Ancient Documents Relating to the History of the Arians

When we were staying at Edessa, with your presbyters present, it was resolved that, a presbyter having been sent to you, you should hasten to come to our retinue: so that, as soon as you had seen our presence, you should straightway pass over to Alexandria. But since a great deal of time has passed since, our letter having been received, you did not come, therefore we wish you now to be admonished again, that even now at least you betake yourself to us as quickly as possible, whereby you may thus be restored to your fatherland, and we may be able to enjoy your prayers. For fuller information, however, we have sent to you the deacon Achitas, from whom it will be possible to learn both the will of our mind, and that you can attain what you desire in your prayers.

Victor Constantius, Maximus, Augustus, to the bishops and presbyters of the catholic Church, greeting. The most reverend Athanasius has not been abandoned by the grace of God, although for a short time he was subjected to a trial of human probation: for he has now received the just and due account from all-bearing and all-sustaining Providence, in that both by the will of the Best and by our judgment he receives back the fatherland and the church, which he formerly possessed by the divine nod: to whom fitting things ought to be brought by our humanity: so that I wish all things which were formerly decreed against those who celebrated communion with him to be given over to oblivion; and that every suspicion thereafter against them be abolished; and that the immunity which his clergy formerly had be preserved to them firm and ratified, as is fitting.

Moreover we have judged it fair to add this too for his sake, that it be proclaimed among all men of the sacred order, that security has been granted to all who adhered to Athanasius, whether they be bishops or clergy. For it will be ample proof that each of them is of upright mind, even from this alone, that they were associated with Athanasius. For whoever have chosen the communion of this man by better judgment and party, all these we have commanded, after the pattern of the aforesaid Providence, and according to our will, to enjoy securely the grace bestowed by the Best God. God keep you.

Victor Constantius, Maximus, Augustus, to the people of the catholic church of Alexandria, greeting.

Since we have before our eyes your discipline in all things, and are by no means ignorant that you have long since been deprived of episcopal oversight, we have decreed to send back to you Athanasius the bishop, a man renowned among all for uprightness and probity of manners. If, then, you shall receive him gladly and becomingly, and shall employ him as a helper in prayers poured out to God, you will preserve at once a concord befitting yourselves and most pleasing to us, and perpetual peace and the law of the church. For it is absurd that discord or sedition should be agitated among you, and this itself is alien to the integrity of our times.

We wish, therefore, that this vice be utterly absent from you, and that you continually make use of him (as I have said) in your prayers, as president and helper before God, and persevere in that zeal in the accustomed manner; so that, with such purpose being celebrated by the mouth of you all, the Gentiles, who still cling to the errors of idols, may most readily hasten to the knowledge of the sacred religion.

He asks that Athanasius be received.—Wherefore we again admonish you, that, acquiescing in what has been said above, you should gladly receive the bishop sent back hither by the suffrage of the Best and by our will, and should consider him inseparable from your minds and opinions: for this becomes you, and is agreeable to our gentleness. For, to root out every occasion of disturbance and sedition, of which those desirous of evils gladly make use, we have enjoined by letters upon our judges among you, that, whomever they find seditious, they should restrain by the penalties and punishments of the laws. Having, therefore, all these things before your eyes, and our judgment joined with the Best God, and your care together with concord, and the penalty established against the immodest, observing the fitting and becoming things according to the laws of the sacred religion, honor the aforesaid Athanasius with all reverence and honor, and offer your prayers together with him to God the Parent of all, both for us and for the sanctity of each one's life.

Victor Constantius Augustus to Nestorius, and in the same form to the prefects of Augustamnica, Thebais, and Africa.

If anything is ever found to have been decreed to the harm or reproach of those who communicated with Athanasius, we wish it to be altogether erased. For we wish that the clergy who formerly had his office should again have it. For we command that this decree be observed, that, Athanasius having been restored to his church, those in communion with him should have the same office which they formerly possessed, whereby they too may rejoice that they have been altogether restored.

Victor Constantius Augustus to Athanasius, greeting. That it was my desire that all things should proceed according to the wish of my brother Constans is not hidden even from your conscience. But in what great grief I have been, when I learned that he had been taken away by certain impious men, your prudence will easily divine again. But since there are some in this mournful time who are busy about terrifying you, therefore we have judged it right that this letter be delivered to your Firmness, by which I am the author to you, that, as befits a bishop, you should teach the peoples the things that pertain to the sacred religion, and give yourself to your accustomed prayers, and not believe a vain rumor from those who bring it, whoever they may be. It is fixed, moreover, in our mind, that according to our will you should remain forever bishop in your see. May divine providence preserve you for many years, dearest parent.

Constantine Caesar to the people of the catholic church of Alexandria, greeting. Nor do I think that it is hidden from your sacred mind, that Athanasius, the interpreter of the adorable law, was for this reason sent to the Gauls, lest at some time the ferocity of bloodthirsty enemies should most greatly threaten his sacred head, and, entangled in the confines of evil men, he should suffer something intolerable, and for which there would be no remedy. To elude, therefore, this ferocity, withdrawn from the jaws of so many gaping after him, he was ordered to dwell under me. And thus he stayed in this city, so that he abounded in all necessary things, although his reverend virtue, relying on divine help, made light of the burdens of harsher fortune.

Now since our lord and father Constantine, before all things, out of piety toward God and toward you, wished to restore this bishop to his own seat, and, overtaken by human lot, rested before he could fulfill this desire, I think it fitting for me, having taken up the will of the sacred memory of the emperor, to fulfill that very thing which he could not. When, therefore, Athanasius shall have come into your presence, then at last you will understand how great his reverence has been with us. Nor ought it to seem strange, if I have done anything of this kind in his favor; for both the image of your desire and the likeness of so great a man have spurred my mind to do this. May divine providence keep you, beloved brothers. Given at Trier, the 15th day before the Kalends of July.

To the lord and brother Athanasius the bishop, Ursacius and Valens, bishops, greeting. Having gotten the opportunity through our brother and fellow-presbyter Museus, who is going thither to your Charity, dear brother, we wish, by his good offices, that you be greeted from Aquileia, and we wish that you may read our letters in safety: of which matter you will give us assurance, if you too observe the exchange in writing. For we wish you to know that peace exists between us and you, and that ecclesiastical communion prevails: of which matter we wish the salutation inscribed in this letter to be our pledge. May divine providence preserve you, beloved brother.

Constantius, victor and ever triumphant Augustus, to Eusebius the bishop. Although I am confident that, the greatness of the matter itself giving me warning, your Gravity can easily measure how I set all things pertaining to my diligence before, in the presence of the heavenly religion, that which excels, and preeminent in my mind, yet, since your Prudence has learned this by documents also frequently sent forth, when you perceive that I do this by night and by day, which I trust can profit the venerable worship. For what is more pleasing or more useful to me than to have devoted my mind to God: so much so, that I feel all facility subject to this kind of zeal?

Therefore I always regard the venerable churches from the innermost affection of my mind, and I desire to recover and firmly maintain their unity, salutary to all: for which reason it was resolved that an assembly of the holy bishops be held in the city of Milan, especially those who might easily reveal (rescind) things done elsewhere; for indeed in various provinces councils of bishops have been gathered, but what the most prudent bishops decreed individually with harmonious unanimity has been clearly declared in the Council of Milan. In fine, a few coming from each province from a common will brought forth unanimous decisions, and confirmed them according to the veneration owed to the law. What, therefore, was in agreement with religion (the religious) was corroborated by their decision; so that they resolved that four of their fellowship should be sent to your Holiness, likewise admonishing that they follow this course, that your Gravity does not shrink from what is not contrary to the utility of the Church.

We indeed, who glory in being servants of God, likewise exhort and admonish that you not delay to adhere to the consent of your brothers. For we trust that, when this has been done, the churches will be able to rejoice in most firm unity. May God ever protect you for many years, most dear and most beloved brother.

Victor Constantine (Constantius), Maximus, ever triumphant Augustus, to the bishops. The former enactments contain, venerable ones, obeying the holy command of God and your pious edict, what has of old been handed down in doctrines, so that we have judged it should be established by our suffrages just as it has been handed down. For we assembled together at Ariminum out of all the cities situated toward the west, that the faith of the catholic Church might be known, and that those who held another opinion might be made manifest. And there, after long deliberation, that faith seemed best which has endured up to now from ancient times, which both the prophets and the evangelists and the apostles preached through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the guardian of your empire and the defender of your health. It was determined, therefore, that we should hold and worship it, and, worshipping it, preserve it to the end.

For it is unbecoming and wicked to wish to change anything of what was rightly and justly decreed, and what was established at Nicaea publicly, with the most illustrious prince Constantine your father, by careful deliberation, matters in which there is so much doctrine and prudence, that [lacuna] we have sufficiently and more than sufficiently perceived by letters given to your Prudence, that it is fitting to give attention to the same: since indeed this both suits the office of bishops, and the safety of all the peoples far and wide is strengthened by this foundation. But the matter has admonished that the enactments should again stand (insist). For no one will judge it superfluous to repeat things once defined, since frequent admonition of matters is wont to increase the sum of diligence. These things being so, let your Sincerity recognize that discussion ought to be had concerning faith and unity, and that care should be taken that a fitting order be provided for ecclesiastical matters.

For the posterity of all peoples everywhere will take note, and faithful concord will be preserved, when, all such questions having been utterly cut off, this matter ought not to extend the intention of the mind further in pursuing all such things. For reason does not permit that anything concerning the eastern bishops be defined in your council. Accordingly, you ought to deal only with those matters which your Gravity knows pertain to you, and, all things being quickly completed, with consenting agreement, send ten to my retinue, as we have already intimated to your Prudence by an earlier letter. For the aforesaid will be able to answer all things which the same easterners may propose to them, or to discuss concerning the faith, so that by a fitting outcome every question may be terminated, and ambiguity put to rest. Since these things are so, you ought to determine nothing against the easterners, or if you should wish to define anything against them in the absence of the aforesaid, whatever shall have been so usurped will vanish with void effect.

For that definition will not be able to have force, to which our own decrees testify that strength and scope (copiousness) are already now denied. Since these things are so, you ought, in accordance with the moderation of religion befitting the venerable bishops, to accomplish things worthy of veneration, so that what religion demands may be carried out, and that no one may usurp what reason forbids to be heard. May the Divinity preserve you for many years, dearest parents. Given the sixth day before the Kalends of June, in the consulship of Eusebius and Hypatius. Which, once proclaimed, reached the ears and minds of all, which alone was the enemy and slayer of the Arian heresy, and through which not only that heresy but the rest also were removed: in which surely both to add anything is rash, and to take away is dangerous: if either of these should be done, our enemies would have free license to do whatever they please.

Concerning the condemnation of Ursacius and Valens.—And for that reason Ursacius and Valens, long since companions and supporters of the Arian doctrine, were by sentence given separated from our communion: which, in order to recover it again, they sought penance and pardon for their sins, of which they acknowledged themselves conscious, as their written statements testify: and on that account pardon and grace for their offenses was granted them.

Now these things were done at the time when the synod at Milan was convening, with the presbyters of the Roman Church present there: and it was therefore most thoroughly persuasive to us, that it would be unjust, since the emperor Constans, worthy of all remembrance from his death onward, promulgated this faith drawn up with all care and diligence, then, after he was baptized, translated from among men to the rest owed him, to wish to contrive anything new in that faith, and to despise so many holy confessors and martyrs, the writers and authors of this decree, who remained in that judgment for the sake of the ancient law and the rite of the Church: whose faith God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, has conferred upon the times of your reign: through whom you reign so widely that you rule even over our world.

Concerning the inconstancy of Ursacius and Valens.—But again these wretched men of ruined mind, with impious daring, show themselves heralds of an impious opinion, and strive to overturn all the decrees of truth. For at that time, when by your edict the synod was being convened, they themselves laid bare the designs of their fraud: for they attempted, through cunning and tumult, along with the companions of that faction, Germinius, Auxentius, and Gaius, who were sowing contentions and discords, to make innovations. Their teaching, one and the same, surpasses every kind of blasphemy. But when they saw that there were no men there of the same disposition, nor that anyone agreed with their depraved opinions, they transferred themselves to our council, so as to seem to write something else: but they themselves not long afterward showed their true mind.

Lest, therefore, ecclesiastical affairs fall into the same troubles again, nor disturbance and tumult again involve and confound everything; it has been firmly resolved that the decrees settled long ago be kept unshaken as legitimate, and that these men be removed from our communion.

Concerning the embassy sent to Constantius.—And therefore we have sent our legates to your equity, to show you the judgment of the synod by letter: and this above all was entrusted to our legates, that they should prove the truth by ancient and just allegations of the facts, and show to your holiness, that it is not, as Ursacius and Valens say, that peace will come if some just things are overturned. For how will those be able to act peacefully who remove peace? But rather from that source contention and disturbance will arise, both for the other cities and for the city of Rome. Wherefore we beseech your humanity, that you look upon our legates with kindly ears and serene countenance, and not permit anything new to be introduced to the insult of the dead, but allow us to remain in the institutions and decrees of our forefathers, whom we have declared to have done everything with great genius, prudence, and the Holy Spirit.

Certainly the innovations which these men are contriving induce unbelief in believers, and belief in unbelievers.

The bishops ask for dismissal.—Again we approach you with our supplications, that you order the bishops staying abroad, whom both the weight of age and poverty afflict, to be brought back to their homeland as quickly as possible; lest the churches, with their bishops absent, be left deserted. This too we add to our prayers, that nothing of the ancient order be lacking, and nothing be in excess, but that everything remain firm, as observed from the times of your blessed father down to this present day; that you not permit us hereafter to be harassed and separated from our dioceses; but that the bishops, with their peoples, may have peace for prayers and divine worship and rest, praying for your reign, safety, and peace, which may the Divinity grant you forever. Moreover our legates bring the subscriptions and greetings of the bishops, who will instruct your holiness on this matter from the sacred letters themselves.

Constantius, victor and triumphant Augustus, to all the bishops who are assembled at Ariminum, greeting.

Although it is by no means unknown to your holiness that we have always had the greatest care for the divine and venerable religion of Christ: nevertheless there was no leisure at this time to admit into our presence the twenty bishops whom your prudence sent to carry out your embassy; for the expedition which we are at present undertaking against the barbarians keeps us occupied: and it is fitting (as you know) that the mind of one who is to treat the affairs of the most sacred religion be free from every care and disturbance. Accordingly we have instructed the bishops to await our return at Hadrianopolis: so that, when the matters pertaining to the state have been duly attended to, we may thereafter be able to hear and weigh diligently what they are going to propose to us.

In the meantime let it not be burdensome to your gravity to await their return; so that when they have come back and reported our answers to you, you may be able to bring to completion those things which will be for the good of the Catholic Church.

We have received the letter of your clemency, most holy emperor, from which we have learned that, on account of the necessary affairs of the state, you did not at that time have sufficient leisure to admit our legates into your presence, and that you instruct us to await their return until such time as your prudence understands those things which have been decided and decreed by us in accordance with the institutions of our forefathers. But now by this letter we confess and confirm to you that we shall in no way depart from our resolve and judgment: we have likewise commanded our legates the same. Wherefore we ask you, that with a calm countenance you have this letter, written to you by our modesty, read; nay, that you also take in good and equal part those things which we have enjoined our legates to carry out.

Furthermore, your kindness understands with us how sad and bitter a thing it is that so many churches, in these most blessed times of yours, are left destitute of their bishops: and therefore we again entreat your clemency, most august emperor, that before the harshness of winter (if it should so seem good to your piety) you grant us the power to return to our churches, so that we may be able to pour forth, with the people, the customary prayers for your reign to God the Father almighty, and to our Lord and Savior Christ his only-begotten Son, as we have always done before, and as we do not yet cease to do.

To our most beloved brethren throughout Illyricum who retain the paternal faith, the bishops of Italy, eternal salvation in the Lord.

It is by the grace of the divine gift that, according to the Apostle, we all have begun to think one thing, all to confess one thing: and as far as pertains to Italy, since it has restored itself to the paternal faith, that is, the faith written at Nicaea, recognizing the fraud which it suffered at Ariminum, we rejoice that Illyricum too has been regarded by God with a merciful nod, and we congratulate it that, having cast off the fellowship of unbelief by which it was burdened, it has begun to approve the things that are of right judgment. Receive therefore, most beloved brethren, our one and the same firm judgment confirmed by subscription. We keep the decrees of the Nicene treatise against Arius and Sabellius, by whose partial inheritance Photinus is condemned.

The statutes of the council of Ariminum, corrupted by the evasion of certain men, we rightly rescind by the consent of all the provinces; copies of which we have also thought fit to send, so that no appearance of compromise be seen either in retaining the faith or in refuting the council of Ariminum. Whoever, therefore, desires to have fellowship with our unanimity, whoever wishes to have undivided peace with us, let him hasten to approve what is our judgment, and to send, without ambiguity, the subscription to the aforementioned faith and the rescission of the council of Ariminum. This certainly we ask, because we ourselves extend the consent of very many of these provinces. Moreover, it is manifest that the authors of the Arian or Aetian heresy, Valens and Ursacius, and the rest of their associates, were not condemned only now, when they began to be made manifest throughout Illyricum, but long ago.

To our most religious lord and brother Germinius, Valens, Ursacius, Gaius, and Paulus, greeting.

When solicitude presses concerning hope and salvation, those who are solicitous ought rather to be praised than to sustain any reproach. Now salvation and hope consist principally in the catholic faith: and therefore, although at the assembly held for all our brothers and fellow bishops, Valens and Paulus being present, you were unwilling to respond to what rumor spreads about you, most religious lord, yet because you testified by your letters that you persevere in the same charity, and are prepared to show unimpaired affection toward us; therefore, gathered together at Sirmium, we again remind your holiness by these words, that, with every occasion for ambiguity excluded, you deign to write back to us, whether you openly and clearly signify that you will not depart from the catholic faith, which was set forth and confirmed at Ariminum by the holy council, to which also all the bishops of the whole East have consented, as you have already professed you will not depart.

And this is, as it is provided therein: We say the Son is like the Father according to the Scriptures, not according to substance, or in all things, but simply. For if this exposition be changed, plainly the perfidious assertion of Basil of old, on account of which the synod was held, by which he was also deservedly condemned, will be restored. Deign, therefore, to declare clearly by your letters what is asked: that you have not said, do not say, nor will say, that the Son is like the Father in all things, except in unbegottenness, lest what the bearers of the letters, Jovianus the deacon and Martyrius the subdeacon, asserted in words of their entreaty before our aforesaid lords and brothers and fellow bishops Valens and Paulus, should seem the more credible, namely that you profess the Son to be like the Father in all things.

For if you shall thus manifest by your writings that you feel as we have wished, then, as to the complaint made against you for injury by certain of your clerics, our brothers and fellow bishops Palladius and Gaius, although you were unwilling, as you were reminded at the first assembly, to inquire into it, it pertains to your own judgment, they of course rendering account for their rashness. These things we have sent to your charity by Secundianus the presbyter, Pullentius the reader, and Candidianus the exorcist, on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of January, in the consulship of Gratian, most noble Prince, and Dagalaifus, keeping a copy with ourselves.

To the lord brothers, most religious Rufianus, Palladius, Severinus, Nicha, Heliodorus, Romulus, Mucianus, and Stercorius, Germinius sends greeting in the Lord. We have learned through the report of Vitalis, now serving in the office of the sublime prefecture, that your holiness desires it to be openly made known to you what it is in our faith that displeases Valens, Ursacius, Gaius, and Paulus.

I thought it necessary by this letter to make plain to your holiness, and to say what I trust has been in you yourselves from the beginning, that we hold what we have received handed down from the fathers, and from the divine Scriptures—what we once learned and daily teach—that Christ the Son of God our Lord is in all things like the Father, except as to unbegottenness; God of God, light of light, virtue of virtue, whole of whole, perfect of perfect, begotten before the ages and before all things that can be understood or spoken; whose begetting no one knows save the Father alone, the Son himself declaring: For no one knows the Son but the Father, neither does anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him; through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made, according to the divine words of our Saviour the Son himself, saying: My Father works until now, and I work.

And again: For whatsoever things the Father does, these the Son likewise does. And again: I and the Father are one. And again: He who has seen me has seen the Father also. And again: As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself. And again: As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. And again: You believe in God, believe also in me. And again: For neither does the Father judge anyone, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father. And again, to whom the Father said: Let us make man to our image and likeness—he did not say, to thy image, or to my image, lest he should show any dissimilarity in the divinity of his Son; but for that reason he joined "to our image and likeness," that he might manifest his Son to be like himself in all things, God.

Again the Evangelist: We saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And the Apostle to the Corinthians: In whom the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, that they should not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And again the same Apostle: And has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption and remission of sins, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. And again the same Apostle: For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 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, being made in the likeness of men.

Who does not understand that just as, according to the form of a servant, our flesh was true in Christ, so also in the form of God the divinity of the Father is true in the Son? And again: See that no one deceive you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of this world, and not according to Christ, for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. If therefore all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ, then he is not partly like and partly unlike, as those now assert who, out of contention for their own lust, turning back, turn themselves away from us.

For as to what they think they bring forward as something great from the divine Scriptures, that they may say Christ is a work and a creature: we on the contrary say, according to the Scriptures, that he is the way, and the door, and the stone of stumbling, and the rock of scandal, and the foundation, and the arm, and the hand, and the wisdom, and the word, and the lamb, and the sheep, and the shepherd, and the priest, and the life, and the day, and other such things. But all these things we so understand and say, as to understand them to be the powers and operations of the Son of God, not as though we compared his divine begetting from the Father to names of this kind, since all things were made out of nothing through the Son, but the Son was not made out of nothing, but was begotten of God the Father.

The craftiness of Valens noted.—But I am amazed that the aforesaid Valens has either forgotten, or else craftily dissembles, what was done and determined in the past. For under Constantius, of blessed memory, when dissension concerning the faith had begun among certain persons, in the presence of that same emperor, with Bishop George of the church of Alexandria present, and Bishop Basil of Pelusium, then bishop of Ancyra, present, and with Valens and Ursacius themselves also present, and in that same depravity—after a discussion concerning the faith held even into the night, and brought to a fixed rule—Mark, rejected by all of us, dictated a faith, in which it was written thus: The Son like the Father in all things, as the holy Scriptures say and teach: to which entire profession we all consented, and subscribed with our own hand. But if now some spirit of this world suggests something else, we cannot as yet know openly.

For as we have professed from the Scriptures that the Son is in all things like the Father, except as to unbegottenness, let them also explain from the Scriptures in what way he is partly like and partly unlike. And therefore, most beloved brothers, I have sent this profession fearlessly and without delay to the conscience of your charity, through Cyriacus the official—the first occasion found being after Carinius the deacon, whom I sent to you—so that through your most watchful devotion also it may be made known to the whole brotherhood before God, lest anyone, in ignorance, be entangled in the snares of the devil's deceit. It is now for your unanimity to write back to me what the Holy Spirit suggests to you. I would inform your charity that I was not able to subscribe this letter myself, because my hand pained me; but I have directed our brothers and fellow-presbyters Innocent, Octavius, and Catulus to subscribe it.

