On Saint Athanasius (two books) 1.31–1.37

But perhaps you do not speak wicked things, and can be found among Christians, you, the denier of the Father, denier of his only Son, denier of the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, founder of the Arian heresy, destroyer of the apostolic faith; you speak nothing wicked with your poisoned lips, you utter nothing wicked with that sacrilegious mouth! Did you not know that in the hundred and second psalm the Holy Spirit said of the Lord, “The Lord does mercy and judgment for all who suffer wrong,” that you ordered judgment to be given unjustly? Whose commands is it fitting for us, the priests of the Lord, to obey? Yours, you who have not yet been rescued from the unclean spirits, or the prophet's, through whom the Holy Spirit warns us, the worshippers of the true Godhead, to avoid every part of injustice? Had you not read that God said to you kings, “Do not touch my anointed ones, and do no harm to my prophets,” that you dared to stretch out your hands against the house of God? David, full of the Holy Spirit, says in the hundred and fifth psalm: “Blessed are those who keep judgment and do righteousness at all times”; and you say, “Do injustice with me.” You persecute Athanasius, the ungodly the godly, the heretic the Christian; but tell me, I beg you, which of you can be acceptable to God? You, the denier of the eternal majesty of the only Son of God, the builder and founder of a false religion, or Athanasius? You have read in the hundred and eighteenth psalm: “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who search his testimonies; with their whole heart they seek him.” Tell me, then, which of you seeks God, which serves his majesty faithfully? You, who persecute Athanasius because he confesses himself a Christian, or he who wants you, his persecutor, rescued from the snares of the devil? You, the destroyer of the catholic faith, or he, the preacher of the apostolic faith? If you serve God, how is it that the Holy Spirit says further on, “For those who work iniquity have not walked in his ways”? You heretics, then, workers of iniquity, since you are not found in the ways of the Lord, certainly show by your works that you are in the way of the devil. Have you read, “Do not seek death by the error of your life, nor bring on destruction by the works of your hands, for God did not make death and does not rejoice in the destruction of the living”? Or not? If you have read it, why did you order us to seek death for ourselves? If you have not, learn what you urged us to do, you who have chosen to be in the lot of those whose crimes the Holy Spirit describes by the mouth of Solomon, saying: “Nor did they hope for the wages of righteousness, nor did they discern the honour of holy souls; for God created man incorruptible and made him in the image of his own likeness; but through the envy of the devil death entered the world. Those who are of his party imitate him.” You see that you are an imitator of the devil, placed in his party; you know that you are seeking death for yourself, you who would not remain in the image of God, as you were made by God, but have betaken yourself to him through whose envy death entered the world.

