Against Constantius 1–24

It is time to speak, for the time to keep silent has passed. Let Christ be awaited, for antichrist has prevailed. Let the shepherds cry out, for the hirelings have fled. Let us lay down our lives for the sheep, for thieves have come in, and the raging lion goes about. Let us go out to martyrdom through these words, for the angel of Satan has transformed himself into an angel of light. Let us enter through the door, for no one goes to the Father except through the Son. Let the false prophets be revealed in their peace, for in heresy and schism those who are approved will be revealed. Let tribulation be endured such as there has not been since the foundation of the world; but let it be understood that the days are to be shortened for the sake of God's elect. The prophecy is fulfilled which says: "The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but will heap up for themselves teachers according to their own desires, having itching ears; and they will turn away their hearing from the truth and turn aside to fables." But let the promise of him who declared it be awaited: "Blessed are you when they curse you and persecute you and say all evil against you for righteousness' sake. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven; for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Let us stand before judges and powers for the name of Christ, for blessed is he who endures to the end. Let us not fear him who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but let us fear him who can kill both body and soul in hell. Nor let us be anxious about ourselves, for the hairs of our head are numbered. And let us follow the truth through the Holy Spirit, lest through the spirit of error we believe a lie. And let us die with Christ, that we may reign with Christ. For to keep silent any longer is a sign of distrust, not a reason of modesty, since it is no less dangerous to have always kept silent than never.

I, brothers, as all who hear me or know me through acquaintance are witnesses, foreseeing long before the gravest danger to the faith, after the exile of the holy men Paulinus, Eusebius, Lucifer, and Dionysius, five years ago separated myself, together with the Gallic bishops, from the communion of Saturninus, Ursacius, and Valens, granting to the rest of their associates the opportunity to come to their senses; so that neither would the will for peace be lacking, and the rotten members of the principal diseases, spreading to the corruption of the whole body, would be cut off; if only it had then pleased us that this very decree, published for the most blessed confessors of Christ, should stand. Afterwards, compelled by the faction of those false apostles to come to the synod of Béziers, I offered an inquiry to demonstrate this heresy. But they, fearing the public conscience, would not hear what I put forward, thinking that they could lie to Christ about their innocence if they willingly did not know what they would afterwards do knowingly. And from then on, held in exile all this time, I resolved neither to depart from the confession of Christ nor to reject any honorable and acceptable means of entering into unity. In short, from then on I have written or spoken nothing reviling against the times, nothing against that which then falsely claimed to be the church of Christ but is now the synagogue of antichrist, worthy of their impiety; nor meanwhile did I count it a crime for anyone to converse with them, or, though the fellowship of communion was suspended, to enter a house of prayer, or to hope for a peace to be desired; while we were preparing, through repentance, an indulgence for error, a return from antichrist to Christ.

If, then, any prudent person perceives the reason for my silence, he will surely not charge that I, who until now have restrained the bitterness of a recent injury, am now at last moved to write these things by some fault of human agitation rather than at the witness of a faithful freedom in Christ. For I who have long been silent will not speak too soon, nor have I kept silence without restraint who at last now speak; nor do I complain of an injury, I who passed over it when it was fresh, and who allowed so much time for silence lest I should be thought to speak at all from my own cause. Now I have no other cause for speaking than Christ's: to whom I owed this too, that I have been silent until now; and to whom, I understand, I owe for the rest that I should not be silent.

And would that you had rather granted to my lifetime and age, almighty God, creator of all things and Father of our one Lord Jesus Christ, that I had fulfilled this ministry of my confession in you and in your Only-begotten in the times of Nero or Decius! Nor would I, by the mercy of the Lord and God, your Son Jesus Christ, glowing with the Holy Spirit, have feared the rack, knowing that Isaiah was sawn in two; nor dreaded the fires, remembering that the Hebrew youths sang among them; nor shunned the cross and the breaking of my legs, recalling that the thief was carried into paradise; nor trembled at the depths of the sea and the engulfing surge of the Pontic tide, since through Jonah and Paul you have taught that the faithful have life in the sea. For that contest against your open enemies would have been happy for me, since no doubt would remain that they were persecutors who compelled us to deny you by punishments, sword, and fire; and we would be allowed to spend for our witness to you nothing more than our deaths. For we would fight openly and confidently against those who deny, those who torture, those who slay; and your peoples, understanding that the persecution was public, would follow us as their leaders to the duty of confession.

