That One Must Die for the Son of God

It would indeed have been fitting, Emperor Constantius, to discuss nothing further with you concerning the divine Scriptures, seeing that we have found you to be an interpolator of the truth, whom we have convicted from your own acts of being one of those who are called wise in their own conceit for the very reason that they are walking the path of foolishness; it would have been fitting, as we have said, after all those things we have already set forth, now to offer silence, especially since we remember it is written: Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him. And again: Speak not in the ears of a fool, lest at any time he hear and despise the wise words of thy mouth.

But because you still trust in the power of your arms and the vain dominion of your empire, and rejoice to be applauded by your following, in that you are able to violate those whom by reason you ought rather to have established in that which you had determined; in all these things, in which you think yourself great, you are in truth wretched, and all the rage of your executioner’s cruelty is despised by the servants of God—I have wished, especially by this book, to make this known to your sacrilege-stricken mind.

For we wish you to hold it fixed and manifest that you, with your temporal, fleeting, fragile, corruptible kingdom, are to pass away, and, unless you provide for yourself while there is place, are to arrive at eternal punishment; but that Christians are to come to eternal rest, and are to attain an incorruptible kingdom. Or will you attempt to defend the notion that through this heresy of yours you are to lay hold of the kingdom of heaven—you, who, fearing along with your pestilential Arians lest, overcome by us Christians, you should ever be forced, with truth itself crying out, to give up your hand, having cast aside disputation, judged that you must flee to the strength of your fragile arms?

As though you could break with weapons those who are to obtain immortal gifts, you, enemy of divine religion, forerunner of antichrist, thought to overcome religious servants of Christ, soldiers of God, whom the only Son of God has deigned to invite to enjoy the eternal friendships of his divinity forever, saying: Blessed are you when men have hated you, and when they curse you and persecute you, and shall reproach you, and say all manner of evil against you: rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

These, though utterly powerless in all things, you thought to drive from their standing, to overthrow—these whom you see prepared for that very reason to be slain for the only Son of God, because they have chosen not to be tormented with you, the deniers, in hell, but to obtain the heavenly kingdom; these you had judged you would overcome by the empty authority of your kingdom—these who by the very confession of their faith are shown clearly to be temples of God. For just as you Arians, by denying the Son of God, are marked out by the words of the prophets, the apostles, and the sacred gospels as houses of the unclean spirit, so we who confess the Son of God show ourselves to be temples of God.

Your cruel and sacrilegious mind, favoring the suggestions of your fellow heretics, had presumed that soldiers of God could succumb to your butchery—we whom God calls his own temples, thus: For I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. You had judged that you could overcome these whom the apostle exhorts to bear God and carry him in their bodies; these you had indeed thought you could subdue by the futile weapons of your kingdom: but you now perceive—though standing behind the veil within your palace you received from me an answer for preserving my salvation—that all the servants of God, having trampled underfoot your frivolous authority, agree in mind, will, purpose, strength, and voice.

You notice how, the more your fleeting dominion deigns to rage against us, the more it is judged to be weak, contemptible, empty, feeble, and abject: for as often as your hand, roused by fury and crime, has prevailed to destroy us, so often, we recall, have we grown, and shown ourselves more and more victorious. You have slaughtered very many in Alexandria, you have torn certain ones throughout the whole world, you have destroyed those resisting you in various places; but all these—which you are utterly unwilling to hear—are martyrs: we believe that all these most blessed ones, slain by your sword, are in paradise. Believe me that we have determined to be slain by you, because we have seen that it is better in all ages to have God as our lover, than to be punished with Judas Iscariot as an imitator of the Jews. Hence it is, Constantius, that, not fearing the gnashings of the serpent brought upon us through you, we are prepared to undergo every destruction.

Never can it cause us to repent of our resolves, if we, who still seem to resist your cruel hands, should be slain by you. For the death which you threaten to bring upon us is prepared for all; but so great a blessedness as the holy martyrs have attained, no one, as we see, has obtained, except those who by dying have conquered death for the sake of the only Son of God. You torture, kill, exterminate men consecrated to God; and you cannot render reasons for the causes of your hatreds, because you are in error. You are angry with us too, because we hold to the true way, and though you could correct yourself by our salutary admonition, you instead heap up your errors with cruel deeds besides, wringing out from disemboweled bodies the minds consecrated to God of those who have determined to keep faith with God to the very last course of their lives.

You perceive that these things are so, and indeed not without the greatest pain to yourself, since you notice that you have no power to turn us away from this religion, which alone is true, nor to draw us back from that course in which we press on toward the prize of the calling on high—neither when you make yourself openly an enemy, nor when you pretend to be a friend. For it is plain what is in you, who deceived Eve; for since you compose your word, through which you creep like a cancer, with a falsely painted swelling of knowledge, asserting yourself—though stained by all your crimes, by your abrogating edict, the harvest of all errors, though you yourself are the very fountain of all error—to be the bearer of light, when you are beset by darkness on every side.

That we can in no way be turned aside from the way of truth—though lacking all understanding, still, seeing yourself in part held in contempt, you can at last perceive this, most savage emperor Constantius. For we Christians know that this is the peculiar business of faith, to be moved from our standing neither by prosperity nor adversity, not to be led away from our once-fixed purpose by any force: we see that by this one religious utterance, "I am a Christian," known to be what you, Constantius, are—an apostate—all crime is excluded: that by this one utterance the defense of salvation, the bond of liberty and honor, is granted; we perceive that by this confession the shield of protection is granted us, a weapon against the devil raging through you against us; and you say: "Deny that you are Christians"?

That we may remain steadfast against the peril opposing us, and not shudder at your torturing savagery, but rather be encouraged than grieved—this the conscience effects, which remembers that the only Son of God grants the presence of his divinity to protect and make victorious his own: hence it comes about that by that punishment by which you believe us to be destroyed, we are given life. For we take up as an increase of strength that very thing which we, believing him for whom we suffer to be with us, receive—the very thing which you, punisher, hoped would serve for our torment: hence it is that we are not broken by your evils shaking us, and the more variously we are vexed by continuous cruelty, the more firmly we are strengthened.

For he is with us who protected the believing Hebrew youths in the furnace of fire; he himself strengthens our minds, he himself governs our sense, he himself kindles our hearts with his divine love, and animates us to endure holy suffering: whence none of us thinks of the death you threaten to bring, but of immortality; not of the temporary punishment inflicted by you, but of everlasting glory. For the sacred scriptures thus disclose that the martyrs of God are consecrated by torments, and crowned by the very proof of suffering: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. And: If before men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and having been troubled in a few things, they shall be well rewarded in many, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace he tried them, and as a whole burnt offering he accepted them, and in due time there shall be regard of them.

