In Defense of Saint Athanasius, to the Emperor Constantius

You compel us, Constantius, to condemn our absent fellow-priest, the devout Athanasius: but we are forbidden by divine law to do this; you drive the priests of the Lord more widely by royal authority to the shedding of blood, ignorant of the laws of justice handed down to us by God, attempting to take them out of our minds. Or will you be able to assert that it is permitted by God that one absent, unheard, and—what is greatest—innocent, be condemned? For how do you suppose it permitted by God that the unheard be punished, when you see Adam and Eve, the founders of our race, struck by God's sentence only after being heard? "And God called Adam, and said to him: Adam, where art thou? And he said: I heard thy voice, O Lord, in paradise, and I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself.

And God said to him: Who told thee that thou wast naked, unless thou hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, that of this alone thou shouldst not eat? And Adam said: The woman whom thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And God said to the woman: Why hast thou done this? And the woman said: The serpent deceived me, and I did eat". Since therefore you observe that God gave this form of judging, since you have gathered from the sacred fountains of Scripture that God pronounced sentence upon those who had been called forth from their hiding places and had confessed, of what impudence have you been and are you, in giving to the servants of God a form of judgment which did not come from the law of the Lord?

And were you not afraid lest it might be said to God by us concerning you, as it was said of that renegade angel: "The serpent persuaded me"; "The Emperor Constantius seduced us; we believed him, thinking him to be a man." Could you not see that you might be struck by such a sentence of an indignant God as that by which the serpent too seems to have been struck? To whom it is said: "Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and above all the beasts of the earth that are upon the earth: upon thy breast and belly shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: she shall watch thy head, and thou shalt watch her heel".

Ought you not to have remembered, from this one sentence of the Lord, that you too could incur the offense of God just as that angel incurred it?—especially since you knew that your work too was serpentine. Or, since that one became a serpent out of the angels, did you suppose that you, out of men, could not become a serpent?

By no means: but tell me, I pray, what difference there is between your deed and that of this renegade, apostate angel: if he by falsehood seduced simple men, you did the same, and indeed to men who were not simple; if he, for the sake of some advantage, enticed their minds to eat of the fruit of that tree, you too, under pretense of peace, contrived to deal with them; and you said that you undertook this work for the good of all Christians—surely, upon examining your work, it is understood that you imitated that serpent: desiring to make men transgressors of God's commandments, you gave the precept that one unheard, absent, and—proclaiming himself able to clear himself of the crime charged—should nonetheless be condemned, and that a hearing should be denied him. Abel, the just, is slain, and Cain, being interrogated, receives his sentence; and do you wish an unheard priest of the Lord to be punished?

"And it came to pass," it says, "that Abel was a shepherd of sheep, but Cain tilled the ground. And it came to pass after some days, that Cain offered, of the fruits of the earth, gifts to the Lord. Abel also offered of the firstlings of his flock: and the Lord had respect to Abel, and to his offerings. But to Cain and his offerings he had no respect: and Cain was exceedingly sorrowful, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said to Cain: Why art thou angry? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? But if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door? Be still." And further on: "And Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go abroad. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and slew him. And the Lord said to Cain: Where is Abel thy brother? Who answered: I know not: am I my brother's keeper? And he said to him: What hast thou done?

The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth". Was it not lawful for God to punish before Cain was even summoned and interrogated? But he was unwilling; giving us the form by which we should begin to judge those committed to us—to us, I say, of whom he says through the prophet Jeremiah to the peoples consecrated to his majesty: "And I will give you shepherds according to my own heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine". "Condemn," you say, "him whom you do not know to have sinned." Why? Surely so that we, no longer bishops, might deserve to be called mad birdcatchers and executioners. Are you not afraid, I ask, in commanding these things, of the voice of the Lord speaking to the most holy Noah: "As the green herbs have I given you all things; save that flesh with the blood you shall not eat.

For I will require the blood of your lives at the hand of every beast, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whosoever shall shed man's blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God". Are you not afraid, I ask, having proved yourself the slayer of so many servants of God, to go on slaughtering the innocent even now, and to compel us to become partners in your funerals? When it was said to Moses by his father-in-law Jethro, why he detained the people the whole day, he replied, "The people come to me to seek judgment from God". If, therefore, it so befits the judgment of priests to be just that it should be said to be terminated by the judgment of God, how could you order us to condemn one unheard?—since you have found Moses saying: "The people come to me to seek judgment from the Lord".

If the people flock to us for this reason, that they may be judged according to the law of God, why then do you demand, "Condemn the innocent"? Since therefore this precept which you have put forth does not come from the law of God but is plainly established by the will of the devil, understand at last who you are. The wife of Lot was turned into salt because she could not fulfill what was commanded; would nothing evil happen to us, do you suppose, at your intervention—because forsooth you are king of the Roman empire—if we condemned a man weighed down with false charges? The sacred Scripture in Exodus says: Moses went up into the mount of God, and the Lord called him out of the mountain, saying: "Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: You have seen what I have done to the Egyptians, how I have carried you upon the wings of eagles, and have taken you to myself.

If therefore you will hear my voice, and keep my covenant, you shall be my peculiar possession above all people: for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation". How shall we be a holy nation, if we are to be the slayers of the innocent? How shall we be a kingdom most sacred to God, if we transgress his commandments? Likewise God says: "Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor". But you say, on the contrary: "Believe me when I speak falsehood, and slaughter the innocent." God warns, saying in Exodus: "Thou shalt not receive a false report: thou shalt not join thy hand to bear false witness for a wicked man. Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil: neither shalt thou yield in judgment, to the opinion of the most part, to stray from the truth. Neither shalt thou pity the poor man in judgment".

And further on: "Thou shalt not go aside in the poor man's judgment. Thou shalt fly lying. The innocent and just person thou shalt not put to death: because I abhor the wicked. Neither shalt thou take bribes, which even blind the wise, and pervert the words of the just". Against these precepts you compel the servants of God to pervert his judgment, attempting even to corrupt with bribes our conscience consecrated in justice to God. "If thou wilt hear my voice," says God, "and do all that I speak, I will be an enemy to thy enemies, and afflict them that afflict thee". Now let it be for you to prove that God commanded that the innocent be struck down, that the apostolic faith be abandoned, and that your perfidy be embraced.

Why did you think that these things, which are contrary to the commands of the Lord, ought to be commanded?—since you remember that even in Leviticus the Lord said to Moses: "Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: I am the Lord your God: According to the custom of the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt, you shall not do: and according to the custom of the country of Canaan, into which I will bring you, you shall not do; neither shall you walk in their ordinances. You shall do my judgments, and shall observe my precepts, and shall walk in them: I am the Lord your God. Keep all my precepts, and all my judgments: and do them: that the man who doth them, may live in them, I am the Lord". If in the precepts of the Lord you can show it written that the just are to be punished at the suggestion of the unjust, then you may rightly consider that you have acted and act correctly in all things.

Show it written in the commandments of God that the worshippers of him, sought out by calumnies, are to be destroyed by us bishops on behalf of you, the persecutor of his house. Why were you led by your Coarian associates to fulfill this malice? What cause compelled you, the emperor, to pursue by calumnies a man of God? Had you not read that God said in Leviticus: "Seek not to lie, nor let any man deceive his neighbor"? And further on: "You shall not lie, nor shall any man deceive his neighbor. Thou shalt not profane the name of the Lord thy God. I am the Lord. Thou shalt not do thy neighbor wrong. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God. I am the Lord your God. Thou shalt not do that which is unjust, nor unjust in judgment. Let it not be with thee to respect the person of the poor, nor honor the countenance of the mighty. But judge thy neighbor according to justice. Thou shalt not be a detractor nor a whisperer among the people.

Thou shalt not stand against the blood of thy neighbor. I am the Lord. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart: but reprove him openly, lest thou incur sin through him. Seek not revenge, nor be mindful of the injury of thy citizens. Thou shalt love thy friend as thyself. I am the Lord. Keep ye my laws". Since you remember that these things were written, do you suppose that we will become respecters of your person? You have sought the death of the innocent, and when you found yourself despised, you have stretched yourself out to inflict every kind of punishment. God says: "Thou shalt not fear the face of the mighty; but shalt honor the countenance of the aged man, and fear the Lord thy God. I am the Lord thy God". And did you suppose that you could be feared, and that Athanasius, whom God commanded to be honored, could be dishonored? Had you not read that God said: "You shall not do any unjust thing in judgment, in rule, in weight, or in measure.

The balance shall be just, and the weights equal", and is that measure just by which you decreed that an absent man was to be slain by us? If it is just that judgment be heard, one who cries out that he is unjustly punished while absent—the arguments of your justice will be made before God against us, who have rejected the precepts of your rashness. In Deuteronomy the glorious Moses is found to have said to the judges whom he had given the people: "Hear them, and judge that which is just, whether he be one of your country, or a stranger. There shall be no difference of persons: you shall hear the little as well as the great: neither shall you respect any man's person, because it is the judgment of God". And do you wish, Constantius—because, I suppose, you live in royal loftiness—that your person be respected? You are exceedingly desirous that he, whose blood you thirst for, be slaughtered by us, the priests of the Lord.

Hence therefore we are detestable to you, because we pronounce judgment according to the will of God. Hence you thought your executioner's right hand should be stretched forth to the sword, as though you could conquer by the sword those whom you saw, for the sake of the Son of God, not doubting to lose even their present life, nor shuddering at death. To the children of Israel the most holy Moses relates, by the precept of God: "See, the Lord thy God hath delivered to thee the land: go up and possess it, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath said to thee: fear not, neither be thou dismayed". If it was commanded to them, who bore the image of our calling, to fear no one but God, how much more does it befit us to fear no one but God, who do not desire to gain the lands of the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Girgashites, and the Amorites, but the heavenly kingdoms, but the everlasting love of God?

For how could the vain force of your empty dignity bend us, or how can it now, from this resolve, since we have determined to fear no one but God? We are not Christians of the sort who said: "Because the Lord hated us, therefore he hath brought us out of the land of Egypt, that he might deliver us into the hand of the Amorite, and destroy us"; but we are of those who said, and say, to God: "For thy sake we are killed all the day long: we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we overcome, because of him that hath loved us". We have not feared, nor do we fear, your threats—we who know that nothing can withstand God—lest we perish as those perished who heard from Moses: "Your brethren have discouraged your heart, saying: The people is greater and taller than we: the cities are great, and walled up to the sky: we have also seen the sons of the Anakims there".

We Christians do not fear your sword, we who presume that, once you, the enemies of God's religion, are laid low, we shall come to the banquet of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. We, God's soldiers, do not fear the power of your falling kingdom. We are not of the sons of that faithlessness who thought their enemies more powerful than God, that we should dread your fragile power: for if the Jews had not so believed—that is, that the Canaanites, Jebusites, Amorites, and other enemies could do more than God—they would surely never have disregarded the voice of Moses, saying: "Fear ye not, nor be ye dismayed.

The Lord your God, who is your leader himself, will fight for you, as he did in Egypt in the sight of all: and in the wilderness (as thou hast seen) the Lord thy God hath carried thee, as a man is wont to carry his little son, all the way that you have come, until you came to this place, going before you in a pillar of fire by night, that he might show you the way by which you should go, and in a cloud by day". If, after these salutary warnings, the children of Israel had not believed that those against whom they waged war could be more powerful than God, they would surely never have come to utter destruction. We know, therefore, that God is powerful enough to snatch us out of your hands, as we press on toward the heavenly kingdom promised to us: we shall not be able to fear your cruelty, above all we who have chosen to be punished by you rather than by God.

You said: "Condemn Athanasius." Whom, Constantius, were we to condemn? Him whom we see confessing the Son of God, as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs confessed? Or you, who deny, as your master Arius denied, as Judas Iscariot denied, and all the Jews? God says to Moses: "Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, and of those things which are on the earth beneath, and whatsoever are in the waters under the earth: thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them, for I am the Lord thy God, a jealous God, rendering the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation, to them that hate me, and shewing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and that keep my commandments.

And thou dost say these divine commands are to be trampled: Take up my idolatry, forsake God, kill my enemy, not God's enemy, Athanasius, so that you may be found among those who hate God, to whom he has promised to render unto the third and fourth generation; take care lest you not be loved by God along with those on whose account he says: Shewing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and that keep my commandments. Dost thou see, most prudent emperor, that this good thing seems to thee an evil, and this evil a good? Either deny that it is good, or deny that thou understandest good things to be evil? And if thou deniest evil things to be good, answer. Is it good to condemn the innocent, or evil? Is it good to forsake God and go after idolatry, or evil? If thou shalt say it is evil, it will be said to thee by us: Why then dost thou defend these things?

Again Moses cries out in Deuteronomy, saying: To keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and his testimonies, and his justifications, whatsoever he hath commanded thee: and thou shalt do what is pleasing and good before the Lord thy God, that it may be well with thee: and thou shalt go in, and possess by inheritance the good land, which the Lord swore unto your fathers. And thou hast chosen these things to be good, these to be pleasing to God, that in contempt of his majesty idolatry should be established by the power of thy kingdom, and that those who have confessed themselves his worshippers should be slain. Behold, saith Moses, I have set before you this day a blessing and a curse: a blessing, if you shall hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day.

Since therefore those are blessed who do not punish the innocent, those keep the Lord's commandments who refuse to condemn a man unheard, how dost thou think thyself blessed, when by thy own deed thou provest thyself set among the cursed? Or if thou art not among the cursed, why dost thou spurn Moses, who says: But if there be found among thee, in one of thy cities which the Lord thy God shall give thee, a man or woman who has done evil before the Lord thy God, transgressing his covenant, and going and serving strange gods, and worshipping them, either the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven. And below: Thou shalt bring forth that man or that woman, and shall stone them with stones, that they die: at the mouth of two witnesses, or three, he shall die.

Dying, he shall not die at the word of one witness; and the hand of the witnesses shall be first upon him to kill him, and afterward the hand of all the people: and thou shalt take away the evil from among you. If thou art not, Constantius, running with the cursed, why hast thou not obeyed the commands of God's servant Moses? Why, when he says that even an idolater is to perish only on the testimony of two or three witnesses, wouldst thou not even permit a hearing to be given to a man consecrated to God, and caused a hearing to be denied to him, to whom thou hadst been handed over by God? Him, I say, to whom, if thou resistest while he defends what is just, thou art commanded by the mouth of Moses to be put to death?

For that the judgments of the priest may remain inviolate, he speaks thus: Arising, thou shalt go up to the place which the Lord thy God shall choose that his name be invoked there for thee: and thou shalt speak to the priests, the Levites, or to the judge, whoever shall be in those days: and inquiring, they shall declare to thee the judgment, and thou shalt do according to all that they who are in that place, in which the Lord thy God has chosen that his name be invoked there, shall declare to thee, and observe most diligently: thou shalt do according to all that they shall appoint thee; according to the law, and according to the judgment which they shall pronounce, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the word which they shall declare to thee, thou shalt do whatsoever they shall show thee, thou shalt not turn aside to the right hand or to the left: and whatsoever man shall act in pride so as not to hearken to the priests who stand to minister in the name of the Lord God, or to the judge, whoever shall be in those days, that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel, and all the people hearing shall fear, and shall no more act impiously.

But thou sayest: in this place how did Moses, most devoted to God, make mention of priests, and likewise of a judge. Prove that thou hast been made a judge over us, prove that thou hast been appointed emperor for this purpose, that thou mightest lead us by thy arms to fulfill every will of thy friend the devil; whereas thou canst not prove that it was commanded thee not only not to dominate over bishops, but even so to obey their decrees, that if thou shouldst attempt to overturn their decisions, if thou wert found in pride, thou wouldst be commanded to die the death. How canst thou say that thou canst judge concerning bishops, when, unless thou obey them, thou already, so far as concerns God, hast been condemned to the penalty of death? Since these things are so, thou who art profane toward the household of God, why dost thou assume this authority over God's priest?

Since he allowed even the Jews themselves, while they remained in God's law, to have their judges from their own race. For if, says Moses, thou shalt say, I will set a prince over me, as do the other nations that are round about me: thou shalt appoint over thee whomsoever the Lord thy God shall choose, him shalt thou set over thee from among thy brethren: thou mayest not set over thee a man of another nation, because he is not thy brother. And it follows why he did not wish a foreigner to become prince, namely lest he should draw others to his own sect.

Therefore he says: Lest he cause us to return into Egypt, that is, to the worship of idols; as if he said: Who art thou, I ask, who hast usurped for thyself this authority, which God did not give thee, and even if he had given it, and had allowed it to belong to thee, thou oughtest first of all to have been a Christian, since it would be a crime for a stranger to judge the servants of God, an enemy of religion to judge the household of God. Then, if thou hadst been a Christian, and God had judged thee worthy to be made a partaker with the priests in governing his people, learn what manner of man he commanded thee to be, in Deuteronomy.

And it shall be, when he sits in his principality, write this in a book before the priests and the Levites, and it shall be with him, and you shall read it to them all the days of his life, that they may learn to fear the Lord their God, to keep all these commandments and to do these ordinances, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandments to the right hand or to the left, that he may be long-lived in his principality, he and his sons with him among the children of Israel. What of this kind hast thou, except all things contrary, except all things which assail the house of God?

First thou art a heretic, then a persecutor of the household of God; thou hast attempted and dost attempt to have Athanasius slain, as though thou didst not remember it is written: If there be a man hating his neighbor and lying in wait for him, and rising up against him, and striking him mortally, and he die, and he flee to one of these cities, the elders of that city shall send and take him thence, and deliver him into the hands of the avengers of blood, that he may die: thine eye shall not spare him, and thou shalt purge the blood of the innocent from among them, and it shall be well with thee. And again: One witness shall not stand to testify against a man for any iniquity, and for any sin whatsoever that is committed: at the mouth of two witnesses or three shall every word stand.

But if an unjust witness shall stand up against a man, accusing him of iniquity, then both the men between whom the controversy is shall stand before the Lord, and before the priest, and in the sight of the judge, whoever shall be in those days: and the judges shall inquire diligently, and behold, if the unjust witness has testified falsely, rising up against his brother, you shall do to him as he wickedly meant to do to his brother, and thou shalt take away the evil from among you; and the rest hearing shall fear, and shall no more presume to do this wicked thing among you. Thine eye shall not spare him: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. When thou seest these things done, dost thou say, murderer, that God has ordained this concerning thee?

I ask, what else is it to say, Condemn him whom you know to be innocent, act against the commandments of God, than to say: Tear out your hearts, take away from yourselves your senses, go on and slay your own souls, though seeing that there is a pit, pretend that you are blind, and cast yourselves headlong into the eternal abyss, plunge into that pit from which you see you cannot be rescued, take away your own life, take upon yourselves perpetual death? What else is it to say, Do what God has forbidden to be done, than: Be enemies to God, gain the devil for your friend, take care that you not attain to paradise, nor finally to the kingdom of heaven which God has promised you if you keep his commandments; love the infernal regions, love the burning lake, desire to be with all those who are forever paying penalties, desire to be called men of the devil.

These are the rewards which thy excellent counsels acquire, these are those excellent things which bring forth everlasting death, these are what plunge a man already near to heaven down into hell. Didst thou not yet know it was written, that thou shouldst ask us to do these evil things? There shall not be in thy bag diverse weights, a greater and a lesser: there shall not be in thy house diverse measures, a greater and a lesser: a true and just weight shall be to thee, and a true and just measure shall be to thee, that thou mayest live long, and that it may be well with thee upon the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee for an inheritance, because everyone who does this is abominable to the Lord thy God, everyone who does unjust things.

Since it is recorded in the sacred writings that whoever does not keep whole weights and just measures is abominable, dost thou believe we would then have been most acceptable to thee, had we pronounced an unjust judgment against him? Moses says, Cursed is he who removes his neighbor's landmarks; we are forbidden to remove landmarks and transfer them from place to place; and thou sayest, Depart, O priests of God, from the boundaries of justice. Cursed, says the Holy Spirit by the mouth of Moses, is whosoever perverts the judgment of the stranger, the orphan, and the widow; and thou, making sport for thyself with our blood, hast said: Punish him whom you do not know to have offended. We did not wish, Constantius, to be cursed along with thee; we desire rather that thou be found blessed with us in the holy Church.

We do not hearken to thy voice, which provokes us to incur God's offense; but we hearken to the voice of Moses, the servant of the Lord, saying: And it shall be, if you will not hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep and to do all his commandments, which I command you this day, that all these curses shall come upon you, and shall overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, cursed shall you be in the field, cursed shall be your barn, and your stores, cursed shall be the offspring of your body, and the produce of your land, the herds of your oxen, and the flocks of your sheep, cursed shall you be in your going out. The Lord shall send upon you weariness and affliction, and anxiety in all that you put your hand to do, whatsoever you shall do, until he destroy you speedily on account of the wickedness of your endeavors.

If it is not wicked endeavor to send false accusations, to persecute the worshippers of God, to introduce God's idolatry into the Church, to slay by military hand those who believe in the only Son of God, then these curses will be unable to overtake and seize thee and those running with thee. Thou hast summoned us to slay the priest of God, to destroy him through whom God has ordained that thou hearken to his precepts. And Moses wrote the words of this law in a book, and gave it to the priests and Levites, who bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to the elders of Israel.

And Moses commanded them on that day, saying: After seven years, at the time of the year of remission, at the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God, in the place which he shall choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing, having gathered together into the assembly men and women, and children, and the stranger who is within your cities, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, and hear and do all the words of this law: and that their children who do not know it, hearing it, may learn to fear the Lord your God all the days that they live upon the earth.

Thou persecutest him through whom the Lord has commanded that thou hearken; while he was engaged in human affairs thou sentest thy fellow-heretic George as his successor, although even if Athanasius had already been freed both bodily, it would not have been lawful for thee to send anyone, but it was and is in the hand of God, whom he would have deigned to appoint as bishop over his people, namely through his own servants, that is, the catholic bishops. For the power of the Holy Spirit for governing the people of God could not be fulfilled, unless it was he whom God had chosen, and upon whom hands had been laid by catholic bishops, just as, when Moses died, we find his successor Joshua the son of Nun filled with the Holy Spirit. The sacred Scripture speaks, saying: And Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of understanding. For Moses had laid his hand upon him. And the children of Israel heard him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses.

Dost thou see that thou hast gone contrary to the ordination of God, acting against the will of God, holding him slain by the edge of thy sword; since it would not have been lawful for anyone to be ordained unless Athanasius had died, and, Athanasius having died, a catholic bishop ought to have been ordained by catholic bishops. Sacred scripture speaks of God having said to Joshua the son of Nun: Moses my servant is dead: now therefore arise and pass over the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land which I will give to them: every place which the sole of your foot shall tread upon, I will give to you, as I said to Moses; the wilderness and Lebanon before you, as far as the great river Euphrates, and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coasts.

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you, nor forsake you. Can God be with his enemy George? Can He be gracious to one whom He has not ordained, whom He has not chosen? Such is George as Arius was, such as Valens and Ursacius are, or as he to whom you assigned me among the Germanicians, Aetius: for thorns cannot proceed except from thorns. That these things are so you will be able to gather by reading, from the acts of George himself, the testimonies of the Alexandrians; and although it pleases you that that blasphemer be wicked—for otherwise he would not be so dear to you, except in that he is wicked—yet I have set these things forth so that you may perceive your own extraordinary work.

Since therefore you know that God is not with George, but is with Athanasius, whom He appointed as bishop to His people, you will at length be able to recognize that you have attempted to destroy God's own ordination, that in Athanasius you have persecuted God Himself. For you hear God say to the successor of Moses: As I was with Moses, so I will be with you, and I will not forsake you, nor despise you. Behold, in another place: Be strong and act manfully, that you may observe and do according to all that Moses my servant commanded you: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may understand in all things whatsoever you do: and let not the book of this law depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do all things that are written therein: then shall you make your way prosperous, and then shall you understand.

Behold, I have commanded you: be strong and act manfully; do not fear, nor be afraid, for the Lord your God is with you in every place. It now remains for you to prove, whether you or George, that what you are doing proceeds from God's commands. For you hear God promise that He will be with the successor of Moses, just as He was with Moses, provided only that he keeps what is written in the book of the law. If then you do not find it written that you should do these things, it will finally be for your fairness to observe that God is not with you Arians, but that it is he who dwells in you who also dwelt in Cain. What cause, Constantius, drove you to do these things, that by the power of your kingdom, led on to such pride, you should have decreed that he must be put to death whom God chose for Himself in the priestly honor? Had you not found it written in the first Book of Kings?

Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor let the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, and executes judgment and justice in the midst of the earth. Why, passing over these things—you who ought at all times to do just judgment—did you compel us also to do injustice with you? You had decreed through us that the catholic be deposed, but the heretic confirmed: but when would men of sound mind have done that? For if the priest Eli, because he set his sons in the honor of the priesthood though unworthy, hears those things which he suffered from the Lord; what ought we to hear and suffer, if, condemning a catholic bishop—and that unheard—we should allow George the Arian to become bishop of the Alexandrians?

And there came, it says, a man of God, and said: Thus says the Lord: Did I not plainly reveal myself to the house of your father, when they were in Egypt in the house of Pharaoh, choosing it out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, that they should go up to my altar, and burn incense, and wear the ephod? And I gave to the house of your father all the offerings of the children of Israel for food. Why then have you looked with an evil eye upon my incense and my sacrifice, and honored your sons above me, that you should be blessed with them from the beginning in all the sacrifices of Israel before me? Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel: I said indeed that your house, and the house of your father, should walk before me forever: but now the Lord says: Far be it from me; for them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.

Behold, the days come, that I will cut off your arm, and the arm of your father's house, that there shall not be an old man in your house forever. And I will destroy the man of yours from my altar, that his eyes may fail, and his soul be grieved: and all the increase of your house shall die in the flower of their age. And this shall be a sign to you, that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they shall both die. If he received that rebuke for his sons from God, what should we deserve to receive on your account, Constantius? I believe it would be said to us: You have honored Constantius more than me; just as it was said to him, that he had honored his sons more than God. For what reason, you say?

