is written. And Helchias the priest went, and Ahicam, and Saphan, and Asaiah, to Holda the prophetess, wife of Sellum the son of Tikvah, keeper of the wardrobe, and she dwelt in Jerusalem: and they spoke to her according to these words.

And she said to them: Thus says the Lord God of Israel, to the man who sent you to me, thus says the Lord: Behold I will bring evils upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, according to all the words of this book which the king of Judah has read; because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense to strange gods, and have provoked me to anger with all the works of their hands: and my wrath is kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched.

And to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord, you shall say this: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: As for the words which you have heard, and revered before my face, because you have heard what I spoke against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse; and you have torn your garments, and wept before me, I also have heard, says the Lord of hosts: therefore I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the evils that I will bring upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof.

And they brought back word to the king, and king Josias sent, and gathered to him all the elders of Judah in Jerusalem; and the king went up to the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, and the priests, and the Levites, and all the people, from the least even to the greatest: and he read in the hearing of the people all the words of the book of the covenant, which was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and testimonies, and precepts with all his heart, and all his soul, and to confirm all the words of that covenant which were written in that book. And all the people entered into the covenant which the king proposed from the book.

And the king commanded Helchias the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that had been made for Baal, and the grove, and all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fire of the brook Cedron. And he took the ashes of them, and scattered them upon the brook, and went to Bethel. And he burned the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places of the cities of Judah, and round about Jerusalem; they burned incense to Baal, and to the sun, and to the moon, and to all the host of heaven.

And he brought out from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, into the brook Cedron, and burned it there, and reduced it to ashes, and cast the ashes upon the graves of the common people: and he pulled down the houses of the perverted ones, which were in the house of the Lord, for whom the women wove garments for the grove; and he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Bersabee; and he broke down the high places of the gates.

And below: And he defiled Topheth, which was in the valley of the son of Ennom, because they had made every man his son and his daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch: the kings of Judah had set up horses to the sun, in the entrance of the temple of the Lord, near the chamber of Nathanmelech the eunuch, and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire in the house of the sun-idol, which the kings of Israel had built on high to Baal, and to all the host of heaven: and the altars that were upon the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the king of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasses had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, the king pulled down, and hastened from there, and cast their dust into the brook Cedron: and the high places also that were before Jerusalem, on the right hand of the mount of Offence, which Solomon king of Israel had built to Astaroth, the idol of the Sidonians, and to Chamos, the idol of Moab, and to Melchom, the abomination of the children of Ammon, the king defiled.

And he broke in pieces the statues, and filled their places with the bones of dead men: and the high place also that was at Bethel, which Jeroboam the son of Nabat had made, who made Israel to sin, both that altar and the high place he broke down, and burned it, and reduced it to powder, and burned the grove. And Josias, turning himself, saw there the sepulchres that were in the mount: and he sent and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and defiled it according to the word of the Lord, which the man of God spoke, who had foretold these things, when Jeroboam stood at the altar on the festival day. What do you recognize, Constantius, was done by a king who was a worshipper of God?

And do we, because we strike you with a word who introduce idolatry into the church—“Lucifer does me an injury,” you say?—when, if you had been a man of that time, you might have been destroyed by the sword; or, if you had already died, even your bones, as those of a sacrilegious man, would have been reduced to nothing by fire. He struck with the sword those guilty of so great a crime; was it unfitting for us not even to wound you with a word? Do you see meanwhile that in this passage also, into the city of God, into the house of the Lord, and into his temple, those kings, your co-sacrilegious ones, had introduced idolatry, which Josias, that most devoted king of God, exterminated; and do you not think that you alone have undertaken to accomplish this same work against God?

Do not, therefore, say: If I were doing wrong, God would already have given vengeance upon me; but rather, I beg you, see that you are held captive by the devil, that you live in his power, just as did those kings whose work king Josias persecuted. Why do we execrate your blasphemies, why do we resist your wicked conspiracies—do we seem to you injurious? So also to the Jews, whose imitators you are, the holiest prophets and the most blessed apostles seemed insolent and proud. In the book of the prophet Amos: And Amasias the priest of Bethel sent, it says, to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying: Amos has made a conspiracy against you in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus says Amos: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land. And Amasias said to Amos: You seer, go, flee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there.

But prophesy not again any more in Bethel, because it is the king's sanctuary, and it is the house of the kingdom. And Amos answered, and said to Amasias: I was not a prophet, nor am I a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman plucking wild figs, and the Lord took me from following the flock: and he said to me: Go, prophesy to my people Israel. And now hear the word of the Lord: You say: Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not gather assemblies against the house of Isaac. Therefore thus says the Lord: Your wife shall be a harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by a line, and you shall die in a polluted land, and Israel shall surely go into captivity out of their own land.

Since you see these things were done by Him who willed truth and correction to be announced to his erring people, why do you call us insolent, why contumelious, because we tell you truths which are erratic to you? Because we do not hearken to your voice saying, Do not believe as believed the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, but believe as Arius has handed down? In what things are we found proud before you? Except in this, that we execrate your sacrileges, and your precepts, that we may avoid swords and poisons. This is not a thing first done by us: all those who have already pleased God, holding this faith which we preach, have done this; none of his servants feared to undergo death for God, none of his household considered the kinds of torments which are inflicted by you tyrants, but had his precepts before their eyes.

Thus Tobias, glorious and preeminent, is found to have been made so before the Lord, while he feared not the edict of your most wretched king, but only the all-powerful God. Believe that these things are so from Tobias himself, saying: When Sennacherib the king came, fleeing from Judea, because of the defense which the Lord made against those, on account of the blasphemies which he blasphemed, and slew in his wrath many of the children of Israel: I stole away their bodies and buried them: and it was reported to the king that I was burying them, and he sought to kill me. But I fled, and all my substance was plundered, and nothing there remained to me more than my wife Anna, Tobias my son. And it happened after forty-five days, his sons killed that king, and Arcedonossar his son reigned there in his stead. And when I had come into my house, my wife Anna was restored to me, and my son Tobias.

On Pentecost, our feast day, which is the holy day of the weeks, a good dinner was made for me, and I sat down to dine, and the table was set for me, and I saw very many dishes, and I said to Tobias my son: Go and bring whatever poor man you shall find of our brethren who are captives in Nineveh, who nevertheless keeps God in mind with his whole heart; bring him; and let him eat this dinner with me: behold, I wait for you, son, until you come. And Tobias went out to seek some poor captive of our brethren, and returning said to me: Father. And I said: What is it, son? And he said to me: Behold, one of our nation has been killed, strangled with a noose thrown about him, and cast out.

And I went out, leaving my dinner, before I had tasted anything of it; and I take him from the street to a place near me, until the sun should set, that I might bury him: and returning I washed, and ate my dinner with mourning, and I remembered the words of the prophet Amos, which he spoke at Bethel, saying: Your feast days shall be turned into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation: and I wept. And after the sun had set, I went and dug, and buried him: and all my neighbors mocked me, saying: How is it this man does not fear? For already he has been sought for this cause, that he might be killed, and he has fled, and again he has begun to bury the dead. When therefore you see that the servants of God have not always feared your cruelty of tyrants, nor now can fear it, but have thought upon, and do think upon, the precepts of the Lord, how do you deign to judge us insolent?

Surely because, God so acting, we tread your power underfoot as mud: this our strength does not do, but the mercy of him grants it, whom you deign to curse in us. God says to the prophet Ezekiel: Son of man, I send you to the house of Israel, for they have embittered me, they and their fathers, even to this day. And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord: If they shall hear or shall tremble because it is a house that embitters, and they shall know that a prophet is among them: and you, son of man, fear them not, neither be dismayed at their presence, because they shall rage and gather round about you, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions; fear not their words, and be not dismayed at their presence, because it is a house that embitters: and you shall speak my words to them, whether perchance they shall hear or be afraid, because it is a house that embitters.

We seem to you contumacious, just as that prophet, dedicated to God alone, seemed to them, whose darkness you follow; surely for this reason the prophet Ezekiel seemed contumacious to your fellow-apostates among the Jews, for this reason he seemed proud to the kings of Israel, because he fulfilled the mandates of the Lord, who spoke to them what God had commanded him to speak. Rightly do you call us proud, us, through whom he willed all his precepts to be carried to the knowledge of the believing peoples: rightly, I say, do you mark us, the bishops of God, as insolent, if we say to you those things which God has willed to be said to you. You hate those who love you, you persecute those who wish you well, but we cannot fear the gnashings of your executioner's teeth.

For you hear the Lord say: And you, son of man, fear them not, neither be dismayed at their presence, because they shall rage and gather round about you, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions: fear not their words, be not dismayed at their presence, because it is a house that embitters. We cannot, I say, fear the threats of your rule, because your scorpion-like powers have no strength against us, whom you perceive to be shielded by the power of God, whose defender and protector you must note to be God.

We will not therefore cease to press upon you the precepts of the Lord, reserving our fears for him alone, who says: Son of man, go in to the house of Israel, and speak my words to them, for you are not sent to a people of deep speech to Israel, nor to many peoples of another voice or another tongue, nor to those grave in speech, whose words you would not understand: and if I had sent you to such, they would perhaps have heard your words: but the house of Israel will not be willing to hear you, because they are not willing to hear me, because the whole house of Israel is contentious and hard of heart. And behold I have made your face powerful against their faces, and I will strengthen your firmness against their contention, and you shall be ever firmer than a rock, fear them not, neither be afraid at their presence, because it is a house that embitters.

Who among us could fear you, whom you see made solid and firm by the power of God, standing with fixed step to beat back your contumacy against your rage, immovable as rocks of mighty mass are wont to stand against the swelling sea? For this reason you judge us your enemies, because we urge you to become a servant of God out of a scorpion. For now indeed it cannot be doubted that you are one of those scorpions of whom you have heard it said by the Lord to the prophet: And you, son of man, fear them not, neither be dismayed at their presence, because they shall rage and gather round about you, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions. For this reason we are injurious to you, because you see yourself called a scorpion by us.

If God had not said that you were a scorpion, you might rightly call me insolent: but now by your own deeds you show yourself to be a scorpion, and you cry out in vain that you suffer insult from us; God says that you are a scorpion, and you are angry at me for calling you by that name? What insult is this, if it is said to you: Unless you turn to God, you shall always be, as you now are, one of the scorpions, one of the most savage enemies of God?

Run through the rest of the prophet Ezekiel, and dare to call me insolent, proud, insulting, contumacious: And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, behold I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel, and you shall hear a word from my mouth, and you shall threaten them from me in this: that I shall say to the wicked man: You shall surely die: and you have not warned him, nor spoken, to warn the wicked man to turn from his ways, that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his injustice, and I will require his blood from your hand: but if you have warned the wicked man, and he has not turned away from his wickedness and his way, that wicked man shall die in his injustice, and you shall have delivered your soul: and in that wherein the just man turns away from his righteousness, and shall commit iniquity, and I will put a stumbling block before him, he shall die, because you did not warn him, and he shall die in his sins, because his righteousness shall not be remembered, and I will require his blood from your hand: but if you have warned the just man that he sin not, and he himself does not forsake it, that just man living shall live, because you have warned him, and you shall have saved your soul.

