On Saint Athanasius (two books) 1.23–1.30

You have persecuted and are persecuting Athanasius, thirsting for his blood. But see what the Holy Spirit says in the ninth psalm, in which you seem to me to be specially described: “He has said in his heart: I shall not be moved from age to age, without evil. His mouth is full of cursing and bitterness and deceit; under his tongue are toil and sorrow. He sits in ambush with the rich in secret places, to kill the innocent. His eyes are fixed on the poor man. He lies in wait in secret like a lion in his den; he lies in wait to seize the poor man, to seize the poor man until he draws him into his net. In his snare he will humble him; he will stoop and fall, while he lords it over the poor. He has said in his heart: God has forgotten; he has turned away his face so as not to see, to the end.” If you persevere in this wickedness, will it not be fitting to say of you, “He has turned away his face so as not to see, to the end”? So great are your killings, Constantius, that when it is said in the tenth psalm, in the person of our people, “In the Lord I trust; how will you say to my soul, Flee to the mountain like a sparrow? For behold, the sinners have bent the bow, they have made ready their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart,” you seem to me to be described there with the partners of your crimes. For we know that you Arians are the antichrists of our time. Or if you are not one who deserves to be numbered among the antichrists, judge for yourself, you denier of the only Son of God. The Holy Spirit says through the prophet: “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord's seat is in heaven. His eyes look upon the poor, and his eyelids examine the sons of men. The Lord examines the righteous and the ungodly, and he who loves iniquity hates his own soul.” And you have decided that a man must be punished whom you yourself have not found guilty, except in this one thing, that he resisted your blasphemy and so became guilty of death in your eyes. Hear the Spirit of God say, “He who loves iniquity hates his own soul,” and yet you compel us to love iniquity rather than justice. If it is not unjust to condemn a catholic unheard on the accusation of you heretics, prove it. For when I find it written further, “He will rain snares upon the sinners; fire and sulphur and the stormy wind are the portion of their cup; for the Lord is righteous and has loved righteousness; his face has seen equity,” I know that you and all who act with you are in this portion. Fire and sulphur and the stormy wind will certainly come upon you, unless you turn to God, since that is the portion of your cup, you deniers of the only Son of God, persecutors of those dedicated to his divine majesty; for though you know that God is just, loves justice and cherishes equity, you have decided to condemn the innocent and to persecute the most faithful priest of the Lord. “Love the Lord,” says the Holy Spirit in the thirtieth psalm, “all his saints, for the Lord seeks truth, and he will repay abundantly those who act in pride.” And you had pushed us to kill an innocent man, to share pride with you. For you could not deny that you are proud, since you have laid deadly hands on the worshippers of God and tried to destroy the evangelical faith and establish the heretical one. Had you not read in the thirty-second psalm, “The Lord loves mercy and judgment, and the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,” that you ordered an absent man to be condemned? Recognize by these works of yours how thoughtless you are and how much an enemy of your own salvation; for though you remember that it is written, “Who is the man who desires life and loves to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit; turn away from evil and do good,” you nevertheless take no rest from doing what God has forbidden you to do. This is not to want to see good days; this is not to want life; this is to ask for death to be granted oneself. Since, then, you are one who runs to drink eternal death, you seem to me to have been foreshown also in the thirty-fifth psalm: “The unjust man has said that he will sin within himself; there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he has acted deceitfully in his sight, so that his iniquity and hatred may be found out. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit; he would not understand so as to do well. He has devised iniquity on his bed; he has set himself in every way that is not good, and he has not hated malice.”

