When you had beheld yourself, Emperor, overcome on every side by the servants of God, you said that you had suffered and were suffering from us an outrage contrary to the admonitions of the Sacred Scriptures; you say that we have shown ourselves insolent toward you, whom it was fitting to honour. If any of the worshippers of God ever spared apostates, let the things you say about us be true. From what shall we begin, so that we may be able to prove that, just as you are now rebuked by us, so all who go astray have been rebuked by the worshippers of God? From what, if not from the acts of Moses, the servant of God? We read in Exodus that Moses went up the mount after the covenant had been delivered to him, and slew very many of the people on account of the guilt of idolatry. Moses stood, it says, at the gates of the camp, and said: Who is ready for the Lord? Let him come to me.
And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves to him, and he said to them: Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Let every man put his sword upon his thigh, and go through and return from gate to gate throughout the camp, and let every man slay his brother, and every man his kinsman, and every man his neighbour. And the sons of Levi did as Moses had said to them; and there fell of the people in that day about three thousand men. And Moses said to them: You have filled your hands today for the Lord, every man against his son or against his brother, that a blessing may be given upon you. Are we insolent toward you, as Moses was toward that senseless people?
Nor did those things which were said or done by Moses please them, when they had already chosen not to serve the God who had rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, but rather that calf which the fire had cast for them. So you too, now given over not to God but to the idolatry of Arius, being convicted of having gone astray, take it ill, cry out that we are contumacious, and say that we have perpetrated an outrageous deed against you, in that we dared to say to the emperor of the Roman realm: You do ill, Constantius, to introduce idolatry into the Church. Moses, the first of the prophets, that man most beloved of God, persecuted with the sword those whose imitator you have set yourself up to be; and am I branded contumacious by you, because I have said that God has forsaken you and that you have given yourself over to idolatry?
The Sacred Scripture further cries out that the sons of Israel committed fornication with the daughters of the Moabites, and that, being invited by them, they ate things sacrificed to idols and adored those same idols; against whom, because the priest Phinehas, kindled and inflamed with the zeal of devotion, so blazed forth — and above all because he slew the idolaters with the sword in the midst of the synagogue — he so pleased God that it is written that at this deed the wrath of the indignant Lord was stilled, and he himself was made exceedingly pre-eminent before the Lord: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has restrained My wrath from the sons of Israel, in that he was zealous with My zeal among them, and I did not consume the sons of Israel in My zeal.
And behold, I give to him My covenant, a covenant of peace to him and to his seed with him, for a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and made entreaty for the sons of Israel. And do you judge us contumacious, because we tell you the truth as you go astray? Do you suppose that, when we displease you, we do not then please God? But I beg you, tell me, Constantius, by what authority you would have us desert the way of the righteous patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and lay hold of this new way of yours which the devil had instituted through Arius.
Have you perhaps been warned in a dream, and was it said to you that you should not suffer us to hold the way of Christ which Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua son of Nun, Job, the judges and the rest of the kings — that is, David, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah — held; the way which all the prophets, apostles and martyrs held; the way which held all who are found to have pleased God? If this was said to you by the prince of demons, hear what God has determined shall be done concerning you through the glorious prophet Moses: 'But if there rise up among you a prophet, or one dreaming a dream, and he give a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass which he foretold, and he say to you, saying:'
'Let us go and serve strange gods whom you know not' — you shall not hearken to the words of that prophet or dreamer, for the Lord your God tests you, to see whether you love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and shall fear him, and shall keep his commandments and hear his voice, and cleave unto him. And that prophet or dreamer of dreams, let them die; for they have spoken to seduce you from the Lord your God. Do you recognize what you have been commanded to suffer? For whether you say you were warned by a dream, or wish to establish yourself to us as a prophet, you are an enemy of God, you who would have us forsake the apostolic faith and take up that faith which denies the only Son of God.
For all those whom I have recounted, it is manifest that they were made so great and such as they were because they believed in the only Son of God, since he who does not believe in the Son has not the Father either, but he who believes in the Son has both the Father and the Son. Since this is the voice of blessed John, and since the choir of the holy apostles is in accord with him, you ought certainly to understand that, as the apostles believed, so before them the patriarchs and prophets had believed, and so all who are known to have been honoured by the merit of faith. For you cannot prove to me that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob believed in one way, and John or all his fellow apostles in another.