What, Constantius, do you say to these things? Must priests of God be silent, and hide the divine mandates from them? Or is it fitting to reveal to you all the precepts of the Lord? Shall we bear the whole will of God to you who are entrusted to us? Or shall we cheat you of it, to your own slaughter? For God says he will require your blood of me; nay rather, if you do not obey God, whose divine warnings we press upon you, you shall die a wicked man in your own wickedness, and the salvation of your soul shall no longer be required of us; since indeed we shall not have been terrified by your threats, but shall have feared only him who has commanded that none but himself be feared; since indeed, that you might snatch yourself from your wicked paths, we would come together in the name of the Lord God.

Lest I should seem to do an injury to you, the emperor, what ought I to have done at the time when I judge you to have been born to turn us, the servants of God, from the way of truth? When he had sent Holofernes, the prince of his power, against Nabuchodonosor, and was besieging Jerusalem, what does Judith ask of God? Surely that he would destroy the enemies of Israel. Did she say: Guard those who rise up against your house?

Lord God of my father Simeon, who gave a sword in vengeance of foreigners, who violated the womb of a virgin unto defilement, and uncovered the thigh unto shame, and defiled the womb unto reproach: for you said: It shall not be so, and you did it; wherefore you gave their princes to slaughter, and their bed, which had taken the beloved one, to blood, and you struck down servants along with the mighty, upon their thrones: and you gave their women for a prey, and their daughters into captivity, and all the spoil for division among the beloved sons, who were zealous with your zeal, and abominated the defilement of their kin, and called upon you for their help: my God will hear me, a widow. For you did their former deeds with them, and these later ones, and now, and things yet to come. For all your ways are prepared, your creature is in your providence.

For behold, the Assyrians are filled with their might, and are exalted in horse and rider, and glory in the arm of footmen, they have trusted in shields, and bent bow, and slings, and have not known that you are the Lord, who breaks battles, the Lord is your name. Cast down their strength, O Eternal One, crush their fullness by your power, and bring down their stubbornness in your wrath: for they have thought to profane your holy things, to defile the tabernacle of the resting place of your honored name, to seize with iron the horn of your altar. Look upon their pride: give into my hand, a widow's hand, the strength which I have devised, and strike their mouth with the lips of my persuasion against the prince, and the prince along with his servant: crush their substance by the hand of a widow.

For your strength is not in numbers, nor your might, nor is your gift given to the strong: but you are the God of the humble, the helper of the weak, the protector of the feeble, the savior of the desperate, even the God of my father, and the God of the inheritance of Israel. Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, creator of the waters, king of all creation, hear my supplication, grant cunning and persuasion in the wound, and in the bruising of those who against your covenant and your holy house, and the heights of Sion, and the house of the possession of your children have devised harsh deeds upon every nation and every tribe. Let them know that you are the God of all power and might, and there is no other defender of the race of Israel besides you. What does your prudent mind deign to feel about these things?

Will you be able to say, after this supplication poured out to God against the enemies of religion, that we contend against you in evil order, because we say to you, Either correct your wicked ways, and do not please yourself in the power of your empire, or know that you shall come to nothing? What else do we, the servants of God, priests of His divine majesty, do today, than what those did whose imitators we desire to be found? For I think it fitting not to abandon the peoples committed to us in this so great persecution brought upon us by you, but to exhort them, because He whose we are is able to snatch us from the hands of His enemies, that you are not to be feared as an enemy of the house of God; that it must be understood you are nothing, since indeed our God and Lord, powerful over all things, is about to reduce to nothing all your impious endeavors instituted against His house. What injury is done to you here by us?

What insult is heaped upon the Roman Emperor by the bishops of the living God, if you are asked either to have eternal life, or it is said to you that, because you have taken up arms against the house of God, unless you correct yourself, you shall perish in a great destruction? For what reason do we proclaim to you the destruction of all the enemies of the house of God? Only that either, terrified by fear of God, you may change yourself, or that, having made yourself punished forever, we may triumph secure from every side; because your blood cannot be required of us by God, and because we shall have seen the destruction of the adversaries of His Church. Persevere then in this your injustice, and you will find what follows for such deserts. "Lucifer is puffed up with pride," you say; because he speaks true things to you. What were you commanding me to do at that time when you, the forerunner of Antichrist, raised arms against us to kill us, the house of God?

At the time when you showed yourself the denier of the only Son of God? Should I have kept silent? And allowed you, the wolf, to come to lay waste the flock of God? Or do you think it fitting that we, the shepherds, should go to meet you with dry throats, ready to have those committed to us together with ourselves devoured? Would it have been sufficient a great deed, that woman Judith, wishing to please God, should slay the enemy with her own hand, and that we, appointed shepherds, should not even resist you by word from the Lord? The Lord says in the Gospel: The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep; but he who is a hireling, and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees; and the wolf catches them and scatters them, because he is a hireling, and has no concern for the sheep.

What then ought we to have done, lest we should seem to have shown ourselves insolent toward you? We recognized you as a wolf, we saw you stretch out your hands against the sheep of the Lord, we perceived you attempting at one time to tear apart all who call upon the name of the Lord. Would it have been fitting for us to show ourselves not shepherds but hirelings? He says to blessed Peter: Feed my lambs. And again: Feed my little sheep. And do you, coming as a wolf, wish that those who are found to be the successors of blessed Peter should play the part of hirelings? Those whom long ago He had promised to His people through Jeremiah, saying: And I will give you shepherds according to my heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and discipline: and He did not say, I will give you the emperor Constantius, who might turn you into the devil's prey. You may say we do wrong, because we resist your sacrilege, protected by the power of God.

Let us see also what, in the time when your fellow tyrant Antiochus was the persecutor of our religion, those did who remembered that none but God is to be feared. But first you must know what he, to whom you are similar, wrote; for thus you will be able to understand that those servants of God, whose companions we desire to be found, resisted the sacrilege of Antiochus, just as we, by God's favor, resist you. The sacred Scripture speaks, saying in the first book of Maccabees: And the king wrote to all his kingdom, that all should be one people, and that every one should leave his own laws. And all the nations agreed according to the word of the king, and many of Israel consented together with them, and profaned the sabbath.

And the king sent letters by the hand of messengers to Jerusalem, and to the cities of Judah, that they should follow the laws of a strange land, and forbid burnt offerings, and sacrifice, and libation in the sanctuary, and profane the sabbaths and the solemn days, and pollute the sanctuary, and set up altars and idols, and sacrifice swine's flesh, and unclean cattle, and leave their children uncircumcised, and make their souls abominable with all uncleanness and abomination: to the end that they might forget the law, and change all the justifications: and whosoever should not do according to the word of the king, should die. According to all these words he wrote to his whole kingdom: and he appointed overseers over the people: and he commanded the cities of Judah to sacrifice, city by city. And many of the people were gathered together to them, all who had forsaken the law: and they committed evils in the land.

And below: And they built the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and in the cities of Judah on every side they built altars: and burnt incense at the doors of the houses, and in the streets: and the books of the law which they found they burnt, tearing them in pieces: and with whomsoever was found the book of the testament, and whosoever observed the law, they put him to death by the king's edict. Thus did they in their strength to Israel, to them that were found month after month in the cities. And on the five and twentieth day of the month they sacrificed upon the altar which was over the altar of holocausts. And the women that had circumcised their children they put to death according to the commandment: and they hanged the infants about their mothers' necks, and destroyed their houses, and them that had circumcised them.

And many of the people of Israel determined and confirmed with themselves, not to eat unclean things: and they chose to die, that they might not be defiled with unclean meats, and that they might not profane the holy covenant: and they did die. And there was very great wrath upon Israel in those days. And Mattathias, the son of John, the son of Simeon, a priest of the sons of Joarib, from Jerusalem, arose, and he had five sons. And below: And they saw the blasphemies that were committed in Judah and Israel: and he said: Woe is me, wherefore was I born to see the ruin of my people, and the ruin of the holy city, and to sit here, when it is given into the hands of the enemies, the sanctuary into the hands of strangers? And below: All her ornaments are taken away: of a free woman she is made a bondslave. Behold our sanctuary, and our beauty, and our glory is laid waste, and the Gentiles have defiled it.

To what purpose then should we live any longer? And Mattathias and his sons rent their garments, and covered themselves with sackcloth, and mourned exceedingly. And they that were sent from the king came thither, and compelled dissension in the city of Modin, that they should sacrifice: and many of Israel came to them. And Mattathias and his sons were gathered together. And they that were sent from the king answered, and said to Mattathias: You are a prince, and noble, and great in this city, and adorned with sons and brethren: now therefore come first, and fulfill the king's commandment, as all the nations have done, and the men of Judah, and they that remain in Jerusalem: and you and your sons shall be in the number of the king's friends, and enriched with gold and silver, and many presents.

Mattathias answered, and said with a loud voice: Although all the nations obey king Antiochus, so as to depart every man from the service of the law of his fathers, and consent to his commandments: I and my sons and my brethren will obey the law of our fathers. God be merciful unto us: it is not profitable for us to forsake the law and the justices of God: we will not hearken to the king's words, to go aside from our religion, either on the right hand, or on the left. And when he had left off speaking these words, there came one of the Jews in the sight of all to sacrifice to the idols upon the altar in the city of Modin, according to the king's edict.

And Mattathias saw, and was grieved, and his reins trembled, and his wrath was kindled according to the judgment of the law: and running upon him he slew him upon the altar: and the man that the king had sent to compel them to sacrifice, he also slew at the same time, and pulled down the altar: and was zealous for the law, as Phinehas did to Zambri the son of Salom. And Mattathias cried out in the city with a loud voice, saying: Whosoever is zealous for the law, and maintains the testament, let him follow me. So he and his sons fled into the mountains, and left all that they had in the city. What such thing have you seen done by us, that you should deign to say: Lucifer has done me an insult?

He slew with the sword a minister of the king, and even one whom he had seen among his own people obey the king's edict rather than God's; I, because I resist you and yours by word, and say, I do not forsake the apostolic and evangelical faith, I believe as our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob believed; for this I am charged by you as guilty of insults. If you had been among the hands of that zealous Mattathias for God, or in the hand of Phinehas, to whom God bears witness in Numbers through Moses, and had tried to live in the manner of foreigners, without doubt they would have killed you with the sword; they would have been about to slay you with the sword: I, because with a word I wound that mind of yours steeped in the blood of Christians, am judged by you guilty of insults. Why, emperor, do you not avenge yourself upon me? Why do you not deign to defend your insults, to avenge yourself upon a beggarly man?

Why do you not act sufficiently? Not because you do not wish to, but because power has not yet been given you by Him, in confidence of whom I speak these free words to you, which indeed, according to your nefarious deeds, may seem wicked to me. When you see that we have renounced you and all the riches of your kingdom, and your father too, and have promised that we will by no means depart from the faith, you may know that we greatly pity you, because, though you are accustomed to devour with the edge of the sword those who displease you, you spare us. I believe this is for piety's sake, and we can perceive this concerning your leniency. For I have been able to gather from your excessive kindness that you have killed no one. You say, he is proud. Whence has it been commanded that I be proud?

Do I seem so to you? Surely because you hear from me that you do those things which the enemies of the religion of God have always done. It is part of my office to press these things upon you, a heretic. Or are you not a heretic? But if you are a heretic, why do you accuse me of doing you injury, when I do this against you which God wished me to do? The most holy prophet Jeremiah tells that God said to him: And you gird your loins, and arise, and speak all that I command you, and be not afraid at their presence, nor be dismayed in their sight.