They shall judge nations and have dominion over peoples, and their Lord shall reign for ever. Those, therefore, who presume upon and rejoice in the attainment of such felicity from the greatness of God, must, thinking also of future joys, trample your present evils underfoot. It is the divine voice of the only Son of God: He who loves his soul in this world shall lose it; and he who hates his soul for my sake, shall keep it unto life eternal. Clinging to this divine precept, Christians—though your claw, recoiling into our wounds, Constantius, rebounds upon our members—we stand and remain unmoved, stronger than you and all your punishments, revolving with ourselves this one thing alone, that this butchery of your cruelty is useful to us for eternal glory. Often mercy is shown by barbarians to the conquered, and there is room for clemency amid arms, at least among those who lead their lives by a savage rite.

But this is unspeakable, what is done against us by you, who have wished you well, and who desire that it should come to pass, and who do not cease continually beseeching God for you: you despoil, proscribe, slay by the sword, punish variously, and you do not permit the bodies which you have decreed to be torn to be buried, you forbid alms to be given, you have filled all the mines and all the places thought worthy to be called places of exile with our number resisting your cunning; you do not cease to banish the innocent, to torment them with hunger, thirst, and nakedness. Upon these you heap those evils, upon us who desire to attain eternal blessedness. And yet, most cruel emperor, whatever your savagery has brought upon us and will bring, note that it is a lie; since indeed neither is the death inflicted by you upon the holy martyrs who went before us truly death, nor loss, nor damage, but an investment of faith.

We Christians are always tortured by you tyrants in perverse questioning during persecution. For by the very method by which the guilty are compelled to confess, we are compelled to deny Christ, the only true Son of God. But as those, having confessed according to their deserts, are condemned, so we, because we do not deny the Son of God, are crowned—for whom condemnation brought by you is victory: we are removed by you from your midst; in whose presence you would not dare to blaspheme. For at one word of a soldier of Christ he is prostrated who remains in you against our religious confession; he speaks, who through you thirsts for our blood; he who has besieged your mind trembles at the presence of the worshippers of God, and cannot bear it, when we dissent from you, who say the Son of God is from nothing, when we stand against your threats, and, aided and protected by his power, trample underfoot all the savagery of your butchery.

You surely feel yourself chastised by the constancy and endurance of his servants, who says: Fear not them which kill the body, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. We are also encouraged by the exhortations of the most blessed apostle Paul to trample upon you, the tyrant of all tyrants: We are children of God. And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. And again: I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Thinking on the glory of that splendor, it behooves us servants of Christ to endure all pressures and persecutions brought not only by you through the devil, but also through all his men, because although they are many, yet from all of them we are freed who believe the Son of God to be truly the Son: and while we remember that the Father and the Son are two persons, yet we claim one divinity for the Father and his only Son. Hearing these just and unconquerable pleas of ours—since he who has besieged your mind cannot endure the truth—he goads your savage spirit to vex us as harshly as possible, to torture us with elaborate kinds of punishments, because we refuse to abandon the way of salvation.

Hence it is that your excessive cruelty mocks our bodies, because we esteem faith highly, and do not deny that we are worshippers of God: you press upon us with all the forces of your butchery, thinking that you will harm us, not knowing that we rejoice in the occasions of our testing; we, namely, who reckon this our greatest happiness, if in this contest of righteousness it should fall to us to be slain by your butcher's hand for the sake of the Son of God—we stand firm with a religious mind against your madness, he indeed conquering in us for whose sake we suffer, whatever injury, under the guise of us, you profanely bandy about, in empty words and vain talk and depraved will, against his own divine majesty; all of which your hard and obstinate mind, the ferocity of a sinner, brings forth to the death of his own salvation: while you dissent from the religion of God, led by madness, seized by fury, and finally, harassed by every savagery by which you are goaded on equally with wild beasts, we resist—he whom you deny protecting us against your monstrous savagery, beast that you are—just as opposing masses are wont to resist the raging sea.

Though the diabolical waves strike through you, and the whirlwinds of the world, roaming widely, beat against us, all the more immovable, as it is, our strength shall be, nor shall we succumb, overwhelmed by the foaming waves of your assaults, but we shall always stand erect against every peril: since the Christian spirit is not an abject one, to be laid low and tossed about into vices, but is so noble and generous that against all temptations it remains unmoved and victorious. We are not Christians thinking to enjoy the sweetness of this present fragile life, but we desire to attain the glory of eternal security and felicity, the possession of everlasting blessedness. It is the religious voice of the blessed apostle John, exhorting us to despise earthly things and desire to follow heavenly ones: And the world passes away, and the lust thereof; but he that does the will of God abides for ever, as God also abides for ever.

Since these things are so, I wish you to know that, with all your tricks and deceits, and with the vast savagery of your cruelty, you lie beneath the feet of the servants of God, that all the glory of your vain dominion is reckoned and held by us as nothing, and that you yourself, with all the might and authority of your empire, are perceived by us to be nothing other than an empty breath. Someone of your flatterers may perhaps say we boast of this. Do you not remember, Constantius, that I said to the judges, with you listening behind the curtain, that although you had decreed that your entire army should hurl the weapons of your kingdom against us, cursers of your blasphemy, as against contemners of your sacrilegious decree—that even if they should shatter all their weapons upon us, we would not, however, be able to depart from our purpose?

But you, in your wisdom, decreed that your soldiers ought to die for you in every war, while you ordained that Christians ought to become deniers of God. And indeed your own men feel the pain of their wounds, they grieve that they have perished, they grieve to lose this light; but we cannot first feel the torment of the punishments, in which Christ suffers, in which Christ works eternal salvation: and then, because we count present things as nothing, and are to be forever in that perpetual light, how could it be that we would not rather choose to be slain by your sacrilegious, deadly hands for Christ the Son of God, the giver of eternal life? We who see that we cannot otherwise please God the Father, unless, being pressed by you to deny his only Son of God, we confess through death itself that he is truly the Son of God.

Your detestable mind takes it ill that we say Christ the Son of God is the Word of God, the Wisdom of God, the Power of God, true God of true God, born of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, light of light, born not made, of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call ὁμοούσιον, through whom all things were made, without whom the Father would never have been. You take it ill, worm of Arius, that we defend this: that the splendor, power, greatness, eternity, divinity, are one, of the Father and of his only Son.