For if the apostles did not believe as the patriarchs believed, why does blessed Paul summon all men to lay hold of the faith of Abraham? But you say: I accuse you, of being insolent, of having shown yourself contumelious toward the emperor; and you keep unravelling the cause of faith. The cause of faith indeed, that I may prove you to be sacrilegious, that I may prove you to have swerved from the way of truth; herein I seem contumelious to you, because I tell you that you have deserted the path of all who worship God, and have laid hold of that path which those held, and still hold, who served not God but a phantasm, and still serve it. Therefore, concerning you who urge me to withdraw from God, hear what God has sanctioned to be done through Moses:
But if your brother by father or mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife who is in your bosom, or the friend who is equal to your own soul, secretly entice you, saying: Let us go and serve strange gods whom you know not, nor your fathers, of the gods of the nations that are round about you, near or far off — you shall not consent to go with him, nor hearken to him; your eye shall not spare him, neither shall you greet him nor conceal him. Denouncing you shall denounce him. Your hand shall be first upon him to kill him, and afterward the hand of all your people. And you shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God. Being commanded indeed to slay him who invites me to forsake God, you say in your ignorance: Lucifer does me an outrage.
Or will you deny that you invited us to take up idolatry? If you think you must deny it, the doctrinal expositions of the sect of your bishops — of your fellow-blasphemers, that is — will convict you; the pamphlets recited by you and handed even to catholic bishops at Rome will convict you, given namely to this end, that your blasphemy might be strengthened in every place. Do you not perceive into what darkness of errors you have run? Do you not see in what manner you may perish? Since you see why Achan, one of the people, acted against the divine warnings — why he took by theft from Jericho a certain portion of raiment, of silver and of gold, and how he was thus punished with death — consider what is to befall you, who deny the eternal divine majesty of the only Son of God.
Hear what was carried out concerning Achan, and at last take counsel for your salvation; return to the Church of God, from which that apostate serpent — that fugitive who perverted even Adam and Eve — has driven you away through the Arians. 'And the Lord,' it says, 'was with Joshua, and his name was over all the earth. But the children of Israel disregarded the ban with a disregarding and committed a fraud concerning the accursed thing; and the Lord was angered with wrath against the children of Israel. And Joshua sent men to Ai, which is joined to Bethel, saying: Go up and view Ai. And the men went up and viewed Ai, and returned to Joshua and said to him: Let not all the people go up, but let two or three thousand men go up and lay waste the city. Lead not all the people thither, for they are few.'
'And there went up with him about three thousand men, and they fled before the men who were in Ai. And the men of Ai slew about thirty-six of them, and pursued them from the gate and crushed them on the slope; and the heart of the people melted and became as water. And Joshua rent his garments, and Joshua fell upon his face before God until evening, he and the elders of Israel, and they cast dust upon their heads. And Joshua said: I beseech you, Lord, why has your servant brought this people over the Jordan, to deliver them to the Amorite, to destroy us? If we had remained in the land, we would have dwelt beside the Jordan. And what shall I say, seeing that Israel has turned its back before its enemy?'
'And the Canaanite and all who dwell in the land shall hear of it, and shall surround us and crush us from off the earth; and what will you do for your great name? And the Lord said to Joshua: Rise up; why have you fallen upon your face? The people have sinned and transgressed my covenant which I appointed for them, and they have stolen of the accursed thing and put it among their own vessels. The children of Israel shall not be able to stand before the face of their enemies; they shall turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become accursed. I will be no longer with you, unless you take away the accursed thing from among yourselves. Rise up, sanctify the people, and say: Let them sanctify themselves for the morrow. For thus says the Lord God of Israel:'
'There is an accursed thing among you; you shall not be able to stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among yourselves. In the morning, therefore, come near according to your tribes; and it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes in the morning shall come near by its families, and the family which the Lord shall take shall come near man by man; and whoever is taken by the Lord shall be burned with fire, he and all that is his, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord and wrought iniquity in Israel. And Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near by their tribes, and the tribe of Judah was taken. And they came near by families, and the family of Zerah was taken; and he brought the family of Zerah near by households, and the household of Zabdi was taken.'