Since these things are so, and the necessity of the office imposed on us by God urges us that we speak to you, acting as you do, whatsoever God shall command to be said to you, it remains either that you obey the commands of God, admonished by me, His servant and priest of His clemency, or that you prove from the sacred Scriptures—perhaps because you are king—that it is not permitted to me to admonish you in the name of the Lord that you correct yourself. If you cannot prove this to be forbidden me, but rather begin to find it commanded me, that I should reprove and rebuke you, and exhort and beseech and admonish, and urge you to please God, why do you say I do you an injury? For to such a degree has He given His bishops power to rebuke and teach those committed to us, that He said: Be not afraid at their presence, be not dismayed at their sight.

Behold, I have made you this day a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass, over all the land, to the kings of Judah, its princes, and the people of the land: and they shall fight against you, and shall not prevail: for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you. What were these things which Jeremiah was saying to the kings of Judah, and its princes, and the peoples of the land? Surely this, that they had forsaken the Lord, and sacrificed to strange gods. This you also have done and do: you have forsaken the apostolic and evangelical faith, you have taken up the Arian heresy, and you compel all the servants of God to become idolaters: because you dare these things, you call those proud who desire your salvation to be provided for. God says to Jeremiah: And you gird your loins, and arise, and speak all that I say to you. Be not afraid at their presence, nor be dismayed at their sight.

And you, emperor Constantius, are indignant that we say to you in your error: Return to the way of salvation, forsake the error invented through Arius by the instigation of the devil? God commands that He alone be feared; He commands that none besides Him be dreaded; and have you established things to be fulfilled which take away the fear of the Lord, and make you an object of dread?

God says to Jeremiah: Behold I have made thee this day a fortified city, and a wall of brass, strong, against all the kings of Judah, and its princes, and the people of the land: and they shall fight against thee, and shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee, to deliver thee, saith the Lord; and dost thou reckon that thou canst be feared by any of the servants of God? Why callest thou me arrogant, proud? Why callest thou me insolent? Namely because I have found thee by thy works to be one of those of whom the blessed John saith: You have heard that antichrist cometh: even now there are many antichrists. Thus thou markest us as guilty of injuries, as though we were the first to resist thy bringing thy idolatry into the Church of God.

Thou hast read in the first book of Machabees: And a man said to his neighbour: If we all do as our brethren have done, and do not fight against the nations for our lives and our justifications, they will now quickly destroy us from the earth. And they thought on that day, saying: Whosoever shall come against us in war on the sabbath day, let us fight against him, and we shall not all die, as our brethren died in the hiding-places. Then there was gathered to them a strong assembly of Israel, of every valiant man in the law, and all who fled from evils came to them, and they became a wall unto them, and they mustered a force, and they smote sinners in their wrath and wicked men in their indignation; and the rest fled to the nations to save themselves.

And Mathathias and his friends went about, and they destroyed the altars, and circumcised all the uncircumcised children whom they found within the borders of Israel, with might; and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hand; and they recovered the law out of the hands of the nations and of the kings, and they gave no horn to the sinner. What, pray, doth thy mind, wounded by the poisons of Arius, deign to think? What can be devised against this our defence by thy heart, mangled by the bites of the serpent? Dost thou observe that those men did such things; and ought we to have kept silent while blasphemies uttered by thy mouth wounded the people divinely committed to us?

And Mathathias, it says, and his friends went about, and destroyed the altars, and circumcised all the uncircumcised children whom they found within the borders of Israel, with might; and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hand; and they recovered the law out of the hands of the nations and of the kings, and they gave no horn to the sinner. Since those who did these things became most beloved of God, would it have been fitting for us, by flattering thee and running along with thee in thy crime, to become—as thou art—most hateful to God? If we seem to thee injurious on this account, because we could not accept thy idolatry, give me, I pray, even one who has spared, among the worshippers of God, the adversaries of His religion.

In the second book of Esdras, when men opposed the restoring of the house, and the temple, and the city in Jerusalem to the Lord, it says: The God of heaven himself hath prospered us, and we his servants will arise and build; but you have no part, nor claim, nor memorial in Jerusalem. And further, when the adversaries said: Will they sacrifice? Will they eat in their place? Will not a fox go up, and break down their stone wall? And these things his servant Esdras said to God: Hear, our God, for we are become despised, and turn their reproach upon their own head, and give them up as a scorn in a land of captivity; and cover not their iniquity, and let not their sin be blotted out from before thy face. Have we spoken any such thing concerning thee?

He whom Esdras entreated is witness—whom I too entreat, and whom the whole blessed Church, established throughout the whole world, entreats—that my wishes concerning thee are these: that thou correct thy errors, and become one of us. Behold meanwhile how the men of God neither feared adversaries, nor ceased pouring forth prayer against the enemies of the house of God, so that the forces of the adversaries of God's religion might indeed be brought to nothing. For thus even the most holy Moses says in the canticle of Exodus to God: Let fear and dread fall upon them, by the greatness of thy arm; let them become as a stone, till thy people, O Lord, pass by, this people which thou hast purchased. Such words did those men address to God concerning those delivered up to them: and yet, because we say to thee, "Either turn to God, or know for certain that God will bring all thy vain pride to nothing," we seem to thee insolent.

Behold further what that most holy man, devoted to God, Mathathias did, after such illustrious deeds as he performed, and what he said to his sons at the very end of his life, and see whether we priests do these things against thee in the right order of God. Holy Scripture speaks, saying: The days of Mathathias drew near that he should die, and he said to his sons: Now hath pride and chastisement gained strength, and the time of overthrow, and the wrath of indignation: now, my sons, be zealous for the law, and give your lives for the covenant of your fathers, and call to mind the deeds of the fathers, which they did in their generations, and you shall receive great glory, and an everlasting name. Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was reputed to him unto justice? Joseph, in the time of his distress, kept the commandment, and was made lord of Egypt. Phinees our father, by being zealous in the zeal of God, received the covenant of an everlasting priesthood.

Jesus, whilst he fulfilled the word, was made a judge in Israel. Caleb, when he gave testimony before the congregation, received an inheritance. David, by his mercy, obtained the throne of an everlasting kingdom. Elias, whilst he was zealous for the law, was taken up into heaven. Ananias, Azarias, and Misahel, by believing, were delivered from the flame. Daniel, in his innocence, was delivered from the mouth of the lions. And thus consider, throughout every generation, that none that trust in him shall want strength. And fear ye not the words of a sinful man, for his glory is dung and worms: today he is lifted up, and tomorrow he shall not be found, because he is returned into his earth, and his thoughts shall come to nothing. My sons, be ye valiant, and strong in the law, for by it you shall be glorious. And behold Simon your brother, I know that he is a man of counsel; hear him always, and he shall be a father to you.

And Judas Machabeus, mighty in strength from his youth, let him be your captain, and shall fight the battle of the people; and you shall call to you all the doers of the law, and revenge the wrong of your people; render to the nations their reward, and take heed to the commandments of the law. When, therefore, thou seest that such precepts were given to his sons, and that he commanded to be done what he himself had also done, let it teach thee that thus the patriarchs, the prophets, and all the just were pleasing to God: what, thou man of darkness, wouldst thou have had us do, lest we seem contumacious to thee? Should we, being living servants of God, have yielded to thee, dead man, thou minion of the devil? Seeing that this Mathathias says to his sons: And thus consider, throughout every generation, that none that trust in him shall want strength.

Lest we seem injurious to thee, should we spare thee who art destroying the house of God—thee who art today, and tomorrow shalt be worms and dung—and should we thereby draw upon ourselves an offence before God, that we might deserve, with thee, to be brought to nothing? Learn after this also what the sons of this most religious Mathathias did—whether they feared the hand of thy fellow-executioner, whether they kept his example before their eyes, and not rather our Lord, whom we believe all-powerful, believing against the enemy they raised themselves up with all their strength. And Judas, who was called Machabeus, his son, rose up in his stead; and all his brethren helped him, and all they that had joined themselves to his father, and they fought with cheerfulness the battle of Israel. And he got his people great honour, and put on a breastplate as a giant, and girt his warlike armour about him, and undertook battles, protecting the camp by his sword.

In his acts he was like a lion, and like a lion's whelp roaring for prey. And he pursued the wicked, seeking them out, and them that troubled his people he burnt with fire; and his enemies were driven away for fear of him, and all the workers of iniquity were troubled, because salvation prospered in his hand. And he grieved many kings, and made Jacob glad with his works, and his memory is blessed for ever. And he went through the cities of Juda, and destroyed the wicked out of them, and turned away wrath from Israel; and he was renowned even to the utmost part of the earth, and he gathered together them that were perishing. Those men, kindled with such zeal, made themselves enemies of the enemies of the house of God; ought we not to have risen up against thee, lest we be called insolent? But thou wouldst do well to call me insolent, if we had not rightly spurned thy sacrilegious edict.

For consider what the leaders of the Jews, kindred to thy own destruction, commanded the apostles, and what the blessed choir of apostles did against it, and thou wilt find that we are not insolent, but rather desirous of what is expedient both for thee and for us. Now Peter and John went up into the temple at the ninth hour of prayer. And a certain man who was lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid every day at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, that he might ask alms of them that went into the temple. He, when he had seen Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked to receive an alms. And Peter with John fastening his eyes upon him, said: Look upon us. But he looked earnestly upon them, hoping that he should receive something of them. But Peter said: Silver and gold I have none; but what I have, I give thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk.

And taking him by the right hand, he lifted him up, and forthwith his feet and soles received strength; and he, leaping up, stood, and walked, and went in with them into the temple, walking and leaping, and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God; and they knew him, that it was he who sat begging alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened to him. And further: And as they were speaking these words to the people, the priests and the officer of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead; and they laid hands on them, and put them in hold. And further: Seeing the constancy of Peter and John, and finding that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they wondered; and they knew them, that they had been with Jesus.

Also seeing the man who had been healed, standing with them, they could say nothing against it. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying: What shall we do to these men? For indeed a known miracle hath been done by them, manifest to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem: we cannot deny it. But that it may be no farther spread among the people, let us threaten them that they speak no more in this name to any man. And calling them, they charged them, not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answering, said to them: If it be just, in the sight of God, to hear you rather than God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. But they, having further threatened them, sent them away, not finding how they might punish them, because of the people; for all men glorified what had been done in that which had come to pass.

For the man was above forty years old, in whom that miracle of healing had been wrought. And being let go, they came to their own company, and related all that the chief priests and ancients had said to them. Who having heard it, with one accord lifted up their voice to God, and said: Lord, thou art he that didst make heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them; who by the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of our father David, thy servant, hast said: Why did the Gentiles rage, and the people meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together against the Lord and against his Christ. For of a truth there assembled together in this city against thy holy Son Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do what thy hand and thy counsel decreed to be done.

And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all confidence they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thy hand to cures, and signs, and wonders to be done by the name of thy holy Son Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was moved wherein they were assembled, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spoke the word of God with confidence. If thou hast already gathered why we have brought forth all these things, if thou hast drunk in the whole intent of our exposition, wilt thou still dare to call us insolent? Since thou seest that even the blessed apostles did not temper their words to the leaders of the Jews, nor yielded to their threats, but rather always carried through fearlessly what had been entrusted to them; and that the people of God, likewise, was not only not terrified by the threats of unbelievers, but even prayed that God would deign to grant to His apostles confidence in speaking and constancy in defending the truth.