But now we fight against a deceiving persecutor, against a flattering enemy, against Constantius the antichrist: who does not strike the back but strokes the belly; does not proscribe us into life but enriches us into death; does not thrust us into prison toward freedom but honors us within the palace toward slavery; does not torment the sides but takes possession of the heart; does not cut off the head with the sword but kills the soul with gold; does not threaten fires publicly but kindles hell privately. He does not contend, lest he be conquered, but flatters, that he may rule. He confesses Christ in order to deny him; he procures unity so that there may be no peace; he suppresses heresies so that there may be no Christians; he honors priests so that there may be no bishops; he builds the roofs of churches so as to destroy the faith. He carries you about in his words, in his mouth; and he does absolutely everything so that you may not be believed to be God as the Father is.

Let there cease, then, the reputation of reviling and the suspicion of lying. For it befits the ministers of truth to bring forward true things. If we say false things, let our reviling speech be infamous; but if we show that all these things are evident, we are not outside apostolic freedom and restraint in rebuking these things after long silence. But perhaps someone will think me rash for saying that Constantius is antichrist. Whoever judges this to be insolence rather than constancy, let him first read again that John said to Herod, "It is not lawful for you to do this"; let him know that it was said by a martyr to King Antiochus, "You indeed, wicked one, destroy us out of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us, who have died for his laws, to eternal life in the resurrection"; and again that another rebuked him with a blessed and faithful voice: "Having power among men, though you are corruptible, you do what you will; but do not think that our race has been forsaken by God. Wait patiently, and see how his great power will torment you and your seed." And so indeed the youths. But a woman spoke no less than perfect and blessed men, saying: "But you, who have become the inventor of all evil against the Hebrews, will not escape the hand of God. For if, for rebuke and correction, the Lord is a little angry with us while we live, he will be reconciled again with his servants." This is not rashness but faith; not thoughtlessness but reason; not fury but confidence.

I proclaim to you, Constantius, what I would have said to Nero, what Decius and Maximian would hear from me: You fight against God, you rage against the church, you persecute the saints, you hate the preachers of Christ, you take away religion; you are a tyrant now not of human but of divine things. These things are shared and common to you and to them; but now hear what is your own. You falsely call yourself a Christian; you are a new enemy of Christ. You are a forerunner of antichrist and work the mysteries of his secrets. You compose creeds while living against the faith. You are a teacher of the profane, untaught in godly things; you give bishoprics to your own, you replace good men with bad. You commit priests to custody, you dispose your armies to terrify the church, you assemble synods and drive the faith of the Westerners to impiety; shut up in one city, you terrify them with threats, weaken them with hunger, wear them out with winter, corrupt them with dissembling. You skillfully nourish the dissensions of the Easterners, you entice the flatterers, you incite your supporters; you are the disturber of the old, the profane author of the new. You carry out every cruelty without the odium of glorious deaths. By a new and unheard-of triumph of ingenuity you outdo the devil, and you persecute without martyrdom.

