Polemical Works 1 part 1/3

When you had perceived that opposition was raised against all your destructive endeavours, and when you had found all your contrivances against the Church of God revealed to the whole people of God, you said that we were and are enemies of peace, foes of unity, opponents even of brotherly love. If between the worshippers of God and the enemies of his religion there ought to be nothing in common, why was it that Moses, at the time when he saw that carnal Jewish people—whose wisdom you hold—had incurred the guilt of idolatry, after he had caused certain ones to be struck down with the sword, also willed that his own station be set apart? Receive how this is so, as it is written: And the Lord said to Moses: Say to the children of Israel, You are a people of stiff neck; take heed lest, bringing another plague upon you, I destroy you.

Now therefore lay aside the robes of your glory and your ornament, and I will show you what I am about to do to you. And the children of Israel took off their adornment and their robes from Mount Horeb; and Moses, taking the tabernacle, pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and it was called the tabernacle of testimony; and it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of testimony, outside the camp. And when Moses went out from the tabernacle, all the people stood, each one gazing toward the door of his own tent. They watched Moses as he went, until he entered the tabernacle.

But as soon as Moses had entered the tabernacle, the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord spoke with Moses; and all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tabernacle, and the whole people rose and worshipped, each one at the door of his own tent. And the Lord spoke to Moses openly, openly, as a man speaks to his friend. But his younger minister, Joshua the son of Nun, did not depart from the tabernacle. By this deed it was shown that you who sin against God must be shunned, and that one must withdraw from you. But, you say: Behold, Moses, though he had the tabernacle in another place, nevertheless did not desert the people, but exhorted them to correct the ways of their errors, God being favourable.

Nor are those lacking in these offices who refused to be mingled with your sacrilege; for you recognize that it is told you that, unless you correct your ways, you shall perish for ever. That, therefore, which we had begun to aim at, that we may carry it through to proof as thoroughly as we can: as often as the people murmured against God and rose up against Moses, you have read that God said to Moses and Aaron: Withdraw from the midst of this undisciplined, defiant people, and I will destroy them. What, then, does he wish us to do, but that we flee from you, the undisciplined and defiant, lest together with you we perish, like those who had been joined with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? Or will you deny that you are undisciplined and defiant?

Look back at your acts displayed against the Church of the Lord, and you will find how undisciplined and defiant you are. In Deuteronomy Moses says: You shall not make a covenant with them, nor show them mercy; nor shall you give your daughters to their sons in marriage, nor shall you take their daughter for your son; for she will seduce your son from me, and he will serve other gods, and the Lord will be angry with wrath against you and will swiftly destroy you. Since he commands these things to be done, how can we be at one with you, have peace with you, who are deniers of the only Son of the one God? How could we have fulfilled this your will? Since you see that God said through Moses concerning the Moabites and Ammonites: You shall not greet them in peace all the days of your life for ever.

How could we Arians and Christians be together? Since you hear Moses say: There shall be no adulteress among the daughters of Israel, and he admonishes in every place that every adulterer brought to the gate be put to death with stones: and you shall remove, he says, the wicked one from among yourselves. If he says that God so detests carnal adultery that he commanded all adulterers to be punished, how much more must the Lord necessarily detest your spiritual adultery, on account of which you both were and are to be fled from. We Christians could not be at one with apostates, since we find that the Holy Spirit said through Moses:

God will open to you his good heavenly treasure, to give you the rain of your land in due season; he will bless all the work of your hands; you shall lend to many nations, but you yourself shall not borrow; and you shall make war on many nations, but they shall not overcome you; the Lord your God will set you at the head and not at the tail, and you shall be above and not beneath, if you hearken to the commandment of the Lord your God, whatever I command you this day to keep and to do, and do not depart from any word that I command you this day, to the right hand or to the left.

How could we be at one with the pseudo-bishops of your sect, the Arians, since you see that we could not have been blessed except because we have not gone after your idolatry, except because we have detested your heresy of the Arians, just as we detest that of all heretics, except because we have judged and hold you to be such as the heathen too, namely worshippers of all the demons, except because we have so abominated you as we do the Jews also, who are found to be without God, since they have denied the only Son of God?