'And the household was brought near man by man, and Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, was taken. And Joshua said to Achan: Give glory this day to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession, and tell me what you have done, and hide it not from me. And Achan answered Joshua and said: Truly I have sinned before the sight of the Lord God of Israel; thus and thus have I done. I saw among the spoil a fair varied garment, and two hundred didrachms of silver, and one golden ingot of fifty didrachms; and I coveted it and took it, and behold, these are hidden in my tent, and the silver hidden beneath them. And Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and these were hidden in the tent, and the silver beneath them.'
'And they took them out of the tent and brought them to Joshua and to the elders of Israel, and laid them down before God. And they seized Achan the son of Carmi and led him into the valley of Achor, together with his sons and daughters, his oxen and his beasts of burden and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had; and all Israel was with him, and they led them to Emek-Achor. And Joshua said to Achan: Why have you troubled us? The Lord shall destroy you as this present day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and they heaped over him a great heap of stones; and the Lord turned from the fierceness of his wrath.'
Consider, Constantius, by what an example you are destined to perish, unless you make provision for yourself — what penalties you are to pay for all eternity. Achan for the transgression of the commandments met with such things; what you deserve is given hence to be understood, because you are an apostate. For if he, because he had of the accursed thing, was punished with so great a destruction, how much more you! Without doubt you shall be punished more grievously, you who make yourself accursed by denying the Son of God. In this we are wicked in your sight, in this proud and obstinate, in this insolent — because we say to you: You have committed sacrilege by being a denier of the only Son of God; because we say: Take counsel for yourself, rescue your soul from the snares of the devil. What new thing do we bishops do, if we speak to you those things which you deserve to hear?
For we find that most holy Samuel, the priest of God, said these things to King Saul, which you shall read below: 'Sorrows and groanings shall be brought upon you. Because you have counted the word of the Lord as nothing, the Lord shall count you as nothing, that you shall not reign;' and again: 'Because you have counted the word of the Lord as nothing, God shall reduce you to nought, that you be not king over Israel;' and below: 'The Lord shall rend the kingdom of Israel from your hand this day, and shall give it to your neighbour who is better than you.' If he said these things to Saul, because he had passed over the precepts of the Lord, why do you think that we ought not with free voice to declare you sacrilegious, and to declare that, unless you turn yourself to God, he will reduce you to nought?
If we had not exhorted you, if we did not summon you to make amends, you would rightly say that you were hated by us. But when you hear us say: Repent, O emperor, correct your ways, that you may find a place of mercy — I think you ought to have considered that, because you are loved by us, you are held dear by us; and yet in this you execrate us, that we abide in the apostolic faith: you render evil for good. We do not wonder that you, from the time you withdraw from the will of God and cease not to fulfil the desire of the devil, should render evils to us who ask and long that God do good to you — since it is engrained in you to act wickedly, seeing that you have made the passage from good to evil, that is, to the devil.
If you persecute us who love you, who desire that all the highest goods come to you, it is neither great nor new, since Saul too persecuted that same Samuel, prophet and priest of the Lord. He persecuted the very one by whom he had been anointed king, and whose prayers were directed to the Lord with unceasing entreaty for the very safety of this persecutor. If you do not believe that we, the priests of God, grieve for you — because you have drunk in so great a darkness of errors, because you are thus butchering yourself — then believe God, who says to Samuel concerning Saul: 'How long do you mourn over Saul? Behold, I cast him out, that he reign not over Israel;' and above: 'And the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying:'
'It repents me that I have set up Saul as king, since he is turned away from me and has not kept my words.' And Samuel was grieved, and cried to the Lord all night and before the light. Though Samuel the priest did these things for the safety of King Saul, yet Saul afterward persecuted Samuel, not recognizing, wretched man, that he was persecuting a prophet and priest of the Lord. So too you, not knowing what you are doing, persecute us who long that you should please God, while you love those who drag you with them to eternal death, to the everlasting offence of the Lord; you are indignant at hearing the truth, though you see that Samuel the priest of the Lord did not flatter the king. Or was it fitting that our predecessors should do one thing, and we another?
Because we tell you the truth, we seem proud to you. What have you heard from us? Surely that you are a murderer. If we lie, then we are rightly called by you contumelious and proud; but if we speak a true thing, we are not contumelious, but are those who imitate men who, by not flattering those committed to them but wholesomely forewarning them, deserved to be made most beloved by God. The king of Israel sent to kill the prophet Elisha — had you but read that Elisha said to those who were with him: Do you see that the son of that murderer has sent to take off my head? — then with reason would you arraign me as guilty of injuries.