We owe more to your cruelty, Nero, Decius, Maximian. For through you we conquered the devil. The holy blood of the blessed martyrs has been gathered up everywhere, and their venerable bones bear witness daily, while demons bellow before them, sicknesses are driven out, bodies are lifted up without ropes, and the garments of women hung by the foot do not fall over their faces, spirits are burned without fire, the tormented confess without being questioned, and all things are done with no less benefit to the examiner than increase of faith. But you, cruelest of all the cruel, rage against us with greater harm and less pardon. You creep in under a name, you kill with flattery, you carry out impiety under the appearance of religion, you extinguish the faith of Christ as a lying preacher of Christ. You do not leave the wretched even excuses, that they might bear to their eternal judge their penalties and some scars of torn bodies, so that weakness might plead necessity. Most wicked of mortals, you so temper all the evils of persecution that you exclude both pardon in sin and martyrdom in confession. But this your father, the craftsman of human deaths, taught: to conquer without defiance, to slay without the sword, to persecute without infamy, to weave plots without suspicion, to lie without being understood, to profess without faith, to flatter without goodness, to do what you will and not show what you will.

But the only-begotten God himself, whom you persecute in me, warned me not to believe you, and that this deceitful and false name in you should not delude me, saying: "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he will enter the kingdom of heaven." Do you now recognize the truth of the divine prophecy against you, and the faithfulness of the Lord's saying, by which not the profession of a name but obedience to the Father's will is admitted to the heavenly kingdom? But see whether you, bearing the name of the Lord in words, do the will of God the Father in deeds. He cries: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"; and you decree that he is not Son, nor the other Father; but, a new persecutor today of the divine religion, you bring in names of adoption, external titles, and a God who feigns everything about himself. Formerly your fathers were enemies of Christ alone; but you contend against God the Father, that he should be a liar, that he deceived, that he professed about himself what he was not, as though he could not even be it. The Son cries: "I and the Father are one"; and "Believe my works, that the Father is in me and I in the Father"; and "All that is the Father's is mine": you rebuke Christ for his truth, you accuse the Father for his profession. You, a man, correct God; corruption, you govern life; night, you light up the light; faithless, you promulgate the faith; impious, you counterfeit piety; and you set the world in profane strife, denying of God what he himself professed of himself.

But besides this correction of falsehood, the Lord taught me another saying for understanding you, saying: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves; by their fruits you will know them." For there is something in the heart that is concealed in the face and veiled in the mind; and those who thought it a sheep have felt a wolf. If they do what belongs to sheep, let them be believed to be sheep; but if they carry out the work of ravening wolves, they are understood to be wolves by their work, and the appearance of their clothing is refuted by the fruit of their deeds. We see your sheep's clothing, ravening wolf. You load God's sanctuary with the gold of the state, and you bring to God what has been taken from temples, or confiscated by edicts, or exacted by penalties. You receive priests with a kiss, the kiss by which Christ was betrayed; you bow your head for a blessing so that you may trample on the faith; you deign to invite to a banquet, from which Judas went out to betray; you remit the poll tax, which Christ paid lest he cause offense; you grant taxes, Caesar, to invite Christians to denial; you relax what is yours so that what is God's may be lost. These are your garments, false sheep.

But now hear the fruits of your works, ravening wolf. I report nothing other than what has been done in the church, nor shall I bring forward any tyranny other than against God. I do not complain, because I do not know the case, yet the complaint is notorious that bishops whom no one dared to condemn were by your order made not to be bishops, and are even now recorded on the fronts of churches with the title of condemnation to the mines. Alexandria is present with me, shaken by so many wars, dreading so great a tumult of campaigns set in motion; for the struggle in arms against the Persian was shorter than against her. Prefects were changed, generals chosen, peoples corrupted, legions moved, so that Christ should not be preached by Athanasius. I say nothing of lesser peoples and cities, on whom throughout the East there is either terror or war. After you turned all your arms against the faith of the West and turned your armies against Christ's sheep, I was allowed to flee under Nero. Or you sent into exile Paulinus, a man of blessed suffering, after tempting him with flattery, and robbed the holy church of Trier of such a priest. You terrified the faith with edicts. You moved him from exile to exile and wore him out until death, and banished him even beyond the Christian name, so that he should take bread neither from your granary nor await it, profaned, from the den of Montanus and Maximilla. How you troubled the most devout people of Milan with the fury of your terror! Your tribunes went into the holy of holies, and opening a way for themselves through the people with every cruelty, dragged the priests from the altar. Do you think, wicked one, that you have sinned more lightly than the impiety of the Jews? They indeed shed the blood of Zechariah; but you, as far as lies in you, have cut off from Christ those incorporated into Christ. Then you turned your war as far as Rome, you snatched the bishop from there: and O wretch, I do not know whether you banished him with greater impiety than you sent him back! What furies you then exercised on the church of Toulouse! Clerics were beaten with clubs, deacons crushed with lead, and hands were laid, as the saints understand with me, on Christ himself. If I lie in this, Constantius, you are a sheep; but if you do it, you are antichrist.