In Joshua the son of Nun: But when, he says, the people heard the sound of the trumpets, the whole people shouted with a great shout, and all the walls of the city round about fell down, and the whole people went up into the city, each one straight before him, and they seized the city and put it under the ban; and whatever was in the city, from man to woman, from young to old, and even to the calf and to the beast of burden, they slew with the edge of the sword; and to the two young men who had spied it out Joshua said: Go into the house of the woman and bring her out, and whatever is hers.

And the two young men who had spied out the city went in to the house of the woman and brought out Rahab the harlot and her father and mother and brothers and whatever was hers and all her kindred, and led her forth outside the camp of Israel; and the city was burned with fire, together with all that was in it. And further on: Joshua preserved alive Rahab the harlot and all her father's house, and she dwelt in Israel to this present day. When, therefore, you see all the inhabitants of the city of Jericho punished by the edge of the sword, and the whole city burned, how did you think we could be at one with you, a heretic, seeing that we perceived you and yours to be more worthy of the ban than even they had been?

How could we be at one with the pseudo-bishops of your sect, the Arians, since you see that no one was preserved alive in the city in which the idolaters dwelt, except only Rahab, because she believed that our Lord was wholly almighty, whereas the idolatry in which the people stationed in Jericho trusted had been found out by human error? How could we be at one with you, since in the third book of Kings it is written that neither are your houses to be trodden, nor food to be taken with you, nor water to be received from you? That this is so, sacred Scripture makes plain: And it came to pass—it speaks of that fellow-apostate of yours—the word of the man of God; and further on: And he stretched out his hand toward the altar, saying:

Seize him! And the king's hand, which he stretched out against him, withered, and he could not draw it back to himself, and the altar was rent, and its fatness was poured out from the altar, according to what the man of God had said by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said to the man of God: Entreat the face of the Lord your God, that my hand may be restored to me. And the man of God entreated the face of the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him and became as it was at first. And the king spoke to the man of God and said: Come in with me into the house and dine, and I will give you gifts. And the man of God said to the king: Not even if you give me half your house will I go in with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for thus the Lord commanded me by the word, saying:

You shall not eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the way by which you came. How could we be at one with you in worshipping God, since against this man of God, who had been sent by God to rebuke King Jeroboam, because he was deceived through that man who was called a prophet, so grievous a vengeance proceeded? And he went away—says Scripture afterward concerning that man of God—by another way, and did not return by the way by which he had come to Bethel. And his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel and the words that he had spoken to the king; and they turned the face of their father. And their father spoke to them, saying: By what way did he go?

And his sons showed him the way by which the man of God who had come out of Judah had gone. And he said to his sons: Saddle me the ass; and they saddled it for him, and he mounted upon it and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak tree, and said to him: Are you the man of God who came out of Judah? And he said: I am. And he said to him: Come with me and eat bread; and he said: I cannot return with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for thus the Lord commanded me by the word, saying: You shall not eat bread there, nor drink water there, nor return thence by the way by which you went. And he said to him: I too am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying:

Bring him back with you into your house, that he may eat bread and drink water. And he lied to him, and brought him back, and he ate bread in his house and drank water. And it came to pass, as they were sitting at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the false prophet who had brought him back, and he said to the man of God who had come out of Judah: Thus says the Lord: Because you have provoked the word of the Lord and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, but have returned and eaten bread and drunk water in this place, concerning which he spoke to you, saying: You shall not eat bread nor drink water; therefore your body shall not enter into the sepulchre of your fathers.

And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread and drunk water, that they saddled the ass for him, and he turned back and went away. And a lion found him on the way and slew him, and his body was cast out on the way, and the ass stood beside him, and the lion stood beside his body. And the men of that city came and spoke in the city where the elder prophet dwelt; and when those who had brought him back from the way heard it, he said: This is the man of God who provoked the word of the Lord. And he went and found his body cast out on the way, and the ass and the lion stood over his body; and the lion did not eat his body, nor leap upon the ass.