The emperors Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, Augusti, to Damasus, bishop of the city of Rome. Let ecclesiastics, or those from the ranks of ecclesiastics, or those who wish to be called by the name of continent persons, not approach the houses of widows and orphans; but let them be banished by public judgments, if hereafter their kinsmen or relatives shall think they ought to be denounced. We decree also that the aforesaid persons shall be able to obtain nothing, by any bounty whatsoever or by final testament, from that woman to whom they have privately attached themselves under pretext of religion: and let everything be to such an extent void which any of them shall have had left to them by these women, that they may not even through an interposed person be able to receive anything either by donation or by testament. Nay more, if perchance, after the warning of our law, they shall think anything ought to be left to them by a woman's donation or final testament, let the treasury seize it.

But as for those who receive by the will of women to whose succession or goods they are aided either by civil law or by the benefits of the edict, let them take as relatives. Read in the Roman churches on the fourth of the Kalends of August, in the consulship of Valentinian and Valens, Augusti, for the third time.

That what the emperors had already granted of their own accord should not lack effect.—And this too, most clement princes, is an illustrious proof of your glory and piety, that when nearly innumerable persons from the scattered regions of Italy, gathered at the sublime shrine of the apostolic see, we sought what ought to be requested from you on behalf of the state of the churches, we could find nothing better than what your spontaneous providence has already bestowed. We see that there ought now to be no shame in asking, nor should the benefits to be obtained still be yours to grant, and that the series of imperial decrees should of itself go about on our behalf. For as to what concerns the equity of the petition, we deserved long ago to obtain what we ask; but as to what concerns the necessity of praying, we so lack the effect of what has been obtained, that we desire to obtain it again.

This indeed, most clement princes, exposes the madness of ruined men, but heaps up the merit of your justice, in that benefits are the more often conferred upon your Church.

A law giving to the Roman pontiff the power of judging in matters of religion.—For from the beginning, filled with the divine Spirit, and keeping in the Lord's religion the precept of the holy Apostles, whose suffrage you hold in honor, you decreed, for the restoring of the body of the Church which the madness of Ursinus—who attempted to seize an honor not due to him—had cut into diverse parts, that, the author being condemned, and the rest whom he had joined to himself as incitements to disturbances being separated, as was fitting, from association with the ruined man, the bishop of Rome should have examination concerning the remaining priests of the churches: so that the pontiff of religion, together with his colleagues, might judge concerning religion, nor should any injury seem to be done to the priesthood, if a priest be judged by no one anywhere profane. No one certainly will deny that whatever is asked has been requested at least by his instigation and consent.

Deservedly, therefore, let a place among the letters of Damasus be given to this.

Praise of this law.—This is plainly a splendid judgment, and worthy of religious princes, one which defers greatly to the divine ministry, and does not lie open to error. For what is more fitting than that he alone should judge concerning the error of a priest, who knows that he cannot obey the favor of his inner conscience without peril to himself; and who would implicate himself in guilt if he should absolve one unworthy, or condemn one innocent; who finally, while avenging an injury to religion, seeks it not in the flanks of the innocent, but in the character of the accused? For how often has it been evident that many whom the courts absolved have been condemned by bishops, and those whom the courts condemned have been absolved? So that the case of those is better who, weighing not secular judgments but divine ones, have taken away their own punishment, lest the innocent be vexed, than of those who have proved their life by the torments of the innocent.

We would weave together many more things, most tranquil princes, were it not an injury to assert that imperial decrees are rather to be affirmed than to be kept.

That the same law be confirmed. Ursinus secretly stirs up movements.—But since, although Ursinus has long since been exiled by the judgment of your clemency, yet through those whom he unlawfully ordained as sacrilegious men, he attempts, however secretly, to solicit the vilest of persons, and by that example certain bishops, who wickedly brood over churches, through the practice of their own rashness and the conspiracy of profane contempt, harass the judgment of the Roman priest, that they may not acquiesce in it; so much so that even those who understand that they ought to be condemned according to the measure of their own deserts, or who have seen themselves condemned, having bribed the multitude of the common people, harass their own judges with the terror of death, and, the judges having been despised or put to flight, obtain an unlawful priesthood: for this reason we ask not for the novelty, but for the firmness, of the imperial statute.

For it is unworthy that any assembly, with a hand of force employed, should be the more secure the more shamefully it has acted.

Deposed bishops retain their churches.—Thus the bishop of Parma, deposed by our judgment, nevertheless shamelessly retains his church. Likewise Florentius of Puteoli, condemned, after being deposed, having troubled the ears of your tranquility, and having obtained a rescript of this kind, that if he had been deposed by the judgment of the priests in the city of Rome, he ought not even to raise his voice in courts of law, after the sixth year crept back to the city, took possession of the church, and by his insolence stirred up many seditions in the town of Puteoli, from which he had been deposed.

He ought to have complied; but the same man, with a savage band of insolent persons, fled from the necessity of pleading his case.

Claudianus, a Donatist pseudo-bishop, dares nefarious things at Rome.—Throughout Africa again, by God's will, sacrilegious rebaptizers were expelled by decree; but from among the expelled Claudianus was ordained, and sent as though a bishop to disturb the city of Rome. He, contrary to the divine precepts of Scripture, contrary to evangelical law, calls all bishops, whether of past times or of the present, empty of the mysteries and—to express his own word—pagans. Your tranquility indeed ordered him, expelled from Rome, to return to his own homeland. But, having despised the judgments, and indeed often being seized, he nevertheless remains, frequently soliciting poorer people with money, and does not shrink from rebaptizing those thus bought. He rather despoils them of what they had obtained than bestows anything, since it is manifest that it cannot be conferred twice.

Ursinus suborns Isaac as an accuser of Damasus.—So at last did the faction of Ursinus advance, that, a Jew named Isaac having been suborned—who, by a return to the synagogue, profaned the heavenly mysteries—the head of our holy brother Damasus was sought, the blood of the innocent was shed, plots were framed, which the providence of your piety, plainly by divine instigation, met and thwarted; the church was nearly despoiled of all its ministries, by this fraud namely, that while he who had been established as judge over all was pleading his own case, there was no one who could judge concerning the lapsed, or at least concerning the factious invaders of the episcopate.

Damasus is proved innocent: Isaac pays the penalties of his calumny. How one resisting ecclesiastical judgment ought to be coerced.—Since therefore, by the judgment of your tranquillity, the innocence of our aforementioned brother Damasus has been proved, and his integrity proclaimed, and Isaac himself, when he could not prove what he alleged, received the reward of his own deserts: we beg your clemency, lest we again seem burdensome in very many cases, that your piety deign to command that whosoever, whether condemned by his judgment or by ours, who are catholic, and who shall have unjustly wished to retain the church, or, having been summoned to the priestly tribunal, shall through contumacy not have appeared, whether he be summoned by the illustrious men, the prefects of the praetorium of your Italy, or by the Vicar, let him come to the city of Rome: or if such a question shall have arisen in more distant parts, let it be brought to the examination of the metropolitan through the judgments of the localities: or if he himself is the metropolitan, let him be ordered without delay to proceed necessarily to Rome, or to those whom the Roman bishop shall have appointed as judges; so that those who have been deposed shall be excluded only from the bounds of that city in which they exercised the priesthood, lest they again shamelessly usurp what has justly been taken from them.

Certainly if the favor or the iniquity of either the metropolitan or of any other priest be suspected, let it be permitted to appeal either to the Roman bishop, or indeed to a council of fifteen neighboring bishops. But whoever shall have deserved to be thus excluded, let him keep silence and be still; and if he does not fear the judgment of God, let him at least be compelled by necessity to sin the less: so that at least for the future, being peaceful and of one accord, we may be able to render fitting thanks to your serenity before our Lord.

That it was lawful for Damasus to use the right by which the cause of priests is assigned to the judgments of priests.—Our aforementioned brother Damasus, since in his own cause he holds the mark of your judgment, let him not become inferior to those over whom, although he is equal in office, he nevertheless excels by the prerogative of the apostolic see, so that they should seem subject to public tribunals, from whom your law removes the priestly head. In this, after the sentence, he does not seem to decline judgment, but to demand the honor conferred by you. For as regards the public laws, what life can be better fortified than yours, clemency, on which the judgment rests?

But as regards the proclaiming of a bishop's conscience, he himself submitted to the more severe judgments of priests, by which not only the reputation but also the morals are weighed, lest some calumniator, again rising up, while he attempts to attack the aforesaid man, should indeed be unable to injure the man himself, whom his own innocence protects; yet an injury be done to religion in the harassment of its ministers.

That the Roman bishop should defend himself either before his own or before the imperial council. That it is permitted for a judge to inquire into the facts, not to pass sentence upon them. The religion of a priest abhors torture.—Receive also another thing, which the holy man desires rather to contribute to your piety than to claim for himself, and not to derogate from anyone, but to attribute to the princes; since he asks nothing new, but follows the examples of the ancients: that the Roman bishop, if his cause is not entrusted to a council, should defend himself before the Imperial council. For pope Silvester too, accused by sacrilegious men, prosecuted his own cause before your ancestor Constantine. And the Scriptures furnish similar examples: for when the holy apostle suffered violence from a governor, he appealed to Caesar, and was sent to Caesar.

Assuredly let your clemency first examine the case, and if a question arises, let it distinguish the points to be inquired into: so that, as you have long deigned to determine, an account of the facts may be sought from the judge, not that the arbitration of the sentence be claimed. For thus it will come to pass, that no ruined or infamous man shall have unlawful opportunity either of accusing the high priest, or of testifying against him: since indeed sacred reading prescribes that an accusation is not easily to be entertained, not only against a bishop, but not even against a presbyter, unless with suitable witnesses. For mercy is not to be granted either to an enemy, or to a calumniator, or to men of the sort which lately appeared to be informers, whose life does not deserve credit, and whose torture the religion of the priest abhors.

Gratian and Valentinian, Augusti, to Aquilinus the vicar.

Gratian complains of neglected orders. Edicts against Ursinus had already been given to Simplicius.—The sentences of the ordinary judges, or that which the boundary of time, or the pronouncement of contumacy, or the examination held before the fathers has sanctioned, do not fear to be shaken and overturned either by inferior authority, or by more powerful men, or by shameless persons. Our own precepts, abandoned through your negligence, what sentence in the end will be able to confirm them? Which indeed, while you despise it, may not rouse you, lest it take on, in regard to desperate men, the effect of long endurance, and duty be compelled by fear to be recognized.

But is it not more absurd that the madness of Ursinus should have commanded what our serenity persuaded by gentle edicts, that all who by profaned religion attempted impious assemblies should be driven back even to the hundredth milestone from the City, where his stubborn frenzy, abandoned by his followers, would rush to the ruin of himself alone, who alone erred; and that those condemned by the judgment of rightly-judging priests should afterward have no return either to the churches which they had contaminated, or in vain, with shameless obstinacy, beg from us a renewal of the trial? Let your praised and proven sincerity recall what letters our clemency once sent to the most illustrious man Simplicius, then vicar, and let it cease to hope for a repetition of the mandate: for it is a matter of shame to our gentleness to renew a precept.

Ursinus, the bishop of Parma, and Florentius of Puteoli disturb the Church.—Gaul indeed restrains Ursinus, and the retreat at Cologne keeps him from stirring up further troubles; though we have heard that he, importuning rather than admonishing those who pass by, urges them to reject their allegiance. The remote corner of Spain has enclosed Isaac, removed thither, under the mark of condemnation—no good provision made for his own safety, if his madness stirs up any disturbances. The bishop of Parma is the more dangerous in that he is nearer to the renowned city, and stirs up more of the ignorant multitude, and disturbs the Church from which he was cast down by the judgment of the holy prelates, evidently hoping for the empty glory of a heavier sentence. If your predecessor had possessed any measure of devout vigor, he ought at once to have expelled him beyond the borders. And Florentius of Puteoli, after the condemnation which he received, rightly convicted by a just judgment, attempting to disturb our gentleness, received a fitting answer as things progressed.

After the fifteenth year he again attempts to contaminate the Church from which he had been expelled; he strives to hold unlawful assemblies, and corrupts the multitude, which lacks counsel, by the persuasion of a ruined mind—relying, of course, on the indolence of our judges, who barter imperial precepts for private favor, and patiently allow religion, which we rightly venerate, and which perhaps they themselves neglect, to be disturbed.

Claudianus the Donatist.—Claudianus too, summoned by those who, against divine precepts, revive the vices of religion—by those, I say, whom we had ordered to be expelled—as if he had undertaken too little of crime had he remained in Africa, is said to have brought himself to Rome; and, a false teacher, he strives either to profane, by his deviant mystery, those still uninitiated, or to corrupt those already initiated with a still greater outrage, wholly anew—since repetition does not build up but overturns the discipline of most holy religion. This Claudianus we have pursued with a punishment unlike what he deserved, and have ordered only, with severity set aside, that he return to his native land. But even now he is said to be lingering, soliciting the ignorant, and, seeking altogether an empty reward, he destroys the souls of bodies that have been redeemed.

The innocence of Damasus proved before Valentinian I.—Hence those persecutors of the most holy see, not only known by the divine will, which was enough, but even proved by the examination of trials to be a man of most holy mind—as was also acknowledged to our divine father Valentinian—not fearing to harass the bishop Damasus with the most shameful calumnies, after they had despaired of being able to overthrow him, now harass the people, for whom he stands as a hostage to the divinity. But thus far the sluggish dissembling of the judges snores on, and there is no need to give warning, as to how far contempt of the sanction may proceed: thus far, I say, the supine sloth of the officials snores on. 5. The authors of the disturbances, at last.

After this, unless you drive beyond the hundredth milestone from the City all whom the sum of our order names, or whom the assemblies of the holy bishops shall by their agreement show to be stirring up disturbances of this sort, and unless you decree them exiles from the borders of those cities whose people or churches they harass, either by themselves or through a similar rabble of their own kind, you will incur, besides the injury to reputation—which is no small loss among good men—the guilt of a neglected sanction.

The order of ecclesiastical judgments, by which the contumacious are to be restrained.—We wish, moreover, that whoever shall have been condemned by the judgment of Damasus, which he shall have held with the counsel of five or seven bishops, or by the judgment or council of those who are catholic, if he shall wish unjustly to retain the church, as one who, having been summoned to the priestly tribunal, did not go through contumacy; either, with the authority of the illustrious men, the prefects of the praetorium of Gaul and Italy, or of the proconsuls or vicars being applied, let him be sent back to the episcopal judgment, or come under escort to the city of Rome: or if in more distant parts the ferocity of some such person shall have arisen, let the whole pleading of his case be brought to the examination of the metropolitan bishop in the same province; or if he himself is the metropolitan, let him proceed without delay necessarily to Rome, or to those whom the Roman bishop shall have appointed as judges; yet so that whoever have been cast down shall be excluded only from the bounds of that city in which they were priests.

For we punish those less severely who deserved it, and avenge sacrilegious obstinacy more mildly than it deserves. But if the iniquity of either the metropolitan bishop or of any priest is suspected, or his favor: let it be permitted to appeal, when summoned, to the Roman bishop or to a council of fifteen neighboring bishops: provided only that, after the examination has been held, what has been determined is not reopened.

Who are not to be readily heard against a bishop.—Now indeed that which, even in matters of lesser affairs and in slight pleadings of causes, natural justice has instilled in our minds, we wish to prevail much more diligently in the most just causes: lest it be easy for anyone marked by a notable depravity of morals, or branded with the infamy of calumny, to assume the role of accuser, or to profess the giving of testimony in an accusation against a bishop.

To the most clement emperors and Christian princes, most glorious and most blessed Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, the holy council which met at Aquileia.

Provision has indeed been made, most clement princes, by the enactments of your tranquillity, that the perfidy of the Arians may no longer be able to hide or creep about. For we think that the effect of the decrees of the council will by no means be lacking. For as far as the parts of the West are concerned, only two have been found who dared to oppose the council with profane and impious voices, men accustomed scarcely to disturb a corner of Dacia Ripensis.

There is another matter about which we are more troubled, which, since we have come together, was fittingly to be treated, lest the whole body of the Church diffused throughout the whole world, and everything, could be thrown into confusion. For although we have frequently learned that Ursinus has not been able to steal in upon your piety, however much he suffers nothing to be at rest, and amid so many necessities of war an importunate stealthiness is attempted: nevertheless lest your holy mind and the tranquillity of your spirit, which desires to provide for all, be bent by the feigned flattery of an importunate man, we think it right, if you deem it worthy, to beseech and entreat you: not only forestalling what is to come, but also shuddering at what has already been done by his rashness. For if he should find any way open to his audacity, what would he not throw into confusion? But if the pity shown to one man can bend you, much more let the prayer of all the priests move you.

For which of us will be joined to him in the fellowship of communion, since he attempted to usurp a rank not owed to him, nor could he lawfully attain to it; and now strives most importunately to recover what he importunely sought?

Condemned so many times for disturbances, he still walks about as if he need not shudder at past examples. What of the fact that, as most of us in this council have learned and seen, he had been coupled and joined with the Arians at that time when they were attempting, with a detestable gathering, to disturb the Church of Milan, mingling secret counsels with Valens, now before the doors of the synagogue, now in the houses of the Arians, and joining his own men to them; and, since he himself could not openly appear in their assembly, instructing and informing them how the peace of the Church might be disturbed? By what frenzy did he hope that he might earn the favor of their supporters and allies?

Since therefore it is written, Avoid a heretic after one correction; and since another man, speaking by the Holy Spirit, said that such beasts must be shunned, and are not to be received with greeting or intercourse: how can it be that we should not judge him, whom we have seen enrolled in their fellowship, to be also an upholder of their perfidy? Even if this were not so, still your Clemency ought to have been implored not to suffer the head of the whole Roman world, the Roman Church, and that most sacred faith of the Apostles, to be disturbed; for from thence flow the rights of venerable communion upon all.

And therefore we ask and beg that you deign to take away from him the opportunity of encroaching.

We know the holy modesty of your Clemency. Lest he thrust upon your hearing things unworthy, lest he clamor with words foreign to the office and name of a priest, lest he speak to you shamelessly—he who ought to have had testimony even from those who are outside—let your Clemency deign to remember with what testimony his own fellow citizens have pursued him. For it is shameful to say, it is indecent to recount, with what disgraceful reputation he has been wounded by reproach. By that shame at least, if touched, he ought to have kept silent; and if he had any conscience as a priest, he would have preferred the peace and concord of the Church to his own ambition and zeal. But being far removed from all sense of shame, through the mutilated man Paschasius, the standard-bearer of his fury, he has sent letters, stirs up the crowds, and strives to incite the pagans and lost men of every sort.

We beg, therefore, that you grant now to the Roman people, who hang in uncertainty after the report of the Prefect of the City, and to us priests, the security that has been denied us, by the removal of this most troublesome man: which being obtained, we shall celebrate thanks in continual succession to God the Almighty Father, and to Christ the Lord His Son.

Victor Maximus, perpetual conqueror, Augustus, to the truly holy and apostolic lord Siricius, bishop, greeting.

We have received the letters of your Holiness, which were most pleasing to us, and which suited well both the name of priest and the dignity of the most splendid City. As for the catholic faith, about which you wished to consult our Clemency, I confess that I have the greater care for it in proportion as the greater and special judgment of Divinity is displayed towards me—I who indeed ascended to empire straight from the very font of salvation, and to whom in all endeavors and successes God has always been present as helper, and who deigns to be even today, and, as I hope, forever, protector and guardian, dearest father.

As for Agricius, whom you recall to have ascended to the rank of the presbyterate unduly, what can I offer more reverently to our catholic religion than that catholic priests should judge of this very matter, of what sort he seems to be? Their assembly, drawn conveniently from all who dwell either within the Gauls or within the five provinces, I shall establish in whatever city they may choose; so that, with these same men presiding and examining, it may be judged what custom holds, and what is of law. For these matters, which are to be established from books and from the most religious constitutions of our forefathers, can be better set forth by those themselves who know them.

Moreover we profess that this is our mind and will, that the catholic faith, all dissension being put far away, should persevere unharmed and inviolable, all priests being of one accord and serving God with one mind. For our arrival found and discovered things so stained by some contamination and polluted with the filth of the wicked, that unless our provision and remedy, which came from the fear of the most high God, had swiftly brought help to these matters, a vast rending and ruin would surely have arisen, and vices scarcely to be healed afterward would have grown together.

As for what has recently been revealed, that the Manichaeans commit crime—not by arguments, nor by doubtful or uncertain suspicions, but by their own confession brought forth in trials—I prefer that your Holiness learn it from the records themselves rather than from my own mouth; because such things, not only shameful in deed but also foul to speak of, we cannot utter without blushing. By the Emperor's own hand. May the Divinity keep you for many years.

Were it not that the simple faith of our Clemency toward your Serenity, and the full grace of concord, are such, I would even trust that it could be advantageous to my own interests, this disturbance and overturning of the catholic law which is now said to be occurring in the parts of your Tranquility. For what could be more desirable to one who might be an enemy, than to contrive something against the churches of God, that is, against God Himself, and to wish to sin where error is not excusable?

But since our Serenity holds religion toward God to be of greater weight than we could think it desirable to have violated even by the bitterest enemy, and since our care concerning your most serene youth is so close, so diligent, that your right actions delight us more than your errors; therefore we have believed that your Perpetuity ought to be admonished, that, having examined the meaning of the highest Name, and considered the power of that very Majesty, you may weigh with a firm mind what you ought to do. For I have heard (for rumor does not allow itself to be hidden, especially concerning what is done among the peoples) that by new edicts of your Clemency violence has been done to the catholic churches, that priests are besieged in the basilicas, that a fine has been proposed, capital punishment added, and that the most holy law has been overturned under the name of I know not what law.

How grave this is, you will be able to perceive, if you are willing to reflect upon the greatness of God. I blush, if your Serenity should think I wished to construct some argument, and to plead the cause of God. For what if this alone were the matter? For if you should disturb things already coalesced and confirmed through so many ages, would you not see that you stir up no small discord? Even by human laws in this mortality our custom holds reverence, and in a matter already old and habitual, to have done something new is a reproach. All Italy and Africa believe by this sacrament, by this faith Gaul, Aquitaine, all Spain glory, venerable Rome herself, whose primacy also in this respect is this, that she has acknowledged God even as she wished to follow Him. I will confess—what has not been said without grief—that Illyricum alone dissented; would that its having erred did not stand as an example!