Because if we had done your commands, we would be found to have despised the Lord's; because George is, as Eli's sons were, a son of pestilence, whom you judged should be set through us in place of the man of God, Athanasius. Furthermore, since God says: He who honors me shall be honored, and he who despises me shall be brought to nothing; if we had heeded your sacrilegious voice uttered against His divine commands, would we have honored God? Or rather, judging you to be nothing, striving to obey only His sacred decrees? Meanwhile, rejoice, for you are dishonoring God. For you hear Him say that all who despise Him shall come to nothing. Or will you deny that you have dishonored the Lord by removing priests and peoples whom He ordained? Or will you deny that you have dishonored the Lord, when against His holy things you compelled His priests to condemn one who was absent, unheard, and indeed assailed with false charges by you and yours?

Have you not then dishonored God, when you took away apostolic and evangelical tradition, and set up idolatry—which Arius built in his heart, and which the devil established—to be held by men who worship God? Since these things are so, it will now be for your prudence to judge what course is expedient for you: whether, correcting your errors here, having obtained pardon for such great crimes, you should determine to be found among the household of God; or, reduced to nothing, as the Lord promises to those who despise Him, you should begin to pay penalties forever, such as those pay whose paths you have chosen to follow. And that you may clearly see what perils await you, because you are dishonoring the Divinity, receive also what was said to Samuel concerning the sons of Eli: And the Lord said to Samuel: Behold, I do a thing in Israel, and whosoever shall hear it, both his ears shall tingle.

In that day I will raise up against Eli all the things I have spoken concerning his house: I will begin, and I will make an end. For I have foretold to him, that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity, because he knew that his sons did wickedly, and did not chastise them. And therefore have I sworn to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of his house shall not be expiated with victims nor offerings forever. If these things were promised to Eli on account of his sons' offense, what shall be promised to you on account of your sacrilege? If those things were promised to him forever, what shall be done to you who do so much? If God said that the sons of Eli spoke evil of Him, how much more shall He say it of you, who have taken up the blasphemy of Arius to attack the faith which the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and all the martyrs have held!

We beg you, meanwhile, to do penance for your deeds, considering at least what happened to the sons of Eli who dishonored God. Eli, says the scripture, was very old, and his sons went on, and their way was evil before the Lord. And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered themselves together against Israel to battle. And below: And the battle turned, and the men of Israel fell before the Philistines, and there were slain of the army in the field about four thousand men: and the people came into the camp, and the elders of Israel said: Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord our God from Shiloh, and let it come into the midst of us, and save us out of the hand of our enemies.

And the people sent to Shiloh, and they took from there the ark of the Lord, who sits upon the cherubim: and the two sons of Eli were with the ark of God, Hophni and Phinehas. And below: They overcame them, and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and every man fled to his own dwelling: and there was an exceedingly great slaughter, and there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen: and the ark of God was taken, and the two sons of Eli were slain.

And below: And a man running came to Heli, and said to him: I am he who came fleeing from the camp from the battle today. And Heli said: What word has come to pass, my son? And the man answered, and said: The man of Israel has fled from the face of the foreigners, and there has been a great slaughter among the people, and both your sons are dead, and the Ark of God is taken. And it came to pass, when he heard, The Ark of God is taken, he fell backward from his seat by the gate, and his back was broken, and he died; for he was an old and heavy man, and he judged Israel twenty years. If these evils came upon Heli, priest and judge of the Israelites, in one day, because he had not chastised his sons as was fitting, what do you suppose will come upon you, destroyer of the religion of God—this I have judged fit to prove to you in this place.

For as to what you will not deny you have said comes from the will of God, that we His servants should be subjected to you our persecutors—namely, that unless our faith, that is, this faith which is called by Lucifer Arian, had been catholic, you would never have received power over all the peoples—if this is so, then it was also possible that someone among those foreigners who had taken the Ark of God was better than a worshiper of God. Indeed you say that your faith, which we know to be heretical, has granted you this: but Maxentius, Nero, and all those persecutors of the house of God said that it was by the power of their gods that we Christians came under their dominion. Run through what happened to those who rejoiced that they had taken the Ark of God, who said that by the power of their gods they had conquered the Israelites, and you will find that you are one of those who have persecuted the house of God.

And the foreigners took away the Ark of God from Abenezer, and brought it into Azotus; and the foreigners took up the Ark, and brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it beside Dagon: and in the morning the men of Azotus rose early, and entered into the house of Dagon, and saw: and behold, Dagon had fallen upon his face before the Ark of God; and they took up Dagon and set him in his place again. And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the Azotians, and it tormented them, and struck them in their houses, in Azotus and its regions. And it came to pass, when they had risen before light, that Dagon had fallen upon his face before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord; and the head of Dagon, and both the palms of his hands, were cut off upon the threshold in a hundred pieces, and both the joints of his hands fell upon the threshold.

And below: And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon Azotus, and he brought upon them mice, and there was a great confusion of death in the city: and the men of Azotus saw that it was so, and said: The Ark of the God of Israel shall not remain with us: for His hand is heavy upon us, and upon Dagon our god. And they sent, and gathered together the rest of the foreigners to them, and said, What shall we do with the Ark of the God of Israel? And the men of Gath said: Let the Ark of the God of Israel pass over into Gath.

And it came to pass, after the Ark of God was carried thither, the hand of the Lord came upon the city, and there was a very great confusion: and He struck the men of the city from the least even to the greatest, and mice broke out among them in their seats, and the men of Gath made themselves seats of skin, and they sent the Ark of God into Ascalon. And it came to pass, when the Ark of God entered into Ascalon, the men of Ascalon cried out, saying: Why have you sent the Ark of the God of Israel to us, to bring death upon us, and upon our people?

And they sent and called together the lords of the foreigners, and said: Send back the Ark of the God of Israel, and let it be returned to its place, and it will not bring death upon us and upon our people: for there has been a heavy confusion in the whole city, very heavy, since the Ark of God entered: and those who lived, and did not die, were struck in their seats: and the cry of the cities went up even to heaven. Do you see, Constantius, how our God allows His religion to appear humbled by you foreigners, and indeed humbled to such a degree, that even you, persecutors of the true religion, may see that there is no other God besides our God.

But to return again to the cause of Athanasius; did you not know it is written in the first Book of Kings: And Samuel judged the people of Israel in all the sanctified places; that you should think it right for an innocent man to be condemned by imperial command over the priests of the Lord? You have read that Samuel judged the people of God in every sanctified place; and because we do not wish to depart from this just way of judging, we suffer persecution from you. But this is nothing new, seeing that Saul once persecuted the righteous Samuel—why did he speak the truth to him, even to the one by whom he had been anointed king, by whom the Lord had raised him to such glory? Saul persecuted the prophet and priest of the Lord because he was not in his right mind: for how else could Saul, in his sound senses, persecute one whom he knew to be the minister of God, filled with the Spirit of God?

He persecuted him whom he continually, because of the persecutor, unknowingly bewailed for his salvation. The Scripture says in the first Book of Kings that the Lord said to Samuel: How long will you mourn for Saul? Behold, I reject him, that he should not reign over Israel: fill your horn with oil, and come, I will send you to the house of Jesse at Bethlehem, for I have seen among the sons of Jesse one to be king for Me. And Samuel said: How shall I go, lest Saul hear, and kill me? He sought to destroy the one whom he had already recognized in many ways to be a man of God: the man of God did not cease to beg pardon for his persecutor; on the contrary, the son of destruction sought to take away his life: for Saul, the persecutor of Samuel, the priest of the Lord, went so far that he said to the Lord who said to him, Come, I will send you: And how shall I go? Saul will hear, and kill me.

Do you see, Constantius, that when men depart from God, they are esteemed not men, but beasts, wild animals, and robbers? Or in this, that you unjustly persecute Athanasius, will you not be compared to Saul? Seeing that you are so eager to slay innocent Athanasius, just as Saul desired to kill not only Samuel, but also David. Saul indeed threatened to kill those with whom he knew God to be. And Saul saw, says the Scripture, that the Lord was with David, and all Israel loved him: and Saul feared David the more. And Saul spoke to Jonathan his son, and to all his servants, that they should kill David. Answer, most shameless emperor: can one who has the Spirit of God do these things? At what time did Saul begin to do these things? Indeed, at the time when he was cursed and rejected through Samuel; for it is written that at that same time the Lord departed from him, and was with David instead.

By these things it is proved that you are Arians without the Spirit of God, who persecute Athanasius, a man full of the Holy Spirit. And David, it says, was wise in all his ways, and the Lord was with him, and all Israel and Judah loved David. Therefore, that you may recognize that you are doing to Athanasius what Saul did to David, hear what is written: And Jonathan the son of Saul loved David greatly, and Jonathan told David, saying: Saul seeks to kill you. And below: And Jonathan spoke to his father, saying: Do not sin, O king, against your servant David, for he has not sinned against you, and his deeds are very good, and he put his life in his own hands, and slew the foreigner, and the Lord wrought salvation for Israel; and all Israel saw it, and rejoiced. Why then do you sin against blood, and wish to kill David without cause? And Saul heard the voice of Jonathan his son: and Saul swore, saying: As the Lord lives, David shall not die.

And below: And war arose again, and David prevailed, and fought against the foreigners, and struck them with a great slaughter, and they fled from the face of David. And an evil spirit came upon Saul, and he was sleeping in his house, and there was a spear in his hand, and behold David was playing upon the harp with his hands: and Saul sought to strike David with the spear, and he struck, and David turned aside from the face of Saul: and he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled, and was saved. And it came to pass in that night, and Saul sent messengers to David's house, to watch him, that in the morning he might kill him. And David fled, and was saved: and he came to Samuel in Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him. And below: And Saul became exceedingly angry at Jonathan. And below: And he said: Let this be, take the young man, for he is a son of death.

And Jonathan answered his father: Why should he die? What has he done? And Saul lifted his spear against Jonathan, to kill him. Would Saul have spared him, who spoke the truth to him, seeing that he did not spare even his own son? Thus you also pass over the commandments of God, and establish your own. Finally, we do not marvel, if, because it is said that no one may be condemned in his absence, you persecute the priests of the Lord; when we see that Saul so persecuted those who served God. The Scripture speaks, saying: And the king said: You shall surely die, Abimelech, both you, and all your father's house. And below: And the king said to the runners standing about him: Bring forth, and slay the priests of the Lord, for their hand is with David, for they knew that David fled, and did not disclose it to me. And the servants of the king would not lay their hands upon the priests of the Lord. What do you say, most righteous king?

If those servants of the king are recorded as refusing to obey the king's command, if they are shown to have despised the precepts of Saul, lest they should act contrary to the commands of God—should it have been fitting for us bishops, trampling the commands of the Lord, to fulfill your sacrilegious, murderous orders? Is it therefore that you deem us fit for persecution, because we do not put your commands before those of the Lord? This also Saul did, as the sacred Scripture proves, saying: And Saul said to Doeg: Turn and fall upon the priests of the Lord. And Doeg the Syrian turned, and himself put to death the priests of the Lord, and slew that day three hundred and five men, all wearing the ephod; and he struck the city of the priests, Nob, with the edge of the sword, from man even to woman, and from infant even to suckling.

In like manner you have now attempted, and still attempt, to tear apart the bodies of those whom you see mindful of the commands of God, resisting your command. We cannot then wonder if you persecute us; when we see that Saul, because they would not deliver the servant of the Lord, David, into his hands, destroyed not only three hundred and five priests, but the whole city as well. Saul persecuted David, him in whose power he often was, and yet often spared him. And it came to pass, says the Scripture, when Saul returned from pursuing the foreigners, and they told him, saying: Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi. And he took with him three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men before the face of the hunt of the wild goats: and he came to the sheepfolds which were by the way, and there was a cave there; and Saul went in to attend to his needs, and David and his men were sitting within the cave.

And the men of David said to him: Behold the day of which the Lord said to you: I will give your enemy into your hands, and you shall do to him as it seems good in your eyes.

And David arose, and secretly cut off the hem of Saul's cloak. And it came to pass after this, that David's heart smote him, because he had cut off the hem of the cloak: and David said to his men: The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to put forth my hand against him, since he is the Lord's anointed. And David persuaded his men with words, and did not permit them to rise up and kill Saul: and Saul arose, and went down on the way, and David went out after Saul, saying: My lord the king. And Saul looked behind him, and David bowed himself with his face to the ground, and worshipped him, and David said to Saul: Why do you listen to the words of the people who say, Behold, David seeks your life?

And behold, this day your eyes have seen how the Lord delivered you today into my hands in the cave, and I would not kill you, and I spared you, and I said: I will not put forth my hand against my lord, since he is the Lord's anointed: I who took the hem of your cloak in my hand, and cut off the skirt of your cloak, and did not kill you. Know and see today that there is no evil or injustice in my hand, and I have not sinned against you, yet you seek to take my life. May the Lord judge between me and you, and avenge me of you, but my hand shall not be against you. As the old proverb says, Out of the wicked comes forth wickedness: but my hand shall not be against you. After whom do you pursue? A dead dog, and after one flea.

May the Lord be judge and avenger between me and you: may the Lord see and judge my cause, and justify me out of your hand. Such is the custom of the worshippers of God, to reserve everything to God, knowing that He is a great avenger. Meanwhile, as I said above, see Saul, when he is in his right mind, what he says; but when he becomes deranged, how thirsty he is for the blood of the just and innocent David: And it came to pass, it says, when David had finished speaking these words to Saul, that Saul said: Is this your voice, my son David?

And Saul lifted up his voice and wept, and said to David: You are more righteous than I, for you have rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded you evil: and you have declared to me today the good you have done to me, how the Lord shut me up in your hands, and you did not kill me: and as when a man finds his enemy, will he let him go on a good way? And the Lord reward you good for what you have done to me this day: and now behold, I know that you shall surely reign, and the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hand: and now swear to me by the Lord, that you will not destroy my seed after me, nor blot out my name from my father's house. And David swore to Saul. After this indeed Saul ought now to have changed; but even yet he does not cease to persecute, nor does David cease to spare him.

And Saul arose, says Scripture, and went down into the shadowy wilderness, with three thousand chosen men of Israel, to seek David. And below: And David sent spies, and knew that Saul had come to Sicelet: and David arose secretly, and went to the place where Saul was sleeping, and Abner the son of Ner, the captain of his host: and Saul was sleeping in the trench with his beautiful coverlets, and the people were around him. And David said to Ahimelech the Hittite, and to Abishai the son of Zeruiah, the brother of Joab, saying: Who will go down with me into the camp to Saul? And Abishai said to David: I will go with you. And David and Abishai came to the people by night, and behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, with his fine spear stuck at his head, and Abner lay sleeping around him.

And Abishai said to David: God has shut up your enemy into your hands today: and now I will strike him with the spear at once into the ground, and I will not strike a second time. And David said to Abishai: Do not touch him: for who shall put forth his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless? And David said: As the Lord lives, unless the Lord strikes him, or his day comes that he should die, or he goes down into battle and perishes there, far be it from me before the Lord to put forth my hand against the Lord's anointed: and now take the spear that is at his head, and the cruse of water, and let us go.

And David took the spear and the cruse of water from his head, and they went their way: and there was none to see it, nor any to know it, nor any that awakened: for they were all asleep, because a deep sleep from the Lord had fallen upon them: and David passed over to the other side, and stood on the top of the hill afar off; a great space being between them: and David called to the people, and to Abner, saying: Will you not answer, Abner? And Abner answered and said: Who are you that calls me? What is it? And David said to Abner: Are you not a man? And who is like you in Israel? Why then have you not kept your lord the king? For one of the people came in to destroy your lord the king.

This thing that you have done is not good: as the Lord lives, you are worthy of death, you who have not kept your lord the king, the Lord's anointed: and now see where the king's spear is, and the cruse of water that was at his head. And king Saul knew David's voice, and said: Is this your voice, my son David? Your servant, my lord the king. And David added: Why does my lord thus pursue after his servant? For what have I done, and what evil is in me? And now let my lord the king hear the words of his servant: If the Lord your God stirs you up against me, let him accept an offering: but if it be the sons of men, cursed be they before the Lord, since they have driven me out today from being established in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve other gods.

Now therefore let not my blood fall to the ground before the face of the Lord, for the king of Israel has come out to seek one flea, as one hunts a partridge in the mountains. And Saul said: I have sinned; return, my son David, for I will do you no more harm, since my life was precious in your eyes this day, in which I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly. And David answered and said: Behold the king's spear: let one of the young men come over and take it. And let the Lord render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness, as he delivered you today into my hand, and I would not put forth my hand against the Lord's anointed. Behold, as your life was highly esteemed this day in my eyes, so let my life be regarded in the sight of the Lord, and let him deliver me out of all tribulation.

And Saul said to David: Blessed are you, my son, both in what you do, and in what you shall be able to accomplish. I have inserted these things so that at last you might understand, whether it is you or Athanasius or ourselves who is unjustly persecuted, and thus you enslave yourself to the death of your own salvation, and thus you draw upon yourself before the Divinity the dangers of death, just as Saul drew upon himself by what he had done. If this is not so, tell me why you persecute us? Surely because we do not shed innocent blood. Whom do you wish us to imitate—you, or David? For of David I find it written: And David reigned over Israel, and executed judgment and justice to all his people: but you we perceive to be an unjust judge, a murderer of God's worshippers. Why do you persecute us? Surely because we would not, as you have done, become apostates, because we would not deny the only Son of God.

David, free of guilt, proclaims a perfect Trinity, and declares one Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and you are found to be an apostate. Whom, I ask, shall I follow—you, or David? Him, the worshipper of the Lord, the lover of mercy; or you, the sacrilegious executioner? By what wisdom, O man, do you persecute Athanasius? I would marvel at your doing this, if king Ahab had not likewise persecuted Elijah and the other prophets of the Lord: I would marvel at your persecuting the man of God, if I did not perceive you to be Ahab in everything. In short, such things are said to you by us, as were said by God's household to him: Do not worship Baal, do not serve idols, but serve God; serve the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, serve the God of Israel.

If you remember that such words were spoken by Elijah and the other prophets of the Lord to the apostate king Ahab, take note that similar words are spoken to you by those to whom the Lord has given authority to teach. Do not, Constantius, fight with the Arians against the house of God, do not introduce the idolatry of Arius into the church, do not deny the only Son of God, cease to persecute the apostolic and evangelical faith. Because we say these things, we seem to be your enemies: so also those who spoke the truth to the king were his enemies. Let us then run through what arose, what took place between Elijah the prophet of the Lord and Ahab your fellow apostate; and you will find that you are today an Ahab. As the Lord lives, says Elijah, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.

And when this indeed had been fulfilled, the madman ought to have recognized that the true God alone was all-powerful, none other than He whom Elijah served. What does Ahab do? He sees that for three years and more there has been no rain, and yet he serves idols the more, and desires the more to kill Elijah. The prophet of God hears from the mouth of the sacrilegious Ahab: Are you he that troubles Israel? So also you say to Athanasius or to us, that it is we who trouble the people of God, when it is you who are calling Christians to embrace your heresy: but you hear from us what that worshipper of idolatry Ahab heard from the glorious Elijah: It is not we who trouble the house of God, but you and your father's house trouble it. Or will you deny that you think of nothing except to make us all your fellow apostates?

But as I had begun to speak of the deeds of Elijah and Ahab: And Elijah said: I do not trouble Israel, but you and your father's house trouble it, in that you have forsaken the Lord our God, and have gone after Baal. And now send, and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the four hundred fifty prophets of confusion, and the four hundred prophets of the groves, who eat at Jezebel's table. And king Ahab sent to all Israel, and gathered all the prophets together unto Mount Carmel: and Elijah came near to all, and said to them: How long do you halt between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.

And the people answered him not a word: and Elijah said to the people: I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord; but the prophets of Baal are four hundred fifty men, and the prophets of the groves four hundred; let two bullocks be given to us, and let them choose one for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under it; and I will dress the other bullock, and put no fire under it. And call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of my God: and let it be, that the God who answers by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said: The word that Elijah has spoken is good. And Elijah said to the prophets of confusion: Choose one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under it.

And they took the bullock, and dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying: Hear us, Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And Elijah the Tishbite added, saying: Call on him with a loud voice all together, lest perhaps he be busy, or asleep, and he shall be awakened. And they called on him with a loud voice, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them, and they prophesied until noon had passed; and it came to pass, when it was time to offer the sacrifice, that Elijah the Tishbite said to the prophets: Depart now, and I will offer the burnt offerings. And they departed and went away; and Elijah said to the people: Come near to me. And all the people came near to him, and Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of Israel, as the Lord had spoken to him, saying, Israel shall be your name.

And he built up the stones, and repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down, and made a trench that would contain two measures of seed round about the altar, and laid the wood in order upon the altar that he made, and cut the burnt offering in pieces, and laid it upon the wood, and stacked it upon the altar, and said: Fill me four barrels with water, and pour it upon the burnt offering, and upon the wood. And he said: Do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And he said: Do it a third time. And they did it a third time. And the water ran round about the altar, and he filled the trench also with water.

And Elijah cried unto heaven and said: Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, hear me, O Lord, hear me today by fire, that this people may know that you are the Lord God of Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things for your sake, and that you have turned the heart of this people back again. And fire fell from the Lord out of heaven, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the water that was in the trench, and licked up the stones and the earth: and all the people fell on their faces, and said: The Lord, he is God, truly. And Elijah said to the people: Take the prophets of Baal, let none of them escape. And they took them, and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and killed them there; and he said to Ahab: Eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance of rain.

And Ahab went up to eat and drink: and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, and bowed himself down to the earth, and put his face between his knees, and said to his servant: Go up now, look toward the sea. And the servant looked, and said: There is nothing. Go again seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that behold, a little cloud, like a man's hand, rose out of the sea, bringing water. And Elijah said to him: Go up, and say to Ahab, Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you. And it came to pass in the meanwhile, that the heaven grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain: and Ahab went weeping in Israel, and the hand of the Lord was upon Elijah.

You know in what perversity Achab also remained even after that: for despite so many signs and wonders shown, he does not deign to rejoice with the people, but grieves that Elijah dared to slay the priests and prophets of idols; nor after such things does he deign to turn himself to God, but rather still persecutes His worshipper. He sees that God is with Elijah, and yet seeks his life all the more. He perceives that the prophets of Baal and of the groves were worshippers of demons, and yet loves them, now slain, more than the one whom he had recognized in so many ways to be God's own household member. So also you deign to love those whom you see to be men of the Arian heretical sect, while persecuting most fiercely the worshippers of God.

I have judged it right to bring before you a few of the many things that passed between Achab and Elijah, that you may know that once you have abandoned God, neither by signs nor by wonders are you easily turned to Him, but rather persist in your errors, raging like savage beasts against the flock of God's worshippers. We beg you, Constantius, not to deign to linger any longer in these your evils, but rather to emerge from the whirlwinds of the devil, lest those evils overtake you which overtook Achab and Jezebel. And do not say you are fortunate in this, that you are powerful to persecute the men of God: since you see that at Elijah's request Achab and Jezebel could have been destroyed, and yet they were preserved, so that the patience of Elijah, the man of God, might be more fully blessed, and the measure of their impiety might be fulfilled: as though indeed Elijah could not have asked God that the persecutors of His religion, the worshippers of idols, might burn.

He asks that fire be given from heaven to consume the sacrifices; forthwith rain descends, which had been withheld for three years and six months; he asks, and forthwith water is given, very many signs are worked; and yet could not the enemies of God be destroyed at Elijah's request, when even those honored captains of fifty, at Elijah's word, were consumed by descending fire? You see today that though you persecute Athanasius, or us, we could be destroyed by a thunderbolt or in any way whatever, but we are preserved to this end, that either you may be converted, or the whole measure of your iniquity may be fulfilled. King Achab persecuted Elijah, as you now persecute Athanasius. Indeed Jezebel said to the Lord's prophet, after she had learned through Elijah of those mighty deeds performed, and of the confounded prophets and priests of idols slain: "So may the gods do to me, and add more, if I do not by this time tomorrow make your life as the life of one of them".

But what does Elijah hear from God after the forty days and nights of fasting kept? Namely, that he should anoint kings, by whom Achab and his companions might be destroyed. There is mercy with Elijah from God; Elijah knows that he is loved by God: against him Achab, Elijah's persecutor, is so wretched that he was ever in the power of the devil. So you have ordered Athanasius to be justly punished, just as Jezebel did Naboth the Israelite: thus you have produced true witnesses against Athanasius, just as they produced witnesses to whom Jezebel wrote saying: "Proclaim a fast, and let Naboth sit at the head of the people, and set two men, sons of wicked men, against him, and let them bear witness against him, saying: You have blasphemed God and the king; and lead him out and stone him, that he may die". Such are now your Arian works: you call us guilty, you charge us with much, nor do you lack false witnesses, for you yourselves are false witnesses in all things.

Thus you, sons of perdition, Arians, attempt to kill Athanasius, just as Jezebel did Naboth; as though you could escape the hand of Him who sees all things. You know that God avenged the blood of Naboth, that He required his death from the hands of his murderers; and do you think that God will not require from your hands the blood of His priest Athanasius? And the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Arise and go down to meet Achab king of Israel, who is in Samaria, because he has gone down here to the vineyard of Naboth to take possession of it. And you shall say to him: Thus says the Lord: As you have killed Naboth, and taken possession of his vineyard, therefore thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, there shall dogs lick your blood also, and harlots shall wash in your blood. And Achab said to Elijah: Have you found me, my enemy?

And Elijah said: I have found you, because you have thought to do evil before the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him. Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will bring evil upon you, and I will kindle a fire after you, and I will destroy your posterity, Achab, him that pisses against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel: and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nabat, like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for all the provocations by which you have provoked me, and have caused Israel to sin. And the Lord spoke concerning Jezebel, saying: Dogs shall eat her by the wall of Jezreel: and your dead shall the birds of the air eat in the city. What do you say to this, Constantius? Do you claim your sins to be less than those of Achab and Jezebel?