Observe what you are, most just emperor, since even what was said against Judas Iscariot and the people of the Jews is felt to have been said on your account. How could we, Constantius, condemn an innocent man at the counsel of your pride, when we knew it is written in David: “Show your mercy to those who know you, and your righteousness to those who are upright in heart. Let not the foot of pride come against me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me. There all who work iniquity have fallen; they have been thrust out and will not be able to stand.” What do you say? Is the mercy and righteousness of God such that the absent and unheard are condemned, and the innocent at that, whom it is not lawful to punish even when present? But what wonder if you, a man who does not know God, ordered these things done? What wonder if, ignorant of his mercy and righteousness, you commanded perverse, wicked, unjust things to be done? Could the word of the psalmist not remove you from so great a crime, when he says, “There all who work iniquity have fallen; they have been thrust out and could not stand”? Nor that word in the thirty-sixth: “Cease from anger and forsake fury; do not be envious so as to do evil, for those who do evil will be destroyed”? Since, reading these things, you decided that the statutes of the Lord were to be held as nothing, I judge that you are the one of whom it is said: “The sinner will watch the righteous and gnash his teeth at him; but the Lord will laugh at him, for he sees that his day will come.” We hold you among those of whom I see it said: “The sinners have drawn the sword, they have bent their bow, to cast down the needy and the poor and to slaughter the upright in heart. Let their sword enter their own hearts, and let their bow be broken. Better is a little for the righteous than the many riches of sinners, for the arms of sinners will be broken.” You are placed among those enemies of the Lord whom the Spirit of God describes further on: “The enemies of the Lord, as soon as they are honoured and exalted, will vanish away like smoke.” Consider at last that you, with all your loftiness, will perish like smoke, unless you correct yourself, being an enemy of God. I see it written further of you that unless you turn and repent you will come to nothing: “I saw the ungodly man highly exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found.” You are he, I say, Constantius, of whom I see this too said: “The sinner watches the righteous and seeks to put him to death; but the Lord will not leave him in his hands.” The prophet, full of the Holy Spirit, says: “Do not be envious among evildoers, nor be jealous of those who work iniquity, for like grass they will quickly wither, and like green herbs they will soon fall.” And it is said by you, Constantius, the destroyer of God's religion: “Imitate me.” Who would imitate you, except one who wishes to wither with you like green herbs? Who, except one who wishes to be wiped out by the anger of God, if Scripture truly says, “Speak righteousness, judge justly, sons of men,” and you rise up to kill an innocent man?

It cannot be doubted, then, that you are one of those to whom the Holy Spirit says: “For in your heart you work iniquities; on the earth your hands weave iniquity. The sinners have been estranged from the womb; they have gone astray from birth; they have spoken falsehood. Their anger is like that of a serpent, like the deaf asp that stops its ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers, of the enchanter who charms wisely. God has broken their teeth in their mouth; the Lord will shatter the jaws of the lions. They will come to nothing like water running off; he has bent his bow until they are weakened. Like melted wax they will be taken away; fire has fallen upon them, and they have not seen the sun.” You hear that you with yours will come to nothing, as those have already come whose imitator you have chosen to be. You see that you persecutors of the servants of God, deniers of the only Son of God, are compared to serpents and asps; and are you not at last afraid, and will you not cross over to the house of God? Will you not, though you are shown to be one of those asps, so shape yourself to trample the devil's head that you may be made worthy to reign among those whose glory John relates: “He came to his own, and his own did not receive him; but as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name”? Had you not read it written in the fifty-eighth psalm, “God of Israel, attend to visit all the nations; do not have mercy on any who work iniquity,” that you ordered sentence to be given against an absent man? Nor had you learned that the Holy Spirit warns and rebukes alike through these words in the sixty-first: “How long will you rush upon a man? Will you kill all?” “The fear of the Lord,” says Solomon, “is the beginning of understanding; but the ungodly despise wisdom and discipline.” That is why you despise discipline and wisdom, because you are without the fear of God; that is why you are described as ungodly in the sacred writings: ungodly certainly, because you have not only deserted God yourself, but persecute so savagely those who worship him. Woe to you, for you are found to be with those of whom I read in Proverbs: “My son, let not ungodly men lead you astray, and do not consent if they entreat you, saying: Come, share with us in blood; let us hide a righteous man in the earth unjustly; let us swallow him up alive like the underworld.” What delighted you in the Arians, imitators of the Jews, Constantius, that, hearing these ungodly words of theirs, you followed them in shedding the blood of the servants of God? Why did you not listen to the counsel of Solomon, who says to you: “Do not go on the way with them; do not turn your foot to their paths. For not unjustly are nets spread for birds. For those who take part in murder store up evils for themselves; these are the ways of all who accomplish wickedness, for by their ungodliness they take away their own soul”; and again: “As long as the innocent hold to righteousness, they will not be ashamed; but the foolish, being desirous of insolence, having become ungodly, have hated understanding and have become subject to reproaches.” You, Constantius, have sought these reproaches for yourself; you have condemned yourself, who, despising God's commands, have decided to cling to the Arians, the disciples of the accursed Jews; with whom you rightly hear further: “For since I called and you did not obey, and I spread out my words and you did not heed, but made my counsels void and did not attend to my rebukes, therefore I too will laugh at your destruction, and I will rejoice over you when sudden tumult comes upon you, and overthrow like a storm, when destruction comes upon you. For when you call on me, I will not hear you. The wicked will seek me and will not find me. For they hated wisdom and did not receive the word of the Lord, nor would they attend to my counsels, for they spurned my rebukes. Therefore they will eat the fruit of their own way and be filled with their own ungodliness. For because they deceived the little ones, they will be killed.”

We would certainly have deserved to be killed with you, and that by God, if we had persecuted the man of God with you. But how could we have done it, we who knew that it is written: “Do not devise evil against your friend, against the sojourner and the one who trusts you. Do not carry on enmity against a man without cause, lest he do you some harm”? Or would it not have been without cause, if we had pronounced sentence of death on an innocent man, as the insane fury of your fellow heretics had ordered through you? Woe to you, for I see it said of you, our persecutor: “An insolent eye, a wicked tongue, hands that shed the blood of the righteous, and a heart devising evil thoughts, and feet hastening to do evil.” You have read: “My son, honour the Lord, and you will be strong; besides him fear no other”; and yet you wanted yourself to be feared and God despised. For how could we have been found fearing God alone, if, giving way to your threats, we had condemned a man absent, unheard, and one we knew to be righteous at that? Solomon says: “A deceitful balance is an abomination before the Lord, but a just weight is acceptable to him.” You, on the contrary, do not hesitate to command, “Condemn a man by an unjust judgment,” thinking right what is perverse. Solomon says further of you and those like you: “The ways of fools are right in their own eyes, but the wise man listens to counsel.” “Condemn Athanasius,” you say; and where you could not prevail by the cleverness of your detestable subtlety, you began to use the forces of your empire. Hear, then, what is written of you: “The evil man does evil with insolence”; and again, since you have already strangled yourself with a noose, clinging to the Arians as Judas Iscariot clung to the Jews: “The law of the wise is a fountain of life, but the fool will die by a snare.” It is further said of you: “A bold king will fall into evils.” Certainly you have fallen into these evils, because by denying the only Son of God you have left yourself nothing of wisdom, but have turned yourself wholly to folly; and this is what has made you slaughter those dear to God. It is written: “The wise man, by fearing, turns away from evil; but the fool mixes, trusting, with the wicked.” Had you not read it written, “He who insults the poor provokes the one who made him,” that you dragged us to kill an innocent man with you? For if God is angry with one who insults, how much more with one who has killed his priest! Did you not still keep in mind what is written, “The beginning of a good way is to do just things; they are more acceptable with the Lord than to sacrifice victims,” that you should compel us to do unjust things? And in another place too: “He who calls the just unjust and the unjust just is abominable before God.” We would undoubtedly be abominable if we pronounced you just and judged Athanasius, a man acceptable to God, unjust. “To admire the person of the ungodly,” it says, “is not good, nor is it holy to turn aside the righteous in judgment.” You say on the contrary, you who are seen described in the person of the ungodly: “Condemn the guiltless, following my person.” And though you have compelled us to do things that could win us an angry God, yet we exhort you, the enemy of our safety, to become godly instead of ungodly, healthy instead of sick, alive instead of dead, religious instead of sacrilegious.

“How,” you say, “shall I be able to obtain this? By what means?” Cease persecuting the house of God; cease proscribing, deporting and killing his servants; confess that you are a Christian; curse with us the band of the Arians sought out by the devil's invention; believe as we believe, who are bishops from the succession of the blessed apostles; confess the only Son of God as they confessed him and as we confess him; and you will obtain pardon for such great crimes. For you have read in Solomon, “Death and life are in the hands of the tongue,” and in blessed Paul, “With the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” You remember that it is written, “A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who accuses wickedly will not escape”; and yet you dared to accuse Athanasius falsely. For we had no case to answer with the colleagues of your Arian sect, since the power of God had long ago forestalled them, with Arius, at Nicaea, at the time when the faith was written down not only against your blasphemy but against all heresies. We had, I say, no question with those false bishops, the enemies of God, your teachers, that we should fight again against those whom God had once driven out from his people. And so now our account is with you, because you have set yourself up as the author of the claim that Athanasius was guilty; and because we refused to punish him unheard, you, a man who knew yourself to be a false witness, began like a monstrous wild beast to want to punish us together with Athanasius, as though you could overcome the strength of God's servants with your gnashings. For though Solomon says, “The threats of a king are like the roaring of a lion,” yet your lion's roarings can have no strength against us. Why? Because you are a forerunner of the Antichrist, and we are soldiers of Christ. Why? Because you, the persecutor of his religion, cannot overcome the men of God. Likewise in another place he says: “There is no difference between the threats of a king and the anger of a lion.” What is this to the servants of God, who have determined that no one is to be feared but God, who remember that our souls are placed in the hand of God? Your fellow Arians may fear your roarings, because they are without knowledge of God, because they have not put on the armour of God. But we of God's household laugh at your roarings like a lion's. Why? Because, recognizing you as the wild beast whose roarings you are described as having, we must rather laugh at you, seeing a raging beast set under the shape of a man, than fear you. But if you are not a wild beast hiding under the image of a man, say so. You have read in Solomon: “Mercy and truth are the guard of a king, and the righteous surround his throne.” Since, on the contrary, a band of malignant Arians surrounds you and we see that you are a punisher of mercy and a curser of truth, what else shall we judge you to be but a wild beast and a monster? You are roused against us like a roaring lion because we love mercy and truth, because we have not punished an innocent and righteous man; and do you think you are not a savage wild beast and a most cruel monster?

But what desire led you to carry out these things I cannot see at all, that you should have persecuted with such ruin a catholic bishop of complete righteousness, a priest of the Lord. Did you not remember that it is written, “To do righteousness and to be truthful pleases God more than the blood of victims”? Athanasius displeases you because he keeps the tradition of the blessed apostles, because he confesses himself a Christian, because he refuses to be your fellow apostate. No wonder, since we hold it written: “The holy man is unclean in the eyes of the wicked.” He who pleases God displeases you malignant men, and especially you, rash and proud; and you are understood to be rash and proud because you have stretched out your hand against God's ordination, because you thought the apostolic tradition should be destroyed, because you decided that the bishops, under whose care you ought to have lived, should be brought under your rule. Understand, then, what you are, hearing through Solomon the name that belongs to you, the proud man: “The rash and proud man will be called a pestilence.” Pestilent man though you are, you will not be able to afflict us with your disease, because divine mercy affords us protection. In short, you, a pestilent man, tried to make us sharers of your pestilence; but he to whom we live dedicated did not allow your temptations to reach upright hearts. For Scripture prompts us: “Deliver those who are led to death, and do not spare to redeem those who are being killed. But if you say, I do not know this man, know that the Lord knows the hearts of all; and he who formed the breath of all knows everything, who repays each according to his works.” When against this you say, “Condemn the worshipper of God, abandon the apostolic faith, accept my faithlessness,” it certainly shows that you are a pestilent man. God wants us to help those placed in pressures and straits; and you urge those who ought to do good to do evil, and that by applying what you think can be feared. Observe now whether that disease called pestilence is not in you. It is a disease strong enough that you can make not only bodies but souls diseased: the souls, that is, of those who are willing to listen to you saying, “Condemn the bishop of the Lord, repudiate the faith which the church has always held, and accept mine, which Arius handed down.” “To be abashed before a person in judgment,” says holy Scripture, “is not good; and he who says that the ungodly man is righteous will be cursed among peoples and hateful to nations; but those who reprove will hope for better things, and the best blessing will come upon them.” And you thought that we could be abashed before your person and condemn the man whom even you knew to be innocent, whom you held guilty only in this, that he refused to deny that he was a Christian.

Meanwhile, because we reprove you, who are on the road of death, because we correct you, see what reward is promised us: “Open your mouth,” says the prophet, “with the word of God, and judge all soundly; open your mouth and judge justly.” And you say: “Condemn an innocent man.” I do indeed keep in mind what is contained in the sacred Scriptures: “Do not be proud before the king.” But if you had been willing to stay within the bounds of your power and I had been proud against you, I would truly have condemned myself as a transgressor of the law. Now, however, because we tell the truth to you, a murderer and a man of sacrilege, we will certainly not deserve to be punished as proud men, but rather to be rewarded with heavenly rewards, because we did not spare you in your error. It is written: “A whip for the horse and a goad for the ass, and a rod for a foolish nation.” We rightly call you deniers of the only Son of God foolish, since we see you engaged in so great a sacrilege. For when I see it written that “as a dog that returns to its vomit becomes hateful, so is a fool who returns in his malice to his sin,” I judge that it was said especially of you. Why, you ask? Because you swore in your letters to the Alexandrians that you would do Athanasius no further harm, and now you seek to kill him. But you say: “My father had sent him into exile, and I too had to obey my father's decrees.” Suppose, as you will, that Athanasius is a heretic: if he had been rightly sent into exile, why did you allow him, against your father's decrees, to recover the dignity that your father thought he had taken from him? But you say: “It was done at the intervention of my brother Constans.” But you could have met Constans by saying: “The man whom our father proved a heretic I cannot receive into the parts of my realm unless he corrects himself.” But you say: “I feared that wars might arise between us.” Then, because Shapur, king of the Persians, is now waging war against you, if he says to you, “Accept my religions, and I will be at peace with you,” must you, with all who live in your empire, go over to the religions of the demons? For Shapur sacrifices to demons. You see, then, that you did not act as a servant of God in receiving him and recalling him to his place, a man you remembered had been deported in the cause of the faith: first, because you judged God powerless, as though he could not protect you while you protected the truth and resisted the heretics; secondly, because you wanted Constans to be more gracious to you than God. If you remembered that King Constans had become a heretic by favouring Athanasius, whom you already held proven sacrilegious, you ought not only not to have put your kingdom before God, but not even your own life. For you yourself are a witness of your own conscience that it was because of the faith which the church has always held and holds, because he would not condemn it, that he was sent into exile; that is, because he refused to be an Arian. It does not escape you that this is why Athanasius was hated by your father, since you too are pleased to persecute him in the same cause in which your father persecuted him. Let him say, in short, that he is not a Christian, let him confess himself an Arian, and he will be most wise and great in your eyes. Rightly, then, are you compared to a dog that has returned to its vomit; for you were already thought a Christian and not an Arian from the time you restored Athanasius with such letters to the people entrusted to him by God. But now, since you are proved to be an Arian and, desiring your heresy to find a place, persecute a righteous man because he attacks it with all his strength, you are rightly compared to a dog returning to its vomit.

Likewise in that excellent deed of yours too you are rightly compared to a dog that has returned to its vomit: that you accepted the truth that Eudoxius of Germanicia was not a catholic and gave letters against him to the people of Antioch, and afterwards began to defend this same Eudoxius as a teacher of truth, claiming his heresy as the catholic faith. Why so fickle, Constantius? Why are you bent this way and that in the cause of the faith, like a reed when the winds beat on it? What wonder if you were so ready to condemn Athanasius and even to invite all the priests of God to do so, since you did not hesitate to do such things in your rashness even in the matter of the state of religion? You boiled over to shed innocent blood, most pious king, as though you did not remember that it is written: “Of the king who judges the poor in truth, his throne will rise up as a witness”; but you thought you would be supreme if you went against the divine Scriptures, if you did everything they forbid. You hate Athanasius because he is a Christian; because he would not be, as you say, a disciple of Arius, you persecute him with the utmost hatred. But the Holy Spirit had shown long ago by the mouth of Solomon that you would be such towards him, saying: “The righteous man is an abomination to the wicked man.” Do not stay any longer in these evils, Constantius; do not abuse the patience of God. Keep in mind what is written in the seventy-seventh psalm: “The Lord was roused as one asleep, like a mighty man heady with wine, and he struck all his enemies in the hinder parts; he gave them everlasting reproach.” In the eighty-first psalm the Holy Spirit says: “How long will you judge iniquity and accept the persons of sinners? Judge the orphan and the needy; justify the lowly and the poor. Rescue the poor, and deliver the needy from the hand of the sinner.” You say, “Kill with me a man dedicated to God,” wanting us to be counted with you among those of whom it is said, “They have not known nor understood; they walk in darkness.” God commands that we not pronounce unjust judgment, that we not, out of respect for your face, the face of a sinner, allow you to punish the man you persecute unjustly. God has commanded that the lowly be justified by us, that the poor be rescued and the needy delivered from your hand, the hand of a butcher. And you say: “Condemn the man whom God wanted rescued from my hand, the hand of a sinner.” No wonder; for you could not go against your own accursed arrangements. The Holy Spirit says in the ninety-sixth: “You who love the Lord, hate evil”; and your commands show that you say, “Love what is evil.” For if it seems evil to God that an innocent man be condemned, that sentence be given against an absent and righteous man, what else do you compel us to do but what God hates? If, then, we did what God hates, we would certainly not be among those to whom it is said, “You who love the Lord, hate evil.” You, of course, do not hate evil because you do not love the Lord; but we refuse to do what God hates because we love him. You do these things because you are not the servant of him whose fear and love compel us to hate evil. For you, the persecutor of his church, are not found in the church of the Lord, so as to think that the prophet said to you in the psalm, “You who love the Lord, hate evil,” since he also says in the hundredth: “He who acts in pride shall not dwell in the midst of my house; he who speaks wicked things has not prospered in the sight of my eyes.” So it is said not to you who are placed outside, but to us: “You who love the Lord, hate evil.” In short, we hate the evil that you love because you are not in the church of God. For how will you be able to claim that you are in the church of God, a man who not only persecutes the church but denies him who founded the church? Or are you not proud, and will you be able to dwell in the house of the Lord as long as you remain in this arrogance? For who could rightly be called proud, if you could be judged humble, who say: “Condemn an innocent man against the divine commands; trample on God's precepts and keep mine”?