To Constantius

I am not unaware, most devout emperor, that things brought before the hearing of the public conscience about certain matters are usually thought weighty or light according to the dignity of those who speak them, since contempt or favor moves a man's mind to understand, by the uncertain judgment of a differing opinion.

But since I am about to speak to you devoutly on a divine matter, I have no fear of the common custom; for, since you are good and religious, there is no fault of judgment among those wise in religion: they judge not what they hear and from whom, but whether what they hear is religious. And since an opportunity of your presence has been given me by God, the duty of my conscience has not failed even in this, lest some unworthiness of the one speaking with you should perhaps give offense in the discourse on religion that I hold before you.

I am a bishop, remaining in the communion of all the churches and bishops of Gaul, though in exile, and still distributing communion to the church through my presbyters. And I am an exile not for a crime but through faction, and through false reports of a synod to you, the devout emperor, denounced by impious men, not from any consciousness of crimes of mine. Nor have I a slight witness of my complaint in my lord, your religious Caesar Julian, who suffered more insult from wicked men in my exile than I suffered injury.

For the letters of Your Piety are at hand. And all the falsehoods of those who procured my exile are not in the dark. He himself too, either the agent or the author of all that was done, is within this city. Trusting in my conscience, I will make plain that you, the Augustus, were deceived and your Caesar mocked, on this condition: that if I am shown to have done anything unworthy not only of a bishop's holiness but even of a layman's integrity, I will no longer expect the priesthood by pardon but will grow old in the penance of a layman.

These things, however, most gracious emperor, I now leave to your judgment, how far and in what way you bid me speak, and I go on to what most needs to be done with you at this time. You will indeed grant this for the present as instruction for the case: that I may bring him, by whose

agency I am an exile, in his presence, to confess the falsehoods he has committed. But I will say nothing of him unless you command it. Now, however, since I fear for the danger of the world, for the guilt of my silence, for the judgment of God, and my concern is for hope, for life, for immortality, not so much my own as yours and everyone's; and since this is common to me with very many, this expectation of a common hope is mine.

Recognize the faith, best and most religious emperor, which you have long wished to hear from the bishops and do not hear. For while those from whom it is sought write their own things and do not proclaim God, they have carried round an endless circle of error and of a conflict always returning on itself. The modesty of human weakness ought to have kept the whole mystery of divine knowledge only within those bounds of its conscience in which it believed, and, after the faith confessed and sworn in baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, neither to doubt nor to innovate anything else.

But the presumption, or the facility, or the error of some has partly confessed deceitfully and partly overstepped boldly the unchangeable constitution of the apostolic teaching, while in confessing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit it evades the truth of their natural meaning, so that nothing should remain in the mind of what is to be confessed in the mystery of rebirth. For this reason, in the conscience of some, neither is the Father Father, nor the Son Son, nor the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit.

Under the pretext of this necessity, as an unacceptable occasion, the practice of writing and renewing the faith has since grown up. And once it began to compose new things rather than keep what was received, it neither defended the old nor confirmed the new, and the faith has become one of the times rather than of the Gospels, since it is written according to the years and not held according to the confession of baptism. It is very dangerous and indeed pitiable for us that there now exist as many creeds as wills, and as many doctrines as habits, and that as many causes of blasphemies sprout as there are vices, while creeds are either written as we wish or understood as we do not wish. And since, according to one God and one Lord and one baptism, there is also one faith, we depart from that faith which alone is; and while they have begun to be many, they have come to this, that there is none.

For we are conscious, each of us with the other, that since the synod of the council of Nicaea nothing has been done but writing creeds. While there is fighting over words, while there is questioning about novelties, while there is occasion from ambiguities, while there is complaint about authors, while there is contention about factions, while there is difficulty in agreement, while one has begun to be anathema to another, almost no one now is Christ's. For by the uncertain

wind of doctrines we wander, and either, while we teach, we confuse, or, while we are taught, we err. And now, what change does last year's faith not have in it? The first, which decrees that homoousion be passed over in silence; the next, again, which distinguishes and proclaims homoousion; the third in turn, which excuses by indulgence the word ousia as simply taken up by the fathers; and finally the fourth, which does not excuse but condemns.

And where at last has it come to? That neither with us nor with anyone before us does anything since remain holy and inviolable. And about the likeness of the Son of God to God the Father, which is the faith of our pitiable time, whether he is like wholly or only in part: we, excellent judges, no doubt, of heavenly mysteries, investigators of invisible secrets, slander one another with professions about the faith of God.

We decree yearly and monthly creeds about God; we repent of our decrees; we defend those who repent; we anathematize those we have defended; we condemn either others' views in ours or ours in others'; and while we bite one another, we are already consumed by one another.