Would that that town of Mursa, in the Arian law, remained unharmed, and had not fallen to the judgment once of a wretched error, since it had instructed its own authors, lest they fall by the especial vengeance of an angered Deity: divine things, believe me, are perilously tempted. Of venerable memory, the lord Valentinian, father of your Clemency, ruled faithfully in this faith. He wished to touch nothing which he saw well established. These men, certainly, were under the same bishops formerly. What so great change is this, that those who were before priests are now judged sacrilegious? Certainly by the same precepts, dedicated by the same sacraments, they believe the same faith who believed before. Or does your venerable Serenity think that a religion once conceived in the minds of men, which God Himself established, can be uprooted? How great discords will be stirred up from this! How great contentions will arise! How frequent and pestilent seditions! How great and how many the prayers of the just reaching unto God!

Since among Christians (which it is impious to say) a certain image of persecution is being born. See in what direction you interpret this diligence of ours. Certainly I could prove my care concerning your Clemency by no greater means than by urging you to desist. For I think you will recognize that no enemy would counsel this. I wish you to understand that these things have been spoken by us in kindness, I hope that you will believe it: whence it is altogether just that you not overthrow things dedicated to the holy Divinity. Restore all Italy, and venerable Rome, and the other provinces to their own churches, to their own priests, and do not thrust yourself in between, since it is more just that those who have departed from the catholic Church into the Arian interpretation should change their error for the true religion, than that they should force their own depravity upon those who think rightly.

Farewell, Pinianus, dear to us.

We believe it to be the custom of the Roman people that the people of the eternal City should rejoice in concord and choose the best priest, and we congratulate ourselves that it has come to pass in our times. Accordingly, since they have willed that the religious Siricius, bishop of holiness, should so preside over the priesthood as to reject the wicked Ursinus with acclamations; may that same bishop remain, to our joy, dearest and most delightful Pinianus: since indeed it is a great example of innocence and probity, that in one acclamation both he himself should be chosen, and the others disapproved. Given the 7th day before the Kalends of March.

Recently, dearest brother, you thought I should be warned concerning the slanderers against our faith, which is true, who say: how do you say that God is one, and again assert that Christ has a Son? Necessarily, if God has a son, he also has a wife, or else he is feminine, and has conceived and borne a son from elsewhere. Behold, you yourselves now speak of several gods; how then do you taunt us, because we say there are gods?

We have learned from you that the sacrilegious ones raise these objections against us. Wherefore we have judged it necessary both to meet their error, and to instruct your holiness concerning the hope which we hold. For we could no longer refuse, since your holiness desired to receive a written instruction of the true faith: not, however, from ourselves, but according to the tradition of the divine Scriptures, through the grace of God omnipotent, with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, through the ministration of the Holy Spirit, who divides graces without hesitation to those who believe in God through Christ.

We have therefore presumed, trusting in your prayers, and also approving the good desire of your Holiness; to whom, the Lord granting it, we have hastened to give satisfaction, dearest brother: since, being urged again and again and with frequent importunity, we could no longer put it off; trusting not in loftiness of speech, nor in the words of an elaborate discourse, of which we have had no care at all; but taking refuge in the mercy of the Lord, to whose glory we have proposed to speak, believing him who said: Open wide thy mouth, and I will fill it. And again the prophet says: The Lord gave the word to those who preach with great power. And again: It is not you who speak, but the spirit of your Father. Thus the insolence of the sacrilegious moved us also to speak: the importunity of your charity likewise compelled us.

And he who gave a mouth for speaking is able also, through your prayers, to supply us with a word, that, aided by his grace, we may speak fittingly for the common good, and to the glory of the same maker of our nature. For the holy and divine Scriptures, having in themselves deep and infinite treasures, shining, need no addition; the Lord saying: Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. And these are they that bear witness of me. And you will not come to me, that you may have eternal life? And again: He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Our Lord Jesus Christ also said this: I am the light of this world; he who follows me does not remain in darkness, but shall have the light of life. This one the holy prophets proclaimed as the sun of righteousness. This, then, is the sun of righteousness, Christ the Son of God.

This is the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world; which the darkness did not comprehend. This shines in pure hearts, and is seen with a clear eye of the soul in the singular and incorruptible nature proper to the only-begotten, who most clearly shows to all who desire it the knowledge of the one true God, saying to the Jews: How can you believe, receiving glory from one another? And you do not seek the glory that comes from the one God. And again he says to the Father: The hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son also may glorify you; as you have given him power over all flesh, that to all whom you have given him he may give eternal life. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.

It is necessary, then, for those who wish to be Christians to know the one true God, who alone is without beginning, unbegotten; and his only-begotten Son, in his own proper and singular begotten nature true God, obedient and subject by will and nature to the unbegotten God and Father. Since, therefore, we have said, according to the tradition of the Scriptures, one true God, as indeed according to true reason there is one true God, one king, one lord, one creator and maker of the universe. Since, therefore, he alone, possessing without beginning a preeminent power, alone needs nothing, alone is under no one's law, nor awaits a command; alone has no superior, since he has made none equal to himself either; who, being wholly unborn God, made the whole Son begotten; through whom he created all things, as it is written: All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made: creator of creator, God of God, subject and obedient in all things to the whole of creation in his commands.

This one, not advancing afterwards, but immediately perfect, as we have said: as much as he could, sealing all power and all wisdom in the substituting of the Son, as it is written, whom the Father, God, has sealed. Hence the Apostle also proclaims him the image of the invisible God, showing forth the invisible power or wisdom of God in the substance of the Son. Therefore, as much as God could, he showed in the Son power and wisdom: whence the Apostle teaches that the power of God and the wisdom of God is the Son: not, therefore, that power or wisdom without beginning which is in the invisible God; but one sitting at the right hand of God, so as to be the receiver from the Father, the Son of the love of God, whom God loves. He has defrauded him of nothing, to whom he has given all things, as the Gospel proclaims: The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.

The Son also, receiving all things from the Father, above all, before all, together with all, adores the Father. This one, then, we accept through the Scriptures to be God of the whole creation: begotten, subject to God the unbegotten: lord of the whole creation, begotten, but minister of the Lord unbegotten: king of the whole creation, begotten, under the power of the king unbegotten; true light, begotten, subject to the unbegotten inaccessible light: wisdom begotten, obeying in all things the sole unbegotten wise one: creator begotten, under the creator unbegotten: good shepherd of the whole creation, begotten, the lamb of God unbegotten: life begotten, giving life to the whole creation by the will of the Father, subject to the sole living God without beginning, as the Son says: As the Father has life in himself and did not receive it; so also he has given to the Son to have life in himself, incomparable, in his own begotten substance; just as the Father in his own unbegotten substance is known to be incomparable.

We confess, then, one and one God, not two Gods: for we do not say two unbegotten, or two fathers [lacuna]

[lacuna] the benefits of Christ, aiding the prayer of believers, and interceding for the same with inexpressible groans, and bringing the saints to the Son, to be led through the Son to the Father. As the holy apostle Paul says: No one can say "Lord Jesus," except in the Holy Spirit. And the Son declares: No one can come to the Father, except through me. It is necessary, therefore, that we confess this trinity. The Holy Spirit magnifies the Son, as the Son says: He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall declare it to you. And the Son glorifies the Father, as he says: I have glorified you upon the earth; I have made known your name to the men whom you gave me.

This Spirit, then, abides in all the saints, as the Son said: I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Advocate, that he may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive; because it does not see him, nor know him: but you know him, because he abides with you, and is in you. He abides, then, as we have said, in all the saints undivided, but whole: for that nature cannot be divided: for he who is not composed of members cannot be divided, but remains whole in all. For we do not call the Holy Spirit God, since Scripture does not say so; but subject to God the Son, and obedient in all things to the commands of that Son, as the Son is to the Father. And just as the Father sealed all power and all wisdom and goodness in the substituting of the Son, so also the Son, at the Father's bidding, showed forth all power and all wisdom in the Holy Spirit.

In that Holy Spirit, therefore, the archangels and angels, and all spiritual powers, and all the saints adore the Son, and through the Son the Father. For so also the Son, after the resurrection, delivering to his disciples the saving mystery of the Trinity, says: All power is given to me in heaven and on earth. Going, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.

[lacuna] the Father is singular, simple Spirit, alone good, alone possessing immortality, and dwells in light inaccessible; so also the Son, in his only-begotten nature, which he received from the Father, is singular. All things which after him and through him were made by the providence of God, he is incomparably, preeminently better; so that none of the things which were made through him can be compared to him; because he is God of all, giving life to all things by the will of the Father. He is not compared to his Father, from whom he has obtained to be the life of all: nor, as we have said, could anything else be compared to him, which things, that they might be and might live, obtained this through him by the will of God: of which the Holy Spirit the Paraclete is first, made by the providence of God through Christ, better and greater than all the rest, pronounced in the holy Scriptures in third place after the Father and after the Son.

This Spirit, in third place, is known to be singular and alone in his singularity. Such a one could not be compared either to Christ the Son of God, the maker of his nature: nor to any of the rest, which through him, by the providence of God, received their being: for the sanctifying power is singular. This Spirit is not God, nor Lord, since he is not creator either: for he made nothing of those things which were not, that they might be, nor can he make anything; since he is not God, but the minister of Christ the Son of God his own: ministering in this, that he may sanctify and enlighten and teach the rational things which were made through Christ by the will of God, and admonish them to keep the commands of Christ, and distribute grace to all believers: he helps the weakness of our prayer, and intercedes for us with inexpressible groans, and at the nod of Christ remits sins to the penitent, and leads to the true and certain knowledge of Christ.

This one does not speak of himself, but whatever he shall hear, he will speak, and teach, and announce future things to believers.

This one professes Christ to be his Lord and God, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool. And again the same Spirit says to Christ his God: Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of equity; you have loved righteousness [lacuna]

[lacuna] that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do. That saying, therefore, which has been repeated so often, I in the Father and the Father in me, does not signify one substance, but two: the unbegotten of the Father and the only-begotten of the Son, and therefore the Son is understood to be in the bosom of the Father, which is perceived in the love and in the power of him who holds all things: he himself, moreover, is infinite; he encompasses that other too. But that other, having received power from the Father over all things which were made after him and through him, encompasses the universe.

Therefore the Father and the Son are not one and the same: he who encompasses, and he who is encompassed; the unbegotten, and the only-begotten; the begetter, and he who was begotten; he who commands, and he who receives the command and obeys; he who gives, and he who receives what is given; he who orders, and he who obeys the order; he who sends, and he who is sent; he who was seen, and he whom no man has seen nor can see; he who is impassible, and he who suffered for us; he who rose from the dead, and he who raised him, the Father; the Son who ascended above the heavens, and the Father who never descended; he who sits at the right hand of God, and the Father who commanded him to sit at his right hand; the Son who denied that he knew that day, and the Father who placed it in his own power; the Son who is going to judge, and the Father who judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.

Do not therefore err; the Father and the Son are not one and the same, nor are they two equals according to the assertion of another error, but one and one, the Father. For he alone is unbegotten and without beginning, and there are not two gods without beginning, or two equals, or two fathers, or two brothers, or two sons; but one unbegotten God, almighty God, who alone is and is called true, and alone good, and alone possessing immortality, and dwelling in unapproachable light. He alone, therefore, in his singularity is such, and no other is such a God without beginning, and all-holding, and alone the author of all things; God also is the only-begotten Son of God by nature, by the will of God and his true, unchangeable Father, but the only-begotten, created and made and begotten from the unbegotten God, God of all things which were made after him and through Jesus by the providence of God his Father.

But the Father is God even to the Son, whose author he is, and of all things; and therefore he alone is the true God, because he is God of God, and holds the Son in his power, and has subjected all things under his feet according to the Apostle, and has given him a name which is above every name. And therefore the Father is the one God, who neither received power nor his being from another, but is what he was without beginning, unbegotten, all-holding God. Him, therefore, the holy Scriptures proclaim the one God and Lord, and the one good, and the only one possessing immortality, and dwelling in unapproachable light. Not because the Son is not God nor Lord, but because the Father is God even to the Son, and of all things; but the Son is God, only-begotten, and Lord of all things which were made through him, and good, and kind, immortal too and unchangeable by nature.

But all these things he has obtained from the Father, and in all things he is found obedient to God his Father. The Father and the Son, therefore, are not called one God, but the Father alone is called the one God, who is God even to the Son, as has been said, and to all things: but the Son is not God to the Father, but is Lord and God of every creature: but he worships the Father, and asks and reveres him, and gives thanks, and is a debtor, because he declares that he lives on account of him, and glories that he has received all power from him in heaven and on earth, according to the tradition of the gospel, where Jesus is reported as saying to the Samaritan woman: We worship what we know, but you worship what you do not know.

And the gospel tradition frequently shows Christ praying to his Father; and it makes manifest him giving thanks to his Father, and saying: I thank thee, Father, that thou hast heard me, and I know that thou always hearest me. Therefore he always worships, because he always professes the Father hearing him. Attend, then, to the meaning of the gospel, for Jesus gives thanks openly for the sake of those who stood by; as he himself declares, saying to his Father: For I know that thou always hearest me; but I say this because of those who stand by, that they may perceive that thou hast sent me.

Attend therefore with diligence, and see the wholesome tradition, that Christ wishes to be known as what he is, not to be called what he is not: for he who calls Christ what he is not, betrays the knowledge of him who is. Do not therefore err: for those who proclaim that the Father and Jesus Christ are one and the same do not know the Father of him, according to the judgment of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who says: If you loved me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father, for my Father is greater than I. With this knowledge, therefore, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit we must with diligence seek this dwelling in the tabernacle of the Lord and rest on his holy mountain, which is promised in the present psalm: because the soul which is without stain can walk that way which leads on high, of which we have spoken above, and with a clear and simple eye can also travel that journey, and can always behold the good things which are prepared, according to what is said: Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

He also always sees God, the giver of good things, as it is said: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. This, then, is what is said, he who enters without stain and works justice. He has instructed what sort of person he must be who hastens to the possession of those good things which are prepared in the heavens: then, as it were by steps, he will deliver commandments, since those who ascend on high seem to ascend by steps; and first ascending upon the nearer step, he will proceed to the next: then to the third and fourth, until he arrives at his destination, which he cannot do without labor. Therefore those who desire to attain a dwelling on high must press on with the labors and sweat of piety with all zeal, that they may be able to reach their destination.

After the soul, made immaculate by the knowledge of piety, they must adorn and instruct it in good works, those who wish to travel the journey of him who leads on high; according to what is said: So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Following this sequence, the Lord in reply will explain also what one who desires to dwell on high must be like, or what he must do, saying: He who enters without stain and works justice, speaking truth in his heart.

Further, in this passage he teaches in order that first one should confirm the truth in himself and in his heart, and, sending down as it were a root, should approve it, so that he may be found just according to the Apostolic teaching, which says thus: With the heart one believes unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. And therefore he says: Speaking truth in his heart, who has not practiced deceit with his tongue. For it is not fitting that he who desires the goods of heaven should speak deceit; nor should he relate whatever pleases him, but the truth, examined and approved, he should send forth from his heart through his lips unto salvation, both for himself and for his hearers. For this the Apostle also teaches, saying: Let no evil word proceed out of your mouth, but if anything be good for the edification of the faith, that it may give grace to those who hear.

For it happens, from careless speaking without concern, that the speaker harms the soul of his neighbor: and therefore he who wishes to dwell in the heavens must guard and measure his words; as it is said in the hundred and eleventh psalm: Happy is the man who shows mercy and lends, he will order his words with judgment. And the Lord Jesus, teaching in the Gospel, says: By your word it is clear that you shall justify the just man without deceit and hypocrisy; and by your word it is clear that you shall condemn the deceitful and crooked man. For this reason we are taught to guard and measure our words, that we may teach our neighbor. Desiring to enter into the tabernacle of the Lord, we shall do no evil to our neighbor, neither in word nor in pretense, according to what is said, and has done no evil to his neighbor.

But it is fitting that he who desires to attain that blessed life should have those around him instructed in the Lord's discipline, lest he receive reproach from anyone on their account. For men are accustomed, when they see some who are unlearned and undisciplined, to reproach those who have them around them or under them. For truly it is a reproach to those who ought to instruct, if those who are under their hand are found wanton or undisciplined, because they are not sufficiently held to discipline, as it is said, a son not instructed is a reproach to his Father. This word, then, teaches those who desire [lacuna]

read [lacuna] of the deity they did not see but [lacuna] with fleshly eyes they saw and in [lacuna] and he himself [lacuna] this word asserting: He who has seen me has seen also him who sent me, the Father, according to that [lacuna] therefore erring [lacuna] if anyone has seen the Son in a human body, he judges the Father also to be corporeal in the same way; which is a horrible impiety.

For according to the true sense, if they will accept this, he who has seen the Son sent by the Father and doing the Father's commands, this one has seen the Father, that is, has known [lacuna] they are light [lacuna] not [lacuna] For if anyone the Son of God, that is Jesus, in his own proper singular nature and dignity which he received, begotten of the Father, and [lacuna] to the Jews [lacuna] asserting [lacuna] named by names, Father and Son, from those things which have been said above, but this one indeed in the light of God [lacuna] often said to the Jews according to [lacuna] the prophet [lacuna] Behold, I lay in Sion a stone of stumbling and a rock of scandal, and he who believes in him shall not be confounded. And again: He who falls upon this stone shall be broken; but on whomever it shall fall, it will crush him. And again: Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising again of many.

It is manifest, therefore, that it is for the rising of believers who are not confounded: but for the fall of those who do not believe, who are scandalized by his teaching, along with the Jews, not rightly interpreting, they themselves shall be crushed. Those, then, who have seen the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have seen him in a twofold manner; with fleshly eyes they saw a human body, but with the eye of the mind through his works they knew God, the Son of God. When, therefore, he says: He who has seen me has seen also him who sent me, the Father, it is of this sort; that he who saw the works of the Son and through the works knew the power of the deity, he himself saw, that is, knew, him who sent me and commanded these works of me, or rather him who works through me.

Those, therefore, who saw ends seeing, they knew and saw, being enlightened by the Son and instructed as to him who sent him, the Father; according to the assertion of the Son himself, saying [lacuna]

[lacuna] or shall have made a vow of doing, cannot be promoted by God. But they have brought forward for themselves nearly fifty other questions, most vain and most useless, which do not lead them to the kingdom of God and of His Christ, but plunge them into the depths of gehenna. But let us return to that from which we departed. Our case is chiefly against those who call themselves orthodox, who have invaded our churches, and hold them in tyrannical fashion, saying that the Son is equal in all things and in every respect to God the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is equal in all things and in every respect to God the Father and God the Son: and this very assertion of theirs is one of nearly thirty sects of theirs.

And because the Son did not say himself equal to the Father, but affirmed himself to be in agreement with the Father, the Son himself made this plain to us, saying: He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him. For as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son to have life in himself: and he gave him power to execute judgment: as if he had said, God unbegotten, my begetter, who is and was God without beginning, living, powerful, good, wise, perfect, everlasting, who is without beginning and without end, willed that I should be, before all things, living, powerful, good, wise, perfect, everlasting (for we call the Son everlasting in this sense, that although the Son has a beginning, yet he will not have an end, but will remain forever, and will give everlastingness to all other good things).

And he granted such capability to me, in whom he willed me to be, that I might be able to fulfill all his wishes and dispositions and commands: and thus I have fulfilled and always fulfill them: for by the will and command of the Father I created innumerable living spirits, virtues and everlasting dominions: and also the Holy Spirit himself, who is before all things and greater than all created things, and the rest of the heavenly and earthly things, visible and invisible, times and ages, by the will and command of the Father, I created: and there was no disagreement between the Father commanding and me performing: but as the Father willed, determined, commanded me; so I too, willing and able without any hindrance or disagreement, accomplished all things: and also all the other things which were afterward done, whether the flood, or the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all the other things which are always done and governed, by the command of the Father, because he is the Son of man.

Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God: and those who have done good will come forth unto the resurrection of judgment. As if he had said, Do not be unbelieving because you see me to be flesh, and think me to be only a man: for you will all see, you who think me to be only a man, that I am not only the living God, but also one who gives life to all the dead: and those who enter into eternal glory, the good, just, and faithful, but the wicked and impious, thieves and robbers, and those who distrusted the truth, but believed iniquity, who cast away my doctrine, and established their own, by the command of my Father, through me, sent by the angels, are sent into the eternal furnace of fire.

Our Lord and God Jesus Christ, Son of God the Father Almighty, made clear to us, more plainly than light, what he had said above: Amen, amen I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, unless he first sees the Father doing it: for whatever things the Father does, these same things the Son also does. Likewise the Son presumes nothing for himself, but does all the things commanded by the Father.

Let us again say a few things against the Macedonians, who say that the Son is like the Father in all things and in every respect, and that there is no difference between the Father and the Son: and against those who call themselves orthodox, who defend, to their own destruction, that the Son is equal to God the Father in all things and in every respect: for concerning the Father and the Son they agree, but concerning the Holy Spirit they disagree; because these latter make the Holy Spirit also equal in all things and in every respect to the Father and the Son; but the Macedonians maintain that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son at the command of the Father, and proclaim him to be the messenger and minister of the Father, just as we also do.

[lacuna] in their layings-on of hands they set the Father before the Son, while they say: God the greatest, founder and maker of the world, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Likewise, God brighter than the bright, higher than the high, mightiest strength of the mighty, God among the foremost, highest among the highest, singular among the single. Likewise, in no way do they set the Father before the Son in their writings; moreover they even condemn those who set the Father before the Son: and yet they themselves set the Father before the Son in the Symbol, when they say: Do you believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth? Do you believe also in Jesus Christ his Son?

Likewise, in no way do they set the Father before the Son in their writings: moreover they condemn all who set the Father before the Son: and yet they themselves in their blessings set the Father before the Son, when they say: God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has regenerated you from water, may he himself anoint you with the Holy Spirit, and so forth. In no way do they set the Father before the Son in their writings; moreover they condemn all who set the Father before the Son; and yet they themselves set the Father before the Son in their oblations, saying: It is worthy and just that we give thanks to you here and everywhere, holy Lord God Almighty: nor is there any other through whom we can have access to you, make prayer, offer sacrifice to you, except through him whom you sent to us, and so forth.

Likewise: It is worthy and just, fitting and just, that we give thanks to you above all things, holy Lord Father Almighty eternal God, who by the incomparable honor of your goodness deigned to make light shine in the darkness, sending us Jesus Christ, the raiser-up of our souls, who for the sake of our salvation, humbling himself even unto death, subjected himself, that he might restore us to that immortality which Adam had lost, making us heirs and sons to himself: for whose kindness to give thanks, we are not able, with any praises, to match your such great magnanimity, asking that in your great and yielding piety you accept this sacrifice, which we offer to you, standing before the sight of your divine piety, through Jesus Christ our Lord and God, through whom we ask and beseech. In no way do they set before.