If, then, this was done even by the blessed apostles and by peoples consecrated to God, and they were called by God neither contumacious nor insolent for having resisted His enemies, how are we called by thee proud, insolent, contumelious—we who, though sinners, yet hold the holy faith of the apostles, and of those peoples who believed in the only Son of God?—proud together with the apostles, because we reckon as nothing thy voice, thou apostate, thy terrors, thou sacrilegious one, we soldiers of Christ; because we preach the Son of God as the true Son of God, as the most blessed apostles preached. Thus we seem to thee insolent, presumptuous, proud, as the most holy apostles seemed to the Jews—to whom, if they were alive today in the body, thou couldst say these things which thou deignest to say to us.

For we find that they were always commanded, by the mouth of thy fellow-blasphemers the Scribes, Pharisees, princes, and the high priest of the Jews, not to teach nor to preach the only Son of God: yet hear further what they did, that is written, lest perchance thy heart, gorged with darkness, may be brought to see the truth: By the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people. (And they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch. But of the rest no man durst join himself unto them: but the people magnified them. And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women;) insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that when Peter came, his shadow at the least might overshadow any of them, and they might be delivered from their infirmities.

And there came also together to Jerusalem a multitude out of the neighbouring cities, bringing sick persons, and such as were troubled with unclean spirits, who were all healed. Then the high priest rising up, and all they that were with him, being of the sect of the Sadducees, were filled with envy, and laid hands on the apostles, and put them in custody. But the Angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, and led them out, saying: Go, and stand in the temple and speak all the words of this life. When therefore they had heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak, and taught. But the high priest arriving, and those who were with him, called together the council, and all the assembly of the sons of Israel, and sent to the prison to bring them.

But the officers came, and did not find them in the prison, and returning reported, saying: We found the prison indeed closed with all diligence, and the guards standing at the door; but when we had opened it, we found no one inside. When the leaders and the high priest of the priests heard these words, they were in doubt concerning them, what this might be. But someone arriving reported to them, saying: Behold, the men whom you put in custody are standing in the temple and teaching the people. Then the captain went with the officers and brought them, not by force; for they feared the people, lest they be stoned. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the priest questioned them, saying: We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, and behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you wish to bring upon us the blood of that man. But Peter and the apostles answering said: Whether it is right to obey God rather than men?

If therefore God is to be obeyed and not men, why do you call us stubborn, why do you call us injurious, whom you see obeying the precepts of God? But when they heard this, the Scripture says, they were enraged, and thought to kill them. So also you keep us in custody, you threaten to kill, because you are possessed by that same spirit by which the Jews were held captive and are still held. If you are not held captive by that same unclean spirit, why do you forbid us to confess and preach the only-begotten Son of God? The angel of God brought out the apostles from the prison of your fellow-despairing Jews: Go, teach in the temple the words of this life: and you, taking priests from the church of God to be thrown into prison, thought that we would not preach the word of life. Meanwhile I beg you to answer, what is the difference between you and your co-Sotinus, whom the Sirmians, in reverse order, call Photinus?

What is the difference, what the distinction, you are asked to distinguish. Behold, if then the leaders and the high priest and the whole council of the Jews said to the apostles, You wish to bring upon us the blood of that man; so too Photinus professes the Son of God to be only a man, saying that he did not exist before the blessed Mary: this too is your profession, that whereas he is the Son of God before all things, that is, before the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, yet he came to be out of nothing, that he is a creature. What difference do you think there is between you and Paul of Samosata, or between your fellow-disciple and you, except that you say "before all things" while he says "after all things"? But you share one mind of cruelty and unbelief, in that you would say that God does not have a true Son. On the contrary, see how the holy Church believes.

We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call ὁμοούσιον, through whom all things were made, whether in heaven or on earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate, was made man, suffered, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and shall come to judge the living and the dead: We believe also in the Holy Spirit. You see that this is the apostolic and evangelical faith, which always maintains that the Son has reigned and reigns with the Father, which confesses that the divine Trinity is perfect, and has one substance. But what would there be between the church and you heretics or Jews, if the blessed church did not so believe?

This holy faith, that you might know what the Lord's church punishes in you, has said and says of you: Those who say, "There was a time when he was not," and "before he was begotten he was not," and that "he was made out of things not existing," or "of another substance," saying that the Son of God is mutable and convertible—these the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes. For this holy faith the apostles were shut up in prison, received chains, were tormented by scourgings hour after hour, lest they reveal the truth to the world, and yet they wished to preach it even to the point of being put to death. And you say that we are men of the greatest stubbornness, because forsooth we hold to the way of the apostles? Because we tell you that you have become one gone astray? What did the blessed Baptist John do to Herod?

Now Herod the tetrarch, when he was reproved by him concerning Herodias his brother's wife, and concerning all the evils that Herod had done, added this above all, and shut John up in prison. For what reason did Herod shut up John? Surely because his deeds were being rebuked; so also you deal with the servants of God, because we say to you: Do not do what you are doing, do not be a murderer, do not persecute the church of the Lord, do not reject the apostolic faith and approve the heretical, do not introduce idolatry into the church. We think we are saying these things especially for your own salvation; and if you refuse to moderate yourself, without doubt you will thus seek eternal death for yourself, just as Herod sought it. For he could not harm John, whether by throwing him into prison or by killing him, since you see that John is the friend of God, but Herod is the enemy of God.

Seeking to harm us, who desire to grant you eternal safety, you persecute us in every way; but the powers of your authority will not avail to harm the servants of the only Son of God, because you are found to be one of those whom he subjected to us who believe, saying: Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall harm you. You who say that I speak the truth to you, whom do you wish me to be found as—proud? That servant who received one talent and hid it, and presented that same one alone to his lord; because he did not, like his fellow-servants, present it multiplied by usury to his lord, he deserved even to lose that talent, and to hear: Wicked and slothful servant?

Or him who presented the sum received multiplied tenfold, to whom it was said: Well done, good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful in a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your lord? But whence shall I be able to hear that, if, fearing you, I do what would be pleasing to you? Look in the Gospel at what the Lord wished us to do, and cease calling us arrogant. A certain man was noble: he went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return. And he called ten servants, and gave them ten talents, and said to them: Trade till I come. But the citizens hated him, and sent an embassy after him, saying: We do not want this man to reign over us. And it came to pass, when he returned, having received the kingdom, that he commanded the servants to be called, to whom he had given money, that he might know how much each had gained by trading.

And the first came, saying: Lord, your talent has gained ten talents. And he said to him: Well done, good servant, because you have been faithful in a little, you shall have authority over ten cities. And another came, saying: Lord, your mina has made five talents. To this one also he said: And you be over five cities. And another came, saying: Behold your talent which I have kept laid up in a napkin, for I feared you, because you are a harsh man: you take up what you did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow. And the lord said to him: Out of your own mouth I judge you, wicked servant; you knew that I am a harsh man, and take up what I did not lay down, and reap what I did not sow: why then did you not put my money at the bank, that at my coming I might have exacted it with interest?

And he said to those who stood by: Take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents. But I say to you, to everyone who has, more will be given; but from him who has not, even what he has shall be taken away. But as for those enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here, and slay them before me. Surely, unless you change, you will be one of those who were ordered to be slain. Do I seem proud to you in this, that I desire that you not be slain, that I long for that sum entrusted to me, which I wish to be multiplied, to be found to include you as well? Because we strive with you in such a manner, do we seem to you enemies—we who, holding fast the precept of the blessed apostle, unceasingly pour out prayer for your welfare?

I exhort therefore first of all that supplications, prayers, petitions, thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and dignity. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Do we seem to you enemies, we who desire that you attain to the knowledge of the truth? You call it insult, that I say what conduces to your salvation and mine. But this very assertion of yours, that I do you injury, shows you to be imprudent.

For if you had been prudent, you would first never have been found a sacrilegious man; then, being corrected by the authority of the sacred writings, you would already have shown yourself to be a man; but now, since you are imprudent, when the bishop says to you: Emperor, provide for your salvation, for you are weighed down by the huge burdens of your crimes, you say, You do me insult. I charge you before God, says the apostle to Timothy, and Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, that you keep these things without partiality, doing nothing by leaning to one side, but observing fairness; and you call insolent him who, catching you in such great crimes, now rebukes you for having committed them, now beseeches you to snatch yourself, while there is opportunity, from your evils, and to be such a one as God would not punish among those whom he calls wicked and faithless, saying: I have begotten and raised up sons, but they have despised me?

Do I seem proud to you in this, that I desire you to be found among those whom the only Son of God invites to his kingdom, saying: Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world? You suppose that you suffer insult, because true things are said to you; the glorious apostle on the contrary commands, saying: Rebuke those who sin in the presence of all, that the rest also may have fear. Whom ought I to obey—you, who say: Let me destroy God's religion, let me convert his servants to antichrist, let me establish all men in this sacrilege of mine; or the blessed apostle, who commands me to rebuke you as a sinner before all? But if you think that I ought to have spared you because you are emperor, in this too you are found imprudent.

For you hear the apostle say: Rebuke those who sin before all, that the rest also may have fear; and you say, You ought to have spared me especially, because I was king of the Roman empire? And where did I omit that testimony? I charge you before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, that you keep these things without partiality, doing nothing by turning to one side. Hence surely I seem to you insolent, because I have not put your commands before the commands of God. In the Acts of the Apostles I read that the blessed apostles were seized by those of whom you are a partner not only in unbelief, but also in cruelty, and were commanded not to teach in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. But let us look together at that very part of sacred Scripture, whether the apostles moderated their fulfilling of the precepts of the only Son of God's enemies, or whether they were most insistent in carrying out what they had undertaken to fulfill.

Calling, it says, the apostles, they beat them and let them go, commanding them not to speak in the name of Jesus to anyone. They therefore departed rejoicing from the presence of the council, that they were counted worthy to suffer insult for the Name. And every day in the temple and at home they did not cease teaching and preaching our Lord Jesus Christ. Since sacred Scripture reports that the blessed apostles acted thus, while you invite the hearts of all to deny the Son of God, and are most zealous to establish your heresy, must we, the leaders of God's churches, be silent, lest perhaps we be found insolent toward you, blasphemer, murderer, destroyer of God's religion? Sacred Scripture says that the apostles feared neither the beatings nor the threats of the sons of pestilence, but always taught; ought we to be broken by the strength of your fallen kingdom, so that you might be able to fulfill all your wicked designs?

We are judged stubborn by you, because the truth is told to you by us. So also your fellow blasphemers judged the most blessed Stephen, because he said to them: Stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did, so you do also. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they slew those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, you who received the law by the ordinance of angels and did not keep it. When the Jews heard these things, were they justly stirred up against the most holy martyr Stephen, or unjustly? If unjustly, then behold yourself unjustly stirred up against those who wish you to be saved.

Take note that you stand on that same side against God's church on which the Jews then stood and now stand, that you are thus stiff-necked, thus uncircumcised in heart and ears: hence it is that, just as they, hearing the truth, could not bear it, but rushed to the murder of God's worshipper, so you also rush to the utter destruction of those who tell you the plain truth. But when they heard these things, says the divine Scripture, they were enraged in their hearts, and gnashed their teeth at him. And further on: But crying out with a loud voice, they stopped their ears, and rushed upon him with one accord: and casting him out of the city, they stoned him.