They persecuted the priests of God, they slew God's household members, they abolished God's religion and established idolatry, they turned the people away from God—and you have done and are doing all these things. So you call us your enemies, just as Achab called Elijah, who, when he had heard through the mouth of the Lord's prophet the indignation, said: "Have you found me, my enemy, O king Achab?"? Was it not because he said: Do not serve idols, but God alone, of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel? And now, because it is said to you: Do not be a heretic, but be a Christian, you call us enemies for bringing to you, who hand over idolatry, the same things that were brought by Elijah to King Achab; and surely Achab would have called Elijah his friend, if the Lord's prophet had judged that his idols ought to be served, and God forsaken. You cannot deny this: for if we had chosen to be what you are, you would have loved us with singular affection.

By these things you are shown to be a son of pestilence, a fount of darkness, a whirlpool of all evils, the head of all wickedness, the sink of all blasphemies, the tinder of heretics, a root of bitterness; a tree destined for fire, since it bears deadly fruits; an enemy of God, a foe of the Church, a corrupter of truth, a contriver of perversity, a lover of injustice, an adversary of justice; wholly turned into darkness, and indeed inexplicable darkness; made in truth a temple of all demons, at whose instigation you have committed, like Achab, all these evils, and continue to commit them. But you cannot long remain unpunished, unless you turn to God; when you see what Achab and Jezebel received. For if Achab, as had been promised him by the mouth of Elijah, perished, if dogs devoured Jezebel, will you go unpunished for such great crimes—you who not only do not grieve at having killed those given over to God, but even now glory in it, thinking you have done well?

Nor is it strange, since He who foreknows the future, whom you deny, said in the Gospel: "The hour will come, that whoever kills you will think he does a service to God; but they do this because they know neither the Father, nor His only Son". Knowing this, you, living without knowledge of God, persecute Athanasius, who speaks the truth to you, loving God with his whole heart. So also Achab persecuted Elijah. But behold the end of Elijah and of his enemy Achab. Behold Elijah translated to enjoy the eternal friendships of God; and now Achab is tormented in outer darkness. Elijah rejoices in the friendship of God, and Achab pays eternal penalties. Without doubt Athanasius will be at the banquet where Elijah is, and you will be in that place of torments, unless you take counsel for yourself, where Achab is held, whose imitator in all things you will be found to be. Is this wisdom, that you should have chosen the eternal misfortune of King Achab, rather than enjoy the perpetual happiness which Elijah obtained?

Whose translation Scripture recounts in the fourth book of Kings, saying: "And as they were going and talking, behold a fiery chariot, and fiery horses, and it parted them both asunder: and Elijah went up by a whirlwind as it were into heaven: and Elisha saw it, and cried out, and said: My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the driver thereof. And he saw him no more". Your deed, heretic, will not seem new to us, if you persecute the priests of the Lord; since in the second book of Chronicles we find that Jeroboam and his sons did these same things. Holy Scripture says: "And Judah and Benjamin, and the Levites, and the priests who were in all Israel, gathered from all their borders, because the Levites left their suburbs and their possessions, and went to Jeroboam, because Jeroboam and his sons cast them out, that they should not serve the Lord.

And he set up for himself priests of the high places, and of the demons, and of the calves which he had made: and he cast them out from the children of Israel, and from the tribes of Israel, who had set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel". It will not be a matter of wonder, then, if you persecute us, or those divinely entrusted to us, if you drive us from that which was committed to us, if finally you place in our stead, enemies of God, those who have with you abandoned God, when you see that you are fulfilling that which Jeroboam did. For what is it to say: "Condemn the faith drawn up at Nicaea, and accept mine," except what Jeroboam said: "Forsake God, and serve my idols"? What man are you to say: "Condemn one who is absent, unheard, innocent"?

Surely you who had already denied the apostolic and evangelical faith; you who had destroyed, so far as lay in your power, the tradition of the blessed apostles: hence in the end it has come about that you have arrived at such madness, because you have been, like Jeroboam, without God. But if you had had God, if you had remembered yourself His worshipper, you would never have said: "Condemn the innocent; strike down the unheard, the absent, your fellow-priest." And that you may see that you are not in God, whence you are commanded to do such things, take the example of a king with whom, according to his merits, his God was present, take also his exhortation to the priests of the Lord, whom he urged to judge righteous judgment for the people of God: consider also the judgment of those you have set up against the Church, and the acts of that man's ministers, and you will be able to weigh whether unclean spirits are not with you, such as were with Jeroboam.

"And Josaphat dwelt," it says in the second book of Chronicles, "at Jerusalem: and he went out again to the people from Bersabee to mount Ephraim, and brought them back to the Lord God of their fathers. And he set judges in all the fortified cities of Judah, in every city, and said to the judges: Take heed what you do: for you do not exercise the judgment of man, but of the Lord, and whatsoever you judge, it shall redound to you. Let the fear of the Lord be with you, and do all things with diligence: for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor desire of gifts." And indeed at Jerusalem Josaphat appointed some of the Levites, and of the priests, and of the heads of the families of Israel, for the judgment of the Lord, and for the causes of the inhabitants thereof. And he charged them, saying: "Thus shall you do in the fear of the Lord, faithfully, and with a perfect heart.

Every cause that comes to you of your brethren, that dwell in their cities, between kindred and kindred, wherever there is a question concerning the law, the commandment, the ceremonies, the justifications: shew it them, that they sin not against the Lord, and that wrath come not upon you and your brethren: so shall you do, and you shall not sin. And Amarias the priest, your chief, in those things which regard God, shall be president: and Zabadias the son of Ishmael, who is ruler in the house of Judah, shall be over those matters which belong to the king's office: and you have before you the Levites and scribes. Take courage and do it, and the Lord shall be with you in that which is good". Did he say to the priests of the Lord, or to the princes of his realm, or to the other judges: "Condemn the just, persecute the innocent, condemn; kill all who believe in God"? Did he say: "Love what God does not love; hate justice, love injustice," as you say?

Or can you deny that you have said: "Condemn Athanasius, absent, unheard"? Josaphat, king of Judah dedicated to God, says that judgment must be rendered according to the law of the Lord; and you, a king turned to apostasy, say: "Condemn the unheard." Suppose, meanwhile, Constantius, that King Josaphat were alive today in the body, and that both of you were speaking to us, he indeed saying: "Take heed what you do: for you do not exercise the judgment of man, but of the Lord, and whatsoever you judge, it shall redound to you. Let the fear of the Lord be with you, and do all things with diligence: for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons"; while you, on the contrary, say that one unheard must be condemned, and indeed one whom you yourself know to be innocent—whom shall we, the bishops of God, be able to obey?

We, to whom, before, He had promised to His people through the mouth of Jeremiah, saying: "And I will give you pastors according to my own heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine". Whom, I ask, should we obey—you, or Josaphat, the man dedicated to God, who would compel us to do that which we remember God to have commanded? If, then, you recognize that he fulfilled the commandments of the Lord, and that you have shown yourself not only a destroyer of God's commandments, but even a deserter of Him, it remains for you to see which of you was the man of God, which of you did the will of His mercy. We read it written thus of him: "And the Lord was with Josaphat, because he walked in the first ways of his father, and did not seek after idols, but after the Lord God of his father, and walked in his commandments, and not according to the doings of Israel.

And the Lord established the kingdom in his hand, and all Judah brought presents to Josaphat: and he had riches and glory in abundance. And his heart was strengthened in the ways of the Lord; and moreover he took away the high places and the groves out of Judah. And in the third year of his reign he sent his princes, and men of valour". And below: "And with them Elimasat, and Joram the priests, and they taught Judah, and with them the book of the law of the Lord, and they passed through into the cities of Judah, and taught the people. And the fear of the Lord came upon all the kingdoms of the earth, and round about Judah, and they warred not against Josaphat: and of the strangers they brought Josaphat gifts, and silver, and presents; and the Arabians brought him rams and sheep, seven thousand seven hundred; and Josaphat went on and increased, even to great heights. Do you do any such thing?

Nay, you have sent through your whole kingdom that we should all spit upon the commandments of God, and take up your precept, which sought to fight against the precept of the Lord. Josaphat sent the princes of the might of his kingdom, sent his counsellors, sent Levites and priests of the Lord, beseeching that all in his kingdom might be worshippers of the Lord, that all with one accord might show themselves servants to God alone; he sent also the book of the sacred law handed down by the glorious Moses, that they might do nothing outside of what God had commanded to be done. You are found not only to have fought against the law of the Lord, which commands that the innocent and the just be not slain, but also to have forsaken God himself; since you do not hold the apostolic faith, but the perfidy of Arius.

He turned the erring people from idols to God; you have attempted to make a people consecrated to God an apostate, which is what you yourself are, that is, sacrilegious. You have persecuted, and you persecute, Athanasius, thirsting for his blood. But see what the Holy Spirit says in the ninth psalm, in which you seem to me to be specially described: He said in his heart: I shall not be moved from generation to generation without evil, whose mouth is full of cursing, and bitterness, and deceit: under his tongue are labor and sorrow: he sits in ambush with the rich in secret places, to slay the innocent. His eyes look upon the poor man: he lies in wait in secret like a lion in his den; he lies in wait to catch the poor man, to catch the poor man, that he may draw him into his snare: he humbled him in his net, he crouched down, and shall fall, when he has dominion over the poor.

He said in his heart: God has forgotten, he has turned away his face, that he may never see it. If you persist in this wickedness, will it not be worthy to be said of you: He has turned away his face, that he may never see it? So great are your funerals, Constantius, that when it is said in the tenth psalm, in the person of our people: In the Lord I put my trust; how then do you say to my soul, Flee to the mountain like a sparrow? For behold the sinners have bent their bow, they have prepared their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark at the upright of heart; you seem to me to be described together with the sharers of your crimes. For we know that you Arians are the antichrists of our time: or if you are not one who deserves to be numbered among the antichrists, count yourself a denier of the only Son of God.

The Holy Spirit says through the prophet: The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven: his eyes look upon the poor man, and his eyelids question the sons of men. The Lord questions the just and the wicked: but he who loves iniquity hates his own soul. And you have decreed that he should be punished, whom you yourself have not even known to be guilty, except only in this, that he resisted your blasphemy, and thereby became in your eyes guilty of death. Hear the Spirit of God say: But he who loves iniquity hates his own soul: yet you compel iniquity to be loved more than justice. If it is not unjust to condemn one unheard, let the heretics who accuse you convict a Catholic.

For as for me, when I still find it written: He shall rain snares upon sinners: fire, and brimstone, and storms of wind shall be the portion of their cup: for the Lord is just, and has loved justice: his countenance beholds equity; I know that you and all who act with you in this matter belong to that number. Fire and brimstone and storms of wind will surely come upon you, unless you are converted to God, since the portion of your cup shall be that of deniers of the only Son of God, of persecutors of those who proclaim his divine majesty: who, though you know that God is just, loves justice, loves equity, yet have determined to condemn the innocent, to persecute the Lord's most faithful priest. Love the Lord, says the Holy Spirit in the thirtieth psalm, all his saints, for the Lord requires truth, and will repay abundantly those who deal proudly. And you had driven us to kill the innocent, in order to possess your own pride.

For you cannot deny that you are proud, since you have sent deadly hands even against the worshippers of God, and have attempted to destroy the evangelical faith, and to establish the heretical. In the thirty-second psalm have you not read: The Lord loves mercy and judgment, and the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord; that you should order an absent man to be condemned? Recognize through these your works how thoughtless you are, and how much an enemy to your own salvation, you who, though you remember it is written: Who is the man who desires life, and loves to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit: and turn away from evil, and do good; yet you take no rest in doing these things, which God has forbidden you to do. This is not to wish to see good days, this is not to wish for life, this is to ask that death be given to yourself.

Since therefore you are such a one, running to draw down eternal death, you seem to me to be foreshown also in the thirty-fifth psalm. The unjust has said, that he may sin within himself: there is no fear of God before his eyes: for he has dealt deceitfully in his sight, so that his iniquity may be found and hated. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: he would not understand, that he might do well: he has meditated iniquity upon his bed: he has set himself in every way that is not good, and has not hated malice. Consider what you are, most just emperor, on whose account even those things seem to be spoken which were spoken against Judas Iscariot and the people of the Jews. How could we, Constantius, have condemned an innocent man at the counsel of your pride? When we knew it written in David: Show your mercy to those who know you, and your justice to those who are upright of heart.

Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me: there have they fallen who work iniquity: they are cast out, and could not stand. What do you say? Is such the mercy of God and his justice, that the absent and the unheard should be condemned? And indeed the innocent, whom it is not lawful to punish even when present. But what wonder if you have ordered these things to be done, a man ignorant of God? What wonder, if, not knowing his mercy and justice, you have commanded things perverse, iniquitous, unjust, to be done? Could not the word of the psalmist saying, There have they fallen who work iniquity: they are cast out, and could not stand, remove you from so great a crime? Nor that other, in the thirty-sixth: Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not be jealous so as to do evil, for they that do evil shall be cut off?

Reading these things, therefore, since you have judged the decrees of the Lord to be held as nothing, I judge you therefore to be that man of whom it is said: The sinner shall watch the just man, and shall gnash upon him with his teeth; but the Lord shall laugh at him, for he foresees that his day will come. We reckon you among those of whom I perceive it said: The sinners have drawn out the sword, they have bent their bow, to slay the poor and needy, to kill the upright of heart; let their sword enter into their own hearts, and let their bow be broken. Better is a little to the just, than the great riches of sinners: for the arms of sinners shall be broken. You are established an enemy of the Lord among those whom the Spirit of God describes further below: The enemies of the Lord, as soon as they are honored and exalted, shall fail like smoke and vanish.

Consider at last, with all your loftiness, unless you correct yourself, that you shall perish like smoke, being indeed an enemy of God. I see it further written of you, that unless converted you repent, you are coming to nothing: I have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon: and I passed by, and lo, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found. You are, I say, that man, Constantius, of whom I see also this said: The sinner watches the just man, and seeks to kill him; but the Lord will not leave him in his hands. The prophet, full of the Holy Spirit, says: Do not be jealous among evildoers, nor envy those who do iniquity: for they shall soon wither like grass, and shall fall away quickly like the green herbs. And do you, Constantius, destroyer of God's religion, say, Imitate me? Who would imitate you, unless one who wished to wither with you like the green herbs?

Who, unless one who wished to be blotted out by the indignation of God? If indeed he truly says: Speak justice, judge rightly, you sons of men: yet you rise up to the killing of the innocent. It cannot be doubted, then, that you are of those to whom the Holy Spirit says: For in your heart you work iniquities; on earth your hands prepare injustice. The sinners are estranged from the womb, they have gone astray from the belly, they have spoken falsehoods: their fury is after the likeness of a serpent, like that of the deaf asp, that stops her ears, that she may not hear the voice of the charmers, of the wise enchanter who charms. God shall break their teeth in their mouth; the Lord shall break the jaw-teeth of the lions: they shall come to nothing, they shall flow away like water; he has bent his bow until they are weakened. As melted wax let them be taken away; fire has fallen upon them, and they have not seen the sun.

You hear that you together with your own shall come to nothing, as those have already come to nothing whose imitator you have chosen to be. You see yourselves, you persecutors of the servants of God, deniers of the only Son of God, compared to serpents and asps; and do you not at last fear to transfer yourself to the house of God? Do you not, who are shown to be one of those very asps, so shape yourself to crush the head of the devil, that you might be made worthy to reign among those whose glory John relates: He came unto his own, and his own received him not; but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name? Did you not remember it written in the fifty-seventh psalm: God of Israel, arise to visit all the nations; be not merciful to all that work iniquity; that you would order sentence to be given against a man absent?

Nor did you know that likewise in the sixty-first psalm the Holy Spirit both admonishes and rebukes in these words: How long will ye rush upon a man? Ye slay all of you? The fear of the Lord, says Solomon, is the beginning of understanding; but the impious despise wisdom and instruction. Hence you despise instruction and wisdom, because you are without the fear of God. Hence you are described by the sacred letters as impious: impious indeed, because not only have you yourself deserted God, but you also so fiercely persecute those who worship him. Woe to you, because you are found to be with those of whom I read in Proverbs: My son, let not impious men seduce you, nor consent if they entreat you saying: Come, share blood with us, let us hide the just man in the earth unjustly: let us swallow him up alive as the grave.

What was it that delighted you in the imitators of the Arians and Jews, Constantius, that hearing their impious voices you should have followed them to the shedding of the blood of God's servants? Why did you not hear the counsels of Solomon telling you: Go not in the way with them, nor turn your foot to their paths: for the nets are not spread in vain for the birds: for they that are partakers of murder treasure up evils for themselves. These are the ways of all that accomplish iniquity: for by their own impiety they take away their own soul. And again: As long as the innocent hold to justice, they shall not be ashamed; but the foolish, being desirous of contumely, being made impious, hate understanding, and are made subject to reproaches.

You have sought these reproaches for yourself, Constantius, you have condemned yourself, who, despising the precepts of God, have thought good to cling to the accursed disciples of the Jews, the Arians, with whom you still fittingly hear this: For because I called, and ye did not obey; and I stretched out my words, and ye did not attend; but ye made void my counsels, and did not heed my rebukes. Therefore I also will laugh at your destruction: and I will rejoice against you, when sudden tumult shall come upon you, and destruction like a storm, when ruin shall come upon you: for it shall be that when ye call upon me, I will not hear; the wicked shall seek me and shall not find me. For they hated wisdom, and did not receive the word of the Lord, neither would they attend to my counsels: for they despised my rebukes: therefore shall they eat the fruits of their own way, and shall be filled with their own impiety. For because they deceived little ones, they shall be slain.

We surely deserved to be slain along with you, and indeed by God, if we had joined you in persecuting the man of God. But how should we have done this? We who knew it written: Devise not evil against your friend, against the sojourner and the one who trusts you. Do not practice enmity against a man without cause, lest he do you some evil. Or was it not without cause, if, just as the mad fury of your fellow-heretics had ordered through you, we had pronounced a sentence of death against an innocent man? Woe to you, because I see it said of you, our persecutor: The scornful eye, the unjust tongue, the hands that shed the blood of the just, and the heart that forges evil thoughts, and the feet that hasten to do evil. You have read: My son, honor the Lord, and you shall prevail: fear no other besides him; and yet you wished to be feared yourself, while God is despised.

For whence indeed could we be found to fear God alone, if, yielding to your threats, we should condemn a man absent, unheard, and indeed one whom we knew to be just? Solomon says: A false balance is an abomination before the Lord: but a just weight is acceptable to him. You, on the contrary, do not hesitate to command, Condemn the man by unjust judgment, thinking that right which is perverse. Solomon still further, concerning you and those like you: The ways of fools are right in their own eyes: but a wise man hearkens to counsel. Condemn Athanasius, you say: and indeed, where you could not prevail by the ingenuity of your detestable subtlety, you began to use the forces of your empire. Receive then what is written of you: The evil man deals wickedly with insolence; and again, because you have already thus strangled yourself in a snare, clinging to the Arians as Judas Iscariot did to the Jews: The law is a fountain of life to the wise, but the fool shall die by a snare.

It is further said of you: A bold king shall fall into evils. Certainly you have fallen into these evils, because you have left yourself no wisdom, denying the only Son of God, but have turned yourself wholly into folly, a thing which has caused you to slaughter those dear to God. It is written: The wise man by fearing shall turn away from evil, but the fool mingles trustingly with the wicked. Had you not read what is written: He who does insult to the poor provokes him who made him; that you should have dragged us along with you to kill an innocent man? For if God is angered at one who does insult, how much more at one who has slain his priest! Still you did not retain what is written: The beginning of the good way is to do what is just: and this is more acceptable with the Lord than to offer sacrifices; that you should force us to do unjust things?

But also in another place: He who calls the just man unjust, and the unjust man as just, is abominable before God. We should without doubt be abominable, if we should pronounce you just, and judge Athanasius, a man acceptable to God, to be unjust. It is not good, he says, to admire the person of the impious, nor holy to turn aside the just in judgment. You say the contrary, you who appear described under the person of the impious: Condemn the innocent, imitating my unjust person: and although you have forced us to do these things, which might make God angry at us, yet we exhort you, enemy of our welfare, to become from impious, pious, from sick, whole, from dead, living, from sacrilegious, religious. Whence, you say, shall I be able to attain this? By what means?

Cease to persecute the house of God; cease to proscribe, deport, and kill his servants; confess yourself a Christian, curse with us the band of Arians sought out by the device of the devil; believe as we believe, we who are bishops by succession from the blessed Apostles; confess the only Son of God, as they confessed, and as we confess; and you shall obtain pardon for such great crimes. For you have read in Solomon: Death and life are in the hands of the tongue, and in the blessed Paul: With the heart man believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. You remember it written: A false witness shall not be unpunished; and he who accuses unjustly shall not escape: and yet you dared to deny Athanasius.

For we had had no cause with the colleagues of your sect, the Arians, since the power of God had already long before condemned them along with Arius at Nicaea, at the time when the faith was set down not only against your blasphemy but against all heresies. We had, I say, no question with those false bishops, enemies of God, your teachers, that we should again contend against those whom God had once driven out from his people. So now our reckoning is with you, because you have made yourself the author of the charge that Athanasius was guilty: whom, because we were unwilling to punish unheard, you, a man who should know yourself a false witness, have begun, like a savage beast and monster, to wish to punish us along with Athanasius, as though by your frauds you could overpower the vigor of the servants of God. For although Solomon says: The threats of a king are like the roarings of a lion, yet your leonine roarings shall have no power against us. Why?

Because you are the forerunner of antichrist, and we are soldiers of Christ. Why? Because you, the persecutor of his religion, cannot overcome the men of God. Again in another place: There is no difference between the threats of a king and the wrath of a lion. What is this to the servants of God, who have determined that none but God is to be feared? Who remember that our souls are placed in the hand of God? Your co-Arians may fear your roarings, because they are without the knowledge of God, because they are by no means clad in the armor of God. But we, the household of God, laugh at your lion-like roarings. Why? Because, knowing you to be a beast, whose roaring you are described as having, we must needs laugh at you rather than fear you, seeing a raging beast set under the figure of a man. But if you are not a beast lurking under the image of a man, say so.

You have read in Solomon: Mercy and truth are the guard of a king, and the just surround his throne. Since a band of malignant Arians has hedged you about, and we see you to be a punisher of mercy, an execrator of truth, what else shall we judge you to be, but a beast and a monster? Are you roused against us like a roaring lion, because we love mercy and truth, because we have not punished an innocent and just man, and do you think that you are not a savage beast and most cruel monster? But what will it was that led you to perpetrate these things, I cannot at all see, that you should have persecuted with such destruction a catholic bishop of complete righteousness, a priest of the Lord. Did you not remember it written: To do justice and to be truthful pleases God more than the blood of sacrifices?

Athanasius displeases you, because he keeps the tradition of the blessed apostles, because he confesses himself a Christian, because he is unwilling to be your fellow-apostate. No wonder; since we hold it written: The holy man is unclean to the wicked. He who pleases God displeases you malignant ones, especially you, rash and proud, who are understood to be rash and proud on this account, because you have stretched forth your hand against the ordinance of God, because you have thought the apostolic tradition ought to be destroyed, because you have thought bishops, under whose care you ought to have conducted yourself, should be brought under your own dominion. Understand then what you are, hearing through Solomon what name is yours as a proud man: The rash and proud shall be called pestilence. Though you be a pestilent man, yet you shall not be able to afflict us with your disease, because the divine clemency affords us protection.

You have finally tried, pestilent one, to make us your fellow-pestilents; but he to whom we live dedicated has not allowed your temptations to approach upright hearts: for scripture suggests: Deliver those who are being led to death, and do not spare to redeem those who are being slain. But if you say, I do not know this man, know that the Lord knows the hearts of all: and he who formed the spirit in them all knows all things, who renders to each according to his works. To this, when you say, Condemn the worshiper of God, abandon the apostolic faith, take up my perfidy, you surely reveal yourself to be a pestilent man. God wishes to help us in the pressures and straits in which we are set; and you urge those whom it is right to do good, to do evil, and moreover apply those things which you suppose might be feared.

Consider now whether there be not in you that disease which is called pestilence, a disease strong enough not only to make bodies but even souls diseased, namely of those who would be willing to hear you saying: Condemn the Lord's bishop, repudiate the faith which the church has always held, and take up mine which Arius handed down. It is not good, says holy scripture, to have respect of persons in judgment: and he who says the impious is just shall be cursed among the peoples, and hateful to the nations. For they who rebuke shall have better hope: and upon them shall come the best blessing. And you thought that we could have respect for your person, and condemn one whom you yourself knew to be innocent, whom you held to be guilty only in this, that he was unwilling to deny that he was a Christian.

Meanwhile, because we rebuke you as you hold to the path of death, because we correct you, you see what reward is promised us: Open, says the Prophet, your mouth with the word of God, and judge all with integrity: open your mouth and judge righteous things. And do you say, Condemn the innocent? I indeed hold, keeping to the sacred scriptures: Do not be proud before a king: but if you had been willing to stay within the bounds of your power, and I had exalted myself against you, in truth I would myself have condemned myself as a transgressor of the law. But now, because we speak the truth to you, a murderer and sacrilegious man, we shall surely not deserve to be punished as though proud, but shall rather be endowed with heavenly rewards, because we have not spared you in your error. It is written: A whip for the horse, and a goad for the ass, but a rod for the foolish nation.

We rightly call you deniers of the only Son of God foolish, whom we see engaged in such great sacrilege. For when I see it written, that as a dog that returns to his vomit becomes hateful, so a fool through his own malice returns to his sin; I judge it said specifically of you. Why, you say? Because you swore in your letters to the Alexandrians that you would do Athanasius no further harm, and now you seek to kill him.