Now, since these things, which are held by public knowledge, have been spoken by me no more as revilings than as truths: if anyone has any hope left in Christ, if anyone fears the day of judgment, if anyone has renounced the devil, if anyone remembers that he was reborn to life, let him receive what I say and judge of it by the judgment by which he must be judged himself. For what I am about to say I learned from no other source; I heard it myself and was present when it was done. In Christ, then, I do not lie, since I am a disciple of the truth and now also a witness of the truth. I was present at the synod of the Easterners at Seleucia, where I found as many blasphemers as Constantius pleased. For at the first division I found that one hundred and five bishops proclaimed homoeusion, that is, "of like essence"; nineteen professed anomoeusion, that is, "of unlike essence"; and only the Egyptians, except the heretic of Alexandria, held most firmly to homoousion. So, at the compulsion of Count Leonas, all were gathered together. Of those who proclaimed homoeusion, some put forward several things devoutly in words: that the Son was from God, that is, from the substance of God, and had always been. But those who defended anomoeusion asserted nothing but what was most profane: denying that anything could be like the substance of God, or that a generation could exist from God; saying rather that Christ is a creature, so that his having been created was counted as his birth; and that he was from nothing, and therefore not Son, nor like God.

I tell you what I myself heard read publicly in the assembly, which was held to have been taken down while the bishop of Antioch was preaching. These things, then, were reported to have been said by him: "God was what he is. He was not Father, because he had no Son either; for if a Son, then there must also be a woman, and conversation, and talk, and the conjugal union of a word, and endearment, and finally the natural little machine for begetting." O my wretched ears, which heard the sound of so deadly a voice: that these things should be said by a man about God, and preached about Christ in the church! After many impieties of this kind, having compared the Father and the Son by names rather than by nature, he said: "For as far as the Son stretches himself to know the Father, so far the Father stretches himself further, so as not to be known by the Son." When these were read, an uproar arose.

But when those who call God unlike understood that human ears would not receive the words of such impiety, these same men, deceivers rather than bishops of the church, write a creed again and condemn homoousion, homoeusion, and unlikeness. Since this was contrary to the sense of the hearers, I myself questioned one of them who happened to come to sound me out, as though I knew nothing of what had happened, asking what it meant that those who had condemned the Son's being of one substance with the Father, and denied his being of like substance, should condemn unlikeness. Then he said to me: "Christ is not like God, but is like the Father." This seemed still more obscure to me. When I questioned him again about it, he spoke thus: "I say that he is unlike God, and can be understood to be like the Father, because the Father willed to create a creature of such a kind that it should will what is like himself; and therefore he is like the Father, because he is a son of the will rather than of the divinity; but unlike God, because he is neither God nor from God, that is, born from the substance of God." Hearing this I was stunned, and did not believe it until the reasoning of this most profane likeness was publicly proclaimed by the agreement of all of them.

But those who proclaimed homoeusion condemned all who most shamelessly said these things without any shame of impiety. The condemned flew to their king; and, received with honor, they confirmed their impieties with all the canvassing they could, denying that the Son is like God, or born from God, or a natural Son. The few lorded it over the many. Constantius extorted the matter of his blasphemy by fear of exile. Boasting that he had now conquered the Easterners because he had subjected ten envoys to his will, and having threatened both the people through the prefect and the bishops within the palace, he secured, through heretical communion, the heretical bishops put in place in the greatest cities of the East. He did nothing else at all than make a gift to the devil of the world for which Christ suffered.