So may you, raging in heart, gnashing your teeth, be against us for no other reason than that we call you a persecutor of God's house, that we call you a destroyer of God's religion, a shedder of the blood of Christ's servants, that we justly call you sacrilegious, blasphemous, heretical, one who assaults the apostolic and evangelical faith. We do nothing hateful to God if, dealing with you in this manner in which I contend with you, we say what we understand you to be. For we find that such men as you have acted thus against a glorious man. Now as they ministered to the Lord, says sacred Scripture, and fasted, the Holy Spirit said: Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then, fasting and praying, they laid hands on them, and sent them away.

And they, being sent forth by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia, and from there sailed to Cyprus: and when they had come to Salamis, they preached the word of the Lord in the synagogues of the Jews: and they had John as their minister: and when they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they found a certain man, a Jewish false prophet, whose name was Bar-Jesus, which is interpreted "Prepared," who was with the proconsul Sergius Paullus, a prudent man: who, when he had summoned Barnabas and Saul, sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer withstood them (for so his name is said to be interpreted), who sought to turn away the proconsul from the faith. But Saul, who is Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looking upon him said: full of all guile and all deceit, son of the devil, enemy of all justice, dost thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?

And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell upon him mist and darkness, and going about he sought someone to lead him by the hand. But the proconsul, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord. We believe that, taught by this testimony, you will not say: Lucifer does me, the emperor, an injury. What does it matter to me what you are, since I say to you these things which he heard from the apostle, that man who was recognized to have been a false prophet? For I have found you, Constantius the emperor, to be such as the glorious Paul and Barnabas found Bar-Jesus the Jew.

For thus you also are found to be contrary to the name of the Lord, as he too was; thus you resist the truth, as he resisted it; thus you are unwilling that men should believe in the only Son of God, you as much as that Jewish false prophet, unless it be that you are moved by the same adverse spirit by which he too was moved. For when you hear that the proconsul was a prudent man and desirous to be instructed by the blessed apostles, that he might grasp the way of truth, and that he whose imitator you are withstood the apostles, lest they should lead the proconsul to believe in the Son of God, it is plain that you are such as that Jewish false prophet was. Likewise, since holy Scripture says that Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, uttered that invective, you ought to understand that that Jewish false prophet was filled with an unclean spirit.

Therefore, just as he, moved by an adverse spirit, spoke against them, since you too are found to resist by the instigation of the adversary in the same way, you ought to judge yourself to be none other than Bar-Jesus, the Jewish false prophet. Therefore, since you understand that you are another Bar-Jesus, the Jewish false prophet, as often as it shall have been said by your sacrilegious mouth that God has no true Son, do not be vexed if there are said to you by us those things which were said by the apostle to your predecessor, the Jewish false prophet: Full of all guile and all deceit, son of the devil, enemy of all justice, who dost not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord.

If you are troubled as to why these things are said to you which were said to him whose path of death you are treading, you show yourself very foolish, in that you wish to be that which that Jewish false prophet was, and yet do not wish to be named by those names by which he too was called. Again I exhort and beseech, and I also warn, that you take counsel for yourself, lest eternal punishment seize you. For if he deserved to be blinded thus, because he attempted to resist, consider what evils may be shown forth for you, a murderer, a sacrilegious man, a destroyer of God's religion, both in this life and forever. Take further these things which can show you that we are not being insolent, but truthful. To Antiochus those seven most glorious brothers offered resistance, indeed just as we now resist you.

Have you read what the fourth answered to your fellow-pestilence, who dares to call me insolent because I tell you that unless you are converted to God you will perish forever? Indeed he says: It is better, being put to death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up again by him: but for you there will be no resurrection unto life. If you, a tyrant, hear from us that you will not receive a resurrection unto life, if you remain in this unbelief, that you will rise not unto rest but unto everlasting punishment, what insult is this? The fifth also, when he had been brought forward and tormented, the Scripture relates that he said to the king: Thou hast power among men, being thyself corruptible, thou doest what thou wilt: but do not think that our race has been forsaken by God; endure patiently, and see how his great power will torment thee and thy seed.

What does it seem to you, that with such constancy a servant of God inveighed against your fellow-tyrant? Will you, a worshipper of the devil, judge a worshipper of God to have been injurious? Will you call proud one who speaks the truth? Nor ought you to judge me insolent, because I tell you that we are not forsaken by God, for whose sake I endure these things, whereas you, unless you are corrected, will come to nothing along with your corruptible glory. Consider also what the sixth said, and you will find that we resist you with that same wedge against the turbulent storm with which they resisted: Do not err in vain; for we suffer these things for our own sakes, having sinned against our God, and things worthy of admonition have been done: but do not think that you will go unpunished, when you have attempted to fight against God.

My letters of mediocrity, and my books written though in a rustic style, prove that I have often said that our sins indeed brought it about that we fell into the hands of you, the forerunner of Antichrist, yet that you fight against God, and therefore, unless you amend yourself, you indeed, like that Antiochus, will go to eternal punishment, but the Lord will be merciful to us. You are grieved that we entrust to memory, and reveal who you are, and that it is fitting that the shadow of Antichrist be trampled by all the soldiers of Christ: who, you say, have been able to trample me? Those whom, because they confess themselves Christians, you keep shut up in prisons, deprive of their patrimony, make exiles, torment, kill. Hence you judge us insolent, because we beg all those entrusted to us to trample the head of the devil, to bring to nothing your sacrilegious attempts by the power of the sufferings they have endured for Christ, the only Son of God.

Let that most glorious mother of the seven sons also be, in your eyes, insolent, because, to conquer your comrade Antiochus, she deigned to encourage her sons, saying: I know not how you appeared in my womb, nor did I give you spirit and life, nor did I myself join together the frame of each of your members: but the creator of the world, who formed the birth of man and who is the searcher of the origins of all things, will in mercy give back to you again both spirit and life, even as you now disregard yourselves for the sake of his laws. These things the devout mother did not cease to say to her sons, loving her sons courageously, until she had seen all of them slain.

We, on the other hand, whom he had foretold through the mouth of the prophet would be shepherds to his flock, saying: And I will give you shepherds according to my own heart, and they shall feed you, feeding you with discipline—ought we to have kept silent, lest we should have seemed insolent to you, coming like a rabid wolf to slaughter God's sheep? The woman so inflamed the hearts of her sons with the love of God, that by their death she gained the sword's victories: and have you judged it fitting to say to the soldiers of Christ: Do not take up arms against Constantius, the satellite of the devil, do not resist the temple of all the demons: rather do whatever he has ordered to be done? What insolence is this of ours, if we strive to fulfill the office delegated to us by God, if in short we are found to be imitators of this woman?

You wish to please the devil, whose work you are found to celebrate; we do not wish this; you wish, by acting thus, to make us most acceptable to God by acting against it. If it still troubles you why you are called by us what you are, hear also what was cried out by that seventh son of this woman against Antiochus: But Antiochus, thinking himself despised, and disdaining the voice of her who reproached him, when he still remained the younger, did not by words exhort him mournfully. Only, but also with an oath affirmed that he would make him rich and blessed, would translate him from his fatherland, and would have him as a guest, and would entrust to him necessary things. But when the youth paid no heed to these things, he called the mother, and urged her to persuade her son toward what would be for his salvation. When he had exhorted much, he took upon himself to persuade his son.

So, bending toward him, she mocked the cruel tyrant, and said in her father's tongue: My son, have pity on me, who carried you in the womb for ten months, and gave you milk for three years, and nourished you, and brought you to this age. I beg you, my child, look up to heaven and earth, and having beheld all things that are in them, understand that God made them out of nothing, and the race of men likewise: thus it will come to pass that you will not fear this executioner, but, made worthy of your brothers, will accept death, so that in that mercy I may receive you together with your brothers. When she had said these things, the youth said: Whom do you await? I do not obey the command of a king, but I obey the precept of the law, which was given to us through Moses: but you, who have become the inventor of all malice against the Hebrews, will not escape the hand of God.

For if because of rebuke and correction our Lord has been somewhat angered against us who are living, yet he will again be reconciled to his servants; but you, wicked one, and most infamous of all men, do not vainly exalt yourself with empty appearances against his servants: for you have not yet escaped the judgment of the almighty, all-seeing God. For our fathers, having now sustained a slight pain, have fallen back under God's covenant into eternal life: but you, by the judgment of God, will pay just penalties for your pride: but I, like my brothers also, deliver both soul and body for the laws of our fathers, calling upon God that he may soon become propitious to our nation, and that you, with torments and scourges, may confess that he alone is God. But upon me and upon my brothers let the Almighty fix his wrath, which has justly been brought upon our whole race. What, Constantius, have you heard from us more than what has been said by this faithful servant of God?

If he said to the satellites of Antiochus: Whom do you await? I do not obey the command of a king, but I obey the precept of the law given to us through Moses: so we too say to your men: What is it that you Arians think you can accomplish against us in accordance with the will of Constantius, the forerunner of Antichrist? As we are Christians, so we shall ever be. If he said to Antiochus: But you, who have become the inventor of all malice against the Hebrews, will not escape the hand of God; so we too have said to you and do say, that indeed there has never been a persecutor of the sacred law of God more powerful than yourself, and that you will not escape the hand of God. If Antiochus hears that the Lord was then angered against his own for the sake of rebuke, and that he would again reconcile himself to his servants, this also you hear us saying to you.

If it was said to that king: But you, wicked one, and most infamous of all men, do not vainly, puffed up with empty hope, exalt yourself against his servants: for you have not yet escaped the judgment of almighty God: this also you hear from us, that indeed you are the most wicked and infamous of all men, who do these things for this purpose, that you may make us your fellow-apostates, but that in vain, puffed up by the devil's instigation with empty hope against us, the servants of God, are you exalted: since you can neither fulfill your malicious endeavors, nor escape the judgment of the all-seeing, all-powerful God. You hear from us, just as Antiochus heard through that illustrious youth: that our brothers, having suffered a little, have fallen back under God's covenant into eternal life, but that you, by the judgment of God, will pay the just penalties of your pride.

You hear also from us that we are thus prepared to be slain by you, executioner, for God's sake, just as you have already slain our brothers, that we are prepared to deliver our souls and bodies for Jesus Christ, the true only Son of God, and moreover that we trust in his untiring loving-kindness, that he will soon snatch away his whole flock from you, ravenous wolf, from you, rabid dog; but that you, unless you take counsel for yourself, will forever go into torments. What more, whether by writing or in person, would you have me say to you, tyrant of our time, that I wish you to refute?

If I have called you an executioner, this was said not only by that most just youth, but also by his mother to Antiochus, your fellow in madness: if I have called you the inventor of all malice, if I have said that you will not escape the hand of God, if I have called you wicked and most infamous of all men, because you will not escape the judgment of the all-powerful, all-seeing one, but will pay just penalties in God's judgment—all these things had already been said by that devout youth to your colleague Antiochus. You cry out that I am contumelious, because you see names worthy of your deeds imposed upon you, those same names which our predecessors, worshippers of the living God, already imposed upon your fellow tyrants. The blessed apostle Peter says: Be sober, be watchful; your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour: resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that these same sufferings are endured by your brotherhood throughout the whole world.