It is not new, what we envoys asserted in your palace, and did not cease to affirm, that it has always thus been believed and is believed by Christians, just as at Nicaea, against your Arian heresy and all errors, the sacred faith appears to have been set down in writing—if only you would at last open the eyes of your heart, pierced by the serpent's bites, you would find that this is the faith the church holds, this the faith she defends, which she knows was handed down to her through the blessed apostles. If you could, in a moment, traverse all nations, you would find, most stupid emperor, that everywhere Christians believe as we do, persisting in this defense of ours, desiring, as we do, to die for the Son of God. But your novel preaching and recent religion, under the pretext of faith, a blasphemy brought forth by you to the ruin of your own salvation, has not only thus far traversed the Roman boundary that was customary to the ancients.

It had no strength, and indeed with you working hard enough at it; but even where it had attempted to fix its roots, it withered, all the servants of God withdrawing from you, of course, and only your few remaining with you, whom the Lord foretold would be sown as tares among the wheat: all of which the artificer of fraud and death has provided and is providing for you, who through you entices and deceives very many by his crooked flatteries, who, though he is guilty of the whole crime, suggests to that most bitter heart of yours that you should punish us as though we were guilty of some crime.

But look at last, open the eyes of your heart, in which there is no light for you, but all is fog and vast darkness dwells, and you will find that your death, inflicted by your frail power, restores our inner life, that this rather leads us on to glory through fires, through swords, through chains and beasts, through whatever, in short, your rage together with that of your most pious emperor has decided to inflict for our death. With God protecting us, we are not only not extinguished, but are made to live more and more, we who remember that there is nothing above us except God; wherefore a soul devoted and given over to God blushes to yield to you, dead through your blasphemy, to a dog barking against the truth, to the worms swarming from Arius. As often as the souls of Christ's servants carefully examine the true force of torments, they consider that there is no greater torment than for a servant of Christ to be conquered by you, the servant of our adversary.

We remember the Lord having said: If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it. But whoever loses his soul for my sake will find it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange will a man give for his soul? The dignity of martyrdom compels us to despise the life of a Christian through death, since indeed a new kind of salvation has been granted through the Son of God; that I may not perish, I die. We know that this discipline has been handed down to us by divine authority, that we should guard the force of the warfare of so great a name without any terror, since indeed the desire for eternal remembrance has long since drawn us away from the longing for this light, and the fellowship of Christ has set us apart for trampling underfoot all earthly things.

It grows, O Constantius, the battle of your cruelty: but observe that the glory of Christ's soldiers grows too, nor are we finally held back from the battle-line of torments by fear, but rather we are summoned to the battle-line by your very torments. You will not be able to deny that this is so, when you see Christians throughout the whole world roused with equal and like warmth of virtue to wage the contest, when you see the soldier of Christ, the uncorrupted firmness of faith, that neither your detestable flatteries deceive it, nor the threats of your fury terrify it, nor the tortures of your butchery and the torments of your cruelty overcome it, since he plainly remains in us, and is always established with us, who said to the blessed apostles: I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. He is present everywhere, because he is omnipotent, the Son all-powerful, with whom the Father shares one eternity and divine power.

But it cannot be told with what great fog of unbelief you have been beset, and with what a cloud of darkness and errors your breast has been covered over, you who, while you pretend to be a Christian, yet strive to remove the Christian name from the midst of things. Amid these things you ought to see that readers will grant pardon, because the mediocre eloquence of my talent has not been able to describe you, for the merit of your impiety, in a way adequate for cursing you; for they saw that I had given a pattern to all who fear God, and provided material to those who would treat of it, by which order they might cut you down, set as you are without the roots of eternal life. And do not say that you are being rebuked by us with abusive words, if you hear from rustic, though nonetheless Christian, people things which you deserve.

We know that one ought not to curse, but rather pray for enemies: for the Son of God, though he be Lord of all things, yet when he was cursed, did not curse in return. Moreover, if the Lord of all things were to curse, all things would certainly collapse at the onrush of so great a majesty. You say, no doubt, to this: The Lord wished you, as his bishop, to be gentle, and you show yourself stubborn toward me. The prophets, the apostles, and the chorus of the gospels teach that one should not kill, you on the contrary deign to kill those dedicated to God. We Christians know that what is needed to appease him whom we worship is those things by which we know he is delighted and rejoices. If therefore what you do is to be reckoned able to please God, then all of us ought to be murderers, sacrilegious men, and blasphemers.

Constantius, you see how great is your madness: that cunning old deceiver, the circumventor of the innocent, is seen to have set up his seat in your mind, and do you think you have not yet been exposed? Do you, who are a wolf, still grow cold under sheep's clothing, you who are named a beast by the most holy prophets, a dog and a ravening wolf by the most blessed apostles, suborned, though you are a worker of iniquity, as though a minister of justice: and do you reckon yourself to be a man, when you bear nothing of a man except the lineaments and outward shape? You grieve to be called a monstrous beast, you who bear nothing of a man except the lineaments and outward shape.

Tell me, I ask, can you, killer of the innocent, be rightly called a Christian, and not rather insane, dull, and mindless, an enemy indeed of God's religion, in which piety, humanity, and all justice reside, in which we are not taught to return evil for evil, in which we are taught not to kill, but to be killed for the sake of the Son of God? You, in your sacrilegious attempt, seeing your vain dominion despised, bring on your torments; but there is a protector of the faith, a governor of salvation, a ruler of souls, whom you drive us always to deny, who is always present with us in our struggle, because he raises up champions and defenders of his divine name. Hence it is that against your unjust servants and ministers, that is, your fellow-executioners who torture us, we stand the stronger, we are strengthened so that our limbs, though beaten and mangled, may overcome your claw.

For how could a raging blow, long repeated, be able to overcome an unconquerable faith, when every soldier of Christ knows that he for whom he suffers is present with him, and rejoices at the endurance of his servants? We stand, indeed, servants of Christ, strengthened by his majesty, with free voice, uncorrupted mind, though naked before your frail weapons, but clothed with those arms which the blessed apostle begged us to put on, saying: For the rest, be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of his power. And: Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavens.

Therefore take up the armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand perfect, your loins girded in truth, wearing the breastplate of justice, and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace; above all taking up the shield of faith, with which you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with every kind of prayer and supplication, and watching therein. Therefore, since your cruelty and that of your father cannot overcome those thus armed, fortified with such power, as has often been said, we have stood and we stand, and until you consume our bodies, we shall stand, fortified by the saving shield of Christ, surrounded by the breastplate of his devotion, governed by the Holy Spirit, immovable, and more and more in all things the authors, driving away every voice of servitude.