[lacuna] the Father and the Son, that is, between light begotten and light unbegotten. But we Christians, upon whom the false name of Arians has been imposed, believe and honor thus, as is written above: that God the Father Almighty willed the Son himself to be before all things, and he is and remains: and that God the Father created all things, and us, through the Son, because the Father commanded the Son, and the Son at once did it: we are ruled by the Father through the Son, because the Father commanded the Son, and the Son rules us.

The Father gave the law of Moses through the Son, instructed the prophets through the Son, because the Father commanded the Son, and gave the law and instructed the prophets: the Father redeemed us, and forgave us our sins through the Son, because the Son, at the command of the Father, both redeemed us and forgave us our sins: the Father gave us the Holy Spirit through the Son, because the Father commanded the Son, and immediately the Son gave us the Holy Spirit: the Father heard us and has mercy through the Son, because we bend knee and neck to the Father through the Son: the Father raised up the temple of his Son through the Son, because the Father commanded the Son to take up a body, to lay it down, to receive it again on the third day, and to return to the Father.

The Father is to raise up all the dead through the Son, because the Father is to command the Son to raise up all the dead: the Father is to judge all the living and the dead through the Son, that is, the good and the wicked, the just and the unjust, because the Father is to command the Son to raise up all the dead, and to judge the living and the dead, that is, the good and the wicked, the just and the unjust: God the Father is to give the just eternal life, the unjust perpetual punishment, through the Son, because the Son, at the command of the Father, will give eternal life to the just, perpetual punishment to the unjust.

And therefore we, the holy Church of God and of his Christ, give all the firstfruits to the Father, but the following portion to the Son; just as also the apostle Paul briefly defined all these things, saying: Even if there are those called gods or lords, whether in heaven or on earth, to us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we from him: and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things, and we through him. For as to those who call themselves orthodox, who make the Son equal in all things to God the Father, and the Holy Spirit through [lacuna]

[lacuna] they defame us. But the Macedonians, after all this, correct themselves, and say: We say that the Son is like the Father in all things and in every respect: but with those who say there is a difference between light begotten and light unbegotten, we do not communicate, because we say there is no difference between God begotten and God unbegotten: equal in honor, equal in power, Soziphanes their leader has written.

For this reason too they are compelled by us to show us where the things written of the Father are written also of the Son: let them say and show from the Scriptures whether the Father was begotten of the Son before the ages, and whether the Father did all things and governs all things by the command of the Son: or whether God the Father Almighty is the minister, messenger, and priest of his Son: or whether by the command of the Son the Father took a body from the virgin, laid it down, and received it again: or whether God the Father asked the Son, and received the Holy Spirit, and gave, granted, sent the Holy Spirit to the Apostles: or whether, at the Son's command, the Father is to raise up all the dead, and is to judge the living and the dead, that is, the good and the wicked, the just and the unjust.

It is written in the Gospel: For God so loved this world, that he sent his only Son, that he might give his life for the life of the world; that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into this world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Likewise in the Gospel: The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hands. Likewise in the Gospel: For as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself, and gave him power to execute judgment. Likewise in the Gospel: For I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, the Father: And this is his will, that of all that the Father has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up on the last day.

Likewise in the Gospel: For this is the will of my Father who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life: and I will raise him up [lacuna]

[lacuna] God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and of sin condemned sin. Likewise the apostle Paul: But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman. And thousands of other such things divine Scripture has handed down to us. Let the Macedonians, then, show us, who say that the Son is equal to God the Father in all things and in every respect, and let those also who call themselves orthodox, who not only make the Son equal to the Father, but also make the Holy Spirit equal to the Father and the Son in all things and in every respect—let them show, if it is written anywhere: For God so loved this world, that he sent his own Father, that he might give his soul for the life of the world, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life: for the Son did not send his Father to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Let them show us it is written: I confess to thee, Son, lord of heaven and earth, for thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Son, for so thy good will was pleased before thee. Let them read to us whether it is written: The Son loves the Father, and has given all things into his hands. Let them prove to us it is written: For as the Son has life in himself, so he has given to his Father to have life in himself; and he has given him power to execute judgment. Or if they can show it written: For I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, my son; for this is his will, that of all that my son has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up on the last day.

Likewise let them read to us: Everyone who hears the Son and has learned, comes to me; not that anyone has seen the Son, except him who is of him—he has seen the Son. Let them show us it is written: My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me, my Son. Or let them prove that it is written: Therefore my Son loves me, because I lay down my soul, and take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again; for this commandment I received from the son [lacuna]

[lacuna] Likewise in the psalm: Blessed are they who dwell in thy house forever and ever; they shall praise thee. Likewise in the Gospel: That everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved this world, that he sent his only Son; that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Likewise in the Gospel: He who believes in the only Son has eternal life; he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God shall remain upon him. Likewise in the Gospel: Jesus answered and said to her: Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water which I shall give him, shall not thirst forever; but it shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. Likewise in the Gospel: He who reaps receives wages, and he who gathers, fruit unto eternal life.

Likewise in the Gospel: Amen, amen I say to you, that he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; and he shall not come into judgment, but shall pass from death to life. Likewise in the Gospel: Jesus therefore says, Amen, amen I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven; but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For he is the bread who came down from heaven, and gives life to this world. They said to him therefore: Lord, give us this bread. And Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger; and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

Likewise in the Gospel: But this is the will of my Father who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him, may have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day. Likewise in the Gospel: Amen, amen I say to you, he who believes in me has eternal life. Likewise in the Gospel: I am the living bread, which came down from heaven, so that if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever. Likewise in the Gospel: He who eats this bread lives forever. Likewise in the Gospel: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, has eternal life. Likewise in the Gospel: They who are of all mine [lacuna]

[lacuna] Lift up your gates, O princes; and be lifted up, ye everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall enter in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, ye everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall enter in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Likewise the apostle Paul: Be imitators of me, brothers, and mark those who so walk: of whom I have often told you, and now tell you weeping, 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: but our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we await a Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall transfigure the body of our humility, conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things to himself.

Likewise in the Gospel: When the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then all nations shall be gathered before him; and he shall separate them, one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and he shall set them on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King shall say to those who are on his right hand, Come, blessed of my Father; receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me. Then they shall answer saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? Or when did we see thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when did we see thee sick, and visited thee?

Or in prison, and came to thee? And the King answering shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. Then he shall say to those who are on the left: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which my Father prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not take me in; I was naked, and you did not clothe me; I was sick, and you did not visit me; I was in prison, and you did not come to me. Then they shall answer [lacuna]

[lacuna] just as he who at the beginning of the Gospel is proclaimed as the Word, God with God. On account of these things which were said above, and when he handed down the pious sense to the pious concerning him, then proceeding a little further, he says: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. This same Word, God, then—that you should not suppose him to be the unbegotten only-begotten Son of God—the Holy Spirit most certainly and most manifestly shows through the most blessed John, at the same time most manifestly announcing the manner of his humanity, and stops the mouth of those who say that he assumed a soul with a body.

He says: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us": that is, he put on flesh, not because the Word, God himself, changed into the nature of flesh, but he took on flesh and dwelt among us, that is, in our flesh, and in it the Word, God, though impassible, suffered; and God, incorruptible, endured corruption, that he might change us into incorruption. But the deity of the Word itself did not die, nor did it undergo corruption; rather, by a brief separation from the body of the deity, the corruption of that body is recognized. But the Word, God, suffered nothing except injury only, for our sake. For if, when we die, our souls do not die, but the departure of the soul from the body constitutes the corruption of our human nature, much more does the deity of the only-begotten God not die; but when he willed, by the nod of the Father, he died of his own accord; that is, he departed from the body, and his separation is called his death.

But after the third day he took up the body again by the Father's will; and he raised it to incorruption; and he ascended with it above the heavens; and he holds it as a glorious, holy, living temple; and in that very body, in which he saved the human race, in that very body he is worshiped by all at the right hand of the power of God. Learn, therefore, certain knowledge of these things from the most blessed and first martyr of the deity of Christ, Stephen, saying: I see, he says, the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of the power of God. The Son of man, the body which [lacuna]

[lacuna] of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ, with the disciples watching, he ascended. He ascended, moreover, with his body to his Father, where he was before; and he offered our body as an acceptable gift to the Father; and receiving his seat at the right hand; to come thence again with glory and power to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works. By the Father's nod he sent the Holy Spirit to his disciples, as he promised, saying: If I ascend to the Father, I will send you the Spirit of truth. But this Spirit we, who are defenders of the truth, must necessarily confess, third after the Father and the Son in nature and order, and possessing the same nature and dignity.

He is the first and greater work of the Father through the Son, created through the Son, holy by nature, possessing sanctifying power, that he may sanctify those who simply believe in the Father through the Son, our Lord and God Jesus Christ: and that he may teach and admonish and enlighten their souls, and distribute graces, and lead and bring all to the knowledge of the truth, to the Son. This Holy Spirit is not God nor Lord, not creator nor maker, not to be worshiped nor adored, as is recognized through the divine declarations of Scripture; but the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies through the Son the things that have been made, and enlightens, and consoles, and intercedes with unspeakable groanings for us; and helps the weakness of our prayer, and leads to the Son of God those who are to be brought to the Father.

In this Spirit both the angels worship the Son, and the archangels and all the natures of invisible and heavenly beings worship the Son in this Spirit, and through the Son, the Father: and in this same Spirit all rational creatures, sanctified, shall come to the Son of God, and through him glorify the Father: and the Holy Spirit himself, before all and for all and above all and with all, worships the Son alone, without a mediator, through whom he was made before all things: just as the Son also, before all, and for all, and with all, and above all, worships the Father, and gives thanks without a mediator, alone worthily, who begot him before all things. And just as the Son does nothing of himself, but [lacuna]

[lacuna] and be ruled, shall not live forever, but rather shall be condemned to the metal of eternal fire.

In this tenor also we believe that God the Father alone, omnipotent, created all things and rules the universe: he handed down the law, gave the Holy Spirit and always gives it to the saints, instructed the prophets: the temple, which the Son took from the Virgin Mary and laid down on the cross, the Father raised up: he reconciled the world to himself, forgave sins and forgives them daily, being about to raise up all the dead, and to judge all the living and the dead, about to give rest and eternal glory to the good and faithful, about to send the evil and unfaithful into gehenna: first because, knowing, being powerful, and willing, before all things he created, founded, begot, made the Son himself, according as God the Father omnipotent himself willed, determined, commanded for the Son, that through him all things be created, made, founded, born, established and be ruled by the command of the Father: through the Son he handed down the law: the Son gave the Holy Spirit and always gives it to the saints: he instructed the prophets: his own temple, which he took from the Virgin Mary and laid down on the cross, the Son himself raised up: he reconciled the world to his Father and to himself: he forgave sins and forgives them daily, being about to raise up all the dead and to judge all the living and the dead: about to give rest and eternal glory to the good and faithful: about to send the evil and unfaithful into gehenna.

But we say that there is one dominion and one power in this way, because according to the Father's dominion the Son accomplishes all things: but the Son also commands the Holy Spirit, angels, and men to do these things according as the Father wills and commands the Son, that the Son may command all the rest. But those who say that, as often as the divine Scripture mentions Jesus Christ, it signifies only a man, a body and soul, not God, and that Jesus Christ came into being from the time he was born of Mary, and did not exist before, as Photinus and his predecessors asserted, we hold as strangers from our communion.

But we say and believe one God and Father of all things in such a way that we say this Holy Spirit, whom we hand down in third place from the Father after the Son in the creed and in baptism, is not God the creator, because nothing was created by him and through him; because all things were created by the Father through the Son; nor that he himself rules [lacuna]

[lacuna] provider of all things, judge and dispenser, God because he created and constructed all things: who made all things out of nothing. Again the same Athanasius brings forward the memory of the ancients and of bishop Dionysius, to show that the Father existed before the Son was begotten, saying: Thus the Father indeed is Father and not Son; not because he was made, but because he is; not from anything, but abiding in himself: but the Son is Son and not Father, not because he existed, but because he was made; not of himself, but from him who made him, he received the dignity of Son.

Then Athanasius himself says: "For the Son does not raise himself up against the Father, nor does he think himself equal with God: but he yields to his Father, and confesses it; teaching all that the Father is greater: greater, however, not in vastness nor in magnitude, which indeed are properties of bodies, but in perpetuity and in his ineffable paternal and generative power: so that whereas he indeed is everlasting, and has fullness in himself, and has life from no one." Likewise also Bishop Bithenus, known to the Pope, writes: "Therefore we say the Son is begotten: but the Son can never become unbegotten.

We know from the holy Scriptures that the Father alone is unbegotten: but we venerate the Son, because it is certain among us that this glory of his ascends to the Father." And a little later the same says: "Since therefore the Father shows himself to be greater, it is certain that this is not only because of the operation of creation, but because he is unbegotten." Likewise the same, in another letter: "Concerning the Father and the Son it is said, as you know, that it is above human capacity to walk with a staff." Therefore truly first I beseech the Lord that he grant me pardon on account of necessity; and thus I will begin from these matters, not from many questions, nor by roundabout ways, but concisely.

" [lacuna] " by the signification of fire, having fire in itself, and remaining fire in fire. For although in it there is the splendor of light by nature, heat the power of burning, mobility of surging, yet the whole is fire, and all these things are one nature." Likewise Hilary: "Of all his own, then, let him be Father." Likewise Hilary: "I ask whether God is of another kind, who remains God in the form of God, and according to marked and marking forms we discern in seals, when lead is impressed with iron, and a gem with the form of wax, or a hollow image sealed in itself." Likewise Hilary: "I ask therefore now, whether there is division and separation when fire is from fire; is nature cut off?

Or does nature not follow, so that it is not with light kindled from light?" We have thought it useful to bring forward these examples of comparison for the Father: nor should it be thought to lie concerning its own profession, when it looks for some natural example of created things to aid the understanding of the divine profession. Does his tabernacle indeed walk? Would furnish examples: "But because heretical madness would disturb the faith of the simpler, so that it should not be believed of God what can scarcely be understood except through bodily comparison; therefore, according to that saying of the Lord, That which is born of the flesh is flesh; but that which is of the Spirit is spirit; because God is spirit, and was born of God." Most vain Hilary deceives the minds of the innocent; and what the Lord had said about those baptized and those who are spiritually born, he asserted was written concerning the birth of the Son of God.

But the very reading refutes Hilary, since the divine Scripture says: "Marvel not that I said to thee, You must be born again." Let them therefore see and understand.

We confess, we believe, we hold, that God the Father omnipotent is without beginning, unbegettable, indivisible, unchangeable, and immutable, the highest, the most high, incomparable and the God of all; and that, knowing, being powerful, and willing, before all ages and times, and before all things whatsoever, he created, founded, begot, made the Son for himself: and the Son himself remains indivisible, immutable, with God the Father in everlasting ages without end. And because, by the will and determination and command of God the Father omnipotent, through the only-begotten Son, God the Holy Spirit, all other things heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible, were created, made, born, founded, established, formed, established, and are ruled. And that the Son from the beginning, and before he descended into Mary the virgin, was always obedient to God his Father.

And that, by the disposition and determination of God the Father omnipotent, through the Son all the prophets spoke, inspired, that the Son himself was to come, being sent by God the Father, the illuminator and Savior of mankind: and that he was to take from the Virgin a temple, that is, flesh, so that the Son of God omnipotent, on account of the assumption of flesh, should be pronounced the Son of man and man, that is, the Son of David, because he took flesh from his seed. And that, God the Father sending him, the Son came into this world, so that through his teaching and passion and death of the cross, and resurrection on the third day, and ascension into the heavens with the flesh there, from whence he had descended without flesh: that through the good of baptism he might save every kind of men believing in him with entire faith, whom the Church also has named.

And that our Lord and God Jesus Christ taught this on earth, according as God the Father commanded him in the heavens. And that the Son is the high priest to God the Father, and is mediator between God the Father omnipotent and every creature: and that he himself is the one through whom we have been reconciled to God the Father. We believe also that the Son asks of his Father: he also petitions and prays for all the saints and penitents: and that the Son has given and gives thanks to God his Father: and that the prayers or thanksgivings of all are offered to God the Father through the Son: and that, by the command of God the Father, his Son sits at his right hand, and intercedes with his Father for us: and we believe that God the Father has subjected all things whatsoever to the Son. And if God the Father has subjected all things to the Son, he has also subjected the Holy Spirit.

But if the Holy Spirit is not subject to the Son, then God the Father omnipotent has not subjected all things to his Son. But also that which is written: The Father subjected to the Son; he loves the Son, and has given all things into his hands; and all things have been delivered to me by my Father; we believe this to be so: in that the Father, having begotten the Son, said to him, know that you shall govern all creation, and shall have dominion over all, as I shall have willed, determined, commanded thee.

But the Son also most willingly shows this very thing, that he neither exists of himself nor does anything of himself, but without doubt displays the workmanship of God in his own nature of brightness, exhibiting his ministry along with the rest of created things, serving mankind by the providence of God, exulting like a giant, running the way from the East even to the West, bearing to all the light of his own nature's brightness; so that every man, having rational understanding, looking upon him, may give thanks to God, who prepared this brightness for the light of human life. For indeed, when you see some man preparing a light at late night, do you give thanks to that light according to the reason of justice? No, but to him who prepared the light.

According to this reason of justice, then, using also natural understanding, you ought to magnify only the maker and giver of this, and to him who granted you the sight of this light you ought to give thanks; so that you too, just as the sun exhibits to you a ministry of service, according to the providence of God, of which you are debtor, may render acts of thanksgiving to your benefactor, who set the sun in the heaven for your benefit, that it might shine upon the earth. Thus it is, then, as is said: He set his tabernacle in the sun; and he, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, exulted like a giant to run his course: his going forth is from the end of heaven; and his circuit unto the ends thereof; and there is none that can hide himself from his heat.

If you therefore, remaining in the ignorance of your error, deny that this visible creature is the workmanship of one God, and according to the impiety of your foolishness affirm it to be the work of many gods who do not exist, the creature itself, by the very appearance of its nature, most evidently convicts the folly of your error; since it keeps order with itself in turn, and observes the proper courses of the seasons, and succeeds itself in turn, and, as it were out of one accord, according to the providence of one God, exhibits to men the use of its service. It is manifest, therefore, that he who created heaven, the same created also the lights in heaven; he likewise created the earth also, and all things that are upon the earth. And of this the most evident proof is this, that those things which [lacuna]

« [lacuna] His birth is before eternal times. If there is anything among things that comes before eternity, there will indeed be something that exceeds the sense of eternity. For he is your own possession, and your only-begotten is: not a portion, not a protraction, not some empty name according to the notion of efficient causes; but a Son, a Son from you, God the Father, true God, and begotten from you in the unity of your nature; to be confessed after you in such a way that he is with you: because you are the eternal author of his eternal origin. Is he, in that he is from you, second from you, while in that he is yours, he is not to be separated from him: because you are never to be confessed without your own; lest you be charged either with being imperfect without generation, or superfluous after generation ».

Likewise from Phoebadius, the Aquitanian companion of Hilary. « Whoever, then, shall have proven that the Father was at some time without Word, without reason, without wisdom, without power, without spirit, by this has proven that the Son was not with the Father and in the Father before every beginning. And yet I do not know whether, lacking these powers, God could be called God. For not only would God, who is perfect in his own everlastingness, not be God, but not even a creature of that kind would stand complete according to its own nature, if unfinished. Something cannot be, if it does not exist; but it will not exist, if it shall lack that which it ought to be. Therefore the whole was lacking to the Father, if anything was lacking. But the whole was lacking, if his Son, that is, the fullness of his powers, is not without a beginning. And this opinion of necessity passes over by a sacrilegious definition into one or the other part of profane blasphemy.

For either the Father must be believed to have obtained a beginning along with his Son, because he could not have existed without his Son, that is, without his powers; and indeed to this beginning of theirs there would be some third God, I know not what; or if the Father alone is said to be without beginning, then certainly he must be said to have been imperfect up to the generation of the Son. For he is imperfect, if he began to have what before he did not have, and yet ought to have had. In short, he who ought always to have been perfect, always wished to have it; because whatever has occupied the whole receives no increase. » Likewise Ambrose, confirming the above statements of Hilary and Phoebadius: « Someone says, how was the Son begotten? As everlasting, as the Word, as wisdom, as the brightness of eternal light: because brightness operates in the very manner it is born. This example is the Apostle’s, not mine.

Do not believe, then, that there ever went by any moment in which God was without wisdom, or light without brightness. » Likewise Ambrose: « Take another point that may make it clear; the Apostle called the Son everlasting, because his power and divinity are everlasting. » Likewise Phoebadius: « This is the surge of blasphemy, this is the whole sacrilegious grief, that in the Father and the Son one God is received. » Likewise Phoebadius: « The Father is God, and the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and all these are one God. »

[lacuna] and evil shall be rooted out from among you. Likewise in Deuteronomy: He shall write for himself this Deuteronomy in a book, for the Levites and the priests, that it may be with him; and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, and to keep all his commandments, and to do these acts of justice, so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers; but he shall not turn aside from the commandments to the right hand or to the left, that he may be long-lived in his principality, both he and his son. Likewise in Deuteronomy: And it is not with you alone that I make this covenant and these curses, but also with those who are present with you today before the Lord your God, as well as with those who are not with you today. Likewise in Deuteronomy: And all the nations of the earth shall say, Why has the Lord done thus to this land?

What is this great wrath of fury? And they shall say, Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which he made with their fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they went and served other gods, and worshipped those whom they had not known, and did not remain faithful to the Lord their God. And the Lord, angered in fury against that land, brought upon it all the curses of the covenant which are written in this book. And the Lord removed them from their land in fury and wrath and very great indignation: and cast them into another land; and so on.

This divine right, these sacred Scriptures, the elder Constantine defended, saying: « Although I feel myself to be most exalted and lord of all, I know that I am mortal, and I understand that at some time I shall leave behind the glory of this kingdom. » Therefore eternal fame is to be sought, and those sublime things which descend from the eternal Lord and from the sublime God—those things which the divine law promises: which the sacred things of the Son of God pledge; which after the course of this life are furnished by the Son of God himself as guarantor. Therefore let the brief glory of this present time be laid aside, that through faith it may be possessed without fear, whereby, according to the sacred law of God, after the bond of death he shall grant immortality after this most brief life, without end promised; and so on. This divine right, these sacred Scriptures, Constantius defended, writing to the holy [lacuna]

[lacuna] the prophets of God. And when they had heard the false prophets who were with Ochozias son of Achab, whose teacher was Gamarias of Mount Ephraim, who was himself the brother of Sedecias, he persuaded Ochozias king of Gomorrah, and he killed Michaeas. And Bechira came to know it, and saw the place of Isaiah and of the prophets who were with him; for he himself dwelt in Bethlehem; and he went to Jerusalem, and they were joined together with Asamar. And it came to pass, when Salmanassar king of the Assyrians came, and took Samaria, and led away [lacuna] said [lacuna] into prison, and had brought them to the mountain of Medor [lacuna] to the river Gozan, Bechira was the younger, and fled and came to Jerusalem in the days of Ezechias king of Judah: he did not walk in [lacuna] [lacuna] of Samaria his father's, because he feared Ezechias. And he was found in the time of Ezechias speaking words of unrighteousness in Jerusalem, and [lacuna] from the children [lacuna] in the region of Bethlehem.