But you say: My father had sent him into exile, and it behooved me to obey the decrees of my father. Suppose, as you wish, that Athanasius is a heretic: if he had rightly been sent into exile, why did you allow him, against your father's decrees, to receive back the dignity which your father had judged he had forfeited? But you say: It was done at the intervention of my brother Constans. But you could have met Constans, saying: Our father, whom he proved a heretic unless he corrected himself, I cannot receive into the part of my kingdom. But you say, I feared lest wars should arise between us. Therefore, because Sapor, king of the Persians, now wages war against you, if he should say to you: Accept my religions and I will be at peace with you; ought you, along with all who dwell in your empire, to go over to the religions of demons? For Sapor sacrifices to demons.

You see, then, that you did not act as a servant of God in receiving him and restoring him to his place, whom you should have remembered was carried off into exile on account of the cause of the faith. First, because you judged God to be powerless, as though He could not protect one who protected the truth and resisted heretics; then, because you wished Constans to be more favorable to you than God: whom indeed, if you remembered that King Constans had become a heretic by favoring Athanasius, whom you already held to be proven sacrilegious, you ought not to have preferred your kingdom to God, nor even your own soul.

For you yourself are witness to your own conscience, that it was on account of the faith which the Church has always held and holds, because he refused to condemn it, that he was sent into exile, namely because he refused to be an Arian: for it does not escape you that Athanasius was hated by your father for this reason; since you too deign to persecute him in that same cause in which your father also persecuted him. Let him at last say that he is not a Christian, let him confess himself an Arian, and he will be with you most wise, great. Fittingly, then, you have been compared to a dog that returns to its vomit: for you were once reckoned a Christian, and not an Arian, from the time when you presented Athanasius, with such letters divinely entrusted to him.

But now, since you are proven to be an Arian, and desiring your heresy to find a place, you persecute a righteous man, because indeed he is fighting against it with all his strength, you have rightly been compared to a dog returning to its vomit. Likewise also in that other notable deed of yours you are rightly compared to a dog that has returned to its vomit, in that, having accepted the truth that Aetius of the Germaniciani was not catholic, and having given letters against him to the Antiochenes, you afterward began to defend this same Aetius as a teacher of truth, judging his heresy to be the catholic faith. Why, Constantius, so fickle? Why, in the cause of the faith, do you bend this way and that like a reed shaken by the winds? What wonder if you were so easily led to condemn Athanasius, even to inviting all the priests of God to do so? Since even in the state of religion you do not hesitate to do such things through your own rashness.

You have boiled up to shed innocent blood, O most pious king, as though you did not remember it written: The throne of a king who judges the poor in truth shall be established forever in testimony; but you thought yourself supreme in this, if you went against the divine scriptures, if you did all things which they forbid. You hate Athanasius because he is a Christian; because he refused, as you say, to be a disciple of Arius, you persecute him with the utmost hatred: but the Holy Spirit had shown long ago that you would be such toward him, saying by the mouth of Solomon: The righteous man is an abomination to the wicked. Cease, Constantius, to linger longer in these evils, do not abuse the patience of God, remember what is written in Psalm: The Lord awoke as one sleeping, like a mighty man overcome with wine, and He smote His enemies on the back; He gave them everlasting reproach.

In Psalm, How long, says the Holy Spirit, will you judge unjustly, and accept the persons of sinners? Judge the fatherless and the needy, do justice to the humble and the poor. Rescue the poor, and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner. You say, Slay together with me him who is consecrated to God, wishing us to be reckoned with you among those of whom it is said: They knew not, neither did they understand, they walk in darkness. God commands that we render no unjust judgment, that we not, out of reverence for your sinner's face, allow you to punish him whom you unjustly persecute. God has commanded that the humble be justified by us, that the poor be rescued, and the needy delivered from the hand of you, the executioner. And you say, Condemn him whom God wished to be delivered from my sinner's hand. No wonder; for you could not act against your own execrable decrees.

The Holy Spirit says in Psalm: You who love the Lord, hate evil: and your precepts show that you say: Love what is evil. For if it seems evil to God that an innocent man be condemned, that sentence be given against an absent man, and indeed a righteous one, what else is it that you compel us to do, but what God hates? If, then, we should do what God hates, surely we would not be among those to whom it is said: You who love the Lord, hate evil. Indeed you do not hate evil for this reason, because you do not love the Lord: but we are unwilling to do what God hates, because we love Him. You do these things because you are not His servant, whose fear and love compel us to hate evil.

For you are not found within the Church of the Lord as a persecutor of that Church, so that you should think the Prophet spoke to you in the psalm: You who love the Lord, hate evil; since also in the hundredth psalm he says: He who works pride shall not dwell in the midst of my house; he who speaks unjust things has not been set right before my eyes. It is not, then, said to you who are placed outside, but to us: You who love the Lord, hate evil. We hate, then, the evil which you love for this reason, because you are not in the Church of God. For how can you maintain that you are in the Church of God, a man who not only persecutes the Church, but also denies Him who founded the Church? Are you not proud, and will you be able to dwell in the house of the Lord, so long as you remain in this arrogance?

For who could rightly be called proud, if you could be judged humble, you who say: Condemn, against the divine commands, an innocent man, trample the precepts of God, keep mine? But perhaps you do not speak unjust things, and you, denier of the Father, denier of His only Son, denier of the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, founder of the Arian heresy, destroyer of the apostolic faith, might be found among Christians; you do not speak unjust things with your poisoned lips, nothing that is unjust comes forth from that sacrilegious mouth. Were you unaware that in the hundred and second psalm the Holy Spirit said of the Lord: The Lord executes mercy and judgment for all who suffer injury; that you should command unjust judgment? Whose commands is it fitting that we, priests of the Lord, obey? Yours, not yet rescued from unclean spirits, or the prophet's? Through whom the Holy Spirit warns that every part of injustice be avoided by us worshippers of the true Godhead?

Had you not read, Constantius, what was said to you kings by God: Touch not my anointed ones, and do no evil to my prophets; that you should dare to stretch out your hands against the house of God? David, full of the Holy Spirit, says in the hundred and fifth psalm: Blessed are they who keep judgment, and do justice at all times; and you say: Do injustice with me. You persecute Athanasius, the impious persecuting the pious, the heretic the Christian: but I beg you, tell me, which of you can be acceptable to God? You, the denier of the eternal majesty of the only Son of God, the builder and founder of a false religion, or Athanasius? You have read in Psalm: Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they who search out his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart: and tell me, which of you seeks God, which of you offers faithful service to His majesty?

You, who persecute Athanasius because he confesses himself a Christian; or he, who wishes you, his persecutor, to be snatched from the snares of the devil? You, who are the destroyer of the catholic faith; or he, the preacher of the apostolic faith? If you are serving God, how does the Holy Spirit say further on? For they who work iniquity have not walked in his ways. You heretics, therefore, workers of iniquity, since you are not found in the ways of the Lord, surely show by your own works that you are in the way of the devil. You have read: Do not through the error of your life court death, nor procure destruction by the works of your hands; for God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living. Or do you remember having read it? Why have you commanded that we seek death for ourselves?

If you have not read it, learn what you have exhorted us to do, you who have chosen to be numbered among those whose deeds the Holy Spirit describes by the mouth of Solomon, saying: Neither did they hope for the wages of righteousness, nor did they judge the honor of holy souls to be of worth; for God created man incorruptible, and made him in the image of His own likeness: but by the envy of the devil death entered into the world. Those, then, imitate him who are of his party. You see that you are an imitator of the devil, that you are set in his party; you know that you are procuring death for yourself, you who have refused to remain in the image of God, as you were made by God, but have betaken yourself to him by whose envy death entered into the world.

On the other hand, receive how great a happiness Athanasius desires to attain; whence also he refuses to be what you are, an apostate Arian; receive too how great a blessedness those attained whom you have already deigned to slay because they called themselves Christians: But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the sight of the unwise, to die, and their departure was accounted an affliction, and their going forth from us, utter destruction: but they are in peace. For though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality, and having been afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded, for God has tried them and found them worthy of Himself.

As gold in the furnace He has proved them, and received them as a burnt offering, and in the time of their visitation they shall shine: they shall shine forth as sparks among the stubble, they shall run to and fro, they shall judge nations and rule over peoples, and their Lord shall reign forever. You desire to kill Athanasius, thinking that if you slay him you can inflict everlasting evil upon him, not knowing what is written: The just, when he is dead, condemns the living wicked, and youth quickly consummated condemns the length of years of the unjust.

For they shall see the end of the wise man, and shall not understand what God has designed for him, nor why the Lord has set him in safety: they shall see and shall despise him, but the Lord shall laugh them to scorn: and after this they shall fall down without honor, and shall be a reproach among the dead forever, because He shall burst them, swollen and speechless, and shall shake them from their foundations, and they shall be utterly laid waste, and shall be in sorrow, and their memory shall perish: they shall come, in fear, to the recognition of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand up against them to convict them.

You see among whom your lot is set: you see with what men you have set yourself to stand against the house of God; but you will see Athanasius among those of whom it is written further on: Then shall the righteous stand with great constancy against those who have afflicted them, and taken away their labors: seeing this, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the suddenness of their unlooked-for salvation, and shall say among themselves, repenting, and groaning for anguish of spirit: These are they whom we once held in derision, and as a byword of reproach. We fools accounted their life madness, and their end without honor: how are they numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints!

Then you will say these things, unless you take counsel for yourself, when you see yourself plunged into Tartarus: then you will say these things, which Scripture says the persecutors of Christ's soldiers will say: We have therefore erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice has not shone unto us, and the sun of understanding has not risen upon us: we wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard deserts, but the way of the Lord we have not known. What has pride profited us, or what have riches with vaunting brought us? All these things have passed away like a shadow, and like a runner who hurries by. Against you, on the other hand, you will see Athanasius among those of whom the Holy Spirit says, telling of their glory: But the righteous shall live forever, and their reward is with the Lord, and their care with the Most High.

Therefore shall they receive a kingdom of glory, and a crown of beauty at the hand of the Lord, for with His right hand He shall protect them, and with His holy arm defend them. You, on the other hand, if you remain in this obstinacy of mind, if you determine to end this fragile life among the Arians, will be among those to whom the Holy Spirit likewise speaks by the mouth of the prophet: Hear therefore, O kings, and understand; learn, you judges of the ends of the earth: give ear, you who rule over multitudes, and please yourselves in a multitude of nations; for power is given you by the Lord, and strength by the Most High, who shall examine your works, and search out your thoughts, because being ministers of His kingdom, you have not judged rightly, nor have you kept the law, nor walked according to the will of God.

Horribly and swiftly shall He appear to you, for a most severe judgment shall be for those who are in high places: for mercy is granted to the small, but the mighty shall be mightily tormented. For God will not except any man's person, neither will He stand in awe of any man's greatness: for He made the small and the great, and He has equal care for all: but the mighty shall be mightily tormented. Therefore, O tyrants, my words are directed to you, that you may learn wisdom, and not fall from it.

Then, if you have not yet listened to us, Constantius, you shall see what now, through your unbelief, you are scarcely able to see, you shall see, when you are set among your fellow tyrants in those places of torment, not only that you loved unjust judgments, but that you desired to destroy the house of God, that you stood forth a denier of the Son of God, that you decreed the faith to be preached otherwise, by your enduring power, than the prophets and apostles preached it. Nor will you be able to say: I am not among those whom the Holy Spirit describes through Solomon; when you hear him say: To you, then, O evil tyrants, are my words. You will not be able, then, to deny that you are the chief of all your own tyrants, if only you look thoroughly at your own works. The keeping of the laws, says the Prophet, is the confirmation of incorruption, and incorruption makes you near to God.

To this you say: Corrupt God's law, as you, our persecutors, have corrupted it. Who is so senseless as to wish, corrupted by you, to perish forever? Who would not wish, by remaining in integrity, to be made near to God? Why have you done these things yourself, or dared to compel us to do them? Had you not read that Solomon said to God in the book of Wisdom: God of our fathers, and Lord of mercies, who hast made all things by thy word, and by thy wisdom hast established man, that he should have dominion over the creature that was made by thee, that he should order the world in justice and equity, and in uprightness of soul execute judgment? And again: Thou hast taught thy people by such works, that the just man must be righteous, and thou hast made thy children to be of good hope. I say, if you had found these things written, you would not dare to provoke us to such inhumanity. But how shall we be children of good hope?

How shall we show ourselves just and humane servants before God? Since the transgressors of the law are called neither just nor children of God. Know, then, from what a good you have wished to drag us to death, and indeed to everlasting death. For whoever ceases to be among those whom God has called into the adoption of sons, loses life and possesses perpetual death. Since, then, you Arians are inhuman, impious, cruel, murderers, how can you be called Christians? But also, since you deny Christ the only Son of God, and confess that you have believed in antichrist, whence or how will you be able to prove yourselves servants of Christ, when by your own profession you show yourselves to be servants of antichrist?

For antichrist, in whom Arius believed, truly was when he was not; but on the contrary our Savior, Lord and God, the only Son of God, is not, as you would have it, Constantius, a creature, but is Lord of the creature; He is eternal, inestimable, such as He is, and whose Son He is; indeed He put on perfect man in the last days from the womb of a virgin; but even when He had taken on man, He remains such—unchangeable, incorruptible, ineffable, and unconvertible—as He is, and as He whose Son He is; He could not, by reason of the man He assumed, be converted into anything other than what He always was; since He is in the form of God His Father, since the Son is equal to the Father, as the most blessed Apostle relates: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

For not because it says, He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, could God the only Son of God become anything other than that which He is—incorruptible, ineffable, unchangeable—since He remains ever in that state of eternal greatness in which His Father also remains. But we understand well what "He emptied himself" means: that is, though the Son be like and equal to the Father, yet He willed also to become man for our salvation. Since, then, you have received antichrist instead of Christ—since he truly was when he was not—with what face do you still resist Christians? Unless it be the face with which adulteresses are wont to resist the chaste.

You have dared to attempt, to wish to lord it over God's people, to wish to subject the Church of God to your kingdom, though its divine majesty fears only God, not your futile empire: and this indeed you have done because you did not know that it is written of you tyrants: Therefore undisciplined souls have erred: for when the wicked are persuaded that they can lord it over the nation of the saints, bound with the chains of darkness, and fettered in a long night, shut up under roofs, they are fugitives. You see now that you are among those persecutors of God's people, of whom you have read, that all are bound together with one chain of darkness. And again: Worthy indeed are they to be deprived of light and to suffer the prison of darkness, who keep shut up thy children, through whom the incorrupt light of the law of life was beginning to be given to all. Will you deny that you hold God's bishops in confinement?

And since you are preventing us from preaching the truth to God's people, why do you keep us in prison? Why do you send us into exile? Unless it is because you fear lest we, by the revelation of the sacred Scriptures, should show that you Arian wolves, ravenous rabid dogs and antichrists of our time, are what you are. For the sacred Scriptures prove from your own deeds that you are not servants of God, but plainly sons of the devil. For if you are not one of those whom the sacred Scriptures cry out will be such, since you will have found it written in Psalm: Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place, thou and the ark of thy sanctification: let thy priests be clothed with justice; why have you wished to condemn one who was absent? Surely to this end, that we might lose the justice with which the Lord had clothed us.

For since it says: Let thy priests be clothed with justice, and you were forcing us to do injustice, what else would we have been, had we done what pleased your malevolence, but your accomplices in crime, but fountains of all iniquity—we who, laying aside the office of justice, would have taken up injustice in order to please you? You persecute the house of God, Constantius, not knowing that you are persecuting God Himself in His house: for the house of God is the Church, in which the Lord dwells, as it is written in the same Psalm: The Lord hath chosen Sion, He hath chosen it beforehand for His habitation: this is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it. Since these things are so, see that you are punishing yourself, when you punish one of ours; that you are persecuting your own salvation, since you are fighting against God, not us, of whom you may hear God say that in it He deigns to rest.

You, then, who attempt to violate the temples of the Lord, unless you convert, will be scattered by that same kind of destruction as those of whom David speaks in Psalm: Who smote Egypt with their firstborn, for his mercy endureth forever; and brought out Israel from among them, for his mercy endureth forever; with a strong hand and a stretched out arm, for his mercy endureth forever. Who divided the Red Sea into parts, for his mercy endureth forever; and brought out Israel through the midst thereof, for his mercy endureth forever; and overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea. Why do I find these things written? Except that I might believe that when you attempted to oppress me, my God, who could have destroyed you had you not converted, just as He destroyed Pharaoh, would likewise have snatched me from your hands, just as He snatched them from Pharaoh's power.

For this reason He says at each clause, for his mercy endureth forever, that He might reveal to me that the Lord's mercy remains always with me, who serve Him alone, but cannot be with you, since you are, evidently, His enemy, as Pharaoh was. We were unwilling to condemn one who was absent; we were unwilling to give sentence, according to your desire, against one whom we know to be innocent, and whom we know to be a preacher of the catholic faith. Why? Because we Christians have set our hope in God, not in you and your fleeting kingdom. We were unwilling to please ourselves with the glory of your kingdom, we who are to obtain glory, awaiting it from Him in whom alone we are taught to trust and hope, as David says in Psalm: Put not your trust in princes, nor in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation. His spirit shall go forth and he shall return into his earth: in that day all their thoughts shall perish.

Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them. Who keepeth truth for ever, who executeth judgment for them that suffer wrong. We were unwilling unjustly to persecute with you a man full of the fruits of justice, lest, while vengeance was being taken upon you, it should also overtake us; we did not do what you unjustly commanded us to fulfill, lest we should come with you to that place which is described in Ecclesiastes: And God shall require him that suffereth persecution; and further: I saw under the sun in the place of judgment, wickedness, and in the place of the just, iniquity.

We were unwilling to join ourselves to you heretics; we were unwilling to join hands with you in attacking the house of God; we were unwilling to take up idolatry with you in contempt of God; we were unwilling to be mingled with your sacrilege, lest we too should deserve to hear along with you those things which the priests, people, and king of Israel heard by the mouth of the prophet Hosea—all of whom, having forsaken God, had turned themselves to idolatry: Hear this, O priests, and hearken, O house of Israel, and give ear, O house of the king: for there is a judgment against you, because you have been a snare to them whom you should have watched over, and as a net spread upon Thabor. You knew well that it was written in the prophet Amos, when you gave instruction, that is, an example of how to condemn an innocent man: Who hath made judgment in the height, and justice on the earth.

Violator of God's justice, did you not know that the prophet Micah said of Judah and its princes? They have not lifted up their hands to God, but have coveted fields and taken them by violence, and houses they have violently taken away: and oppressed a man and his house, a man and his heritage. Therefore thus saith the Lord: Behold, I devise an evil against this people, from which you shall not remove your necks. But when you condemn to proscription, deportation, imprisonment, torture, and finally to death, the worshippers of God, shall no evil be reckoned to you? We were unwilling to be mingled with your unspeakable deeds, lest with you, condemned to eternal punishment, we should hear those things which are said by God through Micah: Hear ye this, O ye heads of the house of Jacob, and ye that remain of the house of Israel: you that abhor judgment, and pervert all that is right. You that build up Sion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.

The judges thereof judged for bribes, and the priests thereof taught for hire, and the prophets thereof divined for money: and they leaned upon the Lord, saying: Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No evil shall come upon us. Had you not yet read in this most holy prophet, that you should order the condemnation of a man consecrated to God? Wherewith shall I lay hold of the Lord, and bow myself to the high God? Shall I lay hold of him by holocausts, or by calves of a year old? May the Lord be appeased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousand fat he-goats? Shall I give my firstborn for my wickedness, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? It hath been shown to thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: verily, to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Nor had you found it written in Habakkuk: The wicked hath oppressed the just by his power?

That you might thus have attempted so wicked a deed as could make you impious before God. Likewise, further on, had you not found it set down? Why lookest thou upon them that despise, and holdest thy peace when the wicked devoureth the man that is more just than himself? And so, seeing that you, being wicked, had attempted to devour the just, indeed we not only did not keep silent about your evildoing, but we will not keep silent. For you are no other than the one of whom it is said: A proud man, a boaster and puffed up, shall accomplish nothing; who hath enlarged his soul as hell, and himself is like death, and is never satisfied. It cannot be said that this does not apply to you, if you would but recall with me the crimes of your misdeeds, and if you would not be slow to recount your funerals.

For who else in our days, pleasing himself, a scorner, proud, accomplishing nothing, who has enlarged his soul as hell, and who can be reckoned as death itself, never satisfied, can be found, except you? But see that all your boasting profits you nothing, when God says this to you. For although you be a scorner of God's commandments, although you desire to persecute His religion, though you have so far enlarged your soul unto the slaughter of God's worshippers that you do not deign in your whole kingdom to cease vexing the Lord's flock; yet all your persecution profits nothing. For all whom you persecute are and always will be servants of God. But you, unless you take heed for yourself, will perish forever: self-pleasing, a scorner, proud, since you enlarge your soul like hell to devour and swallow us up alike, because we resist your evildoing, made like insatiable death, driven by furies to our destruction.

So wicked are you, Constantius, that when I find the prophet saying: Woe to him that buildeth an evil foundation for his house, that he may set his nest on high, you and the heritage of antichrist, which you favor, come before my eyes, as I recognize your sacrilegious endeavors. For it cannot be doubted that you have attempted and are attempting that your heresy might be founded throughout your whole kingdom, while the catholic faith is destroyed. But also, when I hear the prophet consecrated to God say: Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and prepareth a city by iniquity; you seem to me to be one who is building a den of robbers by the shedding of blood, through the slaughter of God's servants. Or will you deny that your wicked council is a den of robbers, of the Arians? If you are not robbers, how do you find yourselves killing men consecrated to God? Woe unto them who build cities in blood.

Most prudent emperor, did you not see that woe could befall you, because you thought your heresy must be rebuilt through the shedding of the blood of men of God? The Holy Spirit says through the prophet Sophonias: Seek the Lord, and all ye meek of the earth, work judgment, and seek righteousness, and answer accordingly, so that you may be read of in the day of the Lord's wrath: you say: Condemn the innocent, be murderers with me, sacrilegious ones; are these not the things you command us to do? You have ordered that the Lord's priest be condemned, and moreover you have ordered that Arian perfidy be held, and that the faith drawn up at Nicaea be rejected. If you cannot deny that you commanded these things to be carried out, behold that you have wished to make us murderers and sacrilegious men too.

God says: And it shall be in that day: I will search Jerusalem with a lamp, I will take vengeance upon the men who are contemptuous, who do not keep the commandments: and you say that yours and your blasphemers' commands are rather to be kept. How could we unjustly condemn a priest of the Lord full of the fruits of righteousness, when we see what threat arose against the rulers of the Jews, or against all their accomplices who are known to have done what you are doing? What splendid and redeemed city was this, a dove: she did not hear the voice, she did not receive discipline, she did not trust in the Lord, and did not draw near to her God. Her princes roar like lions, her judges are like the wolves of Arabia, leaving nothing till the morning: her prophets are spiritual men, contemptuous; her priests defile themselves and act impiously. But the Lord is just in the midst of her, and he will not act unjustly.

Since these things are so, and it is by no means lawful for us to pronounce an unjust judgment, it remains only that you make yourself one of His servants, and learn to pronounce judgment; or if you always wish to be among the adversaries of God, pronounce your unjust judgment alone, and cease to force us to do what you see is divinely forbidden to be done. Cease now to accuse Athanasius or us of destroying God's house, when you may find in Zacharias that you and your tyrants are described there, because you would be persecutors of God's inheritance, you of whom he says that you have usurped power beyond measure. Indeed, telling of your cruelty, the Lord says: I have been jealous for Jerusalem and Sion with great jealousy, and I am angered with great anger against the nations that set themselves up above you, for which I was angry a little. But they contrived evils against themselves.

Do you dare, lover of darkness, execrator of light, to say: Condemn the innocent, when God deigns to command us through Zacharias, saying: Judge righteous judgment, and show kindness and mercy each to his brother: and do not oppress by power the widow, the orphan, the proselyte, and the poor, and let none remember the malice of his brother in his heart. Since these are heavenly commandments, by whose authority did you say, Tear apart your fellow servant? If you should say that you brought forth this authority by the commands of God, you will not be able to prove it, since indeed no precept of God can be found in the sacred Scriptures that the innocent should be condemned.

Since therefore you have done what the law of God forbids, it is established that you have brought forth this authority from the will of him who appears to be an enemy of God; whence you must necessarily be compared to those of whom it is said through the prophet: And they dissuaded others from observing, and gave their back to folly, and made their ears and their heart unpersuadable, so as not to obey; they weighed themselves down, so as not to obey my law. And below: They did not hear; and they will cry out, and I will not hear them, says the Lord almighty. Souls, be at rest: these are the words which you should do: speak truth each to his neighbor, and judge peaceable and just judgment in your gates: and let none of you devise malice against his neighbor in your hearts, and do not love false swearing, for I hate all these things, says the Lord almighty. Why do you compel me to do the things which the Lord almighty says he hates?

But the Lord, instructing concerning fasting, says, Love peace and truth. How could we be lovers of peace and truth, if we should punish as guilty an innocent man weighed down with false charges brought by you and yours? Or what peace was there? Since by doing this we could even have been cast out from the peace of the Lord. For the peace of the Lord who says: My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, would not have been left by him in us, if we had unjustly borne otherwise. Who does not know that when discipline recedes, grace recedes as well? In Malachy, God says: The son honors the father, and the servant his master. And if I am a father, where is my honor? Says the Lord almighty. What fear and honor then were we to render to God, if we had done what you commanded to be done? For your precepts strive to take away fear and honor of God from those dedicated to His mercy.

But further, showing your special work, he says: You have provoked God with your words, and you said: In what have we provoked him? In that you say: Everyone who does evil is good before God, and He blesses them: and where is the God of justice? The prophet says: Where is the God of justice, against those who say: He who does evil is good before God, and He blesses them: and you give commands for the shedding of the blood of the just, and yet you say you are a servant of God, while you are a destroyer of His law. Is it just to condemn one who is absent, and indeed innocent, or unjust? If it is not just, why do you force us to do that thing by which we would deserve to be punished by God? Tobias says: All the days of your life, my son, keep God in mind, and do not wish to sin, or to transgress His commandments.