For we are certain and confident that we can be led away from our fixed resolve by none of your snares, by none of your cunning, by no cavil, by none of your deceits, since indeed we know that the end of sins is death, and then life follows, which is forever; and let us embrace the counsels of the blessed apostle, and desire to be found his imitators and partakers, who asserts that though our old man is being corrupted, the inner man is being renewed. And if the earthly house of our body is dissolved, a heavenly one is being built; and that while placed in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord; with which apostle we shall not be able to render abundant praises to God in the heavenly kingdoms, unless we first come, purged through death, to receive the immortal rewards.

Therefore when our bodies have been scattered and utterly dissolved through you, then let us presume that we are most whole; when death has been inflicted through you, then we believe we are able to live the more. How can you still presume, Constantius, meanwhile ever most foolish emperor, to bring on those things which extinguish you, and give life to us in return? You are roused by evil and depraved counsel to extinguish us, you have been made swift to pour out the blood of the servants of the only-begotten Son of God, not knowing that by our blood heaven is opened, by our blood the burning of hell is extinguished. Worldly ambition admonishes you, heavenly greatness admonishes us, we who fear to lose eternal salvation.

We know that we ought to die for God; for just as fire at Tartarus will hold you forever, unless you make the transition from the camps of the devil to the army stationed in the heavenly camps, so we, if, despising your threats and your torments, we prefer to have our throat cut for the sake of the Son of God by you, a most savage beast and monstrous creature, shall be rejoicing in heaven. For blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; and it does not say: Blessed are they who inflict persecution. We Christians know that we were made soldiers of Christ for this, that in the unjust field of war declared by you, having confessed our leader, so that we might win the triumph of victories, we should die armed: hence the more savage you seem to us, the milder you seem too, when you deign to kill one who confesses himself a Christian.

But in this you are judged most wicked, that under the guise of love, and of one wishing to give counsel, you flatter us so as to cast us down, as if it were useful for us to be preserved by you, cast down from our rank, but condemned by God. We know that you are afraid lest, amid all these punishments devised by your detestable self, we should die in this perseverance of faith, and yet you bring on various harsh tortures. Thus you, who persecute us so hostilely, desire us to be variously tortured, and indeed at every moment; but you have decided not to have us killed, as though death alone made blessed soldiers of Christ, and not also torments, which the more grievous they are, the greater the glory of virtue they produce.

For indeed, we who know that the life of justice is more abundant and prolonged, do not turn our backs in this field of battle, we do not make the transition to your camp, enemy of God, but rather, placed amid these destructions inflicted by you, we desire to be presented to the fold of God, from which the devil holds you seized and possesses you: and yet I say this not that you should spare us. For you will find that we are Christians, as already those whom you have killed you have found stable in faith, patient in suffering, victors in the inquisition, through him, namely, who does not desert his confessors, whose soldiers, as you notice, recognizing ourselves to be, we engage bravely, we fight constantly.

For we know that it is a great glory, an immense sublimity, and a singular sanctity, to adorn the life of eternal salvation with the honor of suffering, that it is the greatest nobility to despise the torments of your power, and not to shudder to trample it, nor to fear your rage, you who so ragingly savage the innocent, who, though you are a teacher of blasphemy, and injustice, and all cruelty, yet reckon that you can be seen as a pious, prudent, and just Christian, blind and dull, and ignorant of the truth. Take note, devourer of the innocent, that in whomever Christ keeps watch, he cannot be conquered by your torments, he conquers hunger, he spurns thirst, he subdues by the vigor of his strength the squalor of prison and cell, the horror of punishments, he tramples every punishment, he crushes all tortures, nor does he fear the death which you threaten with great effort to inflict.

Do you think you overcome him who remembers it is written: What shall I render to the Lord for all he has rendered to me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. And: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress? Or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are put to death all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter, but in all these things we overcome because of him who loved us. What your side could take from us out of these saving precepts, I am utterly unable to see.

For although you do not cease, in raising up with all your effort those who consent to your depravity to entice us, as Epictetus and the others whom you have made yours and your father's satellites out of servants of God, yet far be this madness from us, that we should prefer the false to the true, or that any felicity of your kingdom offered by you should entice us: keep vain glory for yourself, and keep for yourself and your peers, whom a likeness in death has joined to you, all the prudence of your most stupid heart: leave us our folly, since we confess Christ the Son of God to be the true Son, we defend him to be of one and the same substance with the Father, since we profess that we desire to be killed for his sake, lest we deny his divinity: leave us this kind of folly. Why do you work to make us lose it?

Why do you think that the truth can be assailed by you, not knowing how strong it is by its own force? For why else do you see the people of God resisting with unconquered virtue against your fierce roarings and harsh torments? Except because this is the faith which we defend, the apostolic and evangelical faith. These resist your cruelty, these trample your rage, whose hope is of eternal immortality, and whose life is heavenly, and whose ardor is kindled into desire for the perpetual light, and whose salvation rejoices in the promised beatitude. For indeed, being so secure, knowing that we shall come to enjoy eternal life, we endure all things gladly, since we do not profess to think of our own torments, but of your torturer's punishments; we Christians weigh the losses of our bodies against the gains of the soul, we reckon the crown in our wounds, we triumph most joyfully in Christ over the torments and pains inflicted through you.

Remember, Constantius, from the fresh memory of your crimes, which you branded upon yourself in the city of Alexandria, how many by a single stroke of your signature you cast down into ruin, how many you caused to be cut off by the sword, how many to be consumed by hunger and thirst, or killed in prisons, how many you caused to be strangled by cutting off their breath; and yet amid all these cruelties against the holy martyrs whom your gladiatorial spirit has killed, while you rage against us, you rage more cruelly in holding back the sword, in taking pains that no swift remedy of death should come to their aid. We suffer our whole body to be torn apart and burned, proving that nothing befits the gravity and constancy of wise men so much as to be driven from their resolve and purpose by no terrors, but that it is most useful to be tortured for God, and not to be able to die.

Those bound over to God, endure perpetual torments, but you rather are prostrated and brought to nothing. Take what is set down in the twenty-sixth psalm: The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defender of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? While the wicked draw near against me, to eat my flesh. My enemies who trouble me, they themselves are weakened and have fallen. If camps should stand against me, my heart shall not fear. If battle should rise up against me, in this will I hope. One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Therefore, since the power of righteousness is perfected in these sufferings, since, because Christ suffers in us, we do not even feel the punishment, for the reason that where there is no guilt, there is no penalty either, how did you suppose you could overcome by these means those dedicated and devoted to God, to whom faith supplies unconquered increases of virtue? I believe indeed, nor does the truth deceive me, that, although you still press with all the powers of your butchery to tear apart limbs, and though as a raging torturer you long vex the mangled joints with our blood, yet you can never overcome the household of God, you can never prevail to conquer the army of Christ, you cannot subject it to sorrows, you cannot bend it by afflicting punishments. We Christians refuse no tortures nor any death; we cannot tremble before your tyrannical commands, nor before the swords of your judges, because, armed with the sword of God, we resist you.