And Bechira despised Isaiah and the prophets who were with him, saying that Isaiah and the prophets who were with him prophesied in Jerusalem [lacuna] of the city of Judea, that they are being forsaken, and against the sons of Judea and good [lacuna] that they are led captive. And hence, my lord king, that a Greek helmet [lacuna] you shall be led through by the sword: these men prophesied against Israel and Judah and Jerusalem: and Isaiah himself said that he prophesied more than Moses. For Moses said that man cannot see God; but Isaiah said, I have seen God, and behold I live. You, O king, understand that he is a liar: and behold he called Jerusalem Sodom, and named its princes, and those of Judea and Jerusalem, the people of Gomorrah. And when he had disparaged Isaiah and the prophets in many things, Beliar rose up in the heart of Manasses, and in the hearts of the princes of Judah and Benjamin and of the eunuchs and counselors of the king.

And the words of Bechira pleased them, and the king gave orders, and they seized Isaiah. For Beliar had bile against Isaiah because of what Samael had shown him concerning himself, and because he himself had announced the coming of the Most Beloved from the seventh heaven, and of the Transfigured; whose descent and the form in which he would be transfigured, that of a man, and the persecution which he was to suffer, and the contumely which [lacuna]

[lacuna] to the sons the voice of Michaeas and the rest of the prophets, saying in that, in which you heard my prophecy: I saw a glorious angel, not according to the glory of the angels whom I always used to see, but having a great and holy brightness, which brightness I cannot explain. And he came near and took hold of my hand, and said: And who are you, and what is your name, and where will you take me? For I received strength to speak with him. And he said to me: When I have set you up and shown you the vision, on account of which I was sent to you, then you shall know who I am, but I shall not tell you my name, because you shall return into the flesh. For when you have been lifted up, then you shall see. For this reason indeed I was sent, that I might come. He answers me simply and says to me: And you shall see one greater than I.

He speaks cheerfully and simply [lacuna] and higher things of his greater ones you shall see. For this reason I was sent from the seventh heaven, that I might show you all things. And he lifted me up, and I myself ascended into the first firmament, and there I saw Samael and his power: and there was a great war in it, and the angels of Satan likewise envying one another; for as it is above, so also on earth. And I said to the angel who was with me: What is this war, and what is this envy? And he said to me: So it has been from the time when the eye was made, until now it is so, and so shall the war be until he comes whom he is to see, and shall cleanse him.

And afterward he set me upon the firmament; and there was heaven, and I saw there a throne in the midst, and on its right hand and on its left were angels; the angels on the left were as those on the right: for on the right they had great brightness: and they all praised with one voice: and the throne was in the midst, and afterward those on the left gave blessing. But the voice from the left was not the same, nor was it less like those; and I asked the angel who was leading me, and said to him: To whom do the angels send their hymns? And he said to me: To the glory of him who sits in the seventh heaven, who is of the everlasting age, and to his beloved, by whom I was sent to you.

And I was set upon the second heaven, and the height of heaven was such as from heaven to earth and to the firmament: And I saw there, as I had seen in the first heaven, angels on the right and on the left, and thrones in the midst [lacuna] Brodes, Neptune, and Aetna: which, being often seen to roll flames from its summit, is felt by nearly the whole world of those who believe in good faith: although it was first reported at Rome that it had burned, and this has now been dealt with among prodigies. The fifth is concerning the spring of Grenoble, from which both water flows and fire together. For you see flames flying up from the waters, you draw water from the middle of the spring; you run, you drink, and are not burned; you carry it, and are not seized by the fire. But if you bring near a wax candle or a torch, as soon as they touch the flames, they are caught alight.

If you also put in your hand, it is not burned. Hence Hilary indeed says:

If fires truly burn, why do you, waters, live?
But if the waters extinguish, why do you, fires, live?
In the bosoms of the waters a hostile fire lies hidden:
And a high hand commands their common origins

Our Lord Jesus Christ himself is the foundation, himself the completion, himself the cornerstone. He is from earth and from heaven: for God descended from heaven, and took on man from earth, and was joined to man. Behold, from heaven, behold the foundation, behold the cornerstone. In this he was well pleased among men: and to those who are of the earth he gave the Holy Spirit from heaven; that he might make both the higher and the lower one Church; that is, mingling humanity with divinity, and divinity with humanity. But when you hear "foundation," understand the Lord: for he himself measured out the foundation. The stones that are built upon it ought to have a measure equal to the foundation, so that it may become fit for the uses of building [lacuna]

[lacuna] which we behold through a mirror, being reformed into the same image from glory into glory. For just as someone looks upon royal garments, purple and diadem and other similar things, and marvels at their variety, their subtlety, their grace, the beauty of precious stones, and gazing insatiably takes delight; or as [lacuna] beholds [lacuna] with these things removed, and beholds the heavenly image of Christ burning within us, and understanding the beauty of the ineffable light: how they are reformed from glory into glory, the variety and diverse beauties which cannot be told by fleshly tongue, nor indeed grasped by understanding, how great are the things that come to pass in this world among the saints. For the parables themselves are certain images: for divine things are recognized by those who have had experience of them, and are beheld in truth by those in whom it was fitting. Thus therefore you must understand or hear, that is, beyond your knowledge, beyond sense; so long as the very reality pours the grace of the mystery into your mind.

For indeed purple and royal garments bring no gain nor life to those who behold them, except only this, that they delight the sight: but the divine glory and the beauty of the heavenly image bestows eternal life, true charity, purity of heart, heavenly food. Those, therefore, who behold this divine light shining forth in their hearts, are occupied with no earthly things; but are wholly bound to that beauty. For just as a little child, beholding its mother carrying it in her arms, rejoices and is glad, because it draws the life of milk from her, and gazes upon her; so also they who have the true light within them, attending to it, rest and rejoice with a joy that cannot be told: for from it they learn immortal food, and in it they live the true life in the age. Here ends Sermon V.

What dispensation has the coming of Christ? First, that he might restore the nature of Adam to purity, and bestow the heavenly inheritance of the Holy Spirit. Great, therefore, is the benefit he gave to the human race, redeeming us from the prison of darkness, and showing the way of life, and teaching the door by which one might go out from bonds, when he says: Ask, and it shall be given you; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For through this door those willing to seek and to knock are set free, and in it they obtain a twofold grace, both that the soul is freed from the most grievous bonds of death and of sin, and that it receives itself back, and its own thoughts, and has the heavenly King Christ dwelling with it as a bridegroom, from [lacuna]

The question of certain elders, whether truly at the resurrection all the members rise again. Answer. With God all things are possible, and thus he has promised: but man's weakness and reasoning make this seem, as it were, impossible to him. For just as he, taking of the slime of the earth, constructed as it were another nature, unlike the earth; and making very many kinds, so that [lacuna] hair and skin and bones and sinews; and just as a needle put into the fire changes color and is transfigured [lacuna] although it is dissolved, yet it remains stable; so at the resurrection all the members rise again, and the hairs shall not perish, according as it is written, and all things are made bright, and all things are dyed and transfigured in fire and in light: but not, as some say, that they are dissolved and become fire also, and that nature does not stand.

For Peter is Peter, and Philip is Philip: and each one remains in his own nature and substance, just as also in the fullness of the Spirit. But if [lacuna]

[lacuna] just as if there were a deserted or ruined city, and someone should wish to restore it; first he will utterly destroy whatever remained or had fallen; and thus he begins to lay foundations, and to raise the structure; and yet the house is not yet finished. Likewise he who wishes to build a paradise in deserted and hidden places, first begins to clear it, and to surround it with a hedge, and to mark out water channels; then to plant, so that after much time the paradise may bear fruit. So too the will of men, embittered by transgression, has become deserted and thorny. For God said to him: Thorns and thistles shall the earth bring forth for you. It is necessary, therefore, that one labor and, with much toil, seek diligently, and lay the foundation, until the heavenly fire come into his heart, and cleanse away all the thorns. Then at last he will begin to be sanctified. Here ends Homily XXXIII.

All rational creatures (I mean angels, souls, and demons) were created whole and simple by the Creator: some of them have turned to evil through the choices of their free will; and thus it shall be. For of their own will they turned away from holy and whole thought. For this we understand, that nothing evil is established to have been created by the Maker. Therefore we call God the Judge who sends Satan into the fire. For there are certain heretics who say that there are matters without beginning, and a root of matter, and that the power of the root is of one power. Against these things you have a reasonable answer [lacuna]

[lacuna] the oil of gladness above your fellows, and much and varied spiritual and heavenly food, incorrupt, glorious, and the garment of heavenly light [lacuna] for in these things is life, not in the body. But he who remains in his own nature alone [lacuna] shall be corrupted and shall die [lacuna] The soul, when it remains in its own nature alone, and has not partaken of the divine nature, that is, of grace, shall die the eternal death in torments, because it has not been made worthy to be a partaker of eternal life. For just as, when the body of a sick person cannot receive food or drink, all its neighbors or dearest friends or beloved ones, despairing of it, mourn for it [lacuna] for the heavenly charioteer shall mount upon you, and your soul shall become wholly eye, and wholly light.

And if you have partaken of spiritual food, if you have been given drink of the drink of life, and if you have put on the garment of ineffable light, so that you may be able to withstand the machinations of the devil: if the inner man has been confirmed in all these things through testing; or if he shall live the eternal life, resting in the Lord. But if you have not received nor possess all these things, ought you not in truth to be grieved, that you are not a partaker of such great riches, and have not yet received so great a life? Therefore hold the grief of your poverty and want, because you still remain in the want of your own sins. If, then, one who has grief because of his own want, and is not yet satisfied, walks in security, but he who has grief entreats, beseeching the Lord, he will more quickly obtain redemption and heavenly riches; according to what the Lord said concerning the unjust judge.

The discourse concerning the widow taught, in narrating [lacuna]

[lacuna] for the law commanded that animals having a cloven hoof and chewing the cud are to be eaten. For this is necessary, that man understand himself to be twofold, contradicting and not agreeing with the sin dwelling within. But the soul must be separated along with its thoughts, and must be judged by the word and set apart from the fellowship of sin: and then God, having turned you about, distinguishes you, and separates the soul from the evil spirits, who are the roots of thoughts. For just as a farmer, usefully tending the land, first renews it and clears it of thorns and thistles; and then casts in the seeds, so that in due season it may render its fruits; so must one who wishes to please God, and hopes to receive the seed of grace, cleanse and renew, and adorn with every virtue on his own part, the very earth of his heart, so that the seed of the Spirit, falling into the heart of good earth, may render manifold the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Or as the craftsman who works diligently the skins of animals, which are called parchments, unless he first remove from them the hair, and the superfluous fat of the flesh, or the blackness of blood and the remaining uncleanness, so as diligently to cleanse them and make them clear: the law of the Lord cannot be written upon them: therefore, just as the skilled craftsman removes whatever is superfluous, as is fitting, cleansing and giving them brightness; and then the laws of God are written there: and then they become spiritual scriptures: by the same likeness, therefore, those also who wish, and who hope that the laws of the Holy Spirit be written in their sense or soul, and to put on the heavenly image of the life of Christ, must with all care and diligence present their heart clean, as craftsmen do, cleansing themselves from all the coarse fat of this present age, and from the anxiety of flesh and blood; and separated from every earthly bond, and from the distraction of earthly things, which is like the blackness of blood, let them cleanse this away; so that thus cleansing and preparing their own sense and heart, holy God may write there his own laws; according to his promise, giving laws in their heart and writing them in their senses, and they shall be his people.

As also the Apostle says: Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh [lacuna]

[lacuna] Now, therefore, let each one demand an account from his own soul, judging his own thoughts by the divine precepts; and let him test in what things he is given over, and by what he is held fast; and let him see whether his heart or his thoughts agree with the laws of God. But if not, let each one hasten to be converted with all the strength of soul and body; so that just as he keeps the body outwardly from fornication and from malice and corruption, as being the temple of God; so in the inner parts he may guard the soul and its thoughts from the corruption of evil spirits: that it may not have fellowship with their thoughts, nor defile itself, because it is the bride of Christ. For just as the body commits fornication, so also the soul, secretly having fellowship with evil powers in its thoughts, in invisible sins, is corrupted and commits fornication [lacuna] in desires [lacuna] in vainglory, in envy, in rapine.

For wherever the soul has fellowship, there it also ministers and serves: if it has fellowship with the divine Spirit, it ministers to him; but if with dark and evil spirits, it likewise ministers and serves them. As it is said: for the mind of men is corrupted. And again: their mind and conscience are defiled. And again: for I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your senses be corrupted. There is, therefore, a visible fornication. There is also an invisible fornication, through wicked thoughts. For in the law the Holy Spirit, showing forth a certain mystery to the soul, separated the unclean four-footed animals from the clean: for it is necessary that clean things bring forth clean fruits.

So also the thoughts of the soul's own nature ought to be clean, through the knowledge of the word, apart from the indwelling sin and from unclean thoughts: so that the soul, by the knowledge of the word, may bring forth the thoughts of its own nature clean; not consenting to nor having fellowship with the fruit of unclean malice, by that knowledge which nature [lacuna] shall bring forth ignorance, nor does it hear or speak or sink into the darkness of sin, because it has been rescued from vices. For indeed the mind, which has lived in darkness, and is not born to death [lacuna] this is not of the body of Christ, is not of the body of light, but is companion and portion of darkness. And again, whose souls have been illumined by the heavenly light; and have been made a portion of the light. But someone will say: how is the soul, which is not his creature, the body of darkness belonging to the devil? Here, then, look and understand rightly.

For just as the garment which you wear, another has made or woven, and you have put it on; likewise another has built and set up the house, that you might dwell in it: by this same likeness Adam also, transgressing the commandment, and obeying the evil serpent, and despising the holy commandments of God, was drawn away; selling himself to the powers of wickedness, and subjecting to the enemy the soul which God had made good, the proper dwelling-place of his own image. For this reason, therefore, the soul is made a body of the darkness of wickedness, so long as it is in sins

[lacuna] for he did not say of Gabriel and Michael: Let us make according to our image and likeness, but only of man. See therefore your honor, how precious you are compared to the angels, how God himself came upon earth in person for your embassy or redemption. God therefore and the angels came for your redemption and salvation. A king, the son of a king, took counsel, and coming to the cross laid down his soul. For so great is the charity of God toward man, that the Immortal One was fastened to the cross for you, as it is written: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son for it. How then has he not given us all things with him? And elsewhere: Amen, I say to you, that he shall set him over all his own things. For elsewhere the minister of the saints says: when Elisha was on the mountain, and the foreigners had come against him, the servant said, Many are they [lacuna]

[lacuna] when prefects or counts are summoned before the emperor, they are in great fear and trembling, as to how they may answer what is asked, lest they offend in some word, and fall into danger; but rustic and idle people, who have never at all seen the judge, pass their time in security: and in this age, from the emperor down to the poor man, they seem to have security under heaven. But they who enter before the tribunal of Christ [lacuna] are always set in fear and trembling. For even the rich of the earth, when they have stored abundant fruit in their barns, again labor day by day that they may acquire more. But if they presume upon what has been stored, and neglect what is laid up in the barns, they at once rush into want and misfortune. Therefore they ought to labor strongly, and rather to store up. And Christianity is thus, that each one may taste the grace of God. For it is written: Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.

There is therefore a taste of the working in the fullness of virtue, the grace of the Holy Spirit ministering in the heart. For as many as are children of the light and of the kingdom, or ministers of the New Testament in spirit, these are not taught by men, but are taught by God: he himself writing the law in their hearts. For they ought not to be instructed only in the Scriptures which are written with ink; but in the breadth of the heart the grace of God, and the spirit of the law, and the heavenly mysteries should be written

[lacuna] But I say to you that even the Apostles, having the Paraclete, were not secure in all things. For there was in them joy and gladness, fear and trembling from that very grace; not indeed on the part of malice; but that very grace kept watch over them lest they be turned aside even in a small matter. As if someone were casting a stone against a wall, how is the wall hurt or moved? Or as if an arrow were shot at a man covered with a breastplate, how does it harm either the body or the iron, striking and falling? So some part of malice, even if it drew near to them in some way, yet in nothing harmed them, since they were clothed with the perfect virtue of Christ: and being themselves perfect, they had the liberty of working righteousness. Since some indeed say, that where there is grace there is security for the soul [lacuna]

[lacuna] they filled the souls of many as it were with unclean spirits. As the psalm says, that they are filled and darkened with houses of iniquity.

And he set up a testament against the true king, a law of sin, and cloudy images full of sorrows, and marked a reprobate coin to be spurned, and taught the ways of malice, brought in legions, spirits of wickedness who hold the soul in solid fetters and iron saws to keep watch over it lest it go out: and forced it to do their works, according to their own will; and they corrupted it and committed fornication with it; and they covered its eyes with darkness, lest it should see its own lord; and they forced it to grind in the mill of darkness, so that it might think carnal and worldly things, feel earthly and muddy things: and they stirred up in it a muddy fountain, teeming with iniquity; and they scattered in it the counsels of the malignity of spirits, and led its people into captivity, that is, the multitude of its counsels; they despoiled it also of the garments of glory, and cast upon it rags of ignominy and uncleanness, full of bitterness and gall; and they filled it with every uncleanness.

Then after much time had passed, and they themselves, by the fitting power of the custom of darkness, had no memory of their king, nor of their own liberty, but held themselves as if they had been so created from the beginning; therefore Christ, the heavenly and true king, sent, first through the holy prophets, admonishing man, and calling him back into the memory of his own nobility and dignity; reminding him also with how bitter, how deceitful an error he was held, announcing that he himself would come, and would free him through himself from those who held him in captivity. [lacuna] he would blot out the coin of adultery, and would extinguish all the enemies by whom he is held: and he promised to renew him according to his own will, and to give a peaceful and divine law of the spirit, so that at the same time he might change the ancient ways of malice that were in him: only that the soul, mindful of itself, might flee to its own Lord, giving itself to him, and lending him its will: and that it might believe that he would do all things which he promised; and that it should beseech him day and night, crying out to be rescued from evil captivity and bitter servitude.

But when the goodness of our savior Jesus Christ shone forth, and the times of the promise were fulfilled, and Christ the king came to redeem and receive back his own man, whom for a long time a dire servitude held; and as many as believed in him, and fled to him, were redeemed. And he asked, confessing his own captivity, that he could not by himself be freed and delivered from servitude, that is, to the higher world, and from this age it flies more easily to the blessed and everlasting age with much rest. For now the sons of God become both more exalted and superior, without any fear of unclean spirits and their savagery; just as birds no longer fear the snares of wild beasts.

But as there is no man who understands the speech of cattle, so also no man full of worldly spirits recognizes the tongue of the Holy Spirit; but only the sons of grace recognize the words of their mother: according to what is said, comparing spiritual things with spiritual; but the natural man does not receive the things that are of the Spirit; for it is foolishness to him. For as the voice of swallows is unknown to men, so also the carnal are as barbarians to the spiritual. But we say these things by a certain shadowy likeness of those things which are true, concerning birds and things of this kind; taking from these visible things examples and gathering material; since spiritual things admit of no interpretation: just as also the Lord spoke in parables; for he says: I will open my mouth in parables. For spiritual things are invisible, and cannot be set forth by human speech, unless the Spirit himself be besought to teach.

For we cannot know the increase and perfection of spiritual regeneration, but only believe that it so works in men who have been able to please him by their manner of life. So also the speech of spiritual things is barbarous to worldly men. For as all the fishes of the sea know the paths and the depths that are in it, and men cannot recognize either the beasts or the cattle [lacuna] [lacuna] not taught by the words of human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. Give back then, heretic, what the Spirit has taught; give back that faith may not be in the wisdom of men, and there will be no heresy. And that we may not delay longer, let us come to those things which they are accustomed to set against us as an iron wall, saying: are the unbegotten and the begotten the same, or not? So that, because of the dissimilar sound in the name, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit may not seem to be of the same substance.

According to which form I too ask: if there is a difference between the name of the begotten from the unbegotten, so that they may not seem to be of the same substance: then whatever is called unbegotten will be of the same substance, if the name of the begotten differs from that of the unbegotten. The Father, then, is called unbegotten and uncreated: the Son also is called begotten and uncreated. If then in that they are unbegotten and begotten they differ from one another; then in that they are both called uncreated, they will be of the same substance. The Holy Spirit also, of whom it is written that he is neither the Father, nor the Son, nor that he was made; what is to be said? He will be unbegotten: but if unbegotten, he will be of the same substance as that of which also the world is, or those things which are from nothing.

But the world, even though it was made, is unbegotten: for it is not the Son, because it was made; therefore it will be what the Father also is, who is unbegotten: by which reasoning, if the Holy Spirit also was made, he too will be unbegotten like the world. But we have said the Son is uncreated, for he was not made: therefore whatever has not been made will be of the same substance.

The Father was not made; the Holy Spirit was not made; the Son was not made: therefore the Holy Spirit, or the Son, will be of the same substance as that of which the Father also is. The Father is unbegotten, the Holy Spirit is unbegotten, the world also is unbegotten (for they are not born) they will be of the same substance as the Father is: but the world was made, while the Father was not made, nor was the Son, nor the Holy Spirit; therefore the world alone will not be of the same substance as the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Why then do we dwell upon names and upon a wisdom agreeable to men, and not rather upon those things which Scripture has marked out, saying that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are to be believed?

But if faith is to be given to names, so that whatever sounds either unbegotten or uncreated, it is necessary that whatever shall have been unbegotten or uncreated be of the same substance: and by this reasoning whatever thing shall be called immortal, or incorrupt, or incorporeal, or uncreated, would seem to be of the same substance. The world was made, or those things which are in the world: are the things which were made therefore of the same substance, that is, heaven, earth, air, water? If then the things which were made are not of the same substance, because they were not born; then the unbegotten and the begotten, which were not made, will be of the same substance, because it is one thing to be born and another to be made: for the things which come to be by the will of the maker consist in a diversity of substance: but the things which are born, even from things made, always keep the truth of the same nature.