If you think that I am contumelious because you hear that the things you do are evil, in what am I found resisting the devil according to the apostle's precept? For behold, this dragon, leading you into every kind of drunkenness with his wine, has sent into all of God's flock, that by means of your royal support you might make everyone, as you yourself are, drunk—that is, insane, senseless, and mad. For who has made you so drunk with the vine of Sodom, with the vineyard of Gomorrah, that you do not see yourself to have fornicated, just as the Jews fornicated? In what, I say, shall we resist the devil, if we do not go to meet you, through whom he has armed himself to devour us?

If it is not said to you, the drunkard, by the sober, to you, the sick one, by the healthy, to you, the wounded one, by the whole, to you, the blind one, by those who see, to you, the fallen one, by those who stand, to you, the impious one, by the pious, to you, the ravaging wolf, by the sheep of God, to you, the cruel executioner and savage murderer, by the most kind and merciful, to you, the blasphemer, by those who glorify God, to you, the sacrilegious one, by the worshippers of God, to you, the Arian heretic, by Christians—if it is not said to you by us: Depart, minister of our adversary, give honor to God? In what shall we resist the devil, if we spare you from his net of will, if your drunkenness—that is, your madness—is not made known to all, if finally it is not made manifest to the whole world through the very fact that you have raged against us?

From the fact that you do these things, it cannot be perceived that you are a servant of Christ, but plainly the slave of him who is like a roaring lion against us. Hence we seem to you insolent, because we say to you that you have been made drunk by that wine by which those others also were led into every madness of drunkenness; those to whom, or concerning whom, it is said: They have sinned, not his; they are blemished children, a crooked and perverse generation. Have you repaid these things to the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? And further on: Jacob ate and drank and was filled, and the beloved grew fat and kicked: he grew fat, and thick, and broad, and forsook the God who made him, and departed from God his savior. They provoked me with strange gods, they stirred me up with their abominations, and they sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods whom they did not know, new ones lately come, whom their fathers did not know.

You have forsaken the God who begot you, and forgotten the God who nourished you. Thus your perfidy, which you preach, proves that you, like the Jews, have forsaken God and followed idolatry. But now I have thought you should be led to this alone, that you might see that we are not, as I shall tell you plainly, injurious, insolent, or proud, but truthful, and fearing no one except God.

The most blessed apostle John, when he says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out: you seem to me clearly to be one of these false prophets, since by denying the only Son of God, you declare that you have nothing but the spirit of Antichrist in your sacrilegious mouth: hence it results that you cannot even hear us speaking of the divine eternity of the only Son of God, since that spirit of Antichrist which dwells in you cannot bear it, and does not wish to be driven out of you, but wishes to remain in you until it sees you carried off to those places in which it itself will forever be: for it grieves that you, its most faithful darling, obedient to all its desires, should be snatched away from it. Beloved, he says, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that dissolves Jesus is not of God, and this is that of Antichrist. And further on: They are of the world, therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them: but we are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. It is clear, Constantius, that you bear the spirit of Antichrist, that you are moved by the spirit of error.

For just as those who said that the only Son of God did not take on humanity from the womb of the blessed Virgin, who did not believe him incarnate, made man, are shown to have the spirit of error, and are called Antichrists, so also you Arians, when you deny that the only Son of God was truly born of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, when you despise the fact that he is truly the Son and that he has always reigned with the Father, that the Son has never been without the Father, nor do you allow yourselves to believe that the Father was ever without the Son, when you deny that the Father and his only Son have one Godhead—of whose spirit do you show yourselves full, if not of Antichrist's?

For one who has the Spirit of God cannot say, concerning the only Son of God, "There was a time when he was not," and "He was made out of nothing," since he believes him to have reigned with the Father without beginning, and to reign without end. And so when you say that he is not the true Son of God, when finally you attempt to destroy the fact that he is ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί, as the Greeks say, or as we Romans say, of one substance with the Father, you are certainly to be pronounced among those false prophets, and among the Antichrists. You ought not judge me contumelious, because I say that you are moved by an unclean spirit, because I say that you are the forerunner of Antichrist; for your own mouth reveals that you are this, for one who has the Spirit of God could not assert such things as you Arians assert, or all your heretics of various sects likewise.

You deny that God has a true Son, you say that he is adopted, and you judge, perhaps without understanding, that you are indeed one of those Antichrists spoken of by John's mouth: you are revealed, I say, to be led by an adverse spirit. Hence it is, finally, that we have not believed you when you say of the Son, "He was made out of nothing." For we have recognized that such things cannot be said except by the spirit of a false prophet, except by a forerunner of Antichrist, except by a satellite and slave of demons.

We could not have believed you saying these things, since the Holy Spirit spoke also through the prophets concerning the only Son of God, that he is the true Son of God, that he is eternal, and co-eternal with the Father, that the Son was never without the Father, nor was or is the Father without the Son, and the blessed apostles have related these same things: since the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who was in the prophets, also remained in the apostles—which Holy Paraclete Spirit, because he is in the Church of God, and you are established outside the Church of God, since he does not remain in you, you are certainly proved to have the spirit of Antichrist; which unclean spirit, lest you see these things which we bring forward, pours darkness over your heretical hearts, blinding them with the fog of error, lest, that is, you should be able to emerge from its snares. You judge us to be contumelious, because we declare you to be such as we see you to be.

Behold, also, when I find it said by the Lord in the Gospel according to Matthew: Behold, I send you forth as sheep among wolves; you seem to me to be one of those wolves, and indeed one in whom I see gathered the rage of all the wolves roaring against God's flock. For who that denies the only Son of God would not rejoice, would not glory, seeing you have thus laid waste the flock of Christ? I take you also to be one of those unbelievers, one of those faithless ones, to whom it is said: Offspring of vipers, how can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of a good treasure brings forth good things, and an evil man out of an evil treasure brings forth evil things. If the things you speak, Constantius, are good, you can have a good treasure.

I am insolent, because I say to you that darkness dwells in your heart; hence out of your most darkened senses, being as you are, you dare to bring forth unclean and dark things. Behold, too, if you hear that which was said to blessed Peter by the Lord, you will doubtless call me contumelious again. The most holy Matthew says: While he yet spoke, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and elders of the people: and he who betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, he it is, hold him fast. And immediately he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, Rabbi, and kissed him. But Jesus said to him, Friend, why have you come? Then they came and laid hands on Jesus, and held him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus, stretching out his hand, drew his sword, and struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear.

Then Jesus said to him, Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword shall perish by the sword. You must call me contumelious, when you hear that, if you use the sword, you will perish by the sword. Or have you not used the sword against Christians? If you have slain no one by the sword, if you have persecuted no one even unto death, why should not one who confessed the only Son of God to be true Son, who held the apostolic and evangelical faith, who was unwilling to be an Arian, be able not to perish by the sword? For you hear that it was said to blessed Peter, and indeed by God, the only Son of God, that everyone who uses the sword shall perish by the sword.

I am contumelious, because I have said to you: it is not lawful for Christians to kill, since it is fitting for Christians to suffer injury, not to inflict it, to be slain rather than to slay: for you ought, for Christ's sake, not to slay those who proclaim themselves Christians. These commands the Lord has given us; if they are kept, then we shall persevere in being Christians. But you, on the contrary, if you deign to pursue his servants with the sword, we shall no longer be able to call you a Christian, but plainly a robber or a gladiator. Meanwhile, since we have recounted how your madman's fellow Iscariot Judas betrayed the Lord, let us at this point thoroughly reconsider his causes of sacrilege and yours, and you will find that you and Judas Iscariot are one. He betrayed the Lord to the Jews, because he had not been a believer, in the way that your fellow drunkard of Sirmium is now believing, who was called and is unworthily called Photinus.

You have betrayed him, and indeed to the whole world, so that all might be able to deny his divinity. Which of you is greater in crime? I think it is you. For everyone who sins against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, neither in this age nor in the age to come. And you have been the betrayer of that deity, whereby all can deny it. For as far as it lies with you, you have betrayed him, of whom you have also given forth written books, and have set up preachers of your malevolent will in every place. So that all might be able to deny that he is the true Son of God, you have caused the apostolic and evangelical faith set forth against you heretics at Nicaea to be judged heretical, and you have caused your own blasphemy to be called catholic.

And yet that Judas, who had betrayed him, seeing that he had wrought his own destruction to his own ruin, led by repentance, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying: I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood. But they said: What is that to us? See to it yourself. And casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself with a rope.

He, though for one moment, repented, and returned the price he had received; you, what have you done like that?—you who, when convicted of your crime, not only did not repent through his servants, but grew even more into obstinacy; you, what have you done like that?—you who give all the resources of your kingdom, so that you may confirm your sacrilege, who, those whom you could not corrupt from the truth by any other means, have corrupted not a few by an enormous reward of your wealth, who have enriched a certain number of the poor so that they might be equal to your companions in the greatness of their riches. Judas, after he perceived his crime, ended his life with a rope: you, who for the greatness of your wickedness deserve to be punished with a greater penalty, what will you do, when you have come to know, however late, that you have done evil? When your eyes, now not the least corrupted with heretical poison, begin to see the things that they can now behold?

And yet, if you are willing to believe, it must be that what you now do out of ignorance will be forgiven you, just as you note was forgiven to the blessed apostle Paul: but if not, you will be as Judas, about to descend into the infernal night, then to say to those who now compel you to do these things, that is, to your fellow Arians: I have sinned with you, denying the only Son of God; I have sinned in granting you authority to deny his eternal mercy. Then, when you begin to know that we rightly confess one eternity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, when you begin to see that there is one greatness and one power in the Father, and in his only Son, and in the holy Paraclete Spirit, where then will those be who drove you to perpetrate this sacrilege, that you might say to them: I repent, because I ran with you enemies of God, because with you I persecuted the house of God?

They will be with you, without doubt, in Gehenna. Where then will be the riches of your kingdom, which profit you not unto salvation, but unto your eternal destruction? We wish indeed that God might deign to reveal the truth to you, an enemy of your own salvation, and that you might emerge from such great dangers. As for the rest, how much more eminent you are in crime than Iscariot Judas is not hard to reckon; since you have called the whole world together to deny his divinity; but Judas betrayed the Lord only to those who had not yet believed in him; you, on the contrary, have deigned to provoke even those who had already believed, to deny his deity. Judas forced no one to perish with him; you, on the contrary, fight against us with an armed force, us whom you know to believe as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed; certainly it is no great labor to weigh how far apart you and Judas stand.

You say I am abusive, in wishing that neither I nor those entrusted to me be wounded by your pestilent doctrine, because I say to you that you are full of disease, and therefore must be avoided by the servants of God, lest, having become diseased ourselves, we perish together with you by this same plague of yours. Would that, says the apostle to the Corinthians, you would bear with a little of my foolishness, but do bear with me. For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, your minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ Jesus.

Therefore I seem to you abusive, because I fear that through your blasphemies you might corrupt the chastity we have in Christ Jesus, because we are afraid lest, as your very dear serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, you may seduce us from God, and make us guilty of death. You say I am obstinate, because I call you a deceitful workman, a pseudo-Christian. These things are not first brought forward against you by me. For you hear that the blessed apostle designated you a deceitful workman, a pseudo-apostle: for such pseudo-apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light: it is no great thing if his ministers transform themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works. Hence I seem to you proud, because I say, knowing from your deeds, that you are among those whom the Holy Spirit through the apostle foretold would be such. If you are not a deceitful workman, refute me.