The blessed Apostle says to the Ephesians, "Finally": Be strengthened in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for your struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness. You, through whom all the demons rage for our destruction, cannot overcome those clad in the armor of God; therefore we exhort you at last to surrender to us, lest you be tormented through all ages together with those whom the Apostle describes. Thus the sons of light cannot be conquered into the darkness of your prison by a son of darkness, as though those in whom he who is the founder of light deigns to dwell could feel darkness.

Virtue must needs bear what mortal nature has taught can be borne; for if you try to consume our limbs with fire, we shall feel that you are burned in our bodies more than we, since we, who run gladly and readily to death for the faith, presume that we cannot lose life but rather gain it, and indeed an eternal life after a fragile one. Assuredly the edge of your sword always stands drawn, ready for the death of Christians, and yet this point of your sword seems to us softer than any lead, as does the edge of your soul. We endure all things secure in our suffering, as though we were the ones inflicting the torments we suffer, since he who rages against us through you is overthrown by our faith.

For we know that we cannot be destroyed by death into that everlasting malignity, we who have believed in Christ, the sole Son of God, the bestower of eternal life; but we believe and rightly presume that even the bodies which you now burn, torture, and mangle will rise again to light and everlasting life. For if, after we are put to death by you, we knew that we should be nothing thereafter, we should indeed be most foolish not to take thought for this life, that it might be as long-lasting as possible, and full of every comfort; which could have happened to us, had we thought it better to submit to you rather than to the decrees of God; but now, since if the present life is taken away by you an immortal one is received, it is necessary for the servants of the Son of God to despise this present life, with all its goods, for the sake of the Son of God, since every such loss is outweighed by immortality.

Consider, Constantius, how great was the virtue, how great the strength of soul, what firmness of faith there was in those whom you have slain, and is in those who still resist your sacrilege; consider that either those blessed martyrs, whom we now perceive to have been established by God's power in the heavenly kingdoms, or these whom you have not yet been able to kill, have stood against you, a monstrous beast, who do not cease to threaten us with things speakable and unspeakable, though it would always have been far more tolerable for you—desiring as you have always done and still do—to have rival emperors rise up against you, than to have confessors of Christ the Son of God stand forth as victors. For it had pleased your heart, beset by the darkness of every error, and your mind, blinded by deep gloom, first to turn us all from God through your heresy and make us your clients, and then your fellow-satellites.

But truth, which you attempted to contrive in yourself, has conquered you and itself in you; for it prevails by its own force. We are, in short, expecting at every moment that, beyond the torments you have already inflicted, you will add still more by appointing fiercer executioners, more ferocious avengers, who—since by God's mercy we, through the vigor of faith, trample down threats, tortures, and torments—may either fall upon soldiers devoted to God, who resist your deadly edicts, with the sword, or crucify them, or scorch them with fire, or mangle our vitals and limbs with any unheard-of kind of punishment; so that we may stand even now, always to stand, unmoved, through the Lord, since indeed it is not we who overcome your ragings, but he himself in us, by whose help we are ruled, by whose power we are kept safe. For how great are you, or of what sort, that you should be able to strip us of these goods which have been bestowed upon us by God?

You seize us, you deny us, you make us destitute, you condemn, you conquer, you burn, you kill us even by wretched means, and yet you cannot overcome the unconquered faith of Christians. By this you ought to understand that it has come to pass that you too shall receive the punishments of your error and cruelty; and, as for us, that through this proposed difficulty the narrow path leads on high to the reward of immortality, we shall not be able to yield to your cruelty, we who know that martyrdom is a singular imitation of the Lord's fortitude. The way of the martyrs is indeed full of labor and difficulty, and steep enough, so that no one can fulfill it by human strength; but we, who are aided by the help of divine support, must always trample upon you, as we now trample upon you. Hence it is that it pleases us not only not to fear you, the adversary of God's religion, but also of our own accord to provoke you.

You are provoked, since we always await—not that you should show mercy, unmerciful as you are, but that you should kill us: hence it is that our happiness cannot be split apart, because even when we are slain for the Son of God, he himself lives in us through love, he who is our strength in tribulation and our arousal, our fortitude in the battles of persecution. For in whatever ways you wish to display yourself against the worshippers of God, you will never be able to empty out the sealed virtue, since indeed worldly torments neither entice nor terrify it. Since these things are so, what else shall I call you, persecutor of the house of God, but wretched, who obey the instigations of your robber demons, driven by whose goads you have contrived to perpetrate these things, through whom, with your sacrilegious persuasion clinging to your heart, you gladly err. Indulge your folly, unknown to yourself; and would that you wished to err and be foolish only along with your fellow-blaspheming Arians!

You try to drag us too into the fellowship of your evils, you proscribe us, you despoil us; but we know that poverty sought for Christ's sake is a kind of the greatest happiness. You inflict death upon us, executioner; not only do we not withdraw our necks, but we offer them, that we may be slain for the sake of the only Son of God. To what end have I related these things? That you might know your punishments have no power against the servants of Christ, and that we cannot be terrified by that which we always expect to come. You take it ill that you are called a heretic, yet you dare to say that the Son cannot be compared or made equal to the Father; we, who maintain one deity of the Father and the Son, say the Son is equal to the Father. We believe as the blessed Apostle Paul believed, who says of the Son: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

What does it mean, "being in the form of God"? Nothing other than that the Son is, as God the Father is, unchangeable, unconvertible, inestimable, ineffable, eternal, perfect. Nothing other than that the Son inhabits that same inaccessible light which the Father does; nothing other than that there is one divine sublimity of the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit, abiding in the blessed Apostle, already then beholding all your hearts of heretics, added an interpretation of what it is for the Son to be in the form of God: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. The blessed Apostle calls the Son equal to the Father, manifesting one deity of Father and Son; and do you dare, with sacrilegious boldness, to say to your satellites and partners in your sacrilege: We cannot make the Son equal to or comparable with the Father? Or why do you suppose the Lord said, He who has seen me has seen the Father also; and, I and the Father are one?

Unless it is that there is one power of the Father and the Son. You say that the Son has a beginning; but we say he is without beginning: since indeed everything that has a beginning must necessarily also be able to have an end. Therefore, since we believe the only Son of God to be eternal, that is, co-eternal with the Father, and you enemies of God deny this, do we not most rightly call you demented, sons of pestilence stuffed full with every folly? Of whom the blessed Apostle cries out, as once of the Jews: And even as they did not approve of having God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting. And to the Philippians: Be imitators together of me, brethren, and observe those who walk so, as you have our example.