The prophet, full of the Holy Spirit, called the king of Israel the son of a murderer — that is, the son of the devil — not because he called that king's carnal father a murderer, but the devil, whose son that king showed himself to be (as you now lay yourself open to be by your deeds) by persecuting the servants of God, by daring to slay the prophets of his clemency. That you do all these things, the devil incites your hearts. That it is so, hear the Lord saying to the Jews in the Gospel: You are born of the devil your father, and you will to do the desires of your father; for he was a murderer from the beginning.
The prophet of the Lord, I say, full of the Holy Spirit, calls the king of Israel the son of a murderer, that is, of the devil; and do you deem that we do you an outrage, because we say that you are a slayer of the servants of God, a butcher of our bodies, a man of every unjust thought, a destroyer of religion, a denier of the only Son of God? What we discern you to do, this we say of you; what you are, we cry aloud that you are. You call us insolent, only because we tell you what you are. Tell me, I pray, wherefore the king of Israel deserved to hear such things from the Lord: 'Because you have done good things before me, and have done according to my heart and according to my soul to the house of Ahab, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit for you upon the throne of Israel'?
Tell me, I say, why he deserved to hear these things from God. Because he spared God's enemies? Or was it because he most fiercely persecuted them, even with the sword — because he slew the son of Ahab the idolater, and his forty sons, and Jezebel too the queen, whom, once slain, he cast to the dogs; because he extinguished by the mouth of the sword all the servants of Baal together with all the priests and prophets of confusion; because he demolished the graven images — does this please God?
As for us, what did it behove us to do concerning you, that you might not brand us as guilty of contumely — you concerning whom we see that you hold the ways of Ahab and Jezebel? It is nothing new that you do: to act against God, to assail his house, to persecute his prelates, the very men through whom he warns you to take counsel for yourself, that, while there is yet place for repentance, you may withdraw yourself from evil. There were before you men like you in sacrilege, serving idols in the same way, having forsaken the God of their fathers.
In the second book of Paralipomenon we hear that Amaziah, king of Judah, was admonished by God through a prophet not to march to war with those sons of Israel whom he had hired with a hundred thousand talents of silver to set out with him — namely because God had forsaken Israel, since they had forsaken God and served idols. The king obeyed the prophet's words and believed that the threat came from God. Yet what does he then do? After he subdued his adversaries, he thought that the idols of those same men should be carried off and transferred to his kingdom and themselves adored; and because that man of God told him that he had not acted well, in that, forsaking God, he worshipped the idols of the nations, this king strongly persecuted the prophet of the Lord.
You perceive that in you who are turned to apostasy there has always been one and the same mind, to persecute those who wish you well. 'And it came to pass,' says the holy Scripture, 'after Amaziah came from smiting Edom, that he brought thence the gods of Mount Seir and set them up for himself as gods, and adored before them, and himself sacrificed to them. And the wrath of the Lord was kindled against Amaziah, and he sent to him the prophet Baneas; and Baneas said to him: Why have you sought the gods of a people who did not deliver their own people out of your hand? And it came to pass, as he spoke to him, that the king said to him: Have I appointed you counsellor to the king? Beware lest you be scourged.'
You see, Constantius, how demented you become, once it has pleased you to live serving the devil, once it has pleased you not to know the all-powerful God, once you have chosen for yourselves, to the insult of God, that you ought to establish idolatry. For as that king said: Have I appointed you counsellor to the king? Beware lest you be scourged — so you too say: Have I chosen you as counsellors for me, that I should not conduct myself as it pleases me, that I should not hold this way which Arius held? And do you not perceive by what example Arius perished? How vengeance was taken upon him from heaven?