Consider the natures of trees, seeds, cattle, wild beasts, birds, and men; consider also their works, or the dwellings of men, or the lairs of wild beasts, or the nests of birds, or the cells of bees, or the storehouses of ants, or the caves of spiders, or the hidden places of every kind, and in these things which I have named, consider their works. Are they of similar substance?—those things which either generate or are generated, so far are the works of all from the nature of those generating. Only birth is an indication of the substance of that which generates. Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Thrones, Principalities were also made: are they therefore said to be begotten because they were made? But if they are not said to be begotten because they were made, then they will surely be unbegotten: if they are unbegotten, will they be of the same substance as the Father, who is unbegotten?

So then Thrones, Powers, Principalities, Dominations, Virtues are named: will they be of the same substance, although there seems to be a diversity of names? Because the diversity of names is a mark of honor, and not of their substance. For that they are called Virtues, Dominations, Seats, Powers is an expression of ranks, not a demonstration of substance, of what kind or quality they ought to be understood. And indeed all these are called both incorporeal and incorrupt and immortal and unbegotten; for they are not sons, since there is one only Son, who has declared the bosom of the Father. Finally, what does the Apostle say of the angels? For to which of the angels did he ever say, Thou art my Son, the Lord? In denying them as sons, therefore, he denied in them birth, but he did not deny creation. So the Apostle says: Whether Dominations, or Principalities, or Virtues, or Powers, all things were made through him. He said all things were made, but not born.

Is it then, from the fact that they are called incorporeal or incorrupt or immortal, a confession of their substance, what or of what kind they are, and not rather a denial of passions? For when we say something is incorporeal, we deny body, we do not indeed confess substance. Or when we say incorrupt and immortal, we declare not what it is, but what it does not suffer: for that which is called immortal or incorrupt does not suffer either death or corruption; whence let no one, on account of so many and so great names, say that all things are of the same substance, or again compo [lacuna]

Called forth by today's reading to the course of the spiritual stadium, we must consider with careful mind, most beloved brethren, how we ought to run and from what things we must abstain. For the stadium, according to the letter, is called a quarter part of a mile, which Hercules is said first to have run in a single breath, at the end of which a stake was anciently set up, with a crown woven of flowers placed upon it: and thither, in order to seize this, a ready company of young men were wont to run, so that whichever of them, running more swiftly, might be first, might seize the prize (which we call a crown): and thereby might specially obtain the praise of the king and of the onlookers, and afterward many gifts of rewards.

For many strove toward this with a common purpose, but all were surpassed by one; and he who was swifter in the race seemed more worthy than the rest of the gathering of rewards; and as much as the victor rejoiced, enriched with royal gifts, so much did the vanquished grieve, not only deprived of the gifts, but also disgraced by the shame of their slowness. They abstained indeed from foods which harm the running, but not equally; because the abstinence of him who was swifter than the rest in the race had been greater. Do not marvel, brethren, that the Apostle gave from pagan superstition an example fit for imitation for the safeguarding of souls, lest any of you should think that in nothing are the practices of the gentiles to be followed, from whom the Christian religion, at Christ's compulsion, has made us strangers.

Let your charity first know, then, that the Church has appropriated to herself certain sacred things from their rite, which are to be followed not carnally but spiritually; of which this is the example, most useful, which today's reading has brought before us. For the end of the stadium, which was measured out for them to run, signifies the end of the present life, which has been given to us for the course of our salvation, the Lord saying and warning: Run, wretch, run; hasten, while you have time, lest you fall into death. For they ran to seize a temporal and corruptible prize, that they might receive earthly rewards from a mortal king; let us run better for a spiritual and incorruptible prize to be seized after the end of the flesh, that we may receive eternal and unfailing rewards from the King of kings, who is eternal and immortal; hearing his most desirable voice saying: Come, you who labor.

They indeed abstained from rich foods, that they might be rendered more agile in the race; let us also abstain better, not so much from foods as from vices, that we may become swift for running. But whereas out of a great multitude of young men one seized the prize, the rest running in vain; as far as it concerns us, dearest brethren, it is greatly to be feared lest we all, who have set out to run for the crown, be surpassed by one. Whence the Apostle warns: So run, that you may obtain. And how shall we be able to obtain it, since we are unwilling to run; and if at some time we begin to run, alas! Wearied by the fatness of our vices, we shamefully fail in the course!

For although the whole Church is divided into the clerical and lay order, there is none among them who runs for the crown of glory; but some, anxious with insatiable greed, some polluted with unbridled lust, some swollen with the pride of worldly pomp, not only are unwilling to run, but do not even know how to open their eyes to seize the crown. Whence the Psalmist: All have turned aside, together they have become unprofitable. And the Prophet: Like people, like priest. For we are so blinded, and thrust down into a certain pit of oblivion, that thinking nothing of the future, we suppose there is no other life besides this one, in which we pursue our pleasures. To say more, many raving, while they feed their greedy minds with voluptuous desires, and rage like wolves upon those subject to them, yet claim to desire another glory and renown. For such men lose the nature of man, and take on the nature of four-footed beasts, who unreasonably and shamelessly are always intent upon the belly and lust.

For the Creator of all things so set man above earthly creatures, that, by rightly using temporal things, he might after death enjoy eternal things. What, then, is to be done about this, dearest brethren? For we are all lost, unless we are quickly lifted up by divine mercy. For mercy itself calls us to run, saying: walk, lest darkness overtake you. When it calls, if we are willing again to take up the race, it will be granted not to one only, but to many, to touch the crown. And just as in every race the same one did not always win, but he who was now defeated, now with renewed strength became victor; so let us, if we have hitherto been defeated, henceforth take care to be victors. For the way of running is set before our eyes, in which, however slow we have been, we can be, if we wish, all the swifter.

For how can we, sluggish and lazy, cease from the race, we who have not only the Apostle as an exhorter to the crown, but even our own Savior as an exhorter to the seizing of the penny? For he himself, the supreme father of the household, who planted the vineyard, that is, the holy Church, promises to give the penny of heavenly reward to us who entered late, that is, at the end of the world, to labor in the vineyard: likening us to the first laborers, who from morning to evening bore the burden of the day and the heat. For you have heard him, in the true and fitting parable set forth in the Gospel, calling laborers to the cultivation of his vineyard in the morning, at the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh, and rendering an equal penny to all when the work was finished.

And if you wish to know the meanings of the hours you have heard; learn that it was morning from Adam to Noah; the third hour from Noah to Abraham; the sixth from Abraham to Moses; the ninth from Moses to the coming of our Lord and Savior; the eleventh was from the coming of the Lord to the end of the world; in which we, the last laborers, entered the vineyard. But because we are slothful and slow in the work, we cannot be certain of the penny. Let us therefore strive to work more swiftly, that we may be able to be secure of the penny: and since today we are called by the supreme father of the household, let us, not scorning his call, strive to enter to labor in the vineyard.

For he instituted this present fast for this reason, that we might strive in this time, through repentance and mortification of the flesh, to wipe away the countless sins which we have committed through the delight of the flesh on the other days of the year.

Moreover, this day too, which stands as it were the gate of the fasts, both takes from us the canticle of joy, that is, alleluia, and expresses through the whole continuity of its office the voice of the penitent lamenting: teaching us that we ought to cease from immoderate joy, and remain in the weeping and tears of penitence. On this night, therefore, repeating its name often, we have addressed the alleluia itself; in a manner wishing to keep it as a guest, saying to it: Abide with us today, and so on. To which we have also bid a last farewell, saying: May a good angel accompany you, that you may return again to us with joy, so that we may know that we shall not fully rejoice until, renewed by the Body and Blood of our Redeemer, we receive that same canticle with rejoicing. The antiphon of the Mass indeed, which is commonly called the introit, laments with the penitents, saying: The sorrows of death surrounded me, and in my tribulation.

The collect indeed, together with the response, sound the affliction of penitence. That chant, moreover, which we have exchanged for the alleluia (which is called the tract because it has long-drawn melodies) teaches the penitent to cry out to God with deep groaning. And thus the rest of the words of the office, arranged in order, seem to express not the joy of rejoicing, but the mourning and grief of sinners.

Concerning the name indeed of the day which is called Septuagesima, if you ask, know that it takes its name not from the number of days, as some suppose, who reckon so many days from it to the paschal feast, but from the perfection of the number, from which the same number took its beginning. Now this same number consists of ten multiplied seven times: of which the seven pertains to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the ten pertains to the ten precepts of the law: which are joined together in such a way that neither can the gifts of the Holy Spirit be kept by anyone without the precept of the law, nor the precepts of the law without the gift of the Holy Spirit: and whoever has kept the one will without doubt have the other. This number rightly fits the penitent, that they may be able, by keeping especially in this time the ten precepts of the law, to recover the grace of the Holy Spirit which they lost by sinning.

Otherwise, according to some, Septuagesima is so called, according to the letter, because the people of Israel were held captive in Babylon for so many years, and returning from there after a long time, consecrated a fast to God with the same number in commemoration of that same liberation. But since it fits the penitent both according to history and according to allegory, let us strive in this time to bewail our sins, so that our souls, after this life, which revolves through seven days, freed from Babylon, that is, from infernal captivity, and enriched with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, may be able to receive with rejoicing, from the King of kings, both the unfading crown for the race, and the penny for the day's labor. Amen.

Take care, dearest ones, you who desire to cleanse your souls from sin, lest you turn aside by some byway of shamefulness from this road of fasting and amendment which you have undertaken to hold. For there is in some of you, from the deceptions of the ancient enemy, a certain custom introduced on this day, to be despised rather than followed; namely, that because of the mere food of flesh, which is not taken away from us today, you think you may lawfully do every bodily delight and every shameful thing, having found in yourselves this occasion, that because it is lawful for you to eat meat, it is also lawful to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. For these works are not of Christians, but of pagans.

For the pagans, who are also called gentiles, celebrating the festival of their gods, that is, of Jupiter, Saturn, Minerva, and Venus, after immense gluttony of food and drink and shameful feastings, would gather outside the city at the theater, which is also called the brothel: and there, first with jests of various kinds, and finally with the harlots who lurked in the caverns of that same theater, they would wear out their bodies in lust. To this filthiness of shamefulness, therefore, as Orosius Paulus relates, that same devil whom they worshiped incited them; so that to him to whom they offered sacrifice of the victims of animals, they might also offer sacrifice of the strength of their own bodies. For the devil is polluted and unclean, and requires for himself a polluted and unclean sacrifice: whence he is interpreted "pelliceus," that is, "for the sake of the skin," because he takes great delight in luxury, which is aroused by the beauty of the skin.

But as much as the servitude of God differs from that of the devil, so much does the life of those who are called Christians from Christ differ from the life of those who, subjected to the devil, serve him in all things. For this reason we must cease, brethren, from this and from every evil custom on the present day, since this day is not only the head of the fasts, but also of the ages. It is therefore to be venerated with great worship and religion, and not to be polluted with lustful pleasures, because in name and mystery it appears to be consecrated above the rest. It is called by the Lord the Lord's day, because he placed it first in the order of days, and because, death having been overcome, which he took upon himself for us unworthy ones, and the enemy vanquished, from whose power he snatched us, he mightily rose from the dead on it, and in honor of his resurrection appointed that it should be observed by us.

How then do we desire to rise from the death of the soul, if we are unwilling to honor the day of the Lord's resurrection? And by what reasoning do we suppose our minds are purified through fasting, if we wish to enter through the gate of the fasts polluted?

Perhaps someone, unbridled and more obedient to the pleasures of the body than to the laws of God, will answer me as I chastise such things and reprove my own sins along with the iniquities of others: You, who preach that the natural union of male and female and the bond of love established from the beginning ought to be broken, ask for things altogether impossible and useless, that by some fast I should abstain from a woman, who is my own flesh, as though from foods. To him I, although a sinner, will answer easily: Because God did not give the goods of this world that we might abuse them, but that we might use them justly. For marriage, like the other riches of the world, while it is held justly, is good; while unjustly, it turns into sin. Whence Gregory says: whatever we receive for the use of life, we turn back to the use of vices.

Nor do I preach the separation of a consecrated union, but I appoint abstinence for a short time of thirty-six days. For what does it profit to abstain from meats, and not put aside carnal works? For you who have lived the whole year placed in these and other delights, ought at least in this small space of time to cease for God's sake. For why are you called a man from the virtue of the body, if you do not have this virtue in your mind, that for the sake of God, who has given you all things, and from whom you daily ask for greater things, you cannot fast for the tenth part of the year?

For whoever looks closely will find no more than thirty-six days, which are the tenth of the year, spent in this same abstinence. For since the whole year consists of three hundred sixty-six days, if three hundred thirty are subtracted, the same number of days I mentioned are consecrated to fasting. Of these six days, then, which with their nights amount to one hundred fifty hours, the tenth part is fifteen hours. But since we cannot gather from them a whole day together with the following night, which, added to the aforesaid number, we might devote to fasting, ecclesiastical usage has established that what is not rendered in that portion should be made up on the Sundays of the same season, by fasting from meat and from carnal pleasures. For on these days, since they are consecrated in the very name of God, the refreshment of food is granted and license to sin is withdrawn. There is given to us what brings life and is better; there is withdrawn from us what brings death and is worse.

But if we do not defile these days with vices and carnal pollution, we surely restore from them the full tithes of the whole year. But since to us, regenerated by the sacred font, and now tasting the flesh not of the figurative but of the true Lamb, it was said by the Lord himself, "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven"; the Christian religion has established that not only these thirty-six days for the tithes of the year, but also, together with these, the four which begin at the head of the fast, on account of the perfection of so great a mystery, should turn the fast into forty days. For this Lenten fast has great authority both from the Law and from the Prophets and from the Gospel. For the lawgiver Moses, that he might be commended as one who received the Law—although Church never strictly commanded it universally—fasted for forty days.

Likewise Elijah, greatest of the Prophets, who deserved to be caught up into heaven in a fiery chariot, when he was persecuted by Jezebel, first fed by angelic food, afterward abstained from all food for the same number of days.

Now that the season of Lent is drawing to a close, and the joys of the most sacred Resurrection are approaching, the mention of the Lord's Passion, most beloved brothers, comes to us in its yearly round, which today strikes the universal Church with a tearful recounting. And although many days remain from this one until that day which was granted specially to see its Author crucified; nevertheless it is entrusted to us by the holy fathers to recite this same Passion through these following days, especially by blessed Gregory, who in all the ecclesiastical offices, that is the day and night hours, from here until the Paschal feast, introduces the words and mourning of the Passion, suggesting that we ought to weep for him, without whom we can have no joy in its fullness. Whoever, then, trusts to be a member of our Redeemer, let us feel the pain and injury of so great a Head.

Whence the prophet says: "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint; from the sole of the foot even to the crown there is no soundness in it." And the Apostle: "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it." Since indeed we know that the higher and more honorable member, namely Christ, who is our head and crown, suffered, let us, the lower members, suffer with him: especially since he was willing to suffer not for any fault of his own committing, but for our redemption, that he might redeem us from the ancient servitude of the devil, and make us perpetual inhabitants of the heavenly homeland, from which we were shut out as captives. For he, being ineffably merciful, was willing to cleanse our sins and our ancient iniquities not with gold or any kind of metal, or cloaks of beautiful variety, nor even with the victims of other animals, but by offering his own body to God the Father on the altar of the cross, and by the shedding of his most precious blood.

Whence the prophet: "Truly he has borne our sufferings, and carried our infirmities." And our Mediator himself said to the Father: "Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require: then I said, behold, I come." And the meaning is: Oh, God the Father, because I did not see you desiring the burnt offerings of animals for the redemption of the human race, I said at once, behold I come to be sacrificed for the salvation of my people. Behold, dearest brothers, we have heard that Christ was sacrificed for us: whence we may greatly both rejoice and grieve: rejoice, because happy is the fault which had such and so great a Redeemer; grieve, because we see no imitator of so great a Passion. For he, having died bodily, requires a sacrifice not only of our body's death, if that be necessary, but of the amendment of life and the humbling of the spirit.

That is, so that our spirit, marveling at so great and ineffable a humility of its Maker, may tremble, and, overcoming the enticements of the flesh, may have a certain compassion with him who suffered.

Whence it is written: "A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit." And although it is impossible for our bodily frailty to follow his immense deity, yet we do well follow him according to the measure of our humanity, if we mortify the vices of the body through fasting and prayers and vigils: if we rejoice to remain clean and shining before his eyes. Whence the prophet: "Wash yourselves, be clean," and the rest.

But how, when the fury of the persecutor threatens, shall we be ready to lay down our life for him, when for love of him we cannot even fast for a little while from vices and from certain foods? In what way, then, do we imitate his Passion, we who keep our bodies from no filthiness? Moreover, indeed, what is worse, by fiercely resisting his commandments, we are, as it were, adversaries opposed to our enemy. For while he cries out in the Old Testament: "You shall not kill, you shall not steal," and the other precepts of the Law; as if provoking his wrath against us, mad and out of our senses, we commit adultery, and we kill, and we steal: and moreover, all vices, the more they are forbidden us, the more eagerly we take care to follow and love them.

Likewise, while he threatens in the New Testament of the Gospel: "whoever says to his brother, Raca, and whoever says, Fool, shall be liable to the fire of hell"; we, on the contrary, touched by the zeal of envy, heap upon our brothers all manner of insulting reproaches, proudly and stubbornly. Whence we ought to restrain our mind from such things and from things like them, if we hope to be partakers of his redemption. For he is the true priest and pontiff of the good things to come, who offered to God his Father not the blood of goats and bulls, but himself, namely the spotless Lamb, cleansing our conscience from dead works, that is, from sins: and by this he entered once into the holies, that he might now appear before the face of God the Father for us.

For the other priests, having slaughtered the flesh of animals according to the custom of the old law, entered once each year into the holies: but this priest, forever, who did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it, not each year, but in the last year of his life, having sacrificed himself on the altar of the cross, entered once into the holies, that is, into heaven, so that to his servants who follow him by faith he might unlock the secrets of the Father, which after the end he may bestow on them to possess.

The other priests, when the time of sacrifice was completed, being about to return to the temple the following year, took care to return to their own homes: he, having accomplished the mystery of his Passion and Resurrection, returned to his own heavenly palaces, not to come again the following year, but to come at the end of the age, that he may sift with a right examination the merits of the good and the wicked, and render rewards to the good, punishments to the wicked. What shall we do on that day, brothers, on which we shall render account not only for our evil deeds, but also for our idle words? And if we feel all the faults of the tongue, which are accounted by us as nothing; what is to be feared concerning the other members, namely the hands and feet and others, which we know without doubt have done many unlawful things? For if we should pay the penalties for all the faults we have committed, we would be eternally condemned and lost.

Therefore let each one of us, in proportion as he loves his soul, blot out past sins through penitence, and beware lest he repeat them, and let him not rekindle what he has once extinguished by the grace of God. For whoever repeats the sin he has already lamented provokes God to wrath against himself, so that when called upon he will not hear him. Whence he says through Solomon: "I called, and you refused; you despised all my counsel, and neglected my rebukes: I also will laugh at your destruction, and will mock when that which you feared comes upon you." How fearful a voice, most beloved brothers, by which our Redeemer threatens that he will laugh at our destruction! Wherefore let us continually open the ears of our mind to his precepts, that we may see him in judgment not terrible, but gentle. And how shall we be able to endure him terrible and wrathful against us, we who in this present life can scarcely bear a flash of lightning or a thunderclap for fear?

And if we are terrified for a time by the movement of a single creature, with what strength shall we be able to await the Creator coming with fire to judge, and shaking not only the earth but also the heavens? For as the Psalmist says: "A fire shall burn before him, and a mighty tempest shall be round about him." And the Judge himself says through the prophet: "Yet once more, I will shake not only the earth, but also heaven." Fear greatly, brothers, the coming of that Judge, in whose fixed judgment there will be no room for redemption. Cease from wicked morals and from the base habit of a shameful life, and strive to suffer with your Redeemer, that you may rise with him from the graves of your vices, and after the judgment ascend happily to the heavenly kingdoms. Amen.

Rejoicing in the delight of the present day, most beloved brothers, you ought to be diligent to recognize the mysteries with which it shines, so that a learned mind may examine within, whence arise the joys of gladness which we celebrate outwardly. But lest a superfluity of words breed weariness in your minds—especially since the office of this day is drawn out in very long chants and most pleasing jubilations concerning our God—I shall first strive to touch briefly upon its name, which is distinguished by various titles. For it is called the day of Palms, or of Flowers, and of Branches, as well as Hosanna, and the Pasch of Petition or of the Competent, and the day of the washing of heads. Although these are so named according to popular custom, they all nevertheless retain a certain and fitting signification.

It is called the day of Palms because on it our Lord, sitting on a donkey, about to suffer for the salvation of the human race, went to Jerusalem; whom a very great crowd of rejoicing people met with branches of palms and of various trees, crying out: Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. It is also called the day of Flowers, because holy mother Church, in commemoration of so great a joy, has chosen on this day above others, in the yearly cycle, to carry blessed and consecrated flowers while singing, that she may go rejoicing to meet her Redeemer. It is also called the day of Branches, because for the same reason not only palms but also green branches are carried today by the children of the Church.

It is called Hosanna, indeed, because the Hebrew people, going before and following the Lord, seemed to sing to him, "Hosanna," which is interpreted in Latin as "Save now." It is called the Pasch of Petition or of the Competent, because on this day the symbol, that is, the belief of the holy faith, was handed over to the competent neophytes, so that those who hastened to receive the grace of God at the Paschal solemnity might know the faith which they ought to confess. For they are called "competent" as though "petitioning together," that is, seeking the grace of God together. The common people call this the day of the washing of heads, because it was customary on that day to wash the heads of the infants who were to be anointed on holy Sabbath, lest, being soiled by the observance of Lent, they should come to the anointing unclean. This week, moreover, is called Great, either because greater sobriety is observed in it, or because a greater office than in the other weeks is celebrated in it.

Let these things be briefly said concerning the names of this day, which suffice: of which some, as they are understood according to the letter, so they remain; some signify something else allegorically. For in all Scripture of the Old and New Testament, the palm has always signified victory. By the branches of palms, therefore, that victory is designated by which our Lord, through his own death, destroyed our death, and by the trophy of the cross conquered the devil, the prince of death. By the flowers is expressed the odor of virtue, by which the captured faithful souls accompany their king going to Jerusalem, that is, to the holy Church; that celebrating with him the Pasch, that is, the passover, they may deserve to rise with him to heavenly things. By the branches of the trees are signified the sayings of the ancient prophets, which he, having gathered them, strews on the way, who instructs the simple hearts of the brothers, and those less learned, by examples, lest they wander from the way of truth.

But that "hosanna," so often repeated and redoubled by the people, signifies the unity of our faith by which we ought to live; because although among the faithful people there is a diversity as much of rank as of sex and age, yet with one mouth and one praise of confession we ought to cry out to our Savior, saying: Hosanna, that is, save, or make safe: for it is a Hebrew word, which expressed in Latin sounds, save, or make safe your people, or the whole world.