Do justice all the days of your life, and do not walk in the way of iniquity, for if you act in truth, there will be regard for your works, and for all who do justice. Say, Constantius, does he do justice who kills the innocent? Who sheds the blood of the servants of God? If he does not do justice, but rather iniquity, it remains for you to see that you are a lover of iniquity, and a fabricator of every unjust work. For since the sacred law urges us to do justice at all times, and you compel us to do injustice, what else would you have me consider you but a lover and perpetrator of injustice? All the days of your life, my son, he says, keep God in mind; while you have abandoned Him by clinging to the Arians. For we who hold the apostolic faith do not abandon Him. How do you not transgress His commandments, you who would kill His servants dedicated to His name and majesty?

Since you compel them to abandon Him, and to become fellow serpents and fellow apostates with you? We labor under your hatred, because we tell you the truth, because we wish you to live with us forever; but you love those who have passed over to you, those who, though they first contracted with you, have preferred rather to serve your wicked designs than to obey the commands of God. You rejoice that by your cunning you have enticed them into accepting your heresy, that you have them all in subjection, those whom you had already seen say you were worth nothing, whom you saw trample upon the authority of your reign for the sake of truth. But we wish you to know that this deed is not new, but has often been done by the perfidious and thoughtless, by those whom, foreknowing the future, the mouth of the most holy prophet Malachy foretold: You have made your counsels heavy against me, says the Lord almighty, and you said: In what have we detracted from you?

Because you said: Vain is everyone who serves God, and what more? Because we kept His commandments, and walked beseeching before the face of the Lord almighty. And now we call the strangers blessed, and all who do wicked things are renewed: and they resisted God, and were saved. Those who feared God spoke thus, detracting, each to his neighbor: and the Lord paid attention, and heard, and wrote a book of remembrance before Him for those who fear the Lord and dread His name. And it shall be mine, says the Lord almighty, in the day when I act, for a possession; and I will choose them, as a man chooses his son who serves him well: and being converted you shall see how much difference there is between the just and the unjust, between him who serves God and him who does not serve Him.

For behold the day of the Lord comes, burning like an oven, and it shall burn them, and all foreigners shall be, and all who do wicked things, like stubble, and the day of the Lord that comes shall kindle them, says the Lord almighty, and there shall be left of them neither root nor branch. Hearing that God says these things, I think that you, still being willing to remain in your evils, even rejoice in this, that along with transgressors, with those who forsake God, you will receive those same things from Him. Woe to you, murderer and sacrilegious one, for unless you do penance for your deeds, you will be, as you now are, among those whom God rebukes through the mouth of Isaiah, saying: Woe, sinful nation, people full of iniquities, wicked seed, lawless children, you have forsaken the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

You will always be one of those who, because of the wickedness of their pursuits, are compared to the princes of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah, as it is said: Hear the word of the Lord, princes of Sodom: attend to the law of God, people of Gomorrah. You will be with those of whom you have read it was written: If you multiply your prayers, I will not hear you: for your hands are full of blood. Woe to you, Constantius, who have incurred such offense of God, that you could not see what you ought to have guarded against.

For when, by the mouth of Isaiah, He says to those killers of the holy prophets and of all the just: Wash yourselves, be clean, take away your wickedness from before my eyes, cease from your evil deeds, learn to do good, seek judgment, rescue him that suffers wrong, judge for the fatherless, and defend the widow; to this you, on the contrary, command that the worshippers of God be slaughtered, that God Himself be forsaken, and idolatry embraced instead; this would have been to have heard the warnings of God, and to have been corrected. Why then do you compel us to do this? Unless because you desire that we be consumed together with you by the sword. And if you be willing, God says, and hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land. But if you refuse, and do not hear me, the sword shall consume you: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things. Whom shall we obey, God who says these things, or you His enemy?

God tells the Jews that they should now abandon their errors, cast their wickedness from their hearts, learn to do good, judge righteous judgment. You say, Condemn unjustly. Why then do you urge me to do this? Unless you wish me to become the sort of man to whom God has said: But you, God says, why do you burn my vineyard, and why is there plunder of the poor in your houses? Why do you do injury to the people and confound the face of the needy? And you are doing just this, doing all these things for which He is indignant against those who do them: as though you knew you could not please unless you had also burned the Lord's vineyard, and had established plunder of the poor within your house, and had inflicted injuries in many ways upon the servants of God. Or will you try to say you have not done all these things?

Have you not burned the vineyard of the Lord, when you compelled it no longer to know the Lord God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the apostles, the God of the prophets and martyrs, but instead the idolatry invented by Arius, and exalted by you? Is not this the plunder of the poor of God—these Christian servants in your house, concerning whom you have read it written: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven? Since you know you have proscribed those who resist your sacrilege. Will you dare to say: I have not done, nor do I do, injury to the people of God? And who ever did so great an injury as you have done? For you cease neither to inflict every kind of torment, nor to punish in various ways.

We refused to punish the innocent man as if guilty, lest that sentence strike us also, which is even now prophesied by the mouth of Isaiah: Woe to those who write iniquity; for those who write iniquity write, turning aside the judgment of the poor, and seizing the judgment of the needy of my people, that the widow may become their spoil, and the orphan a prey: and what will they do in the day of visitation? For trouble shall come upon you from afar, and to whom will you flee? We did not comply with your poisoned counsel, desiring rather to flee, in all our tribulations and anxieties, to Him to whom that lover of righteousness, Job, fled amid all his trial; we did not obey your cruel command, because we wished to be found imitators of that servant of God, Job, who says: I delivered the poor from the hand of the mighty, and I was a helper to the orphan who had no helper. And the mouth of the widow always blessed me.

For I was clothed with justice, and covered with judgment; and I was the eye of the blind, and the father of the weak; but I broke the jaws of the wicked, and took away the prey from between their teeth. And below: I have been set as the balance of justice, and the Lord knows my simplicity, for my foot has never strayed from the right way, nor has my eye looked awry. What is the right way, from which glorious Job attests he did not deviate? Surely this: which neither kills the innocent, nor knows any other God; for he knows none but the God of angels and archangels, whom you perceive we are not able to be torn from His power.

For when you say of the faith of the blessed Church: If the catholic faith is that drawn up at Nicaea, let Him whom they believed rescue them from my power; you thereby say that God has no man to rescue us from your hands, that you cannot stand on the contrary, you assert that the God of the apostolic Church does not have such power as could exclude your might. For what else does the blessed faith of the Church confess, save that it believes in God the Father and in his only Son, born of the unbegotten and true Father, and in the holy Spirit the Paraclete? What else does the faith of the catholic Church confess, save that the Trinity is perfect, and that the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one? What else does the faith of the blessed Church confess, save that neither did the Father assume man, nor the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, but the only Son of God?

What else does the faith of the glorious Church affirm, save that the only Son of God is unchangeable, unconvertible, inestimable, immense, eternal, even as He is, and whose Son He is? The holy Church has believed that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one power and one sole dominion—this faith, which you call heretical; and you affirm as catholic that faith of yours which says that God does not have a true Son, which says that there was a time when He was not, which says He was made out of nothing—assuredly out of those same notions with which Rabsaces, the general of the king of the Assyrians, reproached the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, saying: Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for your God cannot deliver you out of the hands of the king of the Assyrians.

So too you, leader of Antichrist, say through your agents: Let not the words of your bishops who contradict me deceive you, for the faith which they preach cannot deliver you. For though the wording may vary, still the matter comes to this, that it may be established that you reproach God to us in this way, as being powerless to snatch us away, just as the king of the Assyrians reproached: Thus says the king of the Assyrians: If you wish to be blessed, come out rather to me, and each of you shall eat the fruit of his own vine and fig tree, and drink water from your own cisterns, until I come and take you to a land like your own land, a land of wheat, and wine, and bread, and vineyards. Let not Hezekiah then deceive you, saying: God will deliver you. And further on: Who shall deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?

But that you have been shown to be such a one on the contrary, God says through the mouth of Isaiah to Hezekiah: Be not afraid because of these words which you have heard, with which the envoys of the Assyrians have reproached me: behold, I send my spirit, and having heard a report he shall return to his own land, and shall fall by the sword in his own land. We now discern, Constantius, those very dangers standing about you, unless you take counsel for yourself, which stood about him who said: Thus shall you say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Let not your God deceive you, in whom you trust, saying: Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hands of the king of the Assyrians. You are in dangers, blasphemer, just as he was, and you do not see it; but we, against you, the worshipers of God, see ourselves standing safe and defended, unharmed. Whence are we safe and defended?

Only because we hold the holy faith which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs held—this faith which you have judged heretical. But to return again to Athanasius, in whom you persecute this sacred faith, did you not fear, I ask you, the indignation of the Lord pronounced against those who attempted to reproach the most just Job, that you should attack God's bishop with false charges? Do you not fear even now lest God say to you what He said to that king who spoke against most holy Job: You have sinned, you and your two friends. For you have not spoken the truth before me. Meanwhile you Arians will be found before God now with regard to Athanasius, just as those were then found who reproached Job. It is profitable for you, Constantius, that through Athanasius, the Lord's priest, you be a suppliant to God for your crimes, that you direct your vows through him, just as those men did through Job; that through Athanasius or through his fellow bishops you strive to obtain saving baptism.

But however you may twist yourselves in whatever manner against Athanasius, you are found to be of the sons of that serpent, viper, deserter, renegade—since you are heretics; but Athanasius is a member of God's household, as Job was; he is of the sons of light, and holds that very path of justice which the servant of God Job held; he is himself possessing the faith, whence Athanasius too is of the sons of Abraham. Athanasius confesses the Son of God just as Job confessed him; and how is Job of the sons of Abraham, except because he believed just as Abraham was believing? If you do not know that this is so, run through the blessed apostle Paul, not only to the Romans, but to the Galatians, and you will find that what I maintain is true. Or shall it be denied that Job is of the sons of Abraham, merely because the blessed apostle did not make special mention of just Job's name?

If it cannot be denied that Job is of the sons of Israel, it cannot be doubted that he was made so great and such a man for this reason, that he believed in God as blessed Abraham was believing. For the apostle reveals that believers are justified not by works of the law, but through faith: for the victory over those trials would not have been reckoned to him for righteousness, unless he had been believing in God as Abraham believed; or how would he have overcome the devil, unless because he had been believing in God the Father, and in his only Son, born of the unbegotten and true Father, and in the holy Spirit the Paraclete? Or if you think that it was not always believed as we believe today, prove that the blessed apostles and martyrs could have overcome your fellow executioners, and, having conquered your friend the devil, attain the heavenly kingdoms, without believing in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Therefore if those who believed after the coming of the only Son of God overcame in this way by believing, believe also that before his coming those who overcame the devil believed in no other way than as we believe today. For neither would Daniel have overcome the lions, nor the three youths the fires, unless they had been believing as the Church believes today. Hence, finally, the apostle appeals to the faith of Abraham, proving by the authority of the sacred writings that Abraham believed just as Paul was then believing, but that he himself had formerly been an erring son of wrath, when along with the Jews he denied the only Son of God. Since this is so, I beseech you now to cease waging war against the house of God, and to accept heavenly exhortations, which can lead you to the attainment of everlasting salvation. Hear with your own ears what God says to you through Isaiah: Hear me, you who have lost your heart, who are far from justice.

Or if your heart is with you, if you are not far from justice, why do you say to us, the priests of God: Condemn the absent one, punish the innocent? For if you have not lost your heart, and hold the path of justice, why do you not keep what is written: Keep judgment, do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my mercy to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who lays hold of it, not to violate my sabbaths, keeping his hands from doing injustice. And again: There is no rejoicing for the impious, says the Lord. Cry aloud with strength, spare not: lift up your voice like a trumpet, and announce to my people their sins, and to the house of Jacob their iniquities: they seek me from day to day, and desire to know my ways, as though they were a people that had done justice and had not forsaken the judgment of God.

They now ask of me a just judgment, and desire to draw near to God. What hope, unhappy man, can you have, unless you have done penance for your evil deeds? Since you hear God say: There is no rejoicing for the impious. Or will you deny that you are an impious worshiper of God, when you do not deny that you are a shedder of blood? Furthermore, if in the time of fasting God brought forth such rebukes against those who struck their subjects with their fists, and injured them with other kinds of wrongs, what sort of rebuke would He have brought forth against us, if against the precepts of His divine majesty we should condemn one unheard, absent, and indeed innocent? Nor if you bow your neck like a hoop, and spread sackcloth and ashes beneath you, will your fast be called acceptable in this way. We see by this threat how great God's wrath can be against us, if we should condemn the innocent.

For if in the time of fasting we strike our subjects with our fists, the Lord is indignant to such a degree—how much more, if we should slaughter His own worshipers! If it is not lawful for me to strike my subjects with fists in the time of fasting, will it be lawful at any time to strike my fellow priest with the sword? Not such a fast have I chosen, says the Lord, but loose the bonds of violent contracts; release those who are broken into remission, and tear up every unjust bond; break your bread for the hungry, and bring the needy who are without shelter into your house: if you see one naked, cover him, and do not despise the members of your own household. What hope do you hold, most prudent king, when you turn all these things into their contrary?

For how have you loosed every knot of iniquity, when whether by your unbelief, remaining such as you have made yourself against us, and growing more and more in your malice toward destroying us; or whether in your blasphemy you have grown as the author of sacrilege, further increasing your blasphemy by proclaiming it to be the catholic faith by edict—in the manner, namely, of harlots, who at first fornicate in secret, but afterward become so shameless, so lost to the honor of modesty, that they wish to fornicate in the open? How have you loosed every knot of iniquity, when against blessed Athanasius you still retain the fury you conceived years ago, so that you wish his blood to be shed? How have you released the broken into rest, when you do not cease to torment the servants of God in various ways? And how have you released the broken into rest, when you see that the mines of the prisons, the places of exile, can scarcely now contain the number of Christians condemned by you?

How, even if you break your bread for the hungry, will the Lord accept it as acceptable, when you kill by starvation the servants dedicated to His eternity? How, if you bring the needy without shelter into your house, will God deign to look upon your work, when He sees His own glorious servants cast out of their private houses, made exiles for this reason, that they refused to accept your idolatry established through Arius? How, if you cover the naked, can you please God, when you have taken away the patrimonies of His own servants, and have said: If you condemn the apostolic faith, and accept the Arian, you shall receive back all your goods? Truly there is one thing among all these sacred commands of the Lord which you may be found to fulfill, namely, that you do not despise the members of your own household.

You truly do not despise your fellow vipers, the Arians, born, of course, of your shameless father the devil; you love your brothers because you see them nearer to you, you love them with a singular affection, to them you display the whole glory of your kingdom, them you hold as allies and partners in destroying God's inheritance in your kingdom; them you have made rich, them you have raised above all others set in high estate—that is, those who have judged fit to mingle themselves with your darkness. Therefore, since you are doing these things which God hates, how do you suppose that you can be heard by God? Or if you give alms, could it be accepted there? When you hear Him say: Then your morning light shall arise, and your health shall spring forth quickly, and justice shall go before you, and the majesty of God shall surround you. Then you shall cry out, and God will hear you. While you are still speaking, He will say: Behold, I am here.

Do you think you can attain anything of these things, since no morning light has arisen for you, but inextricable darkness has besieged your soul, and the fogs of errors have overspread it? What health has arisen for you, when you are set in every wound of death, when you daily increase the wounds upon yourself, when you are laboring at how you may utterly destroy yourself? For us indeed there is no health from any other source, except first of all because we have believed, as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed. How can justice go before you, when you remain wholly in injustice? When you are the very sewer of the Arian dogma? When you are a shedder of Christian blood? How shall the majesty of God surround you, when you are one who assaults that very majesty, which, forsaking it, you have judged fit to embrace the idolatry of the Arian dogma? How then shall you cry out, and God hear you? While you are still speaking, will He say: I am here?

When you deny God the Father, deny His only Son, deny the holy Spirit the Paraclete? How can He either hear you, or say to you: Behold, I am here? When you overturn, so far as lies in you, His religion, when you have removed His catholic bishops and appointed heretics? How shall He hear you, whom you have thought fit to trample in every way, unless you do penance for your evil deeds, unless, forsaking your wicked ways, you take hold of the just path of the holy Church? Then indeed you will be able to obtain these promises of God. For it is written concerning those who turn to God with their whole heart: Thus says the Most High who dwells on high, holy forever among the holy, whose name is the Lord Most High, resting among the holy, and giving to the humble in spirit uprightness of soul, and giving vindication to those crushed in heart. I will not be angry with you forever, nor will I always demand vengeance from you.

But to whom does He say this? Surely to those who turn back by making satisfaction to blot out their sins. Whence also: Not such a fast have I chosen, says the Lord, but loose every knot of iniquity, but loose the bonds of violent contracts; release those who are broken into remission, and tear up every unjust bond: break your bread for the hungry, and bring the poor who are without shelter into your house: if you see one naked, cover him, and you will not despise the members of your own household. Then your morning light shall arise, and your health shall spring forth quickly, and justice shall go before you, and the majesty of God shall surround you. Then you shall cry out, and God will hear you: and while you are still speaking, He will say: Behold, I am here.

God will be present with you, if you first believe in Him, if then you turn yourself to these things also, which He further says must be fulfilled below: If you take away from you the bond of iniquity and constraint, and the word of murmuring, and give your bread to the hungry from your heart, and satisfy the humbled soul. Then light shall arise for you in the darkness, and your darkness shall be to you as noonday: and God shall be your God will be with you always, and you will be filled as your soul desires, and all your bones will grow fat, and they will be like a drunken garden, and like a spring whose water has not failed. These things, as has already been said, you will be able to attain, if you betake yourself to the Church, if you shun your Arians, if you deign to hate that congregation of the wicked which is yours.

Then will God be with you always, then in darkness light will arise for you, then darkness will be as noonday to you, then your path will be directed in good things. But if you remain in this obstinacy, in this cruelty by which you torment his servants, God will not be with you, but rather he who is found today too in your gathering of Arians, that is, the devil. For these things which you deign to do are not God's, but the devil's.

If those are works of God, that you proscribe certain men because they either would not condemn Athanasius, the innocent bishop of God, or would not communicate with your co-heretic George, or because they call themselves Christians, because they refuse to become co-apostates with you, they may indeed judge whether those works are pleasing to God; likewise whether that is almsgiving, which you give out of the tears of others, out of the goods of those who chose rather to be deported, killed, and proscribed by you, than either to condemn an innocent man, or to deny the only Son of God, believing in whom they knew Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs to have been glorified—of whom I desire that you become a partaker, and that you share in all things with me: that these are my wishes concerning you, he is witness who is able to grant this to us.

Do you dare, Constantius, to stretch out your hands against those dedicated to God, to harass those whose happiness the apostle declares, saying: "We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose, whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son". Your persecutions indeed work together for our good. But observe through Jeremiah what God promises you, the persecutors, saying: "Israel is holy to the Lord, the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall be held guilty; evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord". Evils will come upon you, which God promises you, Constantius, unless you correct yourself, just as they came upon that carnal, blaspheming people of yours, to whom it is said: "Thou hast done wickedly to pollute thy ways, and in thy hands is found the blood of innocent souls".

You will be forever among the enemies of God, unless you hear, hearing, his holy admonition, which says: "If ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, and if ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, if ye oppress them not, and shed not innocent blood in this place, and walk not after other gods". You will amend your ways if you now cease to persecute the servants of God, if you confess yourself a Christian and deny that you are an Arian, if you believe the Son of God to be the true Son of God, if you anathematize those who say: "There was when he was not, and he was made out of nothing"; you will change your ways if you repent of your murders and your sacrilege; otherwise you will be, as you now are, among those to whom God reproachfully says: "Is my house become a den of robbers, wherein my name is called upon"?

Whom do you wish to be the house of God—you Arians, or us Christians? For if your wicked congregation is the house of God, then a congregation of robbers is the house of God. For by shedding the blood of God's servants, just as the Jews then shed it, you are shown to be robbers. By your fruits, Emperor Constantius, you are known not to be a Christian, but plainly a purveyor of robbers. You order, finally, that the innocent be slain, dwelling, evidently, not in the church of the Lord, but in a den of robbers: you do not cease to kill those whom you see ready to be killed for the glory of the only-begotten Son of God, for his eternal majesty.

We were unwilling, at your false suggestions, to pronounce sentence against a just man, lest that reproach of the Lord strike us too, along with you and the Jews: "He hath bent his tongue as a bow for lies, and faith hath not prevailed upon the earth, for they have proceeded from evil to evil, and they have not known me". You, who are both the fabricator and lover of false accusations, you who know not the Lord—unless you correct yourself, as you are—will be one of those of whom you have read it written: "They do not speak the truth: their tongue hath learned to speak lies: they have refused to return: and they have not ceased usury upon usury, deceit upon deceit: they have refused to know me, saith the Lord. Therefore thus saith the Lord: Behold, I will melt them and try them, for what else shall I do because of the wickedness of the daughter of my people?

Their tongue is a wounding arrow, the wicked words of their mouth: he speaketh peace to his neighbor, and in himself he cherisheth enmity. Shall I not visit them for these things, saith the Lord, or shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation"? Snatch yourself, Constantius, from the pit of Arian madness, lest you incur eternal punishments along with your fellow sacrilegers. Do not glory in your perishable dignity: consider that you are mortal, for you cannot attain immortality unless you acknowledge God and do his will; as it is written: "Thus saith the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, and let not the strong man glory in his strength, and let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, and knows how to glory in God, for I am the Lord who exercises mercy, and judgment, and justice upon the earth; for in these things is my will, saith the Lord".

Since therefore you see that the will of the Lord consists in these things, how do you dare to hold in hatred what the Lord says he loves? "In this," he says, "let him that glorieth glory, that he understandeth and knoweth me, and knows how to glory in God". How can you now say that you glory in God? How can you claim to seek him, when you provoke all worshippers of his majesty to abandon the faith of the apostles, to accept the blasphemy of your teaching? "In this let him that glorieth glory, that he understandeth and knoweth me, and knows how to glory in God, for I am the Lord who exercises mercy and judgment and justice upon the earth, for in these things is my will, saith the Lord".

Since therefore you wish an unjust judgment to be pronounced by the priests of God, since you are the shedder of innocent blood, you are not the servant of him who deigned to speak these words through the prophet's mouth, but plainly you are the servant of him who filled the heart of Cain, that he might slay the just boy, the first worshipper of the Lord. Hence it is that, though you are placed in such high station, you are found to be nevertheless one of those of whom you have read that the Lord spoke in the Gospel: "You are born of your father the devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father: for he was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth".

You are a liar and a murderer: a liar, in that you have laid false charges against the servant of God, Athanasius; a liar, in that you call the heretical faith catholic, and the catholic faith heretical; a murderer, in that you pursue the blood of Athanasius, and have already killed a certain number of worshippers of God. You have not stood, without doubt, in the truth, since you do these things, but you are wholly established in falsehood, since your father also is a liar, who compels you to deny the only Son of God, who drives you to shed the blood of his servants. We refused to condemn an absent man, we refused to pass sentence on the innocent, we refused to adopt your heresy, lest, made like you, we should deserve to hear what your fellow-erring Jews hear, in reproach of whom we gather what is said through Jeremiah: "All the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart".

You are, and will be, unless you surrender yourself to us, among those against whom the Holy Spirit cries out, speaking in the person of our people to God, saying: "I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not his own; neither is it in man to walk and direct his own steps: correct us, O Lord, but in judgment, and not in wrath, lest thou bring us to nothing: pour out thy wrath upon the nations that know thee not, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name, for they have devoured Jacob, and consumed him, and have made his pasture desolate". You see that you are one of those against whom the Spirit of God speaks in the person of our people. Consider, unless you convert, that the wrath of the Lord against you, a foreigner, against you, a king, is coming; for not only have you not called upon the name of the Lord, but you have moreover persecuted him.

For when it says: "For they have devoured Jacob, and consumed him, and made his pastures desolate"; who can be found among your fellow tyrants to be the chief destroyer of this pasture, if not you indeed, who have neither ceased to butcher the servants of God, nor cease to sow your blasphemies throughout your whole realm? For it cannot be doubted that you have attempted to destroy the pasture of God's people, since you have taken away its shepherds, of whom, as we have often said, God said through Jeremiah: "And I will give you shepherds according to my own heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine"; and you have set up heretics, and have caused a restriction to be imposed on the catholics, so that even if they wished to remain in their own sees, they would not dare to preach the apostolic faith, they would not attempt, while you, the defender of the Arian heresy, live in the flesh, to impart the evangelical tradition to the peoples.

This is the proof that shows you have attempted to destroy the pasture of God's people. For the whole nourishment of Christian souls consists in nothing but believing, as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs believed, and then in doing all justice. You, on the contrary, since you wish to remove faith from the hearts of God's people, and to insert your own perfidy, wish the justice of God to be so exercised in the church that an absent and innocent man is condemned by the followers of justice, and that a catholic fellow-priest is punished by his fellow-priests at the instigation of you, a heretic; how then can you appear not to be a destroyer of the pasture of the Lord's flock, when our pasture is nothing but heavenly doctrine? "If thou wilt," says the Lord, "enter into life, keep the commandments"; and again: "If you do the things that I command you, I no longer call you servants, but friends".

Since this is so, you ought to give the Lord's precepts as the standard to purify yourself, which have commanded that an innocent catholic bishop, while you, a heretical emperor, accuse him, should be killed by his fellow-priests? Perhaps, indeed, you will try at this point to say that you have not attempted to destroy the pasture of the Lord's flock. If you can produce no precept of the Lord of such a kind as you have brought forth, it remains that the eyes of your heart, blinded by the blasphemy of Arius, exposed by the servants of God, should see, with this reproach, that you have done all the things we charge against you. You cannot deny that you show yourself toward us such as that Herod showed himself, whose colleague you are found to be both in the rage of butchery, and in sacrilege, and in royal dignity, with regard to those whom we read in the Gospel to have been killed as little children on account of God the Son of God.