For many walk, of whom I have often told you, and now tell you weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. And to Timothy concerning you, Constantius, and your most beloved lost associates: Now the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared. The Holy Spirit still strikes and slays you by the mouth of the same blessed Apostle: In the last days perilous times shall come. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, proud, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, wicked, without natural affection, without faith, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, without kindness, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasures more than of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof; and from such turn away.

And below: Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith; but they shall proceed no further, for their folly shall be manifest to all, as theirs also was. And below: The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires will heap up to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and will turn away their hearing from the truth, and will be turned to fables. Abandoning the apostolic faith, turned to fables, so that your discourse can creep like a canker, though the Holy Spirit by the Apostle's mouth foretold it, you call the Catholics erring, and a little later you call that very thing which you used to call Catholic, and which you compelled men to accept, a blasphemy.

Likewise a little further on, that which you had just now asserted at Antioch against Aetius to have been blasphemy, you now again establish as Catholic; whence you also judged that Aetius should be at Constantinople, because you have approved him as Catholic. You should know from this very fact how much difference there is between the true and the false, since though you yourself, as it seems to you, are skilled, and have a designated number of dictators, yet we perceive that you have been able to persuade no one except those who feared your butchery. But we, for whom nature suffices for speech, strangers to all learning, and hence strangers to letters, are able to destroy every heresy, because the matter itself and the truth speaks. You and your helpers have added to letters and thence another full art; we know only sacred things.

Letters; our speech is common, but yours polished, ornate, which might even be called eloquent; and yet your sweet speech, sought out by art, is able to persuade none of the Christians, except him who is not one but is only called such, as you, who though you be a wolf are judged by the ignorant to be one of the sheep. Who is so foolish, unless he has drunk in all your madness as you have? Who among the servants of God is unwilling to be honored by death in the service of devotion? Who is there who does not desire to pour out the blood of his own veins for Christ, since such a death makes life more complete, and finds eternal glory? We stand, as you perceive, protected by the power of God, shod with the precepts of the Gospel, immovable with fixed step, lest our footsteps be able through you to be swept away in headlong fall.

We stand holding the shield of faith, so that the smoking darts hurled by the enemy through you cannot altogether take effect, since they are always beaten back upon you. Our heads are fortified with the helmet of salvation, the word of the Lord is in our mouth, so that the enemy who has taken his stand in you may be struck down by the spiritual sword, laid low and likewise scattered; you will perceive that the holy faith, which you were compelling us to cast off, is the shield of our soul, and a strong and impenetrable breastplate woven together, which no darts of the devil hurled through you are able to pierce. Seeing such perseverance of the Christians, you say: The Arian dogma, once undertaken by me, must be defended; you speak thus, erring with a seemingly honest intent.

For you feel that nothing in human affairs is more excellent than religion, and that it ought to be defended with the utmost force: you defend it with the sword; but we know that religion is to be defended not by killing, but by dying for God, and by enduring all these evils which you inflict. Defending religion by such a manner, what will your cruelty be able to conquer? For if any one of your soldiers, in this frail military service of your empire, has kept faith to you, a mortal to a mortal, in some outstanding deed, he becomes more acceptable and dearer to you; if he has perished serving you, a vain man, he attains the highest glory, because he fell in death for you his leader: how much more must faith be kept by us, the soldiers of his clemency, toward God the eternal Emperor!

Since the duty of devotion we have undertaken compels us to do these things, you, because you are blind in not believing that Christ is true God, the Son of true God, because you are simply unhappy in that you have by no means escaped the darkness of eternal death, wished also that we should return to our old blindness, so that, not simply but detestably, we might see with light and yet have lost our prudence. For when we recognize that there is for you a single condemnation of death, because you are unwilling to believe, and that there would be a doubled evil for us, if, having rejected our faith, we should prefer to return to destruction, how could you have presumed that we could be separated from the love of God either by your false blandishments—by which, the more they entice, the more they destroy—or by all the kinds of cruel torments?

Who would reject so great a felicity offered to him, unless he be more unhappy than you, seeing that by the confession of a single utterance, "I am a Christian," adversities are overcome, joys arise, kingdoms are laid open, eternal empires are prepared? You say: Deny the Son of God, or the power of my kingdom will kill you. How much better it is to be killed by an enemy of Christ than by Christ! How excellent it is to be slaughtered by you, a friend of antichrist, and to be given life by Christ! Who would not wish to be found a partaker and companion of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and all the just, rather than of Judas, whose imitator you have become? In prison, through your plague-bearing Herod, John the Baptist was punished; Herod's savagery killed James; the apostle John was banished to an island; blessed Peter was crucified; blessed Paul the apostle was bound, shut up in prisons, scourged, and often stoned, and finally killed.

But all these, by enduring those things most gratefully because they had become friends of God, we, perceiving this, likewise prefer to be slaughtered by your cruel hand rather than yield to your butchery. Why do you hold us in hatred, why do you persecute us with such savagery? Surely because we confess ourselves Christians: and those blessed ones, of whom we have made mention, were killed for the sake of the only Son of God, your co-tyrants, because they called themselves his servants. The Holy Spirit says through the mouth of the devout David, in the person of our people: If we have forgotten the name of our God, and if we have spread out our hands to a strange god, shall not God search this out?

For he knows the hidden things of the heart: because for your sake we are put to death all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter; and you, Constantius, meanwhile enslaved to Arian idolatry, emperor that you are, say: Fear the gnashings of my madness growing fierce again for your destruction, and be apostates with me. Hearing this, you do not wish to heal your own wounds, but rather proceed with blind and irrational fury at the instigation of those who insinuate themselves into your mind, and, though you do not know it, incite you to rage—those spirits to whom, by denying the only Son of God, you are known to sacrifice; who, because they can do us no harm by themselves—for we are protected by the greatness of God—persecute us through you their satellite, whom they perceive to be their most hostile enemies, and exercise through you, their lover, as violent a savagery as they can, thinking that through your intervention as executioner they will violate our faith.

It is the teaching of all the sacred Scriptures, that to believe in the Son of God is the first and consummate justice. Hence it is that, when the questioner is defeated in you, those demons are conquered in you, because victory is granted to us not by the strength of our frail bodies, but by his clemency; he supplies strength sufficient that amid every instrument of your butchery we remain unmoved, that we be not broken by the pains of wounds, nor by the blows of torture, but rather be uplifted; hence is the true worship of God, in which the minds of the worshippers present themselves to God as unblemished victims. And do you think that any worshipper of God is so slothful and stupid that he is not roused by the ardor of so great a longing, and armed, incited, spurred, and finally set aflame by those torches of love with which the holy prophets, apostles, and martyrs were inflamed?