But since such names are fitted to this day from the corresponding significations of the mysteries, it must be shown to you, dearest ones, by some brief discourse, by what works of our Savior it is illustrated. For indeed, as the holy evangelist relates, six days before the old Pasch, which are counted from yesterday, Jesus came to Bethany, into the house of Simon the leper, where he had raised Lazarus, and they made him a supper there: at which also Mary, taking a pound of ointment, anointed the feet of the Lord, and wiped them with her hair: for which thing, Judas the betrayer being indignant, Jesus answered in praise of the woman: She has wrought a good work upon me, and the other things which follow in the Passion concerning a matter of this kind.

Following this custom of good work, the holy man Gregory, on this very day, namely yesterday, occupied himself wholly in giving alms and washing the feet of the poor, so that what the most devoted woman did to the head, that is, to Christ, he might do to his members, that is, to the poor. Whence this same day, remaining without its own office, is thus entitled in the Sacramentary: on Saturday there is no public station, when the lord pope gives alms. Concerning which deed, if you wish to gather an allegorical flower, know that the ointment signifies justice, and therefore it is said to have been a pound. For whoever perfectly keeps justice, without doubt washes the feet of the Lord: and whoever, by living well, loves mercy, anoints his feet with ointment. And whoever gives abundantly to the poor, wipes the feet of the Lord with his hair.

The house, then, was filled from the odor of the ointment, that is, the whole world, both by the fame of so devoted a woman, and by the virtue of the faithful imitating her in such things. For that the Son of God, about to suffer, went to Bethany six days before the Pasch, signifies that the man whom he had lost through the serpent's fraud, having been formed on the sixth day, he was hastening, passing through Bethany, that is, through the house of obedience, to redeem with his own blood on that same sixth day. From which aforesaid city of Bethany, going out on the next day, namely on the fifth day before the Pasch, which is today, he sent two of his disciples to Jerusalem, saying to them: Go into the village that is opposite you, and you will find an ass and a colt: loose them and bring them to me. And they, loosing them, brought them to Jesus, and put their garments upon them, and made him sit thereon.

When the crowd, which had come to the feast day, heard that Jesus was going to Jerusalem, they took branches of palms, and came to meet him, and cried out: Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

But since these deeds of the Lord, recorded in the words of the evangelist, are sufficiently clear according to the letter, since they were just as they are stated; the mystical sense must be opened to us for the sake of brevity, which is hidden from all except the wise. For the two disciples signify two orders of preachers, one among the circumcision, the other among the gentiles, or Peter and Philip, whom Christ sent to Jerusalem, that is, to the holy Church; of whom one, namely Philip, led Samaria, as it were the ass, and the other, namely Peter, led Cornelius from the gentiles, as it were the colt, to the faith of Christ. Likewise, by the two animals two peoples are figured, namely the Jewish and the Gentile; which at the coming of the disciples were bound, because each people was bound by the chains of its own sins. The garments of the Apostles are either the doctrines of virtues, or the works of justice. Whence the Psalmist: Let thy priests be clothed with justice.

But the very great crowd, which strewed their garments in the way, signifies the innumerable multitude of martyrs, who, stripping themselves of their own garment, make a way for the simpler ones, by which they may be able to arrive at the vision of peace. For by the ass, on which he sat, the simple hearts of the gentiles are figured; which, as if untamed, remained bound by no restraints of discipline; going, as it was led, to mute idols: which the Lord, by presiding over and ruling it, led to the vision of eternal peace. Finally, it is believed not without the cause of a great sacrament, that the Lord, on this day especially heading to Jerusalem, made use of the ministry of beasts of burden; and that he wished various ornaments of palms and branches and flowers to be carried about him, and to be called King and Lord: all of which things, coming often before to Jerusalem, he had refused to have done.

For he entered with such glory for this reason, that since he knew the time of his passion was now at hand, he might compel the minds of the Jews to be stirred up against him, that through the death of his body he might destroy the death of our souls. Therefore, thrice-blessed ones, who recall his passion, even if we cannot all die for him, and, the calumniators of the Church being pacified, we have no war with them, let us nevertheless take care to mortify the vices of our members, that after the mourning of the passion, taking hold of the joys of the resurrection, we may be able to rise with him from vices to the height of virtues. Amen.

We profess that we believe the indivisible and inseparable holy Trinity, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, so one and threefold, and so threefold and one: a Trinity in distinct and discrete persons: that is, the Father, from whom are all things, the Son, through whom are all things, the Holy Spirit, in whom are all things; yet of one deity, one essence, and one substance, in three indeed subsistences or persons, so that the Father be Father, the Son be Son, the Holy Spirit be Holy Spirit, in one nature and one substance, so that one and only and supreme God be believed. Not introducing three natures as Arius blasphemes, who preached three gods, more essential, lesser, and inferior. But we confess the holy Trinity in unity, and unity in the holy Trinity. For when we say the Almighty Father, the appellation of this name of Father is referred to the person of the Son. And when we say the eternal Son, it is referred to the person of the eternal Father.

And when we name the Holy Spirit, we show that we believe him to be from the person of the eternal Father. But when we say God the Father Almighty, the mystery of this name cannot be emptied out: because when we say Father, we show the Son: and when we say Son, we declare the Father: and when we say the eternal Father, we show the eternal Son. For if we do not find the beginning of the word of this name "Father," when the Father was so called, it is consequently shown that we shall not find the beginning of the Begotten either. Let us beseech that a reason be given us, when the Father received the lot of being called by this name, "father." If in time, if outside time, let someone tell us when he first began to be so called: and if this can be proved, there will be no doubt that from that beginning of the name "Father" the Son received a beginning, at which the Father was named.

And if it fails—nay, since it does fail, and neither can it be proved nor can a beginning of the name "Father" be given, when he began to be father—let him then profess to us the holy Trinity to be co-essential and consubstantial: neither the Father before the Son, nor the Son after the Father, nor the Holy Spirit to have been inferior: because since the beginning of the name "Father" is not found, we do not know by what reasoning a beginning is ascribed to the Son, since when we say the everlasting God the Father, we show the everlasting Son of God. Therefore we profess the holy Trinity in one nature and one essence and substance, in three subsistences or persons. But we believe that the very Word of God, that is, the Son of the Father, begotten without beginning, the same one of the three subsistences of the holy Trinity, the eternal Son, through the dispensation made for us and for our salvation, descended, the Word of God incarnate, and made man.

Coming within the womb of the Virgin, he assumed to himself the power of our nature, from the holy glorious Mother of God, Mary the Virgin, perfect God and perfect man, in two natures, namely of divinity and of humanity: likewise himself consubstantial with us according to humanity: not divided into two sons, but one and the same Son of God and of man, in the truth of two natures, in one subsistence or person, a union of divinity and humanity having been made; so that from two perfect natures there are not two sons, but one, the same Son of God and man remaining what he was, began to be what he was not, while, being without beginning the Son of the eternal Father, he was made the son of man. Therefore he is also one Lord.

The greatest cause makes heretics err, since either they do not know, or they are unwilling to notice, that in the Lord Jesus Christ, just as there is one person, so there are two substances, God from God the Father, and man from a human mother: and the things which the Lord himself speaks concerning himself according to the dispensation of the flesh assumed, they attribute to the divinity, as is that saying: The Father is greater than I, or that: Jesus wearied from the journey, or that: He wept for Lazarus, or other such things which are read.

If they were willing to consider that saying of the Apostle: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, or that of the Gospel: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, they would not doubt, as has been said above, to confess that in one person there are two substances; and where they hear it said: The Father is greater than I, they would take it according to the humanity: but where they hear: I and the Father are one, they would not doubt that it was said according to the divinity, as is given to be understood from his works. For according to man he hungered, that he might show true flesh: but according to God he satisfied five thousand men from five loaves, that he might prove himself God by his powers. According to man he thirsted, but according to God he refreshed the Samaritan woman with living water. According to man he boarded a boat, but according to God he walked on the sea with dry feet.

According to man he slept in the boat, according to God he commanded the winds and the waves. According to man he wept for Lazarus, according to God he raised him, dead four days, from the tomb. According to man he hung on the cross, according to God he gave paradise to the thief from the cross. According to man, having suffered, he tasted death, according to God he raised himself from the dead. If they were willing wisely to discern these and similar things, and to attribute to each substance what is its own, they could easily hold the course of right faith, and would not, on account of his benefits which he took up or suffered for us in the form of a servant, cast insults upon his divinity; and wherever they read in the Scriptures something said according to the humanity that speaks less, this the divinity does not say, but the humanity attests it for the dispensation of the flesh assumed.

For as we read him to be God, so nowhere do we read a greater or lesser God, nor ought we with a religious mind to believe it. But he still persists thus, and says: It cannot be that the Son is not believed to be less than the Father, since he is known to be from the Father. The custom of human generation deceives him, so that because he is called son, he is believed to be less than the father. Among men a father begets a son who is less, because the father himself was begotten less than his own father. Hence, as the son grows, the father grows old, and when the father dies the son is proved to succeed him, and sometimes becomes better and more powerful than the father. But with God it is not so; because where divinity has no growing or aging, it is fitting that love should have an equal son, since fullness cannot have one greater.

Therefore the perfect begot the perfect, the omnipotent the omnipotent, the full the full: and because he had no increase of age, he could not beget one lesser: but I know the son to be altogether such as the father is, as he himself says: He who sees me, sees also the Father; and elsewhere: He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him. But perhaps because you hear "sent," you therefore think him lesser. I ask you, do you believe the Son to be God, or not? Without doubt you will answer, God; for even if you should wish to deny it, you will be refuted by the holy Scriptures, the Apostle saying: Of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. And John in his Epistle says: That we may be in his true Son, who is true God and eternal life. And Thomas says: My God and my Lord.

And Melchizedek the high priest says: Blessed be Abraham of the most high God, who created heaven and earth. You see that not merely "God" but "God most high" is attested by the words of Melchizedek. Osee the prophet also bears witness, saying: Establishing heaven and creating earth, I the Lord your God, whose hands created all the host of heaven. If therefore the Son is God—indeed, because he is God, because all things were made through him, and he is not only not lesser, but God most high—I ask you, whether God is everywhere, or perhaps only in a place? Since it is impious to deny that God is everywhere, I ask you, where was he sent? But understand the sending of the Son as his incarnation, the Apostle himself explaining: God, he says, sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law. Finally we read of him in the prophet: I fill heaven and earth, says the Lord. And the Evangelist concerning the same: Of his fullness, he says, we have all received.

And if he himself fills all things, where was he sent, whose majesty fills all things? But perhaps you still say, as the carnal understanding holds, that between the Father begetting and the Son begotten there could not but have been some interval. Intervals make hours, hours mark time: and thus, if you set time before the Son, you do not confess that all things were made through him. And where is that: All things were made through him? Certainly according to your own proposition I answer, you who say that the Father once existed without the Son. Surely we read likewise in the Apostle: Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, and the Lord himself speaks of himself: I am the way, the truth, and the life. If then the Father was without the Son, as you say, he was without power, he was without wisdom, he was without life, he was without truth.

But since the Father is never to be believed to have been without these, it befits your salvation that, according to the catholic faith, you confess the Son co-eternal and equal with the Father: because his power also is read to be everlasting, the Apostle saying: His everlasting power also and divinity. Likewise also concerning truth, the Psalmist saying: And the truth of the Lord endures forever. They are also accustomed to raise this like a question by calumny. The Father, they say, is so much greater in that he is always named in the first place. Even if he were always named in the first place, it would seem quite fitting; since the Son is from him, not he from the Son. Yet that you may recognize the equality, hear in the Scriptures where the Son also is named first. John the Evangelist says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In "the Word" he indicated the Son.

And the Apostle to the Ephesians: Do you not know that every fornicator and unclean person has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God? Behold, here too the Son is named in the first place. And to the Galatians: Paul an Apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. And to the Thessalonians: Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God and our Father, who loved us. To the Corinthians: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. And the Lord himself says: I and the Father are one. He does not say: The Father and I. And elsewhere: He who sees me, sees also the Father. And again: He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him. Behold how often the Son is named in the first place!

But because there is equality in the Father and the Son, whichever is named before or after can show no prejudice to the other, since there is no diversity where the divinity is equal in both. But we read it thus because human speech cannot otherwise express itself, except that when it has said one, it thus says the other. Behold, that you may recognize that nothing there is greater, and nothing lesser, the question about the Father being named first has ceased: because where there is one substance, one deity, and incorporeal immensity, no disparity or diversity is to be reckoned. For where one God is believed, there lesser and greater are excluded. For unity knows no number, and equality admits no degree, as it is written: You shall not go up by steps to my altar. And therefore let him put away contention, and hold with the catholic faith the inseparable Trinity, joined without mixture, distinct without separation, because the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one full God.

For reason itself teaches that the One admits neither a later nor an earlier: he who alone is, knows no comparison or separation; he who is full cannot be lesser, because to perfection nothing can be added, nor anything taken away. Let there be believed, then, three persons, but not three substances; three properties, but not three powers. Thus there is one everlastingness without beginning, as there is one majesty without end; the Father without an author, the Son without time, the Holy Spirit without one greater. For we catholics say that our Lord God Jesus Christ is both lesser than the Father and equal to him: lesser on account of the humanity assumed, since though he was in the form of God, he deigned to put on the form of a servant; but we say equal on account of the eternal deity, by which the Son, existing from the Father, is also co-eternal with the Father.

Why then do they not confess with us that he is equal, when we do not with them deny that he is lesser? Especially since we read both in the holy Scriptures, the Evangelist saying: Therefore the Jews sought to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath, but also said that God was his Father, making himself equal to God. Behold, the impiety of the Jews says "equal," and the Christian does not fear to say "lesser." And elsewhere the same Evangelist says: He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him. For equal honor is shown only to equals. And in another place he says the same: As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. Hear him saying: As the Father, so also the Son.

Hear him saying: To whom he will—and know him to be equal to the Father, and to have his own power: and do not say God is lesser, for nowhere in the holy Scriptures do we read either a greater God or a lesser. As he himself says to Philip: He who sees me, sees also the Father. And: All things which the Father does, these same things the Son likewise does. Or that: The Word was God. And the Apostle, as we have mentioned: Who is, he says, over all, God blessed forever. And the Apostle: Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God. Why this? Because no one seizes, except what he does not have. He therefore who had the equality did not consider it a matter of seizing: but what the rebellious angel wished to seize by robbery, Christ possessed by nature.

And that he is truly God, hear blessed John saying in his Epistle: And we may be, he says, in his true Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God, and eternal life. Do you hear "true God," and yet presume to say "lesser," and do not confess "equal"? Blessed Paul also says to Titus: Awaiting the blessed hope, and the coming of the glory of the great God. I do not know with what face he is said to be lesser, whom the Apostle professes to be the great God. This too the faithless error is accustomed to say, that where in the Scriptures we read either "God alone," or "the Highest alone," or "the wise alone," this should not be said of the Trinity, but should be taken of the Father alone. How absurd it is to think so may be proved from this one testimony.

For the Apostle says: Made known to the only wise God; they do not understand that he did not say: "to the only wise Father," but: "to the only wise God," which is the Trinity. For while they attribute this to the Father alone, they blaspheme the Son as unwise. And how does the Apostle say that he is the wisdom of God, if the Father alone is wise, since no one can be wise except through his own wisdom? And where is that which the same Apostle attests to the Colossians concerning Christ Jesus: In whom, he says, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? Whence let them recognize how foolish is what they put forth, and wherever they read anything similarly, let them not attribute it to one person, but to the blessed Trinity, which alone is the highest and true God. For also concerning the Holy Spirit the Apostle says thus: To one indeed through the Spirit is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit.

If then, as is true, both the word of wisdom and of knowledge is given through the Holy Spirit; how can this be ascribed to the Father's person alone, that he alone is wise, unless, as has been said, these things belong to the equal Trinity?

They are also accustomed to say that the Son is lesser for this reason, that he is visible, while the Father is invisible. They do not understand that the Son too is not visible in the substance of his deity, except in the assumed man, who is also called Christ. For the Son of God, that is, the Word, who was in the beginning God with God, through whom all things were made, could not be seen in his substance, just as neither can the Father be seen in his substance. Now, without offense to him, I ask that very person who says that the Son of God was seen, whether he confesses his own soul to be visible or invisible: and when he shall have said "invisible," as is indeed true, let it be said to him: If the creature—that is, your soul—is invisible, being certainly a creature of God, how could the Creator of the universe be visible?

But he put on flesh, which could be seen, for this reason, that the deity could not be seen by man. In this flesh the Father is greater; equal to the Word, greater than the flesh: equal to him through whom he made us, greater than him who was made on our account. For that the Son is God, although many testimonies set forth above clearly teach this, yet I have thought a few more should still be added. In Genesis it is written: "God created heaven", and indeed the Evangelist confirms that all things were made by the Son. Likewise it follows there: "God created man to his image and likeness". Behold, here recognize God, because he himself also created man. And Isaiah says of John, the forerunner of the Lord: "Make straight the paths of our God". Of what God, unless indeed of the Son, whom we do not doubt came in the flesh? And a little after: "Strengthen the feeble hands, and confirm the weak knees.

Say to the fainthearted: Behold your God will come with strength, and he will save you, and then the eyes of the blind shall be opened". Which indeed we know was fulfilled at the coming of Christ. The Psalmist also says: "All the nations whatsoever thou hast made shall come and adore before thee, thou art wonderful and doing wonders, thou art God alone". I do not think anyone is so impious as to deny that the Son of God both worked wonders and created all the nations, unless perhaps the Jews. And elsewhere Isaiah, when announcing the coming of Christ through a virgin, says among other things: "And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God". But the blessed Apostle also says: "For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ". And so that you may recognize that Christ is God, thus he says elsewhere: "We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God".

"As I live," saith the Lord, "every knee shall bow to me." Surely he says this of Christ, whom we believe will come to judge the living and the dead. The Psalmist, representing the voices of the angels when Christ had ascended into heaven, says: "Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall enter in". And to those asking who this King of glory might be, the Lord answered: "The Lord who is strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle; he is the King of glory". And lest perhaps they should think this said of the Father, as they absurdly understand many things, let them hear the Apostle agreeing with this verse: "For if they had known it," he says, "they would never have crucified the Lord of glory".

Since by both present and past testimonies, which have been demanded from the sacred Scriptures, the Son is shown to be God, I marvel why some perchance do not fear to blaspheme by calling him lesser: since nowhere at all is God read to be lesser, except, as has been said, on account of the dispensation of the flesh assumed, in which he was not only made lower than the angels, but is found younger than his own mother, as we have already said. According to this rule, then, believe in Christ two substances, true God, and true man. According to the man he is subject to death, according to God he is known to be the author of life, blessed Peter saying: You asked that a murderer be granted to you, but you killed the author of life.

According to the man: My soul is sorrowful even unto death; according to God: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again, and no one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. Hence also they are wont to take occasion for calumny, because the Lord said in the Gospel: The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing. This the carnal sense, not understanding, thinks was said in order that he might show himself to be from the Father, as being both God and Son: just as is wont to happen among men, as when a father who is a craftsman teaches his son his craft, so that what the son sees the father working, this he may more particularly imitate. How absurd it is to believe this of God the Father omnipotent, who is incorporeal, invisible, inestimable, and immeasurable, whoever has sound eyes of the heart can plainly recognize.

For those who think this way must be asked: this world which we behold, by whom was it made? They will by no means deny that it was by the Son, the Evangelist also attesting and saying: All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. Let them say, then, where the Son saw the Father previously making another world, so that afterward he might create this one: especially since, in the power of God, to have willed is to have created; as we read: He spoke, and they were made.

But with the veil of the heart removed, let them learn to believe that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son: because the divinity, wholly and present everywhere, both of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, can nowhere be without itself, as he himself says: I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and let them recognize what it is to see the Son, that there is one substance, one will, one power, one glory. Let it be believed that nothing there is greater, and nothing lesser.

For if we earthly men, what we wish to do with the body, we accomplish by our mind, wisdom carrying it out after the insinuation of premeditation, and in a certain way, counsel having arisen in our mind, we first do inwardly in the heart what we dispose to do, which nevertheless, without any division of the senses, one mind, indissociably, brings about: how does not God the Father, with God the Son, who is his own Wisdom remaining in himself, because he himself is, as we have often said, the wisdom and power of the Father, accomplish all things in one will and one operation? But the Father does not do one set of things and the Son another; but the very things which the Father does, the Son also does, as he himself testifies: Whatsoever, he says, the Father does, these same things the Son likewise also does.

But he said this: The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing, so that we might know and believe that the Son is from the Father, and not from himself, or from elsewhere, but co-eternal with the Father, because the Father also always exists perfect in himself, and nothing was ever lacking to him, or added. For if at some time, as the Arians blaspheme, the Father was without the Son, then the Father was imperfect, then he was without the Word, and as we have already recalled, he was without wisdom, without power, without life, without justice, without truth: because all these species of divinity, according to the Scriptures, are known to be the Son. But since it is blasphemous to say the Father was ever without these virtues, it is just, it is fitting, that you confess the Son to be co-eternal and co-equal with the Father.

For if God, when he speaks in our hearts, speaks in a wondrous manner without sound, how do you think he can speak to his Son, who is his Word? So then consider, that he spoke incorporeally to the Son, because he also incorporeally begot the Son. For he did not teach him as though he had begotten one untaught. But this is what it means that he taught him, that he begot one taught and knowing. And this is: The Father taught me, that is, the Father begot me knowing. But how can the Son do nothing of himself, of whom the Prophet testifies, and says: But God is in heaven above, and in earth he has done all things whatsoever he willed? But perhaps you will say this was said of the Father; return to the Evangelist saying of the Son that all things were made through him, without him nothing was made. He also speaks to Moses: Go, he says, tell the children of Israel, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.

He replying, and saying: Tell me your name, for they will not believe me, thereafter God added and said to him: Go, say to the children of Israel: I am who am, and he who is has sent me to you. And lest you take this to have been said of the Father, hear the blessed Apostle agreeing with this passage, and in a certain way expounding this very testimony, to the Corinthians: The Son of God, he says, who was preached to you by me, and Silvanus, and Timothy, was not in him yes and no, but was in him yes. For as many as are the promises of God, in him is the yes. Hear Paul agreeing with Moses, and do not depart from the catholic faith.

For if you ask the catholic Church what the Father is, it says God: but it also calls the Son God, and it also calls the Holy Spirit God: and yet it does not say three gods, lest it be compared to the Gentiles, who, deceived by their error, contrive many gods. But let us believe the Scripture saying, both of the New and of the Old Testament, that God is one: and if one is greater, another lesser, as the Arians say, one cannot be spoken of; inequality excludes unity. But attend to how we may believe three and one. Equality of powers makes unity, the property of persons makes the Trinity. You have heard how he himself taught his equality with the Father to be understood: I, he says, and the Father are one. "One" is one thing, "we are" another. For when he says "we are," he signifies persons. We are one, that is, we are justice, and the same wisdom, undivided power, equal glory.