You have surely found the cruelty of Herod recorded, which you now deign to display, in Matthew the evangelist: "Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and he sent and slew all the male children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men". Perhaps you do not yet perceive that you have been moved so unjustly against us, worshippers of God, as Herod was moved against those little children. Why do you deign to be hostile to us? Surely because we confess ourselves Christians, who have refused to condemn a just man burdened by you with false charges. From these things you may judge who you are, from the answers of blessed John the Baptist, and you may reconcile yourself to God through penance: "Offspring of vipers, who hath shown you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance; and do not think to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father. For I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. For now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and cast into the fire". What do you think of this? Ought we to have condemned an innocent man, ought we to have pronounced an unheard sentence against an absent man? And how, if we had done this, could we have been found to be Christians? Since blessed John exhorted those who might become Christians, that they should bring forth fruit worthy of repentance—those who had not yet grasped the way of justice were being compelled to grasp it; we, who already hold it, were being urged, and are being urged by you, to occupy that path of iniquity in which the Jews are known to be set.

What then could have happened to us, if we had been fed on your viperous counsels? Except that from Christians we should have been made offspring of vipers. Why have you commanded these things to be done, unless because you wished us to become your fellow-serpents? For though you know that the Lord said in the Gospel: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy"; yet you have said that the innocent man must be slain. For how could I be blessed, if I should condemn a just man, if, rejecting the thirst for justice, I should conceive the ardor of injustice? How shall I be filled by God on account of the fruits of justice, when this unjust deed makes me a fratricide like Cain? How again shall I be able, among the merciful, enriched with the fruits of mercy, to obtain the heavenly kingdom?

Since, if I kill the servant of God according to your wishes, I shall be found not merciful but cruel and wicked, being indeed a murderer; since, if I am merciless toward my brother, so also will that lover of mercy, that exactor of justice, be toward me in turn, who says: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy". "Whosoever," says the Lord, "shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men, shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven"; and do you say, Constantius, that whoever does not shed the blood of the innocent cannot attain the kingdom of heaven? Tell me, most holy one, in what way can the justice of Christians be able to abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, if we should kill him whom you persecute because he calls himself a Christian, because he refuses to become an Arian?

In what way should we be better than the scribes and Pharisees, if we had become with you deniers of the only Son of God, if, as they repudiate, we should with you repudiate the evangelical faith, and destroy the apostolic tradition? Did you not remember that the Lord said: "You have heard that it was said to them of old, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of judgment. But I say to you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of judgment"? That you should command these things to be done? If I am angry without cause with my brother, if I say to him, Fool, the only Son of God says that I shall be liable to hell; and you, Emperor Constantius, say that if I shed the blood of an innocent man, I shall possess eternal rest: could you not remember, when you were meditating that Athanasius ought to be killed, under what condition the Lord commanded that offerings be presented?

"If therefore thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother hath any thing against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go first be reconciled to thy brother, and then return and offer thy gift. What evil had Athanasius wrought, that, transgressing these precepts, thou shouldst command him to be killed? Surely this alone: that he has said, or says, that he is a Christian. For there is nothing else which thou dost execrate, and which thou desirest to punish in Athanasius. Hadst thou not remembered that the Lord commanded that even enemies be loved, that thou shouldst have persecuted so bitterly one whom thou knewest to have sinned neither against thee nor against God? Ye have heard that it hath been said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you: Love your enemies, and bless them that curse you, and do good to them that persecute you, and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise on the good and the evil, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what reward shall ye have? Do not even the publicans do so? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect. The Lord commands even enemies to be loved; and thou dost persecute us because we did not shed with thee the blood of an innocent priest of the Lord.

The divine voice cries out, saying: With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again, and thou sayest: Slaughter him whom ye do not know to have offended. Though thou rememberest thyself to be the fountain of evils, thou wast bold nevertheless to say of him whom thou knewest to have been falsely accused among you: He is guilty of death. So senseless art thou, Constantius Augustus, that when thou didst command these things to be done, thou couldst not even call to mind that saying of the Lord: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how sayest thou to thy brother: Let me cast the mote out of thine eye, and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

The Lord says that a beam is in thine eye, and thou darest say to Athanasius, a most righteous man, "Thou hast a mote in thine eye"? For he has committed none of these things which thou deignest to charge against him: on the contrary, thou hast done all the things we have mentioned—as often as thou hast said, "Condemn," of an innocent man. What other way didst thou wish us to take hold of, except thine own, which the Lord describes, saying: How broad and spacious is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in thereat. Since, then, thou art set in this broad and spacious way, thou hast commanded an innocent man to be condemned, desiring surely that it be revealed to all how widely thy ruin rules.

At the time when thou camest to Italy, thou hadst so fashioned thyself as a wolf into a sheep, as though we should not have discovered thee by thy works, as though the Lord's warning had escaped us, when he says: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves; by their fruits ye shall know them. Did not the sad and most bitter fruits of thy sowing, planted in thee by the poison of the devil, at once appear, so that thou didst attempt to say that he ought to be condemned unheard? Did not the ambushes of thy ravenous wolf immediately lie open? For since thou hadst constructed a very great machination against the fold of God, by thy fruits it is shown that thou wast recognized not as a sheep but as a wolf; and thus what thou art—unless thou take counsel for thyself—a tree destined for the fire, the sacred Gospels prove. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

So every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire: by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father.

If thou doest the will of the Father of the only-begotten Son of God, how does it come about that thou deniest his only-begotten Son, that thou sayest the Father himself is not the true Father, that thou strivest to destroy the foundations laid by the apostles, that thou didst kill and dost kill his worshippers, that thou hast driven his bishops from the peoples entrusted to them, that thou hast commanded an absent man to be condemned unheard, that thou hast sought to introduce thy heresy, which blasphemes the one divinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, into the Church? If all these things, as we have said, are pleasing to God the Father, thou wilt be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven. For thou hearest his only Son say: Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father.

Thou dost order an innocent man to be condemned: dost thou not remember that God said in Exodus? If men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that she miscarries but no other harm follows, he shall be punished according as the woman's husband will lay upon him, and he shall pay with due estimation. But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. I believe nothing of the sacred Scriptures escapes thee; for thou couldst not have given us such distinguished commands unless thou wert skilled in the law. Thou hast certainly read also this: Every one that heareth these my words and doeth them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon a rock: the rain descended, and the floods came, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.

And every one that heareth my words and doeth them not, I will liken him to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand: the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof. Which of these dost thou say thou art, Constantius—the wise man, or the foolish? If thou say the wise man, why do thy works show thee to be foolish? Why is thy house found placed upon the sand? For thou canst not say thou hast built thy house upon the rock, since every wise man sees the fabric of thy folly, since every servant of God beholds this great ruin of thy salvation which the Lord foretold. For in what does a Christian stand firm, except in obeying the precepts of the Lord? Except in this, that though he be harassed by all persecutions for the name of the Son of God, he yet remains unmoved?

In what will a Christian be perfect, unless he also be slain for him whom thou deignest to deny to be the true Son of God? Thou, on the contrary, since thou art not in the Church, but among the Arians, the enemies of God, since thou deniest the only Son of God, since thou dost not fulfill his commandments of mercy but rather strivest to destroy them, since thou art a transgressor of the law, a deserter of the sacrament of the heavenly warfare, a persecutor of God's religion, since thou dost show thyself an executioner toward his worshippers, how canst thou be found a wise man like unto him whom the Lord said built his house upon the rock? But thou sayest against this: I am not foolish, I know myself to be wise. If thou art wise, why hast thou done and dost do those things which only the foolish can do? If thou art wise, why hast thou ordered an absent man to be condemned unheard?

Why hast thou commanded an innocent man to be killed? Why hast thou desired the priests of God to become enemies of God? For they cannot be made friends of God through this deed, since thou knowest the Lord said to the apostles: If ye do what I command you, I will no longer call you servants, but friends. If thou art wise, why must I, a priest of God, hear thee condemning Athanasius? Thou didst not at all allow him to present the grounds of his defense. If thou art wise, if thou art a worshipper of God, why dost thou persecute us because we confess ourselves to be Christians? Why dost thou greatly love those who do not say they are Christians, but confess themselves to be Arians? If thou art wise, why hast thou often sent an armed soldier to the house of God? If thou art prudent, and knowest thyself a servant of God, why hast thou persecuted, and dost persecute, his people with arms?

Why, finally, dost thou call the apostolic and evangelical faith heretical, and pronounce thine own heresy catholic? Thou callest thyself wise; but we perceive, on the contrary, that no one who does these things can be wise. For what sacrilegious man could be called prudent, except by those more imprudent than himself? If thou art wise, Constantius, I shall not be able to find anyone more foolish than thee. Dost thou still seem to thyself wise, who hast supposed that the prophets, apostles, and martyrs were slain for a mere creature? For thou wilt not dare deny that all these were slain for the only Son of God. How canst thou be called wise, who not only didst not attempt to resist the descending rains, the overflowing rivers, the blowing winds, lest they should cast down thyself, whom thou hast been found to be a house, but who hast even turned thyself into the rains, the rivers, and the winds, to this end, that thou, a whirlwind and a diabolical storm, mightest drag us with thee to the outer darkness?

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, says the Apostle, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, luxury, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, contentions, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like, which I foretell you, as I have also foretold, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And has thy mind been vigorous with wisdom for the killing of an innocent man? The apostle cries out that murderers shall not possess the kingdom of heaven, and thou, Constantius, most prudent emperor, sayest: Slaughter the absent, slay the unheard, kill the innocent, and yours shall be the kingdom of God.

Hereby it may be understood how wise thou art—if indeed thou art he who has built his house upon a rock: for thou canst not deny thou hast said: "I desire to condemn Athanasius for this reason, because I desire to please God." Thus, indeed, thou hast desired us also to please God, in the same way as thou thyself hast already pleased him, since, that is, thou hast deigned to think of destroying Athanasius, a priest of the Lord, in the conscience of us all. Thus in the beginning Cain pleased God, as soon as he had contemplated killing his brother; thus it appears, Constantius, from what root thou art, from what stock thou hast descended.

Canst thou after this deny that thou art in that chorus of which the apostle tells the Romans: And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, lasciviousness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, without mercy; who knowing the judgment of God, understood it not, that they who commit such things are worthy of death. Not only they who do them, but they also who consent to them that do them. Behold, this excessive love for us, which suddenly arose in thee, what would it have brought us, if we had dared to obey thee? We would have drunk in everlasting death.

Likewise he says further on: Recompensing to no man evil for evil, providing things honest, not only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Thirsting for these saving admonitions to be trampled upon, thou hast exhorted us to punish an innocent man. But how could we be found to have provided honest things not only in the sight of God but also among men, if we had condemned an innocent man, if we had given the pattern for shedding the blood of the righteous? How could I be found desiring to have peace with all men, if by thy false suggestion I had extinguished the peace of my fellow-priest by a heretical death? Tell me, Constantius, didst thou bring a true charge against Athanasius to the Church of God, or a false one?

If thou art certain that thou hast brought a true one, prove it to me, who have already recognized thee as the bearer of a false charge. Dost thou think that thou hast done nothing evil in the sight of God? What reasoning compelled thee to become a false witness? Why hast thou stood forth as a lying emperor? Why hast thou not feared to be destroyed after the example of Ananias and Sapphira? The Scripture speaks in the Acts of the Apostles, saying that the blessed Peter said to Ananias: Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, did it not remain thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down and gave up the ghost: and great fear came upon all them that heard these things.

And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him. And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter said unto her: Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said: Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her: How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of them who have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost. I believe thou hast read these things, and yet thou hast not feared to fabricate a lie before the sight of the Lord. Why hast thou done this, unless it be because thou art wise? What dost thou think will happen to thee, who art not only a liar, but a murderer, and not only a murderer, but also a heretic?

Dost thou believe that so many things will pass for thee without consequence? Dost thou believe thou canst escape eternal punishments? It is said to Ananias: Why hath Satan filled thine heart, that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost? And wilt thou say, Constantius Emperor, that Satan has not filled the heart of you Arians, that ye should lie to the Holy Ghost dwelling in the Church of God? For thou didst come together with the Church, saying: Athanasius has sinned against God; and the Holy Spirit saw your lying souls, just as he saw Ananias and Sapphira. The Holy Spirit saw, I say, when ye were fabricating these things, that ye had contrived such things concerning Athanasius for this reason, that ye might be able to introduce your heresy into the Church, that ye might be able to destroy the apostolic tradition. Ananias and Sapphira, because in selling their field they defrauded part of the price, because they dared not to speak entirely truthfully before the apostle of God, deserved to be judged in such a manner.

Thou, who not only hast laid false charges against a servant of God, but hast also persecuted the whole house of God, who hast shed the blood of his worshippers, who hast sent his priests to the mines and into exile, and hast set heretics in their places, who hast called the evangelical faith heretical, and hast called your blasphemy catholic, who hast introduced idolatry into the Church, who hast forsaken the God of Abraham, The God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and of all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs—do you, having followed the idolatry of Arius, suppose that, if you persist in this blasphemy and cruelty, the greatest vengeance will not fall upon you? Then, if God deigned to give vengeance thus to the adversaries of Susanna, do you think a heavier vengeance will not proceed against you? It will proceed, believe me, unless you turn back promptly.

For if those men, because they had attempted to violate the chastity of Susanna, deserved to receive what I have set down, how much more you, who have attacked the chastity of the church? They sought Susanna by a false charge, and you have equally sought not only Athanasius, but also all who resist you. Or can you name even one of those resisting to whom no charge was not applied? Thus were you armed to violate the chastity of the church, just as they were against Susanna, who said: "The doors of the orchard are shut, no one sees us, we are in desire of you; therefore consent to us, and be with us: otherwise we will give false testimony against you, that a young man was with you, and that for this reason you sent away the maids from you". Or will you try to deny that this was said?

"We Arians desire, and you, Christians, to be made one body: abandon the faith which you hold, drawn up at Nicaea against us, acquiesce in the doctrine of Arius; otherwise, since we have much power, since ours is the empire, we will burden you in whatever ways we wish, and you will all be removed from your seats." You will not be able to deny that this is so, since your meditations, hateful to God, have been revealed by the deeds themselves. For why were we compelled, even if we did not condemn Athanasius, nevertheless to be mixed into the communion of the Arians, unless because you, pander of the Arian heresy, desired all of us to be made in whatever way your fellow-sacrilegious accomplices? But I believe you still try to deny that you persecute us for this reason, because we refused to become Arian Christians.

How will you be able to deny it, since you sent into exile the most holy Dionysius, Bishop of Milan, who, already believing your false assertions, had condemned Athanasius, because he refused to be an Arian? Or is not Auxentius, whom you rashly and pestilentially ordained in his place, an Arian? If Auxentius holds the holy faith drawn up at Nicaea, then you yourself could not be an Arian, nor could you have done all these things as I assert, nor have brought a false charge against Athanasius. Perhaps, by the cunning and prudent counsel of Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, his subscription was deleted: for having turned to the Arian bishops, and pretending that he too consented to the condemnation of Athanasius, he demanded that the first place in signing be given to himself before Dionysius, since he was older in age.

Moved by this reasoning, the Arians erased the name of Dionysius, and gave first place to Eusebius; whom he, rebuking and mocking them, said: "Neither do I pollute myself with your crimes, nor do I permit my son Dionysius to share in them with you." Dionysius was driven into exile, and in his place was substituted Auxentius the Arian, who, sometimes pretending to be Catholic, by the indulgence of the Emperor Valentinian occupied the church of Milan for twenty years, and died in the year 374. You say from this that we are not catholics, because Susanna was heard, but we not at all. As far as concerns our conscience, we know that we were then vindicated when you were proclaimed a serpent, when all your poisons lay open, when your whole contrivance was exposed: for thus we desired vengeance from you our enemies of God, that God should reveal to His people that you are heretics.

Almost the whole world already knows that Athanasius was falsely sought by you, that you are the author of this iniquity; for you have been seen desiring to accomplish one thing while professing another. To the elders, groaning, Susanna says: I am straitened on every side; for if I do this thing, it is death to me; and if I do it not, I shall not escape your hands. It is better for me to fall into your hands without doing it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord. And we, as soon as we saw crimes imputed by you, were about to extinguish our brothers, since we would be, as you are, darkness. What Christian would not say that it is better for him to be killed by you, the forerunner of Antichrist, than to go into your darkness of Arians or of any heretics whatsoever? You have caused crimes to be imputed not only to Athanasius, but also to us, because we refused to be made Arians instead of Christians.

There has been no lack of individual crimes that could be objected to each of us, so that none of us might seem to have been sent into exile for God's sake, but rather as if for our own crimes. Since therefore you are guilty of such great crimes, because Athanasius was unwilling to have God angered along with you, you said that he was guilty of death: this also those presbyters did, to whom you are equal in this wickedness. For Scripture speaks, saying: And it came to pass on the second day, that when the people came together to her husband Joachim, there came two elders full of wicked intent against Susanna, that they might put her to death: and they said before the people: Send for Susanna the daughter of Chelcias, who is the wife of Joachim. And they sent, and she came, and her parents, and all her kindred. Now Susanna was exceedingly delicate, and of a beautiful countenance.

But the wicked men ordered her to be unveiled (for she was veiled), that they might be satisfied with her beauty. Then all her friends wept, and all that saw her. Then the two elders rising up in the midst of the people, laid their hands upon her head. But she weeping looked up to heaven, for her heart trusted in the Lord. And the elders said: As we walked in the orchard alone, this woman came in with two maids, and shut the doors of the orchard, and sent the maids away; and a young man that was hid there came to her, and lay with her. But we that were in a corner of the orchard, seeing this wickedness, ran up to them, and we saw them lying together. And him indeed we could not take, because he was stronger than us, and opening the doors, he leaped out; but having taken her, we asked who the young man was, but she would not tell us. Of this thing we are witnesses.

And the assembly believed them, as being the elders and the judges of the people, and they condemned her to death. Consider thoroughly, Constantius, your accursed Arian devices, whether the things you have done meanwhile concerning Athanasius are not such as those men did concerning Susanna. For who would not have believed you, an emperor saying: Athanasius has committed sacrilege? But because in this you were more detestable than those ruined pseudo-presbyters, no faith was given you by us; for it was said to you that he could not be condemned in absence. Those presbyters, indeed, made their criminal allegations in his presence, and the whole assembly gave its sentence in his presence; you, on the contrary, when at the accusation of heretics you compelled a catholic, unheard and absent, to be condemned, already your stage-machinery had begun to be seen through. But now hear what was granted to the chaste Susanna by the defender of the innocent, the vindicator of the oppressed. Hear what the book of Daniel relates of Susanna's vindication.

And Susanna cried out with a loud voice, and said: O eternal God, who knowest hidden things, who knowest all things before they come to pass, thou knowest that they have borne false witness against me: and behold I must die, whereas I have done none of these things which these men have maliciously forged against me. And the Lord heard her voice. And when she was led to be put to death, God raised up the holy spirit of a young boy, whose name was Daniel: and he cried out with a loud voice: I am clear from the blood of this woman. Then all the people turning themselves towards him, said: What meaneth this word that thou hast spoken? But he standing in the midst of them, said: Are ye so foolish, ye children of Israel, that without examination or knowledge of the truth, you have condemned a daughter of Israel? Return to judgment, for they have borne false witness against her.

So also now, Athanasius crying out to God, God has made all His servants rise up for the truth against you His adversaries. He has granted these things to His worshippers which He then granted to His most devoted Daniel, that we might understand you to be a false witness, one of the brood of vipers, that you have fabricated these falsehoods together with your fellow-sacrilegious accomplices. All at this now turn back to a just judgment upon the sentence of death that had been forced through, even those whom, unwitting, your cunning, through you, and the devil, master of your soul, had deceived.

For there can be none, apart from your fellow Arians, who does not wish the innocence of Athanasius to be vindicated, who does not favor the innocence of Athanasius, just as now that of Susanna, after it was established that she had been falsely accused of crime—chaste over against the unchaste, pure over against the adulterers, the handmaid of God over against the servants of the devil: so by you, serpentine sons of Satan, the standing of an innocent man faithfully serving God has been assailed; but you lie prostrate. For all your poisons lie dead, put to death by the power of God. Since indeed every Christian soul is praying to God that, as He did for Susanna, He may deign to snatch Athanasius from a false charge, to snatch him from your executioner's sword, from your murderous savagery.

Meanwhile again and again I press the point, that you may see what madness has seized you Arians, what insanity has gripped you, that you dared to contrive these things for the death of an innocent man, when you knew that God knows all things before they come to pass. But it is not to be wondered at if such a contrivance was constructed around Athanasius by you and yours, seeing that you did not hesitate to say of God the Father: He is not a true Father, for He does not have a true Son. For you who say that the Son of God is from nothing, what else do you say except that He is not a true Father? It is not, I say, to be wondered at, if you have thus risen up against the servant of God, Athanasius, when against Him whose servant Athanasius is, you have not hesitated to send your deadly hands. For the robber who has not spared the master of the house will not be able to spare the household resisting him.

But let us now return to what you were bidding us do. You said: Condemn Athanasius. What had intervened, that we should not have seen him face to face? What had happened, that we should not have examined every hinge of the matter? Why would you not allow him to be overcome by suitable witnesses? Did not even the most holy Daniel—nay rather, through Daniel, the Holy Spirit itself—condemn men without a hearing? For we read that the glorious Daniel said to the people: Separate them one from another: and he called one of them, and said to him: O thou that art grown old in evil days, now are thy sins come, which thou hast committed before, in judging unjust judgments, condemning the innocent, and letting the guilty go free, whereas the Lord saith: The innocent and just person thou shalt not put to death. Now then, if thou hast seen her, tell me under what tree thou sawest them conversing together? He answered: Under a mastick tree.

And Daniel said: Well hast thou lied against thy own head; for behold the angel of God, having received the sentence from God, shall cut thee in two. And having put him aside, he commanded that the other should come, and said to him: Thou seed of Chanaan and not of Juda, beauty hath deceived thee, and lust hath perverted thy heart: thus did ye do to the daughters of Israel, and they, for fear, conversed with you: but the daughter of Juda would not abide your injustice. Now, therefore, tell me, under what tree did thou take them conversing together? He answered: Under a holm tree. And Daniel said to him: Well hast thou also lied against thy own head; for the angel of God waiteth with a sword to cut thee in two, and to destroy you. Then all the assembly cried out with a loud voice, and blessed God, who saveth them that trust in him.

And they rose up against the two elders (for Daniel had convicted them of false witness by their own mouth), and they did to them as they had maliciously dealt against their neighbor, according to the law of Moses: and they put them to death, and innocent blood was saved in that day. What can your imprudence answer to this, Constantius? Do you see that those guilty of so great a crime are condemned everywhere only when all things have been most diligently examined? And did you not hesitate to command that the priests of God should pass a sentence of death against him whom you knew to be innocent? What would we have heard had we done so? Doubtless these words which those cliffs of lust, the pseudo-presbyters, the false witnesses, heard: Thou that art grown old in evil days, now are thy sins come, which thou hast committed before, in judging unjust judgments, condemning the innocent, and letting the guilty go free, whereas the Lord saith: The innocent and just person thou shalt not put to death.

Would we not justly and deservedly deserve to hear these words, we who, either enticed or terrified by you, the sink of Arian doctrine, into the condemnation of an innocent man? And therefore all these evils have come upon you.

You, together with your associates, are about to hear what those men heard through Daniel—whether because you are guilty of a false crime laid against you, or because you invite the whole company of bishops to the death of an innocent man, and because you wish the whole people of God to accept your heresy—you will hear it, and indeed more severely, because your crimes are graver, since you have stood forth as the destroyer of the religion of God, who have slain a vast multitude of those calling themselves Christians, who have introduced your Arian heresy into the Church, who have condemned the catholic faith, who have denied that God the Father is a true Father, who have said that His only Son is not a true Son, who have also asserted that the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is not the true Spirit of God.

Whereas against you, and against all enemies of God, the faith of the holy Church cries out, that it believes in God the true unbegotten Father, and in His only Son begotten of the unbegotten and true 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 homoousion, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made, and in the Paraclete, the true Spirit of God. To you, therefore, false witness, spiritual adulterer, sacrilegious murderer, more severe things will justly be said, justly, since by such and so great crimes you are greater than those pseudo-presbyters, the enemies of Susanna.

For if to those liars it is said: Well hast thou lied against thy own head; for now the angel of the Lord, having received the sentence from God, shall cut thee in two; and, Well hast thou also lied against thy own head; the angel of God stands waiting with a sword to cut thee in two, to destroy you—how much more, unless you look to yourself, will such things be said to you! Do you not know it is written: Blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it?

It had fallen from your heart, bound in the darkness of errors, that you should command an innocent man to be condemned: for unless I am mistaken, the sacred law everywhere declares that the innocent and the just must not be condemned; and therefore, because you commanded these things to be done against the precept of God, we hold you as one of those whom the Lord strikes in the Gospel: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you are like whited sepulchers, which appear not, and men that walk over them are not aware. Those indeed did not know, whom you enticed to love you sacrilegiously, who through your efforts had not considered that you are a sepulcher full of all uncleanness; they thought you a man. But as for us, as soon as you began to impose upon the bishops the necessity of condemning an absent man, we said at once that you were a worshipper of injustice, and indeed a persecutor of justice.

Likewise, when we, the legates of the blessed Church, urged you that the sect of Arius should be condemned, and you rather declared it to be catholic, we then foretold that you were the forerunner of Antichrist. Since you deign to persecute Christians, since you put them to death, you make yourself, Constantius, like those to whom the Lord says: Woe to you that build the monuments of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly you bear witness that you consent to the doings of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and you build their sepulchers. Therefore I send you prophets and apostles, and some of them you will kill and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation: from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, who perished between the altar and the temple; yea I say to you, it shall be required of this generation.