Which of us, I ask, does his soul not urge to be killed for Christ at your cruel hands? Whom does it not press on to the glory and heights of martyrdom, not only through these things which you administer, but even through crueler ones? Since your torments are easily overcome, if the glory of those very torments is set before the eyes. For that which lacerates is not considered, where so great a reward of the punishment is offered. By incorruptible rewards, Constantius, your torments are conquered, and torture is trampled underfoot, death is subdued, which, when it is inflicted, rather restores life. Your wounds inflicted, emperor, would grieve, if they did not immediately make us friends of God. And, since we presume that then truly shall we live, if we are struck down by you for the sake of the Son of God, then losing nothing of salvation, how could it be possible that we yield to your empty gnashings?

You have thought that we could be, and can be, subdued by your force, and I believe you still think so in vain. How long, Constantius, will you abuse the patience of God? Nay rather, I urge you, driving these things from your dark thorn-bushes, let your foolish mind receive those thoughts which can set you in the way that leads to the kingdom of God.

Take hold pleasantly of that which would lead you to the banquet of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the friends of God—you, who, a man of utter injustice, have dared to esteem yourself just, setting yourself above all the bishops constituted by God's judgment over holy Church, and rejecting the holy faith which the Church has always held and holds, having striven to preach the blasphemy uttered by the mouth of your sacrilegious Arius, now through your satellites, now by your edict, now with your mouth filled with unclean spirits, and to call yourself justly a perfect worshipper of God and one who does all things holily, when it is found that you have not yet been surpassed in cruelty, nor in detestability, nor in blasphemy, by any of those kings who are called tyrants.

Since these things stand thus in the book which is entitled "Of the Apostolic Kings," because I have already laid open your imprudence, now I wish you to know this, that unless you convert in time, unless you believe, as we do, that the only Son of God has always reigned with the Father, and that the Father has never been without the Son, that the kingdom of the Father and of his only Son is one, and that the Father and the Son possess one Godhead, you shall perish forever: since Arius your teacher called the Son of God a creature, and you have extolled his blasphemy with praises even to heaven.

We press you, we beg you, we urge you to become most beloved of God, and you complain that you suffer injury from us; thus you defend the empty censure of your dignity, as though this would snatch you from perpetual torments; you raise a proud head above the Lord's priests, not noting what is written: Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. The Apostle says of the only Son of God, whom you persecute in us, that being in the form of God he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man: he humbled himself unto death, even the death of the cross.

He who was, and is, and shall ever be in the form of the Father, being indeed the true Son, indeed unchangeable and unconvertible, since he is God, the almighty Son of the Almighty, nevertheless deigned for our salvation to humble himself, that he might make us, lying prostrate and cast down, upright and exalted; and it is his holy humility that has made you, a rabid dog, bark against his divine majesty, seeing only those things from the sacred Scriptures which are written concerning the humility he assumed, passing over those which tell of his eternal divinity. What do you answer to this, Constantius—you to whom the bishops of your Arian dogma repeatedly acclaim that you are bishop of bishops: do you believe that those dying for the sake of the only Son of God will possess the kingdom of heaven, or do you not believe it? If you believe it, why do you drive us to deny his eternity? Why do you not cease persecuting us, who believe in him?

Why are you so restless and always hostile toward us, showing yourself a violent persecutor, but under the title of peace a treacherous enemy? I grieve that you have acquired for yourself such great evils: I mourn for you, that you are placed in every respect without hope of eternal life. Moreover, though you tear us not only with swords but also with your teeth as it were more honorably, bishops were endowed who excelled the rest in dignity, or virtue, or doctrine. Though you gnash your rage, yet hold it certain that we, protected by God, are to overcome it; nor deign to despise us in this, that you see our bodies frail; for what is most important, we are strong, upright and fortified in wisdom, having ornaments and defenses in our hearts and in our senses. Whence now do we see ourselves adorned? Whence do we perceive ourselves fortified and safe? Whence do we know ourselves wise?

Unless because we both avoid your blasphemy, and gladly hand over our mortal bodies to your sword on behalf of the Son of God, knowing that, though you may be able to destroy our earthly dwelling, you cannot destroy the heavenly one which we possess. For this very reason we know that good and evil things have been set before us, so that all the strength of our prudence might be exercised in discerning good things from evil. What is more foolish than truly to deny that you yourself are God? What is wiser than to trample your unspeakable head and to please God by this deed? Hence it is that you perceive us ready to stand with all our strength in the contest of justice, with integral faith, devoted virtue, uncorrupted mind, standing undaunted in the battle line which has been proclaimed by you, soldiers of God fearless.

Bravely also is the shield of faith borne by us, whereby, with God protecting, whatever the devil hurls through your hands is extinguished, because our feet are shod with the teaching of the gospel, and armed with spurs. Though you be august, yet in you is crushed the roaring serpent bent on the death of us innocents; since indeed he cannot through you bite and trip up his own executioner: for God wills us to be pressed by you, not indeed that we should abandon the faith and the way of the patriarchs, apostles, and martyrs, but that, though forced by you to deny the only Son of God, we should not refuse even to undergo death. We are not so foolish and perverse as you, that we should prefer to shake off the things that bring salvation and take up mortal things instead; we are not fleeing the aid of heavenly medicine.

We foresee that, although the physician cuts with iron, burns with cautery, brings the patient by the burning of mustard to every kind of pain, yet it is not an enemy's act to be cut, cauterized, eaten away, and bitten: for it is good precisely because it removes useless pains by means of pains applied for the sake of health. God wills us to dissolve death by death, to shake off eternal torments by temporary torments, to empty out future perpetual punishments by your punishments; we, namely, who, when you have taken life from us, presume rather that something greater can be conferred, that is, an eternal life in place of a temporary one, an incorruptible and perpetual one in place of a fragile and fleeting one. You do not think it enough for you that those confessing themselves Christians should be punished only by the sword, unless you inflict upon their bodies every kind of torment.

It makes no difference by what kind of death you deign to punish us, provided that through these we are admitted to enjoy eternal life, provided that through these your rage is put to death while we on the contrary are brought to life. For if you think it wretched that I would rather be killed by any cruel torment for the Son of God—to say nothing of the eternal glory of the blessed martyrs—I know that by whatever manner death must come. I will indeed give you many who perish more cruelly in their beds, whom some inward suppuration has swollen, and the pain of struggling sinews has contracted. What matters is from what cause, not from what stake I hang. What do you say, most foolish king? Am I sent by you to these torments, to this punishment, unjustly, or justly? If unjustly, the cross that is fixed will be yours, the one fixing it, not mine: if justly, then my own guilt for my crime, not your punishment, will begin to torment me.