For I know that you pretend to be a Christian, while you are an Arian, wishing to make all of us servants of him whose henchman you are. Unless you are not a deceitful workman, prove us wrong. For we see you feigning piety in some things, while you exercise your whole impiety against us Christians. If you are not a deceitful workman, how is it that, feigning to establish peace, you have tried to destroy the whole Church of God, to dissolve the peace given to it through the only Son? For I could not have the peace of the Lord thenceforth, from the moment I did what you commanded me against the Lord's precept, from the moment, that is, that I began to deny, as you deny, the only Son of God himself.

If you have not transformed yourself into an apostle of Christ, you who, as though truly all care of the church pertained to you, are so anxious, namely, that no catholic bishop preside anywhere over a church, that no one be left who could confess himself a Christian. You remove catholic bishops, you ordain heretics, you write dreadful threats, lest perchance sedition arise: certainly one who does not know, judging you by seeing you do these things, would think you a Christian: we, on the other hand, who, instructed by the blessed apostle, know that Satan has transformed himself as an angel of light, who through you carries out all these things against the holy Church, cannot wonder if we see you as his minister, if, as one transformed into a minister of righteousness, we exhort you unto righteousness. Would that you convert yourself to this end, that you might be believed a servant of God, that you might be judged and understood a Christian.

As often as it is said by us to you that you could not have become a denier of the only Son of God, unless you were full of an adverse spirit, you are accustomed to say that we do you an injury: and although I have already proved this matter in very many places, that unclean spirits instigating your hearts, you come against the family of God, take also from the Acts of the Apostles what happened. Now it came to pass, as we were going to prayer, that a certain girl having a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much gain by soothsaying. She, following Paul and us, cried out saying: These men are servants of the most high God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. And this she did for many days: which when Paul was grieved at, turning to the spirit he said: I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour.

But her masters, seeing that the hope of their gain was gone, seized Paul and Silas, and dragged them to the marketplace before the magistrates, and presented them, saying: These men trouble our city, being Jews, and preach a custom which it is not lawful for us to receive nor to observe, being Romans. And the whole crowd rose up together against them, and the magistrates, having torn off their garments, ordered them to be beaten with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely: who, having received such a charge, put them into the innermost prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. Now about midnight, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing a hymn to God, the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were loosed.

The jailer, awakened, and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had fled. But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying: Do yourself no harm: for we are all here. Hearing this, the jailer called for a light, and rushed in, and trembling fell down before the feet of Paul and Silas: and having brought them out, he said: Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him, together with all who were in his house. And taking them the same hour of the night, he washed their wounds: and was baptized himself with all his household: and bringing them into his house, he set a table before them, and they feasted together with his whole household, believing in the Lord.

So then, just as that spirit of divination, hearing the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, was soon driven out from her, so it stirred up the whole population of the city against the preachers of the majesty of the only Son of God—thus also those impure spirits have stirred up you, together with your fellows, against us, his servants. Do not doubt that you are driven by the same spirits by which those who rose up against Paul and Silas were driven, when you see yourself made such a persecutor of the religion of God, as was that mob, which had not yet believed in the only Son of God, that being no other than because they lacked the Spirit of God, as you too are proven to be.

For that you cannot have the Holy Spirit, unless you believe in the only Son of God, is made manifest by the deed of that jailer, who, although he was indeed one of that resisting crowd, nevertheless, after he believed, since he was now ruled by the Holy Spirit by whom Paul and Silas were ruled, embraced no other way than to hold to theirs, for whose sake he had seen the doors of the prison spontaneously unbarred. So you, who now are driven by a different spirit, unless you believe in the only Son of God, as we also believe, can have in you nothing but the spirit of our adversary. For that jailer said to the glorious Paul and Silas: Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said: Believe in our Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. It is established, therefore, that you are not saved, because you have not yet believed in the Lord Jesus.

For you cannot assert that you have believed in him, since you are persecuting him. Or do you perhaps think that you are not persecuting him in us? If you are not persecuting him in us, how is it that he himself says to Saul: Why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad. What was Saul doing, that he should hear these things from the Lord? Surely the same things that you are doing: for he was denying the only Son of God just as you are denying him.

For Paul was not then a persecutor, but later one who began to suffer persecution; and he persecuted Christians not because they had believed, as you believe, that he had existed when he did not exist, that he had been made from nothing, and that he was a true Son: but rather because they dared to confess the only Son of God, because they asserted their belief as Christians that there is one eternity of the Father and the Son, that there is one deity, that there is one power in the Father and the Son. These things Paul abhorred, thinking that the Christians erred: but when he was enlightened by him whom he denied, when he came to know from the books of Moses, and from all the volumes of the prophets, he immediately began to defend the very things he had attacked, namely, those things which the men he had persecuted defended before he himself had believed.

As for the rest, who was so senseless—as you Arians are, or as is Photinus of Sirmium, who is truly called Scotinus (the "dark one")—as to believe in a creature, in one who existed when he did not exist, in one who was created out of nothing? It appears, therefore, that all of you, not believing as the glorious Church believes, are led by an adverse spirit; from which adverse spirit you cannot be freed unless you believe him to be the true Son of God. You say that the bishops do you injury. Why do we seem to you injurious? Surely because we say: Why do you feign yourself a Christian? For you appear to be an Arian, you appear to be an enemy of the religion of God. Hence we seem to be injurious in your eyes and those of your people.

But consider what the most blessed apostle said, so that we bishops might act against you wolves: You know, from the first day that I came into Asia, how I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with tears and trials, which befell me by the plots of the Jews; how I kept back nothing that was profitable, how I declared it to you and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus. And now, behold, bound in the spirit, I go to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me through every city, saying: That chains and tribulations await me in at Jerusalem.

But I count my life of no account, as dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course, and the ministry of the word which I received of the Lord, to testify to Jews and Greeks the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom of the Lord Jesus, shall see my face no more. Wherefore I testify unto you this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to rule the church of the Lord, which he hath purchased with his own blood. I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock: also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. Since you see these to be the commands of the apostle, what do you bid me do, lest I seem contumelious toward you? Surely you bid me be silent and allow you, as one of those grievous wolves foretold, to rage in whatsoever manner you please against the flock of God. We see you, the wolves whom the Holy Spirit through the vessel of election, the apostle, deigned to foreshow, striving to seize the whole flock of God; and are we, the bishops whom the Holy Spirit has appointed to govern the church of God, as the blessed apostle says, bound to spare you, the wolf? Are we bound to reverence the diadem of your kingdom, and even your earring and your bracelets? Are we bound to honor those garments which you deem so illustrious, and to despise the Creator and Ruler of all things?

Who is more foolish than you, that you should say: “I suffer injury from Lucifer, I, an emperor, from a needy man”? Nor do you deign to say, from a bishop—since you have been recognized to be a wolf, and have deserved rejection.

You thought I should be burdened with such an odium, that you might assert that a servant of God had been contumelious to you, the emperor. If you think us injurious, hear what the blessed Paul answered the high priest who forbade him to preach the only Son of God. Looking, says the Scripture, upon the council, Paul said: Men, brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. But the high priest Ananias commanded those standing by him to strike Paul on the mouth. Then Paul said to him: God shall smite thee, thou whited wall: and thou sittest to judge me according to the law, and contrary to the law commandest me to be struck. Therefore if the sacred law cannot judge blessed Paul contumelious because he said this to an unjust judge, neither can you justly call me proud for saying to you what is true and what you are. You mark me down as guilty of injuries, but I ask you to say, of whom concerning me can you complain?

If of God, how can you complain of Him whom you do not know? How, since you are estranged from His house? But if you complain of yourself, what will a man do who can in no way harm the servants of God? If you torture, we are more cared for: if you torment, we are more restored: if you kill, we shall live the more. Because I dare to call you the forerunner of antichrist, you call me injurious. If your own deeds do not show this to be so, consider with great diligence the book of the most holy prophet Daniel also, and you will find yourself to be one of those persecutors of God's religion foreshown there. In the first year of Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans, Daniel saw a dream, and the visions of his head upon his bed, and he wrote his dream: I Daniel beheld, and lo, the four winds of heaven strove upon the great sea: and four beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

The first was like a lion, and had wings. And it was lifted up from the earth and stood upon its feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it. And behold another beast, like to a bear, and it stood on one side: and there were three ribs in its mouth between its teeth, and thus it was said to it: Arise, devour much flesh. After this beast I beheld, and lo another beast, like a leopard, having upon it four wings of a fowl, and the beast had four heads, and power was given to it. After this I beheld, and lo a fourth beast, terrible, wonderful, and exceeding strong: it had great iron teeth, eating and breaking in pieces, and treading down the rest with its feet: and this beast was more terrible than all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.

And I considered its horns, and behold there came up among them another little horn, and three of the first horns were plucked up before it: and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. I beheld till thrones were set, and the Ancient of days sat: his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like clean wool; his throne was like a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire: a fiery stream issued forth before him, thousands upon thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: he sat in judgment, and the books were opened. I beheld then, because of the voice of the great words which the horn spoke, until the beast was slain, and perished, and its body was given to be burned: and the reign of the rest of the beasts was taken away, and a length of life was given to them for a time.

I saw in the vision of the night, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came even to the Ancient of days: and he was brought near before him, and there was given him dominion, and honor, and a kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, and languages served him, and his power is an everlasting power, which shall never pass away, and his kingdom shall never be destroyed. My spirit was terrified within me, I, Daniel, and the visions of my head troubled me: and I came near to one of them that stood by, and I asked of him the truth concerning all this. And he told me the truth, and made known to me the interpretation of the words: These four great beasts are four kingdoms which shall arise on the earth, and the kingdom of the saints of the most high God shall receive the kingdom and possess it forever.

And I sought diligently to know concerning the fourth beast, which was exceedingly terrible above the rest: its teeth were of iron, and its claws of brass: it devoured and broke in pieces, and trod down the rest with its feet: and concerning its ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn that came up, before which three horns fell, that horn having eyes and a mouth speaking great things, and its look was greater than the rest, and that horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of days came and gave judgment to the saints of the most high God, and the time came, and the saints obtained the kingdom. And he said: The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be greater than all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and shall break it in pieces.

Ten kings shall arise, and after them another shall arise who shall exceed in wickedness all that were before him, and he shall bring low three, and shall speak words against the most high God, and shall wear out the saints of the most high God, and shall think to change times and laws, and it shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time; and judgment shall sit, and his kingdom shall be taken away to be destroyed and consumed unto the end: and the kingdom, and the power, and the greatness of the kingdoms is given to the saints of the most high God, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all shall serve and obey him.

I should have inserted only that part which shows through your deeds to which of the beasts you are like: but that you might know that you shall be in that gehenna into which the glorious Daniel reports that beast was cast, unless you correct yourself, and how those whom you persecute shall reign forever in the Lord's kingdom where they are placed, that you might attend to all this we have added it; likewise I judged that the whole revelation should be applied to this, that you yourself, and at least the reader, might be satisfied why you tyrants, persecutors of God's religion, have been called beasts; for I desire to purge myself before your conscience, infected with the poison of the Arian dogma, before you, not a religious man but a destroyer of religion, that I am not, as you assert, being contumelious in calling you a wild beast or a savage monster, since you see that you are so called, names being applied to you according to your deeds.