Meanwhile, since you say we are contumelious to you, mark how this man of God did not spare that king, your fellow-sacrilegist, but after it was said to him, Be silent, lest you be scourged, he said to him: I know that the Lord will destroy you, who have done this thing and have not obeyed my counsel. In what matter do you perceive us to be contumelious? Surely because we say to you: We know that, unless you provide for yourself to turn to God, the Lord will condemn you to eternal punishment. This is the contumely, this the whole injury — that it is told you by the prelates of God that you will perish forever, unless you correct your ways. That king did not believe the man of God. What immediately befell him, holy Scripture says thus:
'And at the time when Amaziah departed from the Lord, they rose up against him and conspired; and he fled from Jerusalem to Lachish, and they slew him among the horses.' So too the deeds of your evil-doings were able to preserve, guard and defend you — even as they defended him who said to the man of God speaking for his own salvation: Have I appointed you counsellor to the king? Be silent, lest you be scourged. It is no first-time thing we do, if we say to you who err, who resist the ordinance of God, who labour to establish new ways: You do ill in not going by the way through which all worshippers of God have attained to the heavenly kingdoms. You have read that King Uzziah was rebuked by the priests of the Lord, because he had dared to do unlawful things: 'And he entered,' says the Scripture,
the temple of the Lord to put incense upon the altar. And Azariah the priest entered after him, and with him the priests of the Lord, thirty sons of valour; and they withstood King Uzziah and said to him: It is not lawful for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but to the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are sanctified to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for you have withdrawn from the Lord, and this shall not be for your honour before the Lord God.' Do you say that the priests of the Lord were contumelious to that king, or not? If they were not contumelious, neither let us seem so to you, since you hear from us things like those which he too heard:
It is not lawful for you, Constantius, an Arian, to assemble with the people of God; it is not lawful for you, the author of Arian idolatry, a denier of the only Son of God, to sit in judgment over the priests of God, a sacrilegist feigning yourself a Christian, when you are the forerunner of Antichrist. It shall not be well for you, that, removing the priests of God, you ordain his adversaries, the colleagues, that is, of your sacrilege. When you hear these things, you are angry with us; angry too, in that day, was King Uzziah with those priests of the Lord. But observe that they, being dedicated to God, kept forever the honour of their station, while Uzziah, to everlasting reproach, was at once marked with the blemish of leprosy. 'And Uzziah was angry,' it says, 'and in his hand was the censer, to burn incense on his altar.'
'And the leprosy broke out on his forehead in the sight of the priests in the house of the Lord.' These things are so; and do you suppose that you, a defiant transgressor, incur no offence before him who has commanded us to represent perpetually to his glory the offices of the priesthood? What pride is this of ours, Constantius, or what arrogance — except that we see you to be diseased, indeed pestilential, being an Arian; that we regard this elephantiasis to be in you, the very one which Arius had; that we urge you to withdraw from the people of God, just as those priests of the Lord compelled Uzziah to go out from the temple; that we thus constrain you to give honour to God?
For if the priests of God drove Uzziah out of the court of God for this reason — because they remembered that lepers were by divine command forbidden to enter the temple before their purification — how much more, consider, are we entitled to drive you out of the Church of Christ, out of the house of the Lord, because it is not lawful for a heretic to assemble with catholics, the insane with the sane, one full of unclean spirits with those in whom dwells the Spirit of God? What contumely is this, if the priests of the Lord, kindled with that same zeal with which our predecessors ever burned, tell you the things that conduce to our salvation and to yours? Lucifer is insolent, you say.
Insolent, forsooth, because I urge you to cast off the elephantiasis of Arius, and, through this faith which the most blessed apostles preached and which we, as you see, are holding, to obtain health for your mind and to be wholly snatched from the snares of the devil, that you may rejoice to have been won for God unto eternity. You, who charge us with being of monstrous haughtiness, have you found it written what Josiah, king of Judah, did to your fellow-sacrilegists, to such men as you are seen to be today — how he persecuted very many of them even after death, consuming their bones with fire? But it befitted that king to persecute the enemies of God with such zeal; was it then unworthy of us bishops, us priests of God, to resist you as you brought idolatry into the Church?
He slew your fellow-sacrilegists with the sword, and pursued even the relics long since buried, desiring to be found the most faithful worshipper of God; but ought we, on the contrary, not to resist you even with a word — you, the friend of God's enemy, you, the dearest of all to the angels turned to apostasy, you who by this your blasphemy have been made the enemy of God? Receive, then, in the fourth book of Kingdoms what Josiah, the servant of the Lord, king of Judaea, obtained on account of the things he did concerning your fellow-defiled ones; and at last cease to say of us: They are proud and contumelious.