But as to the outcome, it makes no difference whether I die by nail or by lance through you, with hands bound behind my back or stretched out and spread wide; whether prone, bent, or upright and raised; it makes no difference whether you kill me resting in bed, or cut my throat as I stand with a sword, or take off my head with an axe, or bind me to a stake or to a cross, burn me with fire, or bury me alive in the earth, hurl me from a rock, or drown me in the seas, or with a sling exerting great force in one vast blow strike my head far from me, or, subtler than all subtlety, play with an arrow fixed for a very long time in my body; though your cruelty devise a hundred thousand forms of punishment, from all of these there will come to me, through that death inflicted by you, immortality alone.

I cannot but rejoice when you heap up such things, since through these torments I know that every torment can be brought to an end. For as for those things which are external, and which I judge can happen through your savagery, I judge that they pertain nothing to me—whether birds or dogs tear my body, cling to my body; whether wild beasts leap upon those cruel eyes of mine while you look on; whether, lying on the ground, I am reduced by claws and teeth even to the bones—since after all these things I am safe with God. For when you have consumed my body by such deeds of your bestial savagery, the Maker of all things will restore and repair it, and indeed from corruption into eternal incorruptibility. But you, our most unjust persecutor, should know that an unending punishment awaits you; do not think you will bear it unpunished, you who have judged that the name of the only Son of God should be subjected to your footsteps, impiously and wickedly trampled.

It is the voice of the blessed apostle: that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed, which glory we are indeed to possess, if we choose to be killed by you rather than to deny the Son of God. When that revelation and brightness shall have shone upon all of us believers, his servants will be forever blessed, placed in his kingdom; you, on the contrary, if you judge that you must persist in your perfidy, shall be in the outer darkness, a deserter indeed of the army and an assailant of truth, one who has done the will of the devil, whence it is necessary that you, unless you draw yourself out of his snares, be tormented with him in unquenchable fire, as it is written.

We say these things not at all of our own accord: for concerning you, transgressors, concerning you, blasphemers, who deny that the only Son of God is truly the Son, and concerning all who refuse to believe in him, we read as set down by the most holy prophet: Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched: you shall be forever, if you remain in this madness, in inextricable darkness.

For just as we who confess the Son of God shall obtain the rewards of immortality and possess perpetual light, so it is necessary that you, his denier, be carried away into setting and eternal darkness; you will be led along that way which you hold, not, as the Arians falsely tell you, to heaven, but to the visible citadel of the world, to the left hand of the wicked, and to impious Tartarus; for it is the way of that renegade, whose every will you, his satellite, are found to fulfill; it is, I say, the way of that serpent, who turned you from the heavenly journey to hold this path of injustice. This is that broad and spacious way of which the Lord speaks in the Gospel, saying: How wide and spacious is the way that leads to destruction!

If therefore you refuse to take counsel for yourself, it cannot be doubted that you are among those whom blessed John strikes, saying: Now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; if anyone does not bring forth good fruit, he shall be cut down and cast into the fire. You, then, and all your fellow-participants, since you are the most bitter trees bearing the fruit of death, sinning as you do against God, unless you make the passage on the heavenly road, you shall be cut down, and hurled down you shall come, quicker than word, into the deep abyss, whence without doubt you shall see those whom you now unjustly persecute, just as that rich man then saw Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the friends of God, and of all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs.

You shall not escape those torments, Constantius, unless first of all you believe that the only Son of God is truly the Son of God; then, as has often been said, that he has always reigned with the Father, and reigns now, that is, without beginning and without end, you shall have confessed this, and you shall have transferred yourself from the wicked assembly of the Arians to the Catholic Church, so that we may confess as Catholics that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are a perfect Trinity, and have one deity.

So you hate Christians, and persecute them in every way, as though your malevolence could conquer those who, having entered on a hard and rough path, though held in contempt, mockery, and hatred by you, nevertheless in all this present life are willing to be poor, humble, ignoble, subject to your injuries, believing that, by enduring all things known to be bitter for the sake of God, they will come to those excellent rewards which the apostle relates are to be obtained, those which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, which the Lord has prepared for those who love him. Therefore, since God will show those things to those who love him, we, loving God, when we displease you, when we are struck by you, presume that we please God. For your deadly sentence can have no authority to punish us forever, since you who condemn are yourself to be condemned, indeed to this end, that you should pay eternal penalties.

But as for us, whom you torture, tear, and kill, eternal joys shall receive us, vast and immense happiness shall possess us, and everlasting blessedness shall be ours. Know therefore that power has rather been given to us by God, so that, while you think you condemn us, we condemn you; while you presume you can punish us, we punish you, sacrilegious Constantius. For indeed he whom you deny deigned to give to his bishops the authority that whatsoever we shall have bound on earth shall be bound also in heaven. We endure temporal evils for God's sake, that we may be able to obtain eternal goods; we flee the temporal things which are offered to us by you as though they were goods, precisely because those goods of yours are followed by eternal evils.

Therefore we choose to endure present things which you think harmful to us, so that, while illustrious confession persists in us, we may deserve to obtain eternal and immortal goods, just as you also, with those who are found to have obeyed your will out of fear of you, and to have abandoned the commandments of God, since indeed they have chosen to prefer present goods and to despise future ones, are about to fall into immortal evils. For they are to be desired above gold and much precious stone, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. For your servant keeps them, and in keeping them there is great reward.

We know that this life, which you labor so greatly to take away, is very brief; we know too that both the goods and the evils of this life are brief, but that the goods of that eternal life, which we desire to attain, are everlasting; for we know that in place of these brief goods, in which you delight and take your pleasure, eternal evils will befall you, and that for us Christians, whom you despise, and whom you do not cease to mangle with all the powers of your empire, eternal goods will follow after these brief evils. That this is so you have read in the 125th Psalm: The Lord has magnified his doing with them. And further: They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves.

And in the 127th: Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways: you shall eat the labors of your fruits; blessed are you, and it shall be well with you. It shall indeed be well forever for those who have not denied the Son of God, who shall possess the labor of their holy confession: but for you, contrariwise, if you shall judge that you must always remain in this madness in which you now live, it shall be ill forever, receiving those things which now Judas Iscariot receives: then you shall see us suppliant, and yet all the lamentation of your penitence shall be to no effect, since indeed here either eternal life or death is acquired.

These things we have always willed in our heart; these things we wish you to know we think upon day and night—your perpetual torments, and the eternal rewards and merits of God's servants; what is threatened as punishment for you who deny his name as persecutor; but what, on the contrary, is promised for everlasting glory to those who confess.