But you are understood to be one of these from this fact, that while you are restoring the memorials of the blessed martyrs, you nevertheless shed the blood of the servants of the only Son of God. Return, Constantius, to the house of God; be a Christian; lest, found outside the Church, you remain always as you are today among those whom the Lord strikes, saying: Strive to enter by the narrow gate, for I say to you, many shall seek to enter, and shall not be able. When the master of the house shall rise up, and shut the door, you shall begin to stand without and knock at the door, saying: Lord, Lord, open to us. And he shall answer and say: I know you not, whence you are. Then you shall begin to say: We have eaten and drunk in your presence, and you have taught in our streets. And he shall say to you: I know you not, whence you are; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. When you shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, entering into the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out. Do not so ruin yourself as to allow yourself to hear these words among those men, especially since you see that you are more wicked than one to whom it might rightly be said: Depart from me, worker of iniquity. You will be, Constantius, if you wish to persist in this ill-will of yours, among that carnal people to whom it is said: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent to thee; you will be, I say, among them, because you are a persecutor of those who would exhort you to merit God, just as they were persecutors of the prophets and apostles. Again the defense of truth presses that it be asked of you why you commanded that an absent man be condemned. Say, I ask, do you order this to be done well or ill?

If you say well, I suppose you take refuge in what the blessed Paul did, that he wrote to the Corinthians that he had already punished a sinner whom he found to have gravely offended. Let us see now, you beast, having only the members and body of a man, but a bestial mind—whether you have acted as the apostle acted, whether you have conducted the matter in that order in which he did, who said: It is absolutely heard that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he might be taken away from among you that hath done this deed.

For I indeed, absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him that hath so done, in the name of our Lord Jesus, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. You say, I believe: And I therefore had commanded you to condemn one who was absent, because the apostle also had condemned. First of all, catholics reported to the blessed apostle—men whom he knew to be faithful, whom he had proved devoted to God, and whom he knew the whole holy church of the Corinthians attested to. You, on the contrary, when you deigned to urge us toward the condemnation of an absent man on the accusation of your sacrilegious associates, hateful to God, heretics.

Then, when you hear the apostle saying: When you are gathered together and my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh; why, you darkness, when we say: We will go at our own expense to him, to whom he has been divinely appointed, and we will hear the same man, only grant catholic accusers according to the mandate of the sacred law; why did you refuse? Why, as though we were gladiators and not bishops, did you labor only according to your wishes, that we might be able to kill him whose blood you had long thirsted for? Meanwhile you must know that you, unhappy man, have been so delivered to Satan for your murders and for your sacrilege, just as that man was found in that guilt among the Corinthians.

For these funerals which you have wrought and are working are no less than his; for if the Holy Spirit says through the mouth of the blessed apostle that he delivered that man to Satan for destruction, how much sooner will he not have delivered you, as soon as you committed crimes so grave? For if it were not so, you would surely have remembered that the apostle said: You were bought with a price, do not become slaves of men: you would never have dared to compel God's priests to condemn an unheard-of man. For I who was bought with a price, since, freed from the law of sin, I was made a servant of righteousness, ought not now, living under the law of righteousness, to have a burden imposed on me by you, that I should again be made a servant of iniquity and injustice. A burden, then, has been imposed by you, because you have been delivered to Satan for destruction on account of murders and sacrilege.

If you had not been delivered to Satan, you would have remembered that the apostle wrote to Timothy: We know that the law is good if a man use it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the unrighteous and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and mothers, for the unchaste, for those who lie with males, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, which is according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, which was entrusted to me. If he has not been delivered—since you denied the Son of God—to the destruction of Satan, how is it that, passing over so many things which could have restrained you from so great a crime, you have deigned to leap forth to do these deeds, which are able to abolish all that is known to be sound doctrine?

You who do these things, which are contrary to sound doctrine, who proscribe, torture, deport, cast into prison, and kill—tell me, I beg, whether you are unlike that king Herod, whose butchery sacred Scripture describes thus: At that time King Herod stretched forth his hands to afflict certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And seeing that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. Now it was the days of unleavened bread. And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, delivering him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him, intending after the Passover to bring him forth to the people. Peter therefore was kept in prison. But prayer was made without ceasing by the church unto God for him: and when Herod was about to bring him forth, that night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and the keepers before the door kept the prison.

And behold an angel of the Lord stood by, and a light shone in that place: and striking Peter's side, he raised him up, saying: Rise quickly. And he rose, and the chains fell from his hands. And below: And when he had passed the first and the second guard, he came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened to them of itself. And when they were gone out, they went on through one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. And Peter, coming to himself, said: Now I know of a truth that the Lord has sent his angel, and delivered me from the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews. Now as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers, what was become of Peter. And when Herod had sought for him and found him not, having examined the keepers, he commanded that they should be led away.

We see you like him in all things, whether in cruelty or in sacrilege; for as he killed the blessed apostle James, so you also have killed a vast multitude of believers, believing as the apostle James believed; as he, in James the apostle, was persecuting the only Son of God, so also you, both in those whom you have already destroyed, and in us, whom you persecute. Again we both instruct and exhort you, that you return to the church of God and cease now to persecute Athanasius, or us who act against your heresy, lest you begin to perish after the example of that Herod; whose death sacred Scripture relates, saying: He went down from Judea to Caesarea, and there abode. Now he was highly displeased with the Tyrians and Sidonians: and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, who was the king's chamberlain, they desired peace, because their countries were nourished from his kingdom.

And upon a set day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne, and made an oration to them. And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. And immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give the honor to God, and being eaten by worms, he gave up the ghost. Did you not know—you who wish to be seen as an expert in the law—that when you were saying, "Condemn the innocent man," the apostle John said: By this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments. He that says: I know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But he that keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.

You order things done against the commandment of God: and the apostle says the contrary, that whoever does not keep his precepts has not even known him; for, he says, if a man says: I have known him, and does not keep his commandments, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him. You wish us to be liars, you wish us to be found murderers, doubtless to this end, that we may not be found to be Christians. For neither liars nor murderers are Christians. The apostle says: He who keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him; and you, apostate forerunner of antichrist, say: Whoever does not keep his commandments will live. Further, He that says he is in the light, he says, and hates his brother, is in darkness even until now. But he that loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no occasion of stumbling in him.

But he that hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness, and knows not whither he goes, because darkness has blinded his eyes. What can be said by you, a man of darkness, to these things? Why, set in darkness and not in light, do you say: Hate along with me also him whom I hate unjustly, be sharers of my madness, be, as I am, murderers also. Then, if he says that he who hates his brother walks in darkness, and knows not whither he goes, evidently because the darkness of violence has blinded his eyes—what if he should kill his brother? What if he should be a murderer? But it seems to you no matter of murder that you are found to have shed the blood of so many servants of God. You dare to order priests of God to do these things, which are pleasing only to your father the devil, and to you, the Arian sons of his.

Likewise the most holy apostle exhorts that, holding the path of righteousness, we may deserve to be established in everlasting rest; and you, most wise man, compel us to come with you into everlasting torments. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that does righteousness is righteous; but he that commits sin is of the devil, because the devil sins from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Since therefore it is said by the apostle that sin is of the devil, and you compel us to commit capital crimes, what else can I call you but a procurator of the devil? One whom I see so loving his causes, so cultivating his business, that you desire all of us to be found on his side. For why do you compel every worshiper of God to make that same passage, unless because you have chosen to favor his party?

You hear the blessed apostle say: For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil; and you press worshipers of God to complete the work of the devil. When you do these things, do you not seem to have made yourself the assailant of him who destroyed the works of the devil? But it is no wonder if you have chosen that what the only Son of God has destroyed should be able to be rebuilt through you, the devil's servant, since you have not hesitated to deny him also who destroyed the work of the devil. Hence it is nothing to you to shed the blood of the innocent, because, having already denied the lover of the innocent and the defender of his worshipers, you have gone over to him, to whom Judas Iscariot went over.

If, then, you cannot deny that it is the work of the devil to shed the blood of a righteous man, it is surely clear that you have done the works of the devil, and have exhorted us to do them. Further, John, most beloved of God, speaks that brotherly love should be kept inviolate, saying: In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever is not righteous is not of God, neither he that loves not his brother, for this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, and not as Cain, who was of the wicked one, and slew his brother. And why did he kill him? Because his own works were wicked, and his brother's righteous. Marvel not, brethren, if the world hates us. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren: he that loves not abides in death.

Whoever hates his brother is a murderer: and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Since, then, everyone found to hate his brother is called a son of the devil, a murderer, and is compared to Cain the fratricide, and is designated as abiding in death, why did you compel me to accomplish this deed, which would have made me, like Cain, a fratricide and a son of the devil, which would have made me abide in eternal death? When you see that I have already passed from death unto life, since God has already established me among those whom he has deigned to call sons. For what cause did you wish me to become Cain, darkness also, and a son of the devil? In what have I injured you, in what matters have I been an adversary of your salvation, that you should desire that such harm be done to me? Why do we repeat these things?

Except that at some time you may be able to understand what you are ignorant of, namely, what is good. For if you knew it, you would never have committed so great a crime yourself, nor pressed us to perpetrate it. Say meanwhile, I beg, why do you persecute the bishop of the house of God? For the apostle says, that he who hates his brother is a murderer. If you wish us to have the name of murderer, why do you hate your brother? Prove Athanasius worthy of hatred; make manifest what evils he has done, that he may be worthy of hatred even by all of us. Surely you will not be able to show any unjust deed committed by him, which would make him hateful. Since this is so, it is necessary that you hate him for this reason, that your work is wicked, but that of Athanasius righteous. For you wish to kill him precisely because he has not imitated you in wickedness, criminality, and sacrilege. It is established that this is so.

For since the glorious apostle introduces the comparison of Cain and Abel, you seem to me to be Cain, and Athanasius Abel. In this, he says, the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. And why did he kill him? Because his works were wicked, and his brother's righteous. Nor should you doubt that your works are wicked, but those of Athanasius righteous. For you are a murderer, a destroyer of the religion of God, a denier of the only Son of God, an assailant of the apostolic faith, a founder of Arian idolatry; whereas Athanasius so continues in the fear of God, that, as far as can be seen, he is found to have committed nothing that could separate him from those most beloved of God.

Since these things are so, we exhort you to love yourself in Athanasius. You hold it written: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; and, He who loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law. For just as you hate yourself in him, not knowing that it is evil to hate a just man unjustly, so you will begin to love yourself in him, if this malevolence of yours shall have been turned into benevolence. Then you will be able to be snatched from the darkness in which the blessed apostle says you dwell. For, he says, do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates us. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren: but he who does not love, abides in death. Do not dare now to say: Condemn the innocent man, you a man who have not yet made the passage from death to life.

For if you had made it, that is, if you had believed in the only Son of God as we do, you would not have chosen to be a murderer, lest, that is, you should begin again to go back to death. Established therefore in a twofold manner without hope of life, you have deigned to command the priests of God, to kill the innocent. But perhaps you can say: I love those who love God, and I hate those who hate him. But this you will not be able to say concerning Athanasius, since it is rather established that you hate God, because you have both abandoned him and passed over to idolatry.

Therefore, since you are not pursuing any fault in a priest of God, but only justice, but only the religion of God, it remains for you still to see us, whom you urged to kill though innocent, of what sort this blessed apostle John commanded us to be toward our fellow servants: He laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. I am commanded by the apostle to lay down my soul for my brother, and by you, the slave of antichrist, I am commanded to slay my brother: and again, Let us have confidence toward God, and whatsoever we shall ask we shall receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do the things that are pleasing before him in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and let us love one another, as he has given us commandment. But how shall I be able to be heard by him in every petition, if I am not keeping his commandment?

For he commanded me to love my brother, not to slay him. And below: Beloved, let us love one another, because charity is of God. And again: Whoever loves not his brother, knows not God, because God is charity. In this the charity of God was made manifest in us, because God sent his only Son into the world, that we might live through him. In this is charity, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another. And again: If any man say, that he loves God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who loves not his brother, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And again: This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God, love also his brother. And again: By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.

For this is the charity of God: and his commandments are not heavy. Consider these few things out of many, and you will find into what darkness you have drawn us, you man of darkness. From this, he says, we know that we love the children of God, because we love God, and do his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments; and yet you deign to drive me to shatter these commandments, to set up against them others, put forth through you at the devil's instigation. How can I be found loving God, if through you I am found an adversary of his commandments? By these deeds what else can you seem to me but one of those tares destined for the fire?

Of which the Lord says, As therefore the tares are gathered up, and burnt with fire, so shall it be at the end of the world: the Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and them that work iniquity; and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. You see that if, with you the heretic pressing hard, I should condemn the innocent, I should be destined for gehenna along with you. For we could not attain the kingdom of God, in which we might shine like the sun, if we had either committed murder, or violated the apostolic faith.

Rejoice to go on living in these evils, refuse to recognize what evils you commit, and you will find yourself without doubt among those wicked ones whom the Lord marks out as destined for the fire, saying: The angels shall go forth and separate the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You deign to count it as nothing to persecute the servants of the only Son of God, you member of the devil, who had supposed that you could lead the whole holy church into scandal. But consider what God promises to you and to all your fellow-sacrilegious ones: Whoever shall receive one such little one in my name, receives me: but whoever shall scandalize one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to this world because of scandals.

For it must needs be that scandals come: nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal comes. And if your hand, or your foot scandalize you, cut it off, and cast it from you. And below: See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven. Therefore, you who not only despise those who believe in his divine majesty, but even kill them, what reward will he whom you deny render to you?

He who said it would be more expedient for you, if a millstone were hung about your neck, and you were plunged into the depth of the sea, than that you should have led one of the believers into scandal, than that you should have despised one of those who are to possess the kingdom of heaven—what will he render to you, who for that cause have deserved to be cut off from the members of his holy church, because through you the devil has cast scandals into the people of God in our days—for although you have stirred up scandals, yet you will only have deceived those who did not already know you to have withered so, like a stream cut off from its spring, like a branch broken from a tree? But as for us, who know you set outside the church, who perceive you the enemy of the only Son of God, knowing you to be dead, we see your efforts, with God's help, beneath our feet.

For we know that the dead cannot rule over the living. But how do you say that you live in Christ? Whence can you prove this, since you deny him? For none can live, save those who confess him to be true God, true Son of God. How are you living, when you persecute us for this very reason, that we confess ourselves to be his servants? Or is it perhaps for some other cause that you persecute us? Have you perhaps found that we have sinned against you? And is that why you are so hostile toward us? We ourselves do not hold that we have sinned against you. For how could it be proved that we have sinned against you, when we urge you to pass from death to life?

And yet if you feel that we have sinned against you, receive what the Lord has commanded you to do concerning us, saying: But if your brother shall sin against you, go, and rebuke him between you and him alone; and if he shall hear you, you shall have gained your brother: but if he will not hear you, take with you one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them, tell the church: but if he will not hear the church, let him be to you as the heathen and the publican.

Since you have not done these things which the Lord commanded to be done, since you not only did not admonish us in yourself, in whose presence you might convict one of us, Athanasius, of being guilty, but have compelled him, unheard by us, to be condemned by his fellow priests, whose hearing you took away from him—how justly can you accuse us of having sinned against you, when you have fulfilled none of these commandments of the Lord? Why do you persecute us so bitterly, when it is rather you who are guilty of transgression, who have acted toward us not at all as the only Son of God gave commandments to you, but have done everything as it pleased our enemy the devil?

For it is his counsel, of this kind, his will, that the unheard be condemned, that the absent be slain, that innocent blood be shed; since, I say, you have not acted in the way the Lord commanded you to act. You dared to bring word to the blessed church, you dared to say: Athanasius has sinned, and his communion ought to be condemned by all. But what will you try to say? He has sinned against God; and behold, it cannot be found that he has sinned against God, since neither you nor your fellow-sacrilegious companions of your harlot Arian heresy can be admitted as witnesses against a catholic bishop. For the Lord was speaking of three catholic witnesses, of the servants of his majesty, that the blessed church might believe them, not you, profane men, born of adultery from a harlot.

Moreover, if we have not thus understood this precept of the Lord, then the worshippers of Saturn and of all idols could also be admitted against the household of God as witnesses; your fellow-blasphemers too could be admitted, the Jews, forsaken by God, set without light, as you are. For if you heretics, indeed of every sect, are to be admitted as witnesses against Christians, then the heathen and the Jews ought to be admitted too: since whether Jews, or heathen, or you heretics, set outside the Lord's church, are without God, as then were all those who were not in the ark of most holy Noah. For as they, set outside the ark, could not be saved, so neither can you, but you shall likewise perish, unless, believing in the only Son of God, you shall remain with us in his holy church. If therefore neither you nor your fellow-blasphemers can be witnesses, how, most foolish king, have you caused to be condemned, and indeed by his own fellow priests, a man of complete innocence?

I add this, that you had already accused him of being a murderer at Sardica in the synod of the catholics, and your iniquity was in no way able to prove it. I add that you yourself gave letters to the church of the Alexandrians attesting that man to be just, a catholic bishop. Finally, even if he had sinned, Athanasius ought to have been expelled from the people committed to him, and indeed so that that people might seek from among its own body another worthy man to be made their bishop; yet he ought not to have been sought by the sword, by you the emperor.

But when you, in place of the innocent man, against whom nothing true was established, in place of the catholic, sent your fellow-sacrilegious Georgius, and upon those unwilling to be defiled by his sacrilege you inflicted such great insults and such punishments, that you proscribed very many, relegated them into exile, into the mines, and even killed a great many, and today you do not cease to inflict on those unwilling to accept your blasphemy—and that of Georgius—things which even the fiercest enemy barbarians in their rage would scarcely do; how do you suppose you can be understood to be a Christian, you who appear fiercer than the most savage beasts, and more monstrous than all wars? You dared to say that Athanasius should be struck down, not perceiving that then you Arians were being punished, indeed by the power of God, when you contrived to introduce idolatry into the Lord's church. But perhaps you will still say: Athanasius has sinned against me.

To say nothing of the fact that in this too you are lying, did you not know what is written concerning how the Lord commanded you to act toward those who sin against you, that you should thus have pursued him with the sword? Then Peter came to him, and said: Lord, if my brother shall sin against me, how often shall I forgive him? Until seven times? He says to him: I do not say to you until seven times, but until seventy times seven. Or are you ashamed to hear Athanasius called your brother? If you profess yourself a Christian, you ought to call all Christians brothers, and indeed not only Athanasius, but also those whom you see begging for alms. For all of us, established in the church of the Lord, are one to him, with whom there is no acceptance of persons: and yet you would do well if you did not wish him to be called your brother.

For since you are a son of pestilence, and he is one of the sons of light, since you are the slave of our enemy, and he is the servant of God, it is most unjust that you should be called brother of a man of God, forerunner of antichrist. If you had seen that he sinned against you in anything, it ought to have been forgiven him at once by you, that God might forgive you your own crimes. But now, since you were unable to forgive because of your obstinacy and malevolence, you, who have made void the Lord's precept, receive what may be set before you: Then Peter came to him and said: Lord, if my brother shall sin against me, how often shall I forgive him? Until seven times?

Therefore the kingdom of heaven is likened to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants: and when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed ten thousand talents: and as he had not the means to pay, his lord commanded that he should be sold, and his wife, and his children, and—all that he had, and that the debt should be paid. But that servant, falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant, being moved with pity, let him go, and forgave him the debt. But that servant going out, found one of his fellow-servants that owed him a hundred pence: and laying hold of him, throttled him, saying: Pay what thou owest. And his fellow-servant falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay thee. And he would not, but went and cast him into prison, till he paid the debt.

Now his fellow-servants, seeing what was done, were sorry, and they came, and told their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him, and said to him: Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all the debt, because thou besoughtest me: shouldst not thou then have had compassion also on thy fellow-servant, even as I had compassion on thee? And his lord being angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt. So also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his brother from your hearts. What do you answer to this, you whose mind's eyes could in no way see these things which the Lord has commanded to be done? Where do you place the fact that he has offended neither against you nor against God, but is enduring persecution because he holds the apostolic faith and refuses to become, as you are, sacrilegious?

You have determined to slay the preacher of truth, desiring to be set yourself in that honor which belongs to those whom, in the Gospel, the Lord designates as the slayers of the prophets, and reveals that they would even stretch out impious hands against Him, saying: There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard, and made a hedge round about it, and dug in it a press, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a strange country. And when the time of the fruits drew nigh, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits thereof. And the husbandmen laying hands on his servants, beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants more than the former; and they did to them in like manner. And last of all he sent to them his son, saying: They will reverence my son.

But the husbandmen seeing the son, said among themselves: This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and we shall have his inheritance. And they took him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard shall come, what will he do to those husbandmen? They say to him: He will bring those evil men to an evil end; and will let out his vineyard to other husbandmen, that shall render him the fruit in due season.

From this—since you greatly desire to be one of them, and you have been persuading us also to become companions of your crimes; for your counsels are no different from the wicked counsels of those who are found to have slain the prophets, who indeed stretched out impious hands against the only Son of God—especially since you also reduce to nothing the sufferings of those blessed ones sent to the husbandmen, by asserting that they were slain on account of him who came into being when he was not; when the sacred Scriptures cry out that the only Son of God has reigned always, and reigns with the Father. The Lord's own writings declare that the Father and His only Son possess one Godhead; and yet you say that he for whom the glorious prophets were slain was made out of nothing. For if what you say is true, it follows that the blessed prophets were slain for a creature.

And where then is that saying that the Lord is angered with immense indignation against those who serve the creature rather than the Creator? If the blessed prophets were slain for a creature, how does God hold them most dear? How is it that the Jews, because they did not believe their words, are today enemies of God? Whence are the Jews found to be enemies of God? Whence are they found placed outside the Lord's vineyard? Unless because they proved to be the slayers of the prophets, unless because the prophets preached that the eternal Son of God was Himself eternal God, and those fellow-blasphemers of yours not only did not believe their prophecy, but even slew them. For whom do you think the Jews persecuted in the prophets, if not the only Son of God, just as also in the apostles and martyrs? Learn at least from yourself that what I say is true: since you too, whom in Athanasius and also in us, persecute the true Son of God.

Since this is so, you had judged that we ought to be joined to the slayers of the prophets, the shedders of the blood of the just, your fellow-sacrilegious ones, that is, the Jews, since you are evidently an imitator of them. For it was for no other reason that you said, "Condemn Athanasius," and commanded us to accept even the faith of Arius, than that we might be made equal to the Jews both in the shedding of the blood of the just and in denying the only Son of God—Jews of whom you are now in all things a partaker. For if they slew the prophets who spoke of the coming of the only Son of God, you likewise slay those who believe as the prophets believed. But how long shall I speak of these things with an unbeliever?

Since I have proposed to make manifest to you that you are one of those to whom the Lord says: Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof. For you are not among that nation which is found to bear the fruits of justice, so that you may not be pronounced one of those whom you hear have been cast out of the kingdom of God on account of the slaying of the just and their own unbelief. Understand that by doing these things you are among those whose wickedness the Lord exposes, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king, who made a marriage for his son, and sent his servants to call them that were invited to the marriage. And further on: And they would not come.

Again he sent other servants, saying: Tell them that were invited: Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my beeves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come ye to the marriage. But they neglected, and went their ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise: and the rest laid hands on his servants, and having treated them contumeliously, put them to death. But when the king had heard of it, he was angry, and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city. Then he saith to his servants: The marriage indeed is ready; but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as you shall find, call to the marriage. And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good: and the marriage was filled with guests. And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment.

And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Since therefore, Constantius, you are without the wedding garment, you shall remain forever, unless you convert, such as that man to whom it is said: Friend, how didst thou come in here without having a wedding garment? Thus you will come into the exterior darkness. And do not doubt that you will come into the exterior darkness, since you have already turned wholly into darkness. For those who shed the blood of the just prophets, who denied the only Son of God, are called both darkness and sons of the devil. Since you too do these things, you will surely remain a son of darkness and of the devil, unless you take counsel for yourself. How, you say, can I take counsel for myself?

By ceasing to persecute us, and by accepting the apostolic faith; and unless you do this, you will remain, as you are now, forever among those to whom it is said: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; that pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law, judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone: blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. If you do not deserve to hear these things along with them, where is the just judgment that proceeds from you, who strive to kill a just man because he preaches the apostolic faith? Where is the just judgment—you who pursue with all the forces of your empire those whom you see neither willing to condemn an unheard cause nor to abandon the catholic faith, and yet love those whom you know to have both shed innocent blood with you and rejected the evangelic faith?

What mercy is there in you, and established by you, which the holy law commands to be shown? Surely that which tortures, proscribes, deports, casts into prison, leads into exile, condemns to the mines; that which kills by hunger, thirst, scourges, nakedness; and at last that which punishes by the sword. This, Constantius, is your mercy, which does not come from the law of God, but from the presumption of the devil. Judgment, and mercy, and faith—these, he says, you ought to have done, and not to leave the others undone. Where is your faith? You who condemned the faith which the most blessed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob held, and all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and have decreed that instead all worshippers of God must accept that faith which the devil, through your teacher Arius, vomited forth against this catholic faith.

From these things you are understood to be one of those recognized as deserving to hear: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law, judgment, and mercy, and faith: these you ought to have done, and not to leave the other undone: blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. Or will you deny that you strain out the gnat and swallow the camel, you who, though you sometimes give alms not only when asked but even of your own accord, nevertheless, as has often been said, proscribe Christians who confess themselves, deport them, torture them, and finally kill them: and therefore you must recognize that you are among those to whom it is said: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness.

So you also outwardly appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. And among those slayers to whom it is said: Serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell? Therefore behold I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you will put to death and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the just blood that has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the altar. Amen I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. You are proven by your own acts to be of that same viperish kind. For you are found to be one of those to whom it was said that they would perpetrate such things.

Or if you deny that you are one of those who hear from the mouth of the Lord: Serpents, generation of vipers, then prove that it was not you but the Jews who sent a soldier to Alexandria; that it was a Jewish soldier who besieged the doors of the house of God; that Syrianus, the leader of the soldiers, was a Jew. Prove that Jews entered the basilica with weapons, and slew a certain number. If you cannot prove this, since it is established that you sent them to attack the religion of God, we most rightly say that you are one of those to whom it was said: Serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee the judgment of hell? Without doubt you will not flee the judgment of hell, but you will forever burn there together with your fellow serpents, unless you take thought for yourself. Then, he says, they shall deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake.