Moreover, that you bear the likeness of that fourth beast, that you desire to fulfill what it was foretold that beast would fulfill, is manifest. It is written of antichrist, to whom you are likened, or are judged to be him: He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most high God, and shall think to change times and laws, and it shall be given into his hand. This you have already done and are doing. For when you say: The Son of God is not true God, but was made out of nothing, you speak words against God. For since we Christians vindicate one divinity to the Father and to His only Son, and you attack this our defense, asserting of the Son that there was a time when He was not, and that He was made out of nothing, you certainly prove yourself to be either antichrist, or at least his forerunner.

Nor indeed can you be understood to be anything else, except either the forerunner of antichrist or antichrist himself, you who dare to call the apostolic and evangelical faith heretical, and try to vindicate your blasphemy as the catholic faith. You feel that you suffer injury because you are called a beast by us: you are found to be devising a change of faith, that is, that we should not believe as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed, but that you would have it believed as your ruined Arius taught: and do you say that you are not rightly called a beast, when the most holy prophet said you would be a beast, because you were going to do these things? You are not less than antichrist in unbelief, Constantius: for you do not cease to devour the servants of God with iron teeth. What more? Antichrist will do nothing except cause the only Son of God to be denied: this is what your most unclean mind, fattened on folly, is doing.

But however much you rage, your times shall pass, shall pass away, and there shall come those times in which you shall see yourself, unless you take counsel for yourself, placed in that fiery river, and you shall then see those whom you fiercely persecute—because they refuse to perish with you—not in that place of torments where you shall be, but with the holy angels giving thanks and praises forever to God, while you are in that flaming stream. Do not wonder if the glorious Daniel designated you a beast, since the blessed Paul also said of your kindred to the Cretans: The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. And below: Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men that turn from the truth.

Hence we bishops are injurious to you, because we rebuke and reproach you for daring to turn yourself from the truth, for wishing, having forsaken God's commands, to cling to the blasphemies and commands of men, for finally, having forsaken God, taking up idolatry. Hence I seem to you your own enemy, because I wish you to walk according to the apostle's precept, and not according to the commands of Arius and the Jews. Against these our most just charges, seeing yourself overcome by the truth, you are accustomed to say: The sacred Scriptures command kings and all who dwell in high station that you ought to be subject to me; and do you dare to bring such things upon me, Lucifer?

You perceive these things, you understand such things as command that you be honored; but the things that command what you must do, you pretend not to know—those that admonish you, the Lord, to obey the priests, those that urge that you ought to show yourself one among all your fellow servants, and that you should call yourself superior to no one, if you wish to be found a servant of God. These things, says the blessed apostle to Titus, speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority: let no man despise thee. If you are a Christian, since you too are one of those on whose behalf he said: These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority: let no man despise thee, then surely you ought to hear me rebuking you with all authority, not to despise me.

Then will you be a Christian, if you do not despise me exhorting you to persevere a Christian: but if you despise me, you shall be found no longer among the Christians; because if you had been a Christian, you would not have despised him whom God ordained to instruct His people, and him to whom the apostle said: These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority: let no man despise thee. For what do I exhort you?

Only that you not be a murderer, that you not persecute the house of God; that you cease to torture, proscribe, deport, shut up in prison, slaughter, destroy in various ways, kill those whom you see to be Christians; that you finally cease to blaspheme the only Son of God; that you receive the apostolic faith, which you call heretical—namely this our faith, which they described at Nicaea against you and all heretics; that you believe as we do, and deign to reject the idolatry instituted by Arius your master; that you proclaim yourself a Christian, not an Arian; that you cease to send false charges against the priests of God: this is my reproof, this my rebuke. The apostle tells me to rebuke you with all authority, and you say: Lucifer does me an injury; and you do not say: A priest of God admonishes and exhorts according to the precepts of the sacred law, that I may be able to lead a life most acceptable to God.

For as to your saying that we owe you obedience, know that we know ourselves to be debtors in obedience not to you alone, but to all who dwell in high station, showing them due service. For the apostle says: Admonish them to be subject to princes and magistrates, to obey, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, not to be litigious, but gentle, showing all mildness towards all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, unbelieving, erring, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another: but when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, not by the works of righteousness which we did, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by his grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of life.

He admonishes therefore that we, being subjects, ought to be in good works, not in evil ones. If it is a good work that we kill an absent man, that we destroy one crying out unheard that he wishes to clear himself, that we, omitting all regard for mercy, punish along with you one whom we know to be innocent, if it is a good work to deny the only Son of God, if it is a work acceptable to God to forsake the apostolic faith and take up the heretical, you would rightly say that I act against the warnings of the sacred Scriptures. I add this, that the apostle made mention of those princes and magistrates who had not yet believed in the only Son of God; assuredly they would have been provoked to believe by our humility and gentleness, and long patience in adversities, and the greatest obedience in fitting matters.

But if you, because you are emperor, pretending to be one of us, compel us to forsake God and take up idolatry, must we then acquiesce to you, lest the apostle's precepts seem to have been disregarded? And yet you, who pretend to be a Christian, are attempting to make Christians do what you yourself are doing, that is, apostates—you who are still foolish, and remaining unbelieving in your malice, in which the Apostle says that we too were before knowledge, before we had received the sacred faith. In which respect were we spared to you, except that we might fulfill what was lawful? Or when you say, blasphemer and murderer: Kill those who believe in the only Son of God, be persecutors with me of His house, deny Him with me, reject the apostolic faith, take up my heresy, of which I have been the lover with all the strength of my heart—who is more wretched than you, that one should not shun you?

Should he not flee, recognizing that you, who persuade these things, are a temple of demons? Because you hear these things, you say: I suffer injury from Lucifer, a wretched man, yet, forsooth, an emperor; that blasphemous, filthy word of yours does not follow: I hear what I deserve from Lucifer, priest of the Lord. To the Galatians the vessel of election says: I marvel that you are so quickly transferred, you who were called in grace, to another gospel, which is not another, except that there are some who trouble you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we have said before, so now I say again: if any man preach to you a gospel other than that which you have received, let him be anathema.

And do you think you can be judged by me as anything other than anathema, since I find you preaching a gospel otherwise than the blessed apostles handed down? So when you hear from me that I hold you anathema for preaching otherwise than the apostles preached, if you say that I am being injurious, you will be able to know that you lie, bearing something of a man in you; since you may see that I say anathema to you for this reason, because the blessed apostle has already anathematized you. You judge me injurious because I call you foolish; but how can I rightly be called injurious by you, when it is established that I speak the truth, namely that you are foolish? For if the Galatians hear from the blessed apostle, "O foolish Galatians", why do you think you should not be called by the name of fool?

For if they were called foolish because they had obeyed false brethren, because, giving heed to the suggestions of your serpent-fellows, they had judged that they ought to keep the sabbaths and observe circumcision, how much more rightly are you called foolish, who have stood forth as a denier of the only Son of God! Because I say to you, Tear yourself away from the rabid Arian dogs, grieve for yourself that by clinging to their malicious counsel you yourself have become a dog—you call me contumacious; but perhaps you do not know that the deniers of the only Son of God are called dogs, called fat bulls, called sons of iniquity, adulterous seed of a harlot, sons of perdition, and wicked seed. If you grieve to be called thus by God, hear Him speaking through Isaiah to your fellow-blasphemer Jews: Draw near hither, sons of iniquity, adulterous seed of a harlot. In whom have you delighted, and against whom have you opened your mouth, and against whom have you thrust out your tongue?

Are you not sons of perdition, wicked seed? And in another place: See that all things are blinded, they have not known wisdom, all are dumb dogs, unable to bark, dreaming in their beds, loving to slumber: and shameless dogs, souls that know no fullness, and they are wicked, knowing no understanding, they have all followed their own ways. Who are these to whom, or on account of whom, these things are said? Surely those whom the only Son of God, through the mouth of David, accuses in the twenty-first psalm, saying: Many calves have surrounded me, fat bulls have besieged me. They have opened their mouth against me, as a lion ravening and roaring. And below: Many dogs have surrounded me, the council of the malignant has besieged me: they have pierced my hands and my feet.

When, therefore, you observe that your masters in sacrilege are called calves, fat bulls, and dogs, you, being one of the council of the malignant, will not be able to judge me contumelious, because I call you by those names by which those who address you have been and are called: for you are no less in wickedness, you who dare to say: There was when he was not, and he was made out of nothing, so that you should not be called by names fitting for you. But do you wish not to be called by these names? Change your ways, correct your errors, as most blessed Paul corrected his, and the rest of that faithless people. Because I say to you: Tear yourself away from the council of the malignant, I seem to you to be contumelious. For what reason? Surely because I profess myself a Christian, because I have refused to abandon God and go after your idolatry.

We were not the first to be called contumelious and proud sacrilegious ones by you; for all those were so called who resisted the deadly edicts of your fellow-tyrants. To pass over the others, at the close of this discourse I turn again only to king Antiochus. Did he judge those who resisted him to be contumelious and proud, or not? Without doubt, since he considered them to have been contumelious and proud, he pursued those dedicated to God with such cruelty even unto death. It remains, then, for you to see what Antiochus did further to him whom you already know; and if you can rightly say that they were proud and contumelious toward Antiochus, you can say the same of us. For we too suffer these things from you which they suffered from Antiochus; thus we cry out for the faith, for religion, just as they cried out; thus we profess to serve the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, just as they confessed.

Scripture says: He sent an Athenian king to compel the Jews to depart from their ancestral customs and not to use the laws of God, even to defile the temple that was in Jerusalem, and to call it after Jupiter Olympius, and the temple in Gerizim after Jupiter the Hospitable, as those who inhabited the place desired. But the sedition of evils was most grievous and burdensome to all. For the temple was full of the reveling of the Gentiles, of men consorting with harlots, and of women approaching themselves within the sacred precincts, bringing in besides things which were not fitting; the altar too was full of unlawful things forbidden by the laws. Neither were the sabbaths kept, nor were the ancestral solemn days observed. And below: They were led, under bitter necessity, each month, on the day of the king's birthday, to a mournful ceremony; and when the feast of Bacchus was celebrated, they were compelled, wearing ivy, to march in procession to Bacchus.

A decree also went forth to the neighboring cities of the Greeks, at the suggestion of the Ptolemies, to do the same against the Jews and to compel them likewise: but those who would not go over to the Greek institutions were to be put to death. Come, then, and behold the misery. For two women were denounced for having circumcised their children, whose infants they hung at their breasts, and, having led them publicly through the city, they cast them down from the wall. Others in the neighborhood ran together into caves, and secretly kept the seventh day. And when this was reported, they were burned, because they feared to bring themselves glorious help on the solemn day. What do you think the worshippers of God ought to have done then? Ought God or Antiochus to have been pleased?

If you do not think they ought to have pleased Antiochus, neither ought we to please you, since you also, though in another manner, nevertheless wish to take us away from God and join us to the devil, just as he wished them: the very cruelty is carried out through you, savage and unjust as you are toward those who resist your deadly edict. It remains, therefore, as has often been said, that you grieve that you have erred, and, recognizing that you are a murderer and a blasphemer, that you, deserter of God, present yourself to His house; otherwise you will have only yourself to blame, when you begin to see yourself there where now are all those your fellow-tyrants.