Hear, on the other hand, how great a happiness Athanasius longs to obtain, which is why he refuses to be what you are, an Arian apostate; hear how great a blessedness those too have obtained whom you have already been pleased to kill because they called themselves Christians: “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die, and their departure was thought an evil, and their going from us destruction; but they are in peace. For though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and having been afflicted a little, they will be greatly rewarded, for God tested them and found them worthy of himself. Like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a burnt offering he accepted them. And in the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and their Lord will reign for ever.” You desire to kill Athanasius, thinking that if you slaughter him you can do him eternal harm, not knowing that it is written: “The righteous man who has died condemns the ungodly who are living, and youth quickly completed condemns the long old age of the unrighteous. For they will see the end of the wise man and will not understand what the Lord purposed for him, and why he made him safe. They will see and despise him, but the Lord will laugh them to scorn. And after this they will become dishonoured corpses and an outrage among the dead for ever, for he will dash them speechless and puffed up, and shake them from their foundations, and they will be left utterly dry, and they will be in anguish, and their memory will perish. They will come with dread at the reckoning of their sins, and their lawless deeds will convict them to their face.” You see among whom your portion is placed; you see with what sort of men you have made yourself stand against the house of God. But Athanasius you will see among those of whom you may hear it written further on: “Then the righteous man will stand with great confidence against those who afflicted him and made light of his labours. When they see him, they will be shaken with dreadful fear, and they will be amazed at the unexpectedness of his salvation. They will say among themselves, repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit: This is the man whom we once held in derision and made a byword of reproach. We fools thought his life madness and his end without honour. How has he been numbered among the sons of God, and why is his lot among the saints?” Then, unless you take thought for yourself, you will say this, when you see yourself plunged into Tartarus; then you will say what holy Scripture says the persecutors of the soldiers of Christ will say: “So we strayed from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness did not shine on us, and the sun did not rise upon us. We wearied ourselves in the paths of iniquity and destruction, and we journeyed through trackless deserts, but the way of the Lord we did not know. What did pride profit us? Or what good has wealth with boasting brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow and like a messenger running by.” On the other hand you will see Athanasius among those whose glory the Holy Spirit tells, saying: “But the righteous live for ever, and their reward is with the Lord, and their care is with the Most High. Therefore they will receive the kingdom of splendour and the diadem from the hand of the Lord, for with his right hand he will cover them and with his arm he will shield them.” You, on the contrary, if you remain in this obstinacy of mind, if you resolve to end this fragile life among the Arians, will be among those to whom the Holy Spirit likewise speaks by the mouth of the prophet: “Hear, therefore, O kings, and understand; learn, judges of the ends of the earth; give ear, you who rule over multitudes and pride yourselves on crowds of nations. For your power was given you by the Lord and your strength by the Most High, who will examine your works and search out your thoughts; because, being ministers of his kingdom, you did not judge rightly, nor keep the law, nor walk according to the will of God. Terribly and swiftly he will come upon you, for the severest judgment falls on those in high places. For the lowly may be pardoned in mercy, but the mighty will be mightily tested. For the Lord of all will not shrink from anyone's person, nor will he reverence anyone's greatness; for he himself made both small and great, and he takes thought for all alike; but a stronger inquiry awaits the strong. To you, then, O evil tyrants, are my words, that you may learn wisdom and not fall away.” Then, if you have not yet heard us, Constantius, you will see what you cannot see now because of your unbelief; you will see then, when you have been placed among your fellow tyrants in those places of torment, not only that you loved unjust judgments, but that you wished to destroy the house of God, that you became a denier of the Son of God, that by your threatening power you decreed that the faith be preached otherwise than the prophets and apostles preached it. Nor will you be able to say, “I am not among those whom the Holy Spirit describes through Solomon,” when you hear him say: “To you, then, O evil tyrants, are my words.”

You will not be able to deny, then, that you are the chief of all your fellow tyrants, if only you look closely at your work. “The keeping of the laws,” says the prophet, “is the assurance of incorruption, and incorruption makes one near to God.” To this you say: “Corrupt the law of God, as you, our persecutors, have corrupted it.” Who is so senseless as to want to be corrupted by you and perish for ever? Who would not want to become near to God by remaining in integrity? Why have you either done these things yourself or dared to compel us to do them? Had you not read that Solomon said to God in the book of Wisdom: “God of the fathers and Lord of mercies, who made all things by your word, and by your wisdom formed man to have dominion over the creatures made by you, to order the world in righteousness and equity and to judge with uprightness of soul”; and again: “You taught your people by such works that the righteous must be humane, and you made your sons to be of good hope”? Had you not found these things written, I say, that you dared to provoke us to such inhumanity? How shall we be sons of good hope? How shall we, his servants, present ourselves righteous and humane before God, when transgressors of the law are called neither righteous nor sons of God? Learn, then, from what good you wished to drag us to death, and everlasting death at that; for everyone who ceases to be among those whom God has called into the adoption of sons loses life and possesses everlasting death. Since, then, you Arians are inhuman, ungodly, cruel murderers, how can you be called Christians? But also, since you deny Christ, the only Son of God, and confess that you have believed in the Antichrist, from where or how will you be able to prove yourselves servants of Christ, when you have shown by your own profession that you are servants of the Antichrist? For the antichrist in whom Arius believed truly was “when he was not”; but our Saviour, Lord and God, the only Son of God, is not, as you would have it, Constantius, a creature, but the Lord of creation; he is eternal, beyond reckoning, as is he whose Son he is. He did indeed put on a perfect man in the last days from the womb of the virgin; but even when he had taken up man, he is unchangeable, incorruptible, inexpressible and unalterable, as is he whose Son he is. The man he took up could not change him into anything other than what he always was, since he is in the form of God his Father, since the Son is equal to the Father, as the most blessed apostle relates: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” For because he said, “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” the only Son of God, God, could not become anything other than what he is, incorruptible, inexpressible, unchangeable, since he remains always in that state of eternal greatness in which his Father too remains. But we certainly understand what “he emptied himself” means: that though the Son is like and equal to the Father, he nevertheless willed to become man also for our salvation.