He still uses, now as before in other matters, the habit of his art: to confirm crooked things under the appearance of right, and to establish insane things under the name of reason. "I do not want words that are not written to be spoken," he says. Who, I ask, would order this to bishops? And who would forbid the form of the apostolic preaching? Say first, if you think it rightly said: I do not want new compounds of medicines against new poisons, I do not want new wars against new enemies, I do not want fresh counsels against new plots. For if the Arian heretics avoid homoousion today because they denied it before, do you not shun it today so that they may deny it now as well? The Apostle commands us to avoid novelties of words, but profane ones: why do you exclude devout ones? especially since he said, "All Scripture divinely inspired is profitable." You nowhere read "unbegettable" written: will it for that reason have to be denied, because it is new? You decree that the Son is like the Father. The Gospels do not proclaim it: why do you not shun this word? In one case novelty is chosen, in another it is removed. Where an occasion for impiety lies open, novelty is admitted; but where it is the greatest and only safeguard of religion, it is excluded.

But I will not keep silent about the deceiving subtlety of your devilish ingenuity. You decree that the Son be proclaimed like the Father, which is not written, so that you may keep silent that Christ is equal to God, which is written. For this was the cause of the Lord's death: "For this reason the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath but called God his own Father, making himself equal to God." John, saying this, proclaimed it with a loud voice, so that the Son, professing God as his Father, should be understood to profess himself equal to God. And if perhaps you say that Christ denied that he was equal to God because he said, "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing," remember that Christ also answered about the Sabbath, which he was accused of breaking, so as in this very matter to put forward the authority of the Father working in him, and to claim for himself equality of power and honor: "Whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise"; and again, "That they may honor the Son as they honor the Father"; and, "He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him." If the power is the same and the honor the same, I ask in what equality is lacking.

But likeness pleases you, so that you may not hear, "I and the Father are one"? Did the Lord also deny this, "that we are one", in which neither union nor difference was left, when the Jews again slandered him for making himself God by this saying, by saying: "If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do them, and you will not believe me, believe at least my works, that the Father is in me and I in the Father"? What, I ask, is lacking to equality with God? Work? Nature? Profession? For "the Father is in me and I in the Father" is equality, which expressed the reciprocity of equality, since being in and being are common to both. And to do the works of his Father is nothing else than to work in himself the power of the Father's divinity. And their being one is not to refuse equality but to build up the faith of equality by an increase of understanding.

You forbid, then, that unwritten things be said; and yet you yourself use unwritten things and do not speak what is written. You want the Son to be proclaimed like the Father, so that you may not hear from the Apostle: "Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." Christ did not seize what he was, that is, to be in the form of God. To be in the form of God is not equality with God, if being in the form of a servant is not equality with man. But if in the form of a servant Christ is man, what else is he in the form of God than Christ God? You want him proclaimed like for this reason, so that this may not be in your faith: "And let every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father."

O your deceitful flattery! You cover waters with straw, hide pits with turf, and put snares under bait. You think you satisfy the ignorant because you say "like the Father according to the Scriptures". Hear even now the art of your impiety. Do we not devoutly say that man is like God according to the Scriptures, since it was said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness"? Man, then, is in the image and likeness of God the Father and God the Son. And of what kind the image is, catholics will teach if they are asked. But here man is made to the likeness and image of God; a likeness between the Father and the Son is not also proclaimed. For "our" is a demonstration of equality, since there is no difference between those in whose mystery are both the image and the likeness.