If this was visited upon him, because he had eaten bread and taken a drink of water in a profane place among foreign men, what would have been visited upon us, if, as you desired, we had joined friendships with you—whom we know to be a heretic, whom we know to be a denier of the only Son of God—if we had poured out prayer with you Arians, if, in short, we had suffered ourselves, we priests of the Lord, to celebrate all the things that we celebrate together with your pseudo-bishops the Arians? Meanwhile, that you were sent in to circumvent us, just as that false prophet was sent to that man of God, you ought, on recalling your acts, to recognize as most bitter;

for just as that one, though he was a false prophet, called himself a prophet in order to deceive an innocent man, so you also, though you are not a Christian but an Arian, feigned yourself a Christian in order to ensnare us. Then, since the Church of the Lord has always had peace and has cast out you and the heretics of all sects, you said: I wish peace to be established in my empire—desiring to violate the Lord's peace among us, longing to rend the people of God, providing for your heresy, into which you wish to make us all cross over. Thus you lied that you were a man of God, when you said that you were making this peace for the sake of our salvation, just like that false prophet who said:

Return with me, for I too am a prophet of the Lord, and an angel spoke to me. Thus, I say, you lied, when you said that you undertook to do this in order that you might please God, seeing that you were labouring to join each of the catholic bishops to the communion of the Arians. How could it have been possible for Christians to be at one with you and your fellow-Arians, since you see that God said this to King Jehoshaphat—why he had received Ahab the idolater into friendships, why he had gone out to war with the enemy of the Lord?

For after that fellow-sacrilegist of yours, Ahab, had been struck according to the word of God with a deadly wound in the battle, and Jehoshaphat, because he had cried out to God with his whole heart, had been restored to his own house, holy Scripture relates that Jehu the son of Hanani, who was a seer, went out before his face and said such things as these: If you help that sinner and are a friend of those who hate the Lord, in this is wrath upon you from the face of the Lord; but good words have been found in you, because you have removed the groves from the land and have prepared your heart to seek the Lord. If these things are said to him, what would be said to us, if we had preferred to be friends with you, a heretic and an enemy of God? Or will you perhaps dare to say:

Am I not an enemy of God, as Ahab king of Israel once was? How are you not an enemy, you who do the very same things that Ahab did? Since you thus assail the religion of God, just as he assailed it, and thus persecute His house, just as he persecuted it. How could we have come to agreement with you and with your followers, when even a king devoted to God, Jehoshaphat, was rebuked by God through a prophet because he had joined himself in friendship to Ahaziah king of Israel? 'And Jehoshaphat king of Judah,' it says, 'joined friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel; he himself began to act wickedly, and made common cause with him to build ships to go to Tarshish. And he built ships at Ezion-geber, and Eliezer the son of Uzziah from Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying:'

'Because you have made common cause with Ahaziah, the Lord has broken your work, and your ships are shattered and shall not be able to go to Tarshish.' If these things are spoken to him by the Lord, because in the building of ships he had taken as companion of the way of perdition a king, what could be said of us, if we, the priests of God, held as friend the destroyer of His house, the persecutor of the catholic faith? If God broke his work because he had joined himself to an unrighteous man, then we ourselves, I believe, would already have been scattered by the thunderbolt, had we joined ourselves to you, a blasphemer.

How could we, who are servants of God, and you who are servants of the devil, come together into one, when God has willed that there be such a separation between us and you as between light and darkness, between life and death, between sweet and bitter, as between the holy angels of God who are ever magnifying His mercy and those apostates whom you shall see tormented together with you for eternity, unless you snatch yourself away from them? How, I say, could we, the servants of God, be together with you, the servants of Antichrist? When it was said to King Amaziah by God in the second book of Chronicles:

'The army of Israel shall not go with you, for God is not with Israel, with all the sons of Ephraim; for if you think to prevail with them, the Lord will turn you to flight before your enemies, for strength is from the Lord.' By what means could we resist the devil, if we were to run together with you in so great a crime of yours, together with the enemies of God, together with men found without knowledge of God, together with those who do not have God, among whom we know there is a whole host of demons? For you cannot be deniers of the only Son of God without demons, since none make you blaspheme but those who have blinded your hearts, so that the truth cannot be grasped by you.