Then a faith is sought, as though there were no faith. A faith must be written, as though it were not in the heart. Reborn through faith, we are now taught toward faith, as though that rebirth were without faith. We learn Christ after baptism, as though there could be any baptism without faith in Christ.

We correct, as though there were pardon for having sinned against the Holy Spirit. But the perpetual cause of this very impiety lies chiefly here: that while we put forward the apostolic faith sevenfold, we ourselves will not confess the gospel faith, defending our impieties before the people with much talk and mocking the ears of the simple with the vanity of grand speech and deceiving words; while we avoid believing about the Lord Christ what he taught must be believed about himself, and under the fair name of peace creep into a unity of unbelief, and under the pretext of rejecting novelties ourselves rebel against God again with new words, and under the name of the Scriptures lie about things not written: wandering, prodigal, impious, while we change what abides, lose what was received, and presume irreligious things.

In winter, on a stormy sea, it is safest for sailors, when shipwreck rages, to return to the harbor from which they set out; or it befits careless young men who, in keeping their house, have transgressed the ways of their father's discipline and used their liberty lavishly, when they now fear losing their inheritance, that their only necessary and safe recourse is to their father's way of life. So, amid these shipwrecks of the faith, when the inheritance of the heavenly patrimony is already almost squandered, it is safest for us to keep the first and only gospel faith confessed and understood in baptism, and not to change it; to believe well what alone I have received and heard. Not that what is contained in the synod of our fathers should be condemned as irreligiously and impiously written, but because it is usurped by human rashness for contradiction, so that for this reason, under the name

of novelty, the gospel is denied, so that it is dangerously renewed under the guise of correction. What has been corrected always goes further, so that, while every correction displeases, correction following on correction condemns every correction; as if now, whatever it is, it is no longer some correction of a correction but has begun to be condemnation.

How much I now admire you, lord emperor Constantius, as a man of the blessed and religious faith of the Only-begotten, desiring a faith only according to what is written! And rightly indeed you hasten to those very words of the only-begotten God, so that a breast capable of imperial concern may also be full of the knowledge of the divine sayings; he who rejects this is antichrist, and he who feigns it is anathema. But this one thing I ask, by this sincere hearing that your graciousness grants: that, in the presence of the synod which is now disputing about the faith, you would deign to hear a few things from me out of the gospel Scriptures, and that I may speak with you in the words of my Lord Jesus Christ, whose exile or priest I am. For earthen vessels hold no mean treasures, and the weaker members of the body are the more to be honored, and among us unlearned fishermen once spoke of God. According to the prophet, God looks upon the humble and trembling at his words.

You seek the faith, emperor: hear it, not from new sheets of paper, but from God's books. Know that it can be given even in the West, from which those who come will recline in the kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Remember that it lies not in a question of philosophy but in the teaching of the Gospel. And I ask a hearing not so much for myself as for you and the churches of God. For I have the faith within me; I need none from outside. What I have received I hold, and I do not change what is God's.

But remember nevertheless that there is no heretic who does not now falsely claim to preach according to the Scriptures the things by which he blasphemes. For this reason Marcellus, when he reads "the Word of God", does not know it. For this reason Photinus, when he speaks of "the man Jesus Christ", does not know it. For this reason Sabellius too, while he does not understand "I and the Father are one", is without God the Father and without God the Son.

For this reason Montanus too, through his mad women, defends the preaching of another Paraclete. For this reason Manichaeus and Marcion hate the law, because the letter kills and the devil is the prince of the world. They all speak the Scriptures without the sense of Scripture and put forward faith without faith. For the Scriptures lie not in reading but in understanding, and not in transgression but in love.

Hear, I beg, the things that are written about Christ, lest under cover of them things that are not written be preached. Lend your ears to what I am about to say from the books.

Raise your faith to God. Hear what profits faith, unity, and eternity. I am going to speak with you, with honor for your rule and your faith, of all that profits the peace of East and West, in the public conscience, before a divided synod, amid a notorious dispute.

Meanwhile I send ahead a pledge of my coming discourse before you. I will not defend anything to cause scandal, nor anything outside the Gospel; but you will understand that in the mysteries of the only true God and of Jesus Christ whom he sent, I proclaim one God the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, born from God, who is before eternal times and was in the beginning with God, God the Word; who is the image of the invisible God, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; who, being in the form of God, humbling himself for our salvation, took the form of a servant from the Virgin by the conception of the Holy Spirit, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross; and after the resurrection from death, sitting thereafter in the heavens, he will come as judge of the living and the dead and king of all eternal ages. For he is the only-begotten God, and true God, and great God, God over all, and every tongue will confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.

These things I have so believed in the Holy Spirit that I cannot be taught any faith about the Lord Jesus Christ beyond this; not taking away by this the reverence of the fathers' faith, but, according to the creed of my rebirth and the knowledge of the gospel teaching, not dissonant from it in these points.