And then shall many be scandalized, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. If your sacrilegious mind does not know that I suffer persecution from you on account of the only Son of God, you might not be of that kind, might not be in the number of those to whom it is said: Serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell? Therefore behold I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you will put to death and crucify, and persecute from city to city. Since you are today doing these very things, you will not dare deny that you are of the viper's brood.

For you have killed very many Christians in many places, you hold others bound in prisons, in workhouses; even from this you may see that you are one of those to whom it is said: Serpents, generation of vipers; and below: Behold I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes, and some of them you will kill: since you do not deign to curse those whom you see, through your abounding iniquity, to have departed from the apostolic faith—those whose charity has grown cold—but instead curse those whom you see remaining in that state of faith in which, remaining, the blessed prophets, apostles, and martyrs deserved to attain the eternal friendships of God. For at Alexandria you do not curse Macheta and Didyma among the presbyters, who are known to have become Arians from Christians, but rather those whom you still know stand with us. Or if it is not so, why do you not now curse Didyma and Macheta, whom you formerly cursed?

Unless it be because then they would have been held execrable by you, since they were still, of course, Christians, but now they are most dear to you, since they have of course begun to be, as you are, apostate blasphemers. But we already believe that, after so many proofs shown to you, being yourself one of those to whom it is said, Serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee the judgment of hell? You will take pains to heal the wounds inflicted upon you by the devil, so grave since you are both a murderer and sacrilegious: from which crimes, if you refuse to be freed, your blood will be required of you—we shall be clean before God in the future from your blood, we who have made the truth manifest to you in every way; from you shall be required not only your own blood, but also the blood of those whom you have either led to accept heresy, or enticed to slaughter the innocent.

But if you should say: I thought that the faith of those you call Arians was catholic; if you wavered in the matter of faith, if you did not know that those who say they believe in a creature are heretics, that is, those who say that God does not have a true Son—did you also not know this, that it is not just to persecute the innocent with the sword? Had it slipped your mind that the Lord said to blessed Peter: Put up again thy sword into its place. For all that take the sword shall perish with the sword? What then, Constantius, will you do, you who have slain so great a multitude of the servants of the only Son of God, Christ? For you may see him, whom you persecute in us, saying, that all who take the sword shall perish by the sword. What shall you receive?

Unless, believing in him whom you have denied, you obtain pardon for your crimes, you deserve to be struck by the sword of God's clemency as often as you have struck those dedicated to it. What man of God did you say the necessity should be imposed upon priests, to strike an absent man, to punish one unheard, to shed the blood of an innocent man? Why did you refuse to have Athanasius our fellow-priest heard by us? Why did you wish thus, in the manner of robbers, secretly to slaughter the man of God? Unless because you are of those against whom these words were brought forth in reproach: No one has ascended into heaven, except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven. For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. This is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light, for their works were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, so that his works may not be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they have been done in God.

If you knew yourself to be a servant of the only Son of God, you would certainly never deny his majesty, you would never order his servants to be slaughtered now secretly, now openly; but because you are a lover of darkness—being indeed darkness yourself, because your works are evil—you were unwilling to have the matter you had brought forward examined fully by the priests of God. Why were you unwilling? Unless because you feared that your serpentine work would be made public. While we are in the body, says the Apostle, we are strangers from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight; we are bold also, having a good will, rather to be strangers from the body and to be present with the Lord, and we strive, whether absent or present, to please him. For we must all be made manifest before the tribunal of Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil.

And you, Constantius, heretic, say: Christians, condemn a Christian. Why do you say this? Unless because you have judged it best to shed the blood of the just, and even to forsake God and take up idolatry. But again I beseech you, most pious emperor, to recognize—since you are both a denier of the only Son of God and a persecutor of those who believe in him—whether you may not be found equal to those whose wickedness is described in the Acts of the Apostles: When there was great dissension among them, the tribune, fearing lest Paul should be torn apart by them, ordered the army to go down and take him into the camp. But the following night the Lord stood by him and said: Be steadfast; for as you have testified concerning me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also at Rome. When day came, some of the Jews gathered together and bound themselves by an oath, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul.

There were about forty who had made this conspiracy, and they went to the chief priests and told them, saying: We have bound ourselves by a vow to taste nothing at all until we kill Paul; now therefore you gather a council and inform the tribune, that he may bring him down to you, as though you meant to inquire more diligently about him; and we, before he comes near, are ready to kill him. If you did not seek Athanasius the priest of God by this same kind of device, unless you had contrived to pretend one thing and had planned to accomplish another, can you deny that you too are driven by that same adverse spirit by which the Jews were driven and are driven? For unless you had been roused by that spirit against us who serve God, you would never, without doubt, have ordered an innocent man to be condemned in his absence.

But I repeat these things often, as though you yourself, when at times you rest from the goads of your fury, might not consider that you have strayed in every way so far from the rule of justice that you could not even see, in the Acts of the Apostles, that when the Jews sought the death of the blessed Paul, the Gentile governor Festus by no means gave his assent to the assembly of the Jews, but promised that he himself would hear both parties together: the Gentile preserved the right of equity, but you have destroyed it; or is it equity to condemn one unheard, to slay one absent, and to deny a hearing to a just man, for whom the whole people of God can bear witness, that he was falsely accused by you and your Arians, being a Christian? Therefore, as I began to say, hear what was done between the Jews and the blessed Paul by Festus.

Now when Festus, as governor, had come into the province, he went up to Jerusalem, where they laid an ambush to kill him on the way. Festus therefore answered that Paul was being kept at Caesarea, and that he himself would go there more speedily. Let those among you, therefore, who are able, go down, and if there is any crime in the man, let them accuse him. Having stayed among them not more than eight or ten days, he went down to Caesarea, and on the next day sat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought; when he had been brought, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges which they could not prove; while Paul made his defense, that he had done nothing against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar.

The pagan kept the way of equity between the blessed Paul and your fellow-murderers the Jews, and you, wishing to obey the desires of your evil meditations, had decided that equity and justice should be removed from our senses. But how could we have done what you compelled to be done against justice? We who remembered it written: Do not judge according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. You said, condemn one unheard—at what time did you say this, why did you not remember that Nicodemus said: Does our law judge a man, unless it first hears from him and knows what he has done? Why were you unwilling that he be heard, whom you called deserving of death, unless because you had brought false charges? The Lord says to the Jews: He who speaks a lie speaks of his own, for he is a liar, and so is his father.

And you, though you have been shown to be a liar, do you suppose you are not the son of a liar, and do you, son of a liar, dare to resist the truthful priests of the Lord, you deceiver? You sacrilegious man, you dare—whom we recognize to be that thief and robber whom the Lord foretold, saying: Amen, amen, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up by another way, is a thief and a robber. You indeed stretched forth your hands to claim Christ's sheep for the Antichrist; but as you have been recognized as a thief and a robber, you have been avoided and rejected. Why have the sheep of God not followed you, or your fellow sacrilegious companion Georgius? Why do they follow him whom you so bitterly resent as being bishop of the Alexandrians? Unless because God appointed him bishop for them, while the devil sent you and Georgius in to slaughter them like thieves and robbers.

He who enters by the door, he says, is the shepherd of the sheep; to him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out; and when he has put forth all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice; they do not follow another, but flee from him, because they do not know his voice. Since therefore you have not entered by the door into the church, you are seen to be a thief and a robber; for you do not know the Son of God, so that you cannot say you have entered by the door: since he would call them both thieves and robbers, because even then they were not believing in his divine clemency, nor would they believe afterward, and would try to teach his sheep otherwise.

Therefore, since you spread this insane teaching from this source—for because you have not believed in him, you are indeed that thief and robber who was even then being foreshown, as is most clearly proved by your blasphemies. That this is so is proved by what follows in his pronouncement: Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he shall be saved, and shall go in, and find pasture; the thief comes only that he may steal. You, then, a thief, who are found to have entered the fold of God for this purpose, namely that you might steal and kill—with what voice can you still say: Athanasius ought not to be bishop of the Alexandrians, but Georgius, when you see that you yourself and Georgius, and all your fellow sacrilegious companions, are nothing else but thieves and robbers?

God willed his servants to be shepherds over the flock, that recognizing you and yours to be robbers and thieves, they might drive you off. But you, having driven us out—those appointed by God's judgment—for that reason decided that you and yours should preside over the Lord's flock, so that you might be free to rage among God's flock. Since you are such a one, we shall not be able to wonder that you have said the absent worshipper of God ought to be punished. For you could not have kept in mind that the Lord said: "If you love me, keep my commandments: and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate, that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see him nor know him; you know him, because he abides with you and is in you".

But tell me, I ask you, how could the Holy Spirit the Paraclete dwell in us, if we had done your will or that of your father? Further on too he says: "He who hears my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him." Judas, not Iscariot, said to him: "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to this world?" Jesus answered and said to him: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words". From these pronouncements of the Lord it can be conjectured how great an enemy of ours you have shown yourself to be: "He who hears my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me".

How could we show that we loved him, if, like you, we trampled his commandments? For you indeed trample the Lord's commandments; and while he has decreed that they be kept, you not only command that they need not be kept, but even order that he himself be denied. Or how could his Father love me because I kept the commandments of his Son, if I condemned an innocent man? The Son of God says: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him": and you say, food for the fire, apostate: "Condemn the innocent man." By what manner would we have been found to love the Son of God, if against his commandments we had slain a just man? How could it come about that the Father would love us, and that the Father and Son would come and deign to abide in us, if, rescinding the Lord's commandments, we kept your sacrilegious precepts?

Behold, Constantius, how the devil, that envious lover of your will, has tried through you, his client, to drive us from what glory, had not the Lord's mercy come to our aid; considering you now to be not a man, whom God made in his own image and likeness, but the filth of every sewer, we trampled your sacrilegious commands. For who, unless more wretched than you Arians, would refuse to be loved by the only Son of God? Who is there who would refuse to be loved by his Father? Who would refuse to be a temple of the Father and his only Son? Which indeed he cannot attain who, like you, has been both a murderer and a sacrilegious man: yet you too could attain it, if you were converted and truly repented. The Lord says further: "This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends, if you do what I command you. Now I do not call you servants, but friends". And again: "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, and whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you". How could we be friends of the only Son of God, if against his forbidding of mercy we condemned the absent, we killed the innocent? How could our fruit increase in growth? How could we receive from the Father whatever we asked in his name, if, as you were compelling us, we not only punished his worshipper, but denied him as well? Had you not found that the blessed apostle wrote to Titus, a man consecrated to God, concerning the irreproachable office of a bishop, that it should be worthy to present to God, that you should desire us to become murderers?

"For this cause I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I appointed you: if any is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless, as God's steward; not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre; but a lover of hospitality, gentle, sober, just, holy, temperate, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake".

Since therefore he wished such a man to become bishop, one who lived holding to this path of justice, by what authority have you dared to give new precepts to exclude the commandments of the blessed apostle—precepts which are known to have arisen from the will of the devil? The apostle wishes me to be not soon angry, not a striker, and you wish me to be made a murderer? From these things it can be gathered that the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of the blessed apostle, but a wicked spirit spoke through your Arian mouth. Meanwhile you see that the apostle commanded that you, resisting the truth, should be judged by the intervention of a bishop, so that your blasphemy might be punished through sound doctrine. I did not bring forward the saying of the blessed apostle, that a bishop must be blameless, in order to deny that I am a sinner, since I both know my own conscience, and hear that just man Job say: "For who is clean from filth?

No one, even if his life on earth be but one day"; and I note that the blessed John also says: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us". I did not therefore bring forward the apostle's precept in order to proclaim myself, who remember that I am a sinner, to be without stain, but so that you might notice how great an evil is that which you have commanded to be done. "Exhort the younger men likewise," he says, "to be sober-minded, showing yourself in all things a pattern of good works, in doctrine, in integrity, in gravity, in speech sound and irreproachable, that the adversary may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of us". How could I have shown myself a pattern of good works to others, if I had shed the blood of God's servant?

How could God's people have recognized me as preaching the integral doctrine which the apostles handed down, if I had accepted your heresy, if in the end I had communicated, even in pretense, with your henchmen the Arian pseudo-bishops? How could my speech be brought forth sound and irreproachable, if, deserting the evangelical and apostolic faith, I had accepted your blasphemy? How could the adversary have been made ashamed? How could nothing evil be said of me, when if I had judged that I should give in to you, it would have been discovered that I had become both a murderer and a sacrilegious man?

Again, when he admonishes that servants ought to be subject to their masters, he says: "For the grace of God our Savior has appeared to all men, instructing us, that denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly, and righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to himself a people acceptable, zealous of good works". Since he commanded us to walk in these good works, what seemed right to you, that you should be invited to commit murder? For how could we be seen denying ungodliness and living godly and righteously, if with you we had shed the blood of an innocent man?

But also, since he says that the Lord delivered himself up for our sins for this reason, that he might snatch us from the works of Satan, and appoint us to be zealous of good works—if we had joined with you in perpetrating this deed of yours, in what part would we be, except that in which Cain is? "For the grace of God our Savior has appeared to all men," he says, "instructing us, that denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly, and righteously, and godly in this present world". And you, Emperor Constantius, deign to say that we are impious, wicked, ruined, malicious, unjust, unrighteous. Where shall I find that blessed hope, which the blessed apostle teaches me to await, if I not only slay the servants of him who alone is able to bestow all beatitude, but even deny him himself? For you do both, Constantius, since you both persecute and kill his servants, and, deserting him, have judged that you should give yourself over to idols.

Why do you do these things, unless because the grace of God our Savior has not appeared to you? For if it had appeared, you would remember the apostle's precepts, saying: "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is". If it is the will of the Lord to kill the innocent, to abandon the evangelical faith, then not only this passage, but the whole body of the blessed apostle's epistles could lend patronage to your prescriptions; but if no part of the sacred Scriptures favors your prescriptions, it is clearer than light that you dwell under the power of darkness; whence it has come about that you have drawn nothing from the sacred fountains of Scripture that could have removed you from such great dangers.

For if the power of darkness had not reduced you under its dominion, you would surely keep in mind what the Philippians hear: "Be followers together of me, brothers, and mark them who walk so as you have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things". I wish you would say, most prudent Emperor, in what things we ought to become fellow-followers of the apostle: teach us, apostate.

If the apostle was a murderer, if a blasphemer, if a destroyer of the evangelical faith, if sacrilegious—for he confesses that he did all these things before he believed in the only Son of God—but you, who do today those things which he did before he came to the knowledge of the only Son of God, on what grounds did you dare to command us, priests of the Lord, that we should condemn an innocent man, that, accepting your heresy, we should spit upon the apostolic faith? On what grounds did you command these things to be done, which are brought forth contrary to the pattern of the apostle, unless because you are among the enemies of the cross of Christ, among those who were even then designated by the mouth of the holy apostle?

Should we listen to you and yours, whose end the apostle says is destruction?—those henchmen of yours who, abandoning the pattern of the tradition of discipline and the rule of faith handed down through the apostles, gave themselves over to you for the sake of base gain; those who valued the abundance of your table more than that which the Lord promises to his own; those who chose to be your table companions rather than those of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, or martyrs; to whom it is most rightly said: "Your God is your belly." "Prove all things," says the apostle, "hold fast that which is good, abstain from every appearance of evil"; and because we have seen your accursed Arian work and avoided it, we suffer hatred. But how fair and how pleasant it is to be hated by you, but loved by God! You have driven us from the office entrusted to us, thinking that you could destroy what God has built.

"But to each one of us," he says writing to the Ephesians, "is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ, wherefore it says: When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth?

He who descended is the same also who ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things; and he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by cunning craftiness, in order to deceive.

But speaking the truth in love, may we grow up into him in all things, who is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, makes increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love". Since you read that these things are so, why did you dare to remove the pastors whom God willed to preside over his flock? Why, unless so that pastors of God might be able, together with you, to be carried by every wind of doctrine over the Lord's flock, lest they should have been led, as children are, by every wind of doctrine?

Coming to the faith, lest by your cunning as wicked men they should fall back, to the remedies of the devil your prince, from the apostolic and evangelical faith, you took away the bishops from the peoples over whom we preside by divine appointment, for this very purpose, that you might teach doctrine not apostolic but heretical. Woe to you, wretched man, through whom Satan does these things. You had found, wise man, a color fit for your deceit, by which you might defend to your father the sheep of God—you, in whom, that you might tarry in these evils, he has already darted into your heart those darts with which he wounded the minds of Eve and Adam, to this end, namely, that he might establish you in this depravity.

You had found, I say, wise man, a color fit for your deceit; by which you might lay waste the Lord's flock, saying: "Athanasius has sinned, and therefore whoever slays him along with me shall be a bishop; and whoever thinks him worthy of consideration shall not be." And those who condemned Athanasius were joined to the pseudo-bishops of your Arian dogma.

If any, fearing your wrath, did this, they incurred through you a threefold crime of murder and sacrilege, whether because they condemned an innocent man, or because Catholics communicated with heretics, and allowed you wolves to enter into the flock of God, since the apostle says that pastors were given for this reason, that all the teaching of demons, which is put forth through you heretics and all adversaries of the Church, might be excluded, and that the servants of God, running in the truth, might remain unmoved until they arrived at the highest perfection; and you, darkness, have dared to take away the pastors established by God's judgment, so that you, a wolf, might turn everyone into prey for your beloved devil. "That we henceforth," he says, "be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by cunning craftiness, in order to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, may we grow up into him in all things, who is the head, even Christ".

How could we grow up into him, if we had followed you into darkness, since you deny that he is the true God, since you say that he is not begotten of the substance of the Father, but assert that he was made out of nothing? How could we have grown up into him, we who would not be walking in the truth, from the moment we had followed you, an apostate? Then, since he says: "Speaking the truth, let us grow up in love", and since it is manifest that Athanasius, a priest of God, was assailed by you and yours with false charges, if we had done what you commanded, how would we have been seen running either in truth or in love, we who would have extinguished the love which we hold with our fellow bishop Athanasius, and, because we had complied with a false charge, would have deserved, joined with you the deceiver in the murder of an innocent man, to be struck with divine indignation along with you?

Thus, therefore, Constantius, is the house of God built through deceit, through the shedding of innocent blood, through blasphemous preaching? Woe to you who live for this, that the devil may work all these evils through you. You say to me: Punish the innocent one, abandon the catholic faith, and take up the poisons of my heresy—while the apostle says: This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk in the vanity of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. Whom of you should I obey? You, or the apostle? You, a sacrilegious apostate, or him who is found to have already shed his blood for the sake of the only-begotten Son of God? Whom of you should I follow? You, a temple of demons, or that other, a temple of God?

You, who by your works show yourself to be either a Jew or a heathen, or him who has already, through this faith which you curse, attained the heavenly kingdoms? For if you do not by your own works show yourself to be a heathen, you will be able to defend yourself, since these things would not rightly be brought against you. First, because you deny the Son of God, you are to us a heathen or a Jew: then, when you proscribe, deport, torture, load the innocent with false charges, and kill, you cannot be found a Christian, one who by his own way is recognized as a man of God, but rather one of those of whom the Spirit of God says through the apostle, that they are in the vanity of their mind, senseless, alienated from the life of God, through the blindness of their heart.

Since then these things which you do are shown by the voice of the apostle to be done by men blinded in heart, with what face do you dare to say to those sound in heart and mind, You have erred; deceiver, to the truthful, You are liars? The apostle says: As the truth is in Jesus, that you put off, concerning your former way of life, the old man, which is corrupted according to the desire of error. But be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which is created according to God in justice and holiness and truth. Putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor. Where have you left aside these salutary warnings, which the apostle exhorts us to keep? How indeed could we be found to have put off the old man, and to have put on the new man, who is according to God?

How could we be seen abiding in justice and holiness and truth, we who, doing unjust things with you, would have extinguished that new man who is created according to God, and would have begun again to bear that old man, which is corrupted according to the desire of error, just as it was corrupted before it began to know God? For all those things which you do are the deeds not of the household of God, but of the satellites of antichrist: Putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, for we are members one of another. If you had been of the members of the Church of God, believe me, you would never have brought a lie to the Church; but because you are the man of him who deceived Adam through deceit, and Eve, therefore you have brought a lie, that you might so ensnare us as the devil ensnared the first-formed human beings. You said: Condemn Athanasius, because he has gravely sinned, otherwise you will be in the greatest guilt before God.

Receive the faith of Arius, and you shall live forever. Learn what he who so dearly loves you did concerning Adam and Eve, and you will find that you now do to us what he then did to them. And Moses says in Genesis: And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed. But the serpent was more subtle than all the beasts that were. And further on: And the serpent said to the woman: Why has God said, You shall not eat of every tree that is in paradise? And the woman said to the serpent: Of every tree that is in paradise we shall eat, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise God said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. We say to you, in the place of the serpent persuading us to condemn the unheard and to slaughter the innocent: the Lord has commanded that the innocent and the just not be killed.

And the serpent said to the woman: You shall not die. For God knew that on whatever day you shall eat of it, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. So then, when this serpent says through you to us, You will be more just if you shed just blood, you will be more blessed if you anathematize the apostolic and evangelical faith and take up the Arian perfidy—by the mercy of God this is already trampled down by us who know his deceit; but God is witness that we grieve for you, because he has set himself up through you to ensnare us. For it is agreed that he then attacked Adam and Eve by himself. I beg you not to take these things ill, which are said for the sake of your salvation. For I think you are grieved that I have said the serpent has attacked us through you, and that I have placed you in many places among those who have been called serpents.

Consider your work and theirs, and if you do not recognize that you are one body with them, say that I do not speak this justly. You certainly hear that your teachers in perfidy, the Jews, are often called serpents in the sacred Gospels by the Lord, serpents, offspring of vipers. Whence did they merit to be called by this name? Certainly because of their wicked deed, certainly because of their unbelief. Hence also John the Baptist says to them, Offspring of vipers, who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance. As therefore of those who believed in the only-begotten Son of God, who corrected their ways, some deserved to become children of light, while others are called serpents, so too you, unless you bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, unless you correct your ways, will be called a son of the viper and the serpent.

For which servant of God, seeing you to be a murderer and a blasphemer, would not call you by the same name by which the Jews are called? Who, among those who fear God, will hesitate to pronounce you what you are, when he sees the scribes, Pharisees, and princes of the Jews called serpents for this reason, because they shed the blood of the prophets and denied the only-begotten Son of God? Since these things are so, it remains for you to do penance for your deeds, considering that God has granted the mercy of his clemency to all who turn away from evil ways, taking as your model the Ninevites, whom if you imitate, you will necessarily obtain the help of mercy. Therefore learn what was done, and what they themselves did, terrified by the preaching of Jonah. It was commanded, says sacred Scripture, to the whale, and it cast Jonah forth upon the land.

And the word of the Lord came to Jonah again, saying: Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach in it according to the preaching that I bade you before. And Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to what the Lord had said to him. Now Nineveh was a great city, of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he preached, and said: Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least. And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne, and laid aside his robe, and put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And it was proclaimed by the king of Nineveh and his magistrates, saying: Let neither men nor beasts, herds nor flocks, taste anything, nor let them be fed, nor drink water.

And men were covered with sackcloth, and men and beasts cried earnestly to God, and each one turned from his evil way and from the iniquity that was in his hands, saying: Who knows whether God will repent, and turn away from the fierceness of his wrath, that we perish not? And God saw their doing, that they turned each one from his evil way; and God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them, and he did it not. And Jonah was exceedingly grieved, and was troubled, and prayed to God, saying: Lord, are not these my words, when I was yet in my own country? Therefore I hastened to flee to Tharsis, for I knew that you are merciful and gracious, patient and full of compassion, and relenting from evil. And further on: And God said to Jonah: Are you greatly grieved for the gourd? I am greatly grieved, even unto death.

And the Lord said: You have had pity on the gourd, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And shall I not spare Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left? And as for you, Constantius, if God should see that you have cast off your evil doing, if he should see your lost ways corrected, and see you reformed in all things, believe me, you will begin to be in great felicity among the servants of God.

You have also the example of the most blessed apostle Paul, lest perhaps you do these things through ignorance as he did—for as soon as you turn to confess the only-begotten Son of God, forgiveness for your crimes will be granted to you, as it was to him: follow him, take hold of his way, hear him speaking to the Philippians, both what he was before his knowledge of the truth, and what blessedness he deserved to obtain after that knowledge. If anyone else thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; according to the law a Pharisee; according to zeal, persecuting the Church; according to the justice that is in the law, living without blame. But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

Yea, I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having my own justice, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Jesus Christ, the justice which is of God through faith, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection which is from the dead.

As has already been said, imitate this man, follow this man, so that, since he was once what you now are—a persecutor of the Church, a denier of the only-begotten Son of God—you may be found, in order to attain the heavenly kingdoms, to have been converted from perfidy to embracing the catholic faith, just as he was, and so may you make the passage from death to life.

Learn further, from Timothy revealing it about himself, that he had persecuted the Church out of ignorance of God: But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for the just man, but for the unjust and disobedient, for the ungodly, and for sinners, for the wicked and defiled, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for the unchaste, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, which is according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, which has been committed to my trust. And I give thanks to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he counted me faithful, putting me in the ministry, who before was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious; but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief.

And the grace of our Lord has abounded exceedingly, with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. So you too, from a persecutor, from one injurious and blasphemous, can be made blessed and truly most dear to God, if, as the blessed Paul did, you believe that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God, if you confess that he has always reigned with the Father and shall reign, that is, without beginning and without end; if you do not resist the sacred Scriptures which cry out that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one eternity; if finally you believe that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one Godhead—believe me, you shall be among the choir of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs; otherwise it will be charged against you, when you begin to see yourself tormented with the devil and all his satellites, why you despised these so wholesome admonitions of ours.