Could we in any way linger on your side, and consent to your most shameful schemes, when through the glorious David the Holy Spirit declares that none are blessed except those who have withdrawn themselves from you, the deniers of the only Son of God, that only those shall remain blessed who have not mingled themselves with your serpentine thoughts? 'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence.' How could there be for you and for us a meeting-place in one spot? When you hear David likewise say in the sixth psalm: 'Depart from me, all you who work iniquity.'

If you Arians do not work iniquity, then judge yourself, O prince, in the sacrilege of the Arians, you who persecute us with horrible animosity when we call ourselves Christians. Rightly then know that we have acted well in withdrawing from you who are hateful to God. For how would it have been fitting for us to remain in your assembly, tainted with every crime, and not to flee you who are plagues and pestilences? Since he says, in the person of our people, in the twenty-fifth psalm: 'For your mercy is before my eyes, and I have been well pleased in your truth. I have not sat in the council of vanity, and with those who do iniquity I will not go in; I have hated the church of the malignant, and I will not sit with the ungodly.' If your council is not one of vanity, refute me.

Is that not a council of vanity, in which the whole design is nothing other than that the Son of God be denied, that God the Father be defended as not being a true Father, that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete be asserted not to be the true Spirit of God, that the apostolic and evangelical tradition be destroyed, that the tradition of Arius be established? In which council nothing else is established except what can procure great joy for all heretics and pagans and Jews; all the execrators of the religion of God rejoice, indeed because they see you, the emperor, carrying out the object of their desire, indeed because they perceive that you have shown yourself a denier of the only Son of God and a persecutor of His servants.

This is the council which you have been accustomed to assemble with the utmost force of your empire, indeed for this end: that all the authority of the sacred Scriptures be dissolved by the authority of your empire, that all truth may be buried, that the lies of your detestable fabrication may seem true. These are the aims of your scheming in that notable council assembled through your power. Therefore you hate us, because we execrate your council of the malignant; therefore we are in exile, therefore we are being done to death in prison, therefore to us alone is the sight of men forbidden; for this reason, shut up in darkness, we are guarded under a huge guard.

For this reason no man is admitted to visit us, namely because we would not have any fellowship in your crimes with you, the ungodly and sacrilegious, from whom, in our person, a supplication has been directed to God, that we might not, dwelling with you, perish together, but might be separated from your wicked council, from your unrighteous conspiracy. For he says in the twenty-seventh psalm: 'Hear, O Lord, the voice of my supplication, when I pray to you, when I lift up my hands to your holy temple; do not draw away my soul together with sinners, and do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their hearts.'

'Give them according to their works and according to the wickedness of their pursuits; according to the work of their hands render to them, repay them their recompense.' Therefore we are hated by you, Constantius, because we would not have those things said of us which are spoken by the mouth of the prophet concerning you and your followers on account of your wicked work, which are spoken concerning the Jews whose imitator you have become.

Are you not Constantius the emperor, who pretended to make peace, when your evil designs were none other than that the Son of God should be denied, that the apostolic and evangelical faith should be destroyed, and your Arian heresy built up instead, that all who did not acquiesce to you should be deported, proscribed, tortured in various ways, and finally killed? And therefore the Holy Spirit, marking you and your followers and smiting you together, says in the person of our people: 'Do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their heart.' You were saying to us:

'I wish peace to be made'; and the adversary of our religion, abiding in your heart, was plotting through you to make us idolaters; whence indeed you will truly receive according to your work, according to the wickedness of your pursuits, unless you provide for yourself in time. We have avoided and are avoiding your counsel, which has been and is being made against God, whose scheming the Holy Spirit, then already seeing, said through the mouth of David in the thirty-second psalm: 'The Lord has scattered the counsels of the nations, and he rejects the thoughts of the peoples, and he rejects the counsels of princes.' But your counsels, brought forth against His Church, God rejects;

for He cannot hate His own people, His inheritance, and love you, the sons of pestilence, you, the persecutors of His servants. You said: 'Make peace with the bishops of my sect, the Arians, and be as one'; and the Spirit of God says through Solomon in the Proverbs: 'The ways of the ungodly do not, do not follow, nor emulate the way of the wicked; in whatever place they have set their army, do not come upon it there. But turn aside from it and pass on; for they do not sleep unless they have done evil; sleep is taken from them, and they do not slumber. For these are fed with the food of impiety, and are made drunk with unrighteous wine. But the ways of the just shall shine like light; they go forth and give light, until the day set right.'