But of the Son you will nowhere find likeness. The Apostle says that he is the image of God, but with an addition of faith, lest you should think the image a mere copy. For he says: "Who is the image of the invisible God": so that, as the image of the invisible God, he should be the image of the invisible God by this too, that he himself is invisible. But likeness together with image he assigned to man in relation to God, lest that should be thought a property of truth to which likeness had been joined with the image. Finally, where he is made equal in meaning of power, and a likeness of working is shown in the Son, and an advance of understanding is proclaimed, then it is said thus: "Whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise." To do likewise seemed too little unless the same things were done that were done alike. And so likeness of doing was devoutly shown in the property of the same deeds. There is also in the Lord a likeness of the flesh of sin; but in him it is not a likeness of flesh but a likeness of the flesh of sin: so that what is in the form of God is man, and what is in the likeness of the flesh of sin is the likeness of man, since he is in the stature of man and outside the sin of man. What then is this crafty profession of your religion, to call the Son like the Father according to the Scriptures, when only man was made to the image and likeness of God? Why, then, do you deceive with words? Why do you evade by art? Why do you not devoutly say equal to God, for that is according to the Scriptures?

But do you fear that by saying "equal" you would signify "unbegettable"? Understand the truth: he was understood to be equal to God for this reason, that he professed God to be his own; and to testify that God is his own Father is a demonstration of birth. To me indeed likeness is holy, lest occasion be given to union; but it is not to be conceded to you by me, because I will devoutly confess him equal first, and like afterward. I will religiously proclaim him like the Father, like also to God; but like in such a way that I will always set before likeness this saying: "I and the Father are one." But you contradict all these things, because you defend likeness as an excuse. You deny the Son by denying birth, you deny God by denying nature, you deny the like by denying equality, you deny the true by denying unity. And now I ask what likeness you leave to him to whom you grant no property of what makes him Son.

This, now, I ask of you, Constantius: in what faith do you at last believe? For I now go through the times of your changes, by which, descending to the very bottom of the abyss of your blasphemy, you have run down steep steps. For after the first and truly faith of the synod of Nicaea, a council being gathered again at Antioch, you renew your faith. But it happens to you as it usually does to unskilled builders, who are always displeased with their own work: you always tear down what you always build. And lest you accuse me of being an unjust judge of your will, I will tell you what displeases you in that same faith of the Dedication. Unless I am mistaken, it is this, which is yours: "Who was begotten from the Father, God from God, whole from whole, one from one, perfect from perfect, king from king, unchangeable, the unvarying image of the Godhead, essence, power, and glory." I, founded and abiding in the faith written by the fathers at Nicaea, do not need these; but you cut them away by correcting, and without harm to my faith you seek for yourself an occasion of unbelief. Then, after the synod of Serdica, you again stir up at Sirmium, against Photinus, all the care of your catholic teaching. But at once you shudder at this, which was contained in both creeds: "But those who say that the Son of God is from things that did not exist, or from another substance and not from God, and that there was once a time or an age when he was not, the holy and catholic church knows to be strangers." You disagree with your own, and as an enemy rebel against your own. You overturn the old by the new; you cut away the new themselves by a renewed correction; and you condemn what was corrected by correcting again. You take up also, against the ravings of Ossius and the growths of Ursacius and Valens, the condemnations of your corrections; but soon you decide that all your own things must be corrected, or rather condemned. For you are offended by these few words, most hostile to you: "And if anyone says that the Father is older in time than the only-begotten Son, and the Son younger than the Father, let him be anathema."

We do not complain about what was cut away, but rather about what was instituted after the synod of Nicaea. For even if it is affirmed that nothing faulty lies beneath any of these things, yet the cause of the will would not be religious; because the changing of good things is the plotting of evil, and an unnecessary correction is an occasion of perversity. I say nothing of why you cut away what was done by our fathers at Nicaea, for you do not agree with them; this only I ask, why do you condemn your own? For the Apostle proclaims one faith and one baptism; whatever with you is beyond the one faith is unbelief, not faith. For you who condemn the faith by correcting it make faith a matter of condemnation, since with you it is abolished by another, which in turn must be abolished by another.