Since these things are so, let dissension be removed, and let the whole faith be held. They also say: The Father is greater for this reason, because he is immortal. They must be asked whether they confess the Son to be mortal in the substance of his deity. If they say this, how contrary to reason they speak, every man can recognize, who does not doubt even that the human soul is immortal. But this must be said to them, that according to the flesh he is said to have suffered and died. For according to divinity, by which he always existed, and created all things, he remains immortal. They also say he is visible; how absurd this is, let those who say it recognize, since not even the human soul can be visible, how much more God in his substance? But therefore he assumed flesh, which could be seen, because deity could not be beheld with bodily eyes. Let these things for the present suffice concerning the equality of the Father and the Son.

For concerning the equality of the works of the Trinity, that is, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a little later, by the Lord's grace, we will show from the sacred Scriptures. But now concerning the deity of the Holy Spirit a few of the many testimonies must be set forth, which the heretics are said not only to assert as lesser, but even to deny altogether to be God. Let them hear a few things concerning the deity of the Holy Spirit. In Genesis the divine word says: The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters; this is the eminence of power, not the poverty of necessity. And in the Gospel: God is Spirit: and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. And lest perhaps you understand this said of the Father, and not of the Holy Spirit, hear what follows: The Spirit breathes where he wills. Hear "where he wills," that you may not doubt he is of his own power.

And the Apostle says to the Corinthians: There are divisions of graces, but the same Spirit: and there are divisions of operations, but the same God, who works all in all. And that you may know the Spirit himself to be named Lord and God, hear below how he concludes: To one indeed is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, and the rest. And thus he concludes: But all these things the one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills. He who dispenses divine gifts as he wills, knows no law of a superior. Recognize then, that he who divides as he wills is proved subject to no one, but is known to be of his own power. For from supreme power descends will, to which no authority contradicts. And to the Hebrews likewise he speaks of the distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.

And who this distributor and divider is, he shows plainly to the Romans, saying: To each as God has divided the measure of faith. And to the Corinthians: Know you not, he says, that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone violates the temple of God, God will destroy him. And who this God is, whose temple he forbids to be violated, hear in what follows: Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? And who this Holy Spirit would be, whose temple we would be, he shows by thus concluding: Glorify, he says, and bear God in your body. Recognize the Holy Spirit plainly to be God, and cease to blaspheme. And in the Acts of the Apostles blessed Peter says to Ananias, who had vowed an offering to God, and afterward proved undevout, thus: Who compelled you to lie to the Holy Spirit? You have not lied to men, but to God.

Behold here too the testimony of blessed Peter manifests most evidently that he is God.

Likewise there: The Holy Spirit said: Set apart for me Paul and Barnabas for the work to which I have chosen them. And blessed Paul there said: Take heed, he says, to yourselves and to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops, to rule the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. And who this is who sets apart and sends the Apostles, the same Paul declares to the Corinthians, saying: And God has appointed, he says, in the Church first Apostles, second Prophets, third Teachers, and so on. Behold where he has shown, clearer than light, that the Holy Spirit is God; and him whom in the Acts of the Apostles he calls the Holy Spirit, to the Corinthians he manifestly confesses to be God. For the same vessel of election says to the Jews: Well did the Holy Spirit prophesy of you through the mouth of Isaiah the prophet.

And who this Holy Spirit is who spoke in the Prophets, blessed David expresses, saying: I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me. And in the Acts: That the Scripture might be fulfilled, he says, which God foretold through the mouth of his prophets. And here recognize that he plainly declares him to be God who spoke through the mouth of the prophets, just as Zechariah also says in the Gospel: Blessed, he says, be the God of Israel, for he has visited and wrought redemption for his people, and after a few words he says: As he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets. Recognize that the Lord God is the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the mouth of the prophets, which not even the impious Jews deny.

For if he were not God, he would not in baptism be joined in one name of deity with the Father and the Son, as it is written, where the Lord himself set the rule of baptism: Go, he says, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This testimony alone ought to suffice for heretics against unbelief in the inseparable Trinity, since not even they themselves dare to baptize otherwise, lest they seem to corrupt the Lord's rule. And where one name is said, there both greater and lesser are excluded. And in the second to the Corinthians: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with you all. That you may recognize that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one substance and deity, hear Isaiah the prophet saying: Who weighed the mass of the earth with three fingers.

For we also find in the Scriptures singly that the finger is named the Holy Spirit, as is that in the Gospel where he says: If I cast out demons by the finger of God; which another evangelist declares, saying: If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God. And the magicians of Pharaoh, overcome by divine signs, say: It is the finger of God. At Pentecost, which the Jews used to celebrate even before the coming of Christ, Moses received tablets inscribed by the finger of God, that is, by the Spirit; and what was then figured on stone tablets—the very hard hearts of the Jews—after the Ascension of the Lord he deigned to appear visibly on tablets of flesh, that is, in the hearts of the disciples, in that very form of fire in which he appeared to Moses in the desert, of whom we believe Isaiah says: Our God is a consuming fire.

And as we read that no one knows the thoughts of men except God, how is the Holy Spirit not God, who is known to know not only what is in man, but also what is in God? As the Apostle says: For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God; and a little after: So the things of God no one has known, except the Spirit of God. But perhaps someone will say he is therefore lesser, because he is read to have been sent. And what will he say when he reads in Isaiah the prophet, speaking in the person of Christ: The Lord has sent me, and his Spirit. And elsewhere: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; for which reason he has anointed me, to preach good news to the poor remission, and sight to the blind, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and so on.

And that you may know this is evidently said of the Lord, the Evangelist says: When the Lord Jesus had come into the synagogue, the book of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, which, opening, he found written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and the rest which we have said above. And after this: He closed, it says, the book, and gave it to the attendant, and said: Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Is it to be believed that he is sent, who is known to be everywhere? As the Psalmist says: Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? But just as the sending of the Son is declared as incarnation, when he deigned to show himself either in the form of a dove, or in fire, or in various such assumed signs. How then is he to be believed lesser, who is even shown to have sent God—who is equal to the Father as he himself is—for our remission?

And not only to have sent, as we have recalled was said through Isaiah, but also to have created according to the flesh, as you have in the Gospel the angel saying to Mary: The Holy Spirit, he says, will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and so on. For Christ was conceived not by generation, but by the command and blessing of the Holy Spirit, as another evangelist also says: She was found, he says, to have in her womb of the Holy Spirit. The prophets, moreover, frequently say, as we have already recalled, Thus says the Lord. And who this Lord is, Micah the prophet clearly shows, when he speaks to Ahab saying: If you return safe from the battle, the Lord has not spoken by me. And who this God is who spoke in the Prophets, Paul the apostle demonstrates, when he says to the Jews: Well, he says, did the Holy Spirit prophesy of you through the mouth of Isaiah the prophet.

Go, he says, blind the heart of this people, and so on. Heretics are nevertheless to be asked, whose offense is greater: he who sins against the Father, or he who sins against the Holy Spirit, whom they say is not God. And when they say that the greater offense is to sin against the Father, the children of Israel are again to be asked whether they sinned against the Father, or against another. When they answer that they sinned against the Father, they are again to be asked whether their sins were forgiven them. Certainly they will not deny it, since we also read that they were converted to God, and their sins were forgiven them. Then they are to be asked to explain how they understand what was said by the Lord: Whoever sins against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in the age to come. If he is not God, why is his offense said by the Lord to be so grave.

Again they are to be asked whether the children of Israel were rebellious against God, or not. Since they cannot deny it, it must be said to them, how do they take that which blessed Stephen reproaches the Jews, saying: You always resist the Holy Spirit, and have always been rebellious to him, as your fathers were. Hear also what is said to the Thessalonians, where he places the Holy Spirit even in prior position, and calls him Lord, saying: Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and the patience of Christ. Note carefully, that here the Holy Spirit is prayed to, that he may direct the hearts of believers into the love of God, and into the patience of Christ. They are also to be asked, which is greater, the heavens or the powers of the heavens?

And when they undoubtedly say the powers of the heavens, it must be said to them: The Holy Spirit is so far from being lesser, that he is indeed supreme, since by the word of the Lord the heavens are said to have been created, but by the Holy Spirit the powers of the heavens. Take also where the Creator is evidently described as the Holy Spirit. Job says: The divine Spirit who made me. And in one verse he has shown him as divine Creator without doubt: since he calls him divine, he shows him to be both God and Creator. As David also says: Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. They are also to be asked, whether a creature can be everywhere, or not. And when they answer that it cannot be everywhere, as is indeed true, it must be said without doubt: the Holy Spirit is God, and not a creature, who is described as being everywhere.

Of whom, as has already been said, the Prophet, fearing his omnipotence, says: Where shall I go from your Spirit; and from your face, where shall I flee? Recognize therefore that there is no place where the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit is not proved to be present. Likewise they are to be asked, whether anyone besides God can forgive sins; and when they answer that no one can except God, because it is written: No one can forgive sins but God alone, it must be said to them without doubt that the Holy Spirit is God, who is known to confer the remission of sins, as the Lord said: Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. He also, in baptism together with the Father and the Son, grants remission of sins to those baptized. Hear also that the Holy Spirit is God, who is frequently joined with the Father and the Son.

To the Corinthians, as has already been said: The grace, he says, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with you all. If he were not God, and were a creature, as the heretic blasphemes, he would never in baptism, where the salvation of mankind is at stake, be joined with the Father and the Son. For that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one substance, Isaiah the prophet says, as we have already recalled: Who weighed the mass of the earth with three fingers? In this passage, through the three fingers, he has fully taught that there is one substance in three persons. Which the Apostle, understanding this to be said of the Trinity, says: All things are from him, and through him, and in him are all things, that is, from the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit all things are held together.

Likewise the same Apostle says to the Corinthians: God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. In this passage the Trinity is most clearly understood. God who said that light should shine out of darkness—the Holy Spirit is recognized; and where he says, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, the Father is understood; but in that where he says, in the face of Christ Jesus, the Son is designated. Hear further, that the Trinity remains in unity, and unity in the Trinity—the voices of angels and archangels declare this in Isaiah, where the Seraphim are written to say the hymn: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth—not three holies, but he concluded a threefold holy by saying, Lord God of Sabaoth: that is, so that you may understand three persons and one God.

They do not say it once, lest you believe in a singularity; not twice, lest you exclude the Holy Spirit; not "holy" of the Lords of Sabaoth, lest you confess three gods after the manner of the gentiles. But they say: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, and it is the Trinity that is praised as God, who is Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. That he is also God, from the equality of operations, whoever has sound eyes of the heart will easily be able to prove, as we shall demonstrate in what follows. As the Father saves, so also the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: Save us, O God, and gather us from the nations. Of the Son: The Son of Man came to save what was lost; and elsewhere: For he shall save his people from their sins. Of the Holy Spirit, to Titus: He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. As the Father strengthens, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit.

Esther, of the Father: Strengthen me, O king, and God of gods. Of the Son the Apostle: I thank our Lord Jesus Christ, who has strengthened me, and counted me faithful. Of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel: And the child grew, and was strengthened in spirit. The Father gives life, so does the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel: As the Father raises the dead, and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills. Of the Holy Spirit in the Epistle of Peter the apostle: Put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit. And Paul the apostle: The letter, he says, kills, but the spirit gives life. And in the Gospel: It is the spirit that gives life, for the flesh profits nothing. As the Father sets free, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: God the Most High, their deliverer. Of the Son in the Gospel: If he sets you free, you will be free indeed, and the truth will set you free.

Of the Holy Spirit: The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. The Father chooses, so does the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father the Apostle: Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who chose us before the foundation of the world. Of the Son: You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. Of the Holy Spirit in the Acts: When therefore they had fasted and prayed, the Holy Spirit said to them: Set apart for me Barnabas and Paul for the work to which I have chosen them. The Father is called Creator, so is the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father, the Apostle: What is the dispensation of the mystery hidden from God who created all things. Of the Son, to the Colossians: For by him all things were created, and all things hold together in him; and in the Gospel: All things were made through him.

Of the Holy Spirit in Solomon: And he saw, and numbered, and measured all things; he himself created them through the Holy Spirit; and in the Psalm: Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created; and elsewhere: By the spirit of his mouth all their power. As the Father foretold, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: But God, who foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ should suffer, has thus fulfilled it. Thus of the Son in the Gospel the angel said to the women: Go and tell his brothers, that he goes before you into Galilee, there you will see him, as he told you beforehand. Of the Holy Spirit in the Acts, Peter: This scripture must be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold through the mouth of David. Great is the Father, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: Great is our God, and greatly to be praised.

Of the Son, to Titus: Awaiting the blessed hope, and the coming of the glory of the great God our Savior Jesus Christ. Of the Holy Spirit in Kings, the Lord says to Elijah: Behold, the Lord passed by, and the Holy and strong Spirit. As the love of the Father, so of the Son, so also of the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: But the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ abounded exceedingly, and the love of our God. Of the Son: For the love of Christ constrains us. Of the Holy Spirit: What do you wish, that I come to you with a rod, or in the love of the Spirit? And elsewhere: The love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The Father gives eternal life, so does the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father in the Epistle of John: Because God will give us eternal life.

Of the Son in the Gospel: My sheep hear my voice, and follow me, and I give them eternal life. Of the Holy Spirit, to the Galatians: He who sows in the Spirit, from the spirit will reap eternal life. As the Father gives peace, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. Of the Son in the Gospel: My peace I leave with you. Of the Holy Spirit: But the prudence of the Spirit is life and peace. The Father reveals, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father, to the Galatians: That he might reveal his Son in me. Of the Son there also: For neither did I receive it from man, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Of the Holy Spirit, to the Ephesians: Which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles by his Holy Spirit; and elsewhere: For God has revealed it to us through the Spirit. As the Father illumines, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: You will light my lamp, O Lord. Of the Son in the Apostle: Awake, you who sleep, and Christ shall give you light. Of the Holy Spirit the same Apostle: Since God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. As the Gospel is called that of the Father, so of the Son, so also of the Holy Spirit. Of the Father, to Titus: Which is according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Of the Son, to the Romans: Whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son.

Of the Holy Spirit in the epistle of blessed Peter: To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto you they administered these things, which are now told you by them that have preached the gospel to you, the Holy Spirit being sent down from heaven. As the Father has given light, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: My God, enlighten my darkness. Of the Son in the Psalm: The Lord is God, and he has shone upon us. Of the Holy Spirit the Prophet: And I will no longer hide my face from them, because my Spirit has shone upon the whole house of Israel. And the Apostle: Since God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. The Father has foreknowledge, so does the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: God, who are the knower of hidden things.

Of the Son: From the beginning, he says, Jesus knew who would betray him. Of the Holy Spirit: When the Paraclete, the Spirit, has come, he will teach you all truth, and will announce to you the things that are to come. As the Father is said to be everywhere, so the Son, so also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father: Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord. Of the Son: Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them; and the Apostle: Who ascended above the heavens that he might fill all things. Of the Holy Spirit in Solomon: The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world, and what is above the world he has filled—the very Lord, the maker of the whole world, as we read: Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. And David: Where shall I go from your Spirit? The Father reproves, so does the Son, so also the Holy Spirit.

Of the Father: Lord, rebuke me not in your anger. Of the Son: I will reprove you, and set them before your face. Of the Spirit: When the Paraclete Spirit has come, he will reprove the world concerning sin, and so on.

Good is the Father, good the Son, good also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father, Good Father. Of the Son, I am the good shepherd. Of the Holy Spirit, Thy good Spirit shall lead me into the right way. He sanctifies and justifies, the Father as also the Son, as also the Holy Spirit. The Apostle: But you are sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. Holy is the Father called, holy is the Son called, holy also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father in Leviticus, Be ye holy, because I am holy. Of the Son in the Gospel, That which shall be born of thee holy, shall be called the Son of God. Likewise there, We know who thou art, the Holy One of God. Of the Holy Spirit in Solomon, For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit. Strong is the Father, strong the Son, strong also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father, God strong and patient.

Of the Son in Isaiah, And his name shall be called God the strong one. Of the Holy Spirit in Solomon, The spirit of fortitude in his ways. He works the Father, he works the Son, and this the Holy Spirit also. Of the Father to the Philippians, For it is God who works in you both to will. Of the Son in the Gospel, I must work the works of him that sent me. Of the Holy Spirit to the Corinthians, But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to every man as he will. Virtue is the Father, virtue the Son, virtue also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father the Apostle: I am not ashamed of the Gospel. For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. Of the Son the Apostle: Gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Of the Holy Spirit to the Thessalonians, Our gospel was not among you in word only, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. Fountain is the Father, fountain the Son, fountain also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father, Jeremiah: They have forsaken the fountain of living water. Of the Son in Solomon, The Word of God, fountain of wisdom. Of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah: Behold the name of the Lord cometh from afar, burning in the anger of his indignation, and shall devour the nations; and his Spirit as a fountain of water dragging the valley. Charity is the Father, charity the Son, charity also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father in the Epistle of John, God is charity. Of the Son the Apostle to the Corinthians, For the charity of Christ presseth us. Of the Holy Spirit the Apostle, I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the charity of the Spirit. He regenerates, the Father, the Son regenerates, the Holy Spirit also regenerates.

Of the Father, Peter: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy hath regenerated us unto a lively hope. Of the Son in the same place, Loving one another from the heart, as being reborn by the word of the living God. Of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel, Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. He raises up, the Father, the Son raises up, the Holy Spirit also raises up. Of the Father in the Acts, The God of our fathers, who raised up Jesus, and will raise us also by his power. Of the Son in the Gospel, The Jews came not only for Jesus' sake, but that they might see Lazarus whom he raised from the dead. Of the Holy Spirit the Apostle, And if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he shall quicken also your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

Grace of God the Father, grace of the Son, grace also of the Holy Spirit. Of the Father, Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ. Of the Son to the Corinthians, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich he became poor for your sakes. Of the Holy Spirit in the Acts, And they that came with Peter were astonished, because the grace of the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the Gentiles also. He seals, the Father, the Son seals, the Holy Spirit also seals. Of the Father to the Corinthians, And he who hath sealed us together with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God. Of the Son to the Ephesians, Hearing the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also you are sealed. Of the Holy Spirit, in the same place, Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.

He dwells, the Father in believers, the Son dwells, the Holy Spirit also dwells. Of the Father in Isaiah, Keep the day of the sabbath, and sanctify it, that I may dwell in the midst of you. Of the Son to the Ephesians, That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts. Of the Holy Spirit, Know you not that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? He searches, the Father searches, the Son searches, the Holy Spirit also searches. Of the Father in the Psalm, God searching the hearts and reins. Of the Son in the Apocalypse, And all the churches shall know that I am he that searcheth the reins and hearts. Of the Holy Spirit in the Apostle, The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. He bears witness, the Father bears witness, the Son bears witness, the Holy Spirit also bears witness. Of the Father in the Psalm, The testimony of God is faithful, giving wisdom to little ones.

Of the Son to Timothy, I charge thee before God, who quickeneth all things, and Christ Jesus, who gave testimony under Pontius Pilate. Of the Holy Spirit the Apostle, He beareth witness to our spirit. He shows, the Father shows, the Son shows, the Holy Spirit also shows. Of the Father to Timothy, Whom in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only Mighty. Of the Son in the Gospel the Son himself says, But I will show you whom you shall fear; and, Many good works have I shown you from my Father. Of the Holy Spirit to the Corinthians, My preaching was not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the showing of the Spirit. He fills, the Father fills, the Son fills, the Holy Spirit also fills. Of the Father, Jeremiah: Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord.

Of the Son in the Apostle, Now the Lord fill your hearts, and confirm you in every good work and word. And in the Gospel, Of his fulness we have all received. Of the Holy Spirit in the Acts, It filled all the place where the disciples were gathered together. And, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. He speaks, the Father speaks, the Son speaks, the Holy Spirit also speaks. Of the Father, God hath spoken in his holy place. Of the Son, As Jesus was speaking to the multitudes. Of the Holy Spirit, It is he that speaketh in you. He appeared, the Father appeared, the Son appeared, the Holy Spirit also appeared. Of the Father in the Acts, The God of glory appeared to our fathers. Of the Son in the Epistle of John, For this the Son appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Of the Holy Spirit in Job, And a spirit passed before my eyes, and horror came upon me.

Truth is the Father, truth the Son, truth also the Holy Spirit. Of the Father in the Psalm, Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. Of the Son, Truth is sprung out of the earth. And in the Gospel, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel, When the Spirit of truth is come, he will teach you all truth. Behold the unity of the working; do not doubt to believe in the unity of the Trinity. They are also accustomed to say concerning baptism, that in this their baptism is better than ours; because those who are converted from them to us, we do not rebaptize, but reconcile through the imposition of hands. But they, if they are able to seduce any of ours, rebaptize them without consideration. They are to be asked: Do they say that this baptism which they give is their own, or ours? If it is ours, why do they presume to baptize similarly as we do?

If it is theirs, why do they violate it by repeating it? But we have reverence for the Lord's words, and just as he commanded, so we baptize, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. But it is certain that they too baptize thus. For if they baptized as they believe, in the name of the greater Father, and in the name of the lesser Son, and in the name of the much lesser Holy Spirit, then indeed we would not repeat the baptism, but we would give it, because they were not baptizing according to the rule which the Lord handed down. But what do we do? They baptize well, but believe ill: they baptize well, but it is evil that they rebaptize. They baptize regularly indeed, but they insinuate their faith badly.

And while they carnally make degrees in the divinity, they incur an offense against the divinity: not fearing that which the Lord said: He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean wholly. For the Lord said in the Gospel, You are the salt of the earth; and whoever is wise understands that this was not said without cause. For salt is made from water, but if it is put back into water again, it dissolves and perishes. So he who has once been baptized from water has been made salt: but if he permits himself to be baptized again, he is reduced to nothing just as salt cast into water, and his soul is punished with perpetual death. For the Apostle says of the Church, Because we, being many, are one bread, one body: because just as one bread is made from many grains, so from many peoples one Church is gathered together.

And bread, as all know, is made through water, and is baked through fire, and every Christian through the water of baptism and the fire of the Holy Spirit is made an offering of God, the Lord saying: Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. But just as if someone should put bread already once baked back into water, and wish to mix it again and bake it again, it loses its former dignity, and is turned into blackness and earth. So does whoever permits baptism to be repeated in himself become such. And therefore each one ought, with God's help, to preserve his baptism even unto death, if he wishes to arrive faithfully at the kingdom of heaven. For whoever allows himself to be rebaptized blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, in that he denies himself to be a Christian, and to have been reborn through water and the Holy Spirit.

And it is necessary that he receive that sentence of the Lord's threat which we have recalled: Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.