'But the ways of the ungodly are dark; they do not know how they stumble.' How could we have fellowship with you Arians, with spiritual adulterers? We who hold to what is written: 'Do not give heed to a deceitful woman; for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman, who for a time fattens your throat, but at the last you shall find her more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword; but the feet of the foolish, who use her, lead them down with death to the world below.' But do you say that these things were spoken concerning adulteries of the flesh?

If you maintain that these things were said on account of adulteries of the flesh, how much more are you to be fled, you spiritual adulterers, lest through your Arian heresy, the spiritual harlot, these things which are spoken come upon us? For to certain ones it seems sweet that they be joined in friendship with you the king by receiving your heresy, but they shall taste it more bitter than gall, when together with you they begin to be tormented forever, when those who chose to be with you begin to feel it in perpetual Gehenna, then about to say: 'Woe to us who set the emperor Constantius before God.' How could there be agreement for us and for you? When Solomon further says below: 'Cast pestilence out of the council, and strife shall go out with it'; and: 'Do not imitate evil men, nor desire to be with them;'

for their heart devises falsehood, and their lips speak sorrows'; and: 'Do not bring the ungodly near to the pasture of the just, nor be led astray by fullness of the belly. For the just falls seven times and rises again, but the ungodly shall be weakened by evils.' With the proud and the transgressors, with those who wish rather to be found with Judas Iscariot than with the most blessed prophets, apostles, and martyrs—how can we be? When I hear in the hundredth psalm: 'I walked in the innocence of my heart in the midst of your house. I did not set before my eyes an evil thing; I hated those who commit transgressions, a depraved heart did not cleave to me; the malignant, turning from me, I did not acknowledge; the one secretly slandering his neighbors, him I persecuted;'

with the proud eye and insatiable heart, with such a one I would not eat'; and in the hundred and eighteenth psalm: 'I have hated the unrighteous, and I have loved your law.' Since you are unrighteous, being indeed deniers of the only Son of God, since you ought to be hated by us, because, leaving the way of truth, you have taken hold of all errors, because, leaving the light, you have chosen to go into the outer darkness—how could we have been most dear to you, the abominable head, to you, the destroyer of God's house, the kindling of all who work iniquity? How could we be intimate friends, as are Valens, Ursacius, Epictetus, Saturninus and the rest?

Of whose number, even though they have seen into what pit they have fallen, they would nevertheless certainly choose to perish with you, provided only that they enjoy together with you the empty splendor of your kingdom. How could we have been with you, we who hold in abhorrence those things which they chose to enjoy with you, we men who strive after those things which are to remain forever? On what account is there no agreement between us and you? Surely because we would not receive your heresy, surely because, being Christians, we would not become Arians. But who is there, unless he be, as you Arians are, out of his mind, who would forsake the house of God and go to the tomb of the devil?

For this reason we labor under hatred with you, because we were and are fearful lest those things be said of us which were said of those deserters, that is, the Jews, whom Jeremiah accuses, saying: 'Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob and all the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: What fault did your fathers find in me, that they went far from me and went after vanities, and were made vain, and did not say:'

'Where is God who delivered us from the land of Egypt, who led us out, affording guidance in the wilderness, in a land untilled and unknown, and in a land without water and without fruit, in a land in which no man passed through, nor did any son of man dwell there, and he brought you into Carmel, that you might eat its fruit and its good things; and you entered and defiled my land, and made my inheritance an abomination; the priests did not say, Where is the Lord? and those versed in my law did not know me, and the shepherds acted impiously against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after unprofitable things.' We were unwilling to hear these reproaches, whence also we have said that you and your followers must be fled.