Since, then, you have accepted the Antichrist in place of Christ, because he truly was when he was not, with what face do you still resist Christians, if not with that with which adulteresses resist chaste women? You dared to try to lord it over the people of God, to subject the church of God to your kingdom, the church that fears only his divine majesty, to your worthless rule; and you did this because you do not know that it is written of you tyrants: “Therefore undisciplined souls have gone astray; for when the lawless supposed that they could lord it over a holy nation, they themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of a long night, shut in under their roofs, fugitives.” You see now that you are among those persecutors of the people of God of whom you have read that they are all bound by one chain of darkness; and again: “They indeed deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned in darkness, who had kept your sons imprisoned, through whom the incorruptible light of the law was beginning to be given to all.” Or will you deny that you hold the bishops of God in confinement? And why do you hold them? Surely so that we may not preach the truth to the people of God? Why do you keep us in prison? Why do you send us into exile? Is it not because you fear that we may show, by the revelation of the sacred Scriptures, that you Arians are ravening wolves, mad dogs, and the antichrists of our time? For the sacred Scriptures prove from your acts that you are not servants of God but plainly sons of the devil. For if you are not one of those whom the sacred Scriptures cry out would be such, why, when you found it written in the hundred and thirty-first psalm, “Arise, Lord, into your rest, you and the ark of your holiness; let your priests be clothed with righteousness,” did you want an absent man condemned by us? Surely so that we might lose the righteousness with which the Lord had clothed us. For since he says, “Let your priests be clothed with righteousness,” and you were pressing us to do injustice, what else would we be, if we had done what seemed good to your ill will, but your partners in crime, fountains of all iniquity? We, that is, who, laying aside the duty of righteousness, would have taken up that of injustice to please you. You persecute the house of God, Constantius, not knowing that you persecute God himself in his house; for the house of God is the church, in which the Lord dwells, as it is written in the same psalm: “The Lord has chosen Zion; he has preferred it for his dwelling. This is my rest for ever and ever; here I will dwell, for I have preferred it.” Since this is so, see that it is you who are punished when you punish any of us; that you persecute your own salvation when you fight against God, not against us, in whom you hear God say that he deigns to rest. You, then, who try to violate the temples of the Lord, unless you turn, will perish in the same way as those of whom David speaks in the hundred and thirty-fifth psalm: “Who struck Egypt with their firstborn, for his mercy endures for ever; and brought Israel out from their midst, for his mercy endures for ever; who divided the Red Sea in two, for his mercy endures for ever; and led Israel through the midst of it, for his mercy endures for ever; and shook off Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea.” Why do I find this written, except that I should believe that, when you tried to oppress me, my God could, unless you turned, destroy you as he did Pharaoh, and would rescue me from your hands as he rescued them from Pharaoh's power? For that is why he says at each of the mighty works, “for his mercy endures for ever”: to show me that the mercy of the Lord abides with me always, as long as I serve him alone, but cannot be with you, because you are his enemy, as Pharaoh was.

We refused to condemn an absent man; we refused to give sentence, as you wished, against one we know to be innocent and whom we know to be a preacher of the catholic faith. Why? Because we Christians have stretched out our hope to God, not to you and your perishing kingdom. We refused to please ourselves with the glory of your kingdom, since we are waiting to obtain glory from him in whom alone we must trust and hope, as David teaches when he says in the hundred and forty-fifth psalm: “Do not trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. His breath will go forth, and he will return to his earth; on that day all their thoughts will perish. Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them; who keeps truth for ever, who does judgment for those who suffer wrong.” We refused to persecute unjustly with you a man full of the fruits of righteousness, lest when God began to take vengeance on you he should take it on us too. We did not do what you unjustly ordered us to carry out, lest we should come with you to that place described in Ecclesiastes: “And God will seek out the one who suffers persecution”; and further: “I saw under the sun the place of judgment, there the ungodly man; and the place of the righteous, there the godly man.” We refused to join ourselves to heretics; we refused to join hands with you to attack the house of God; we refused to accept idolatry with you to the insult of God; we refused to be mixed up in your sacrilege, lest we too should deserve to hear with you what the priests, the people and the king of Israel, who had all forsaken God and gone over to idolatry, will hear by the mouth of the prophet Hosea: “Hear this, priests, and attend, house of Israel, and give ear, house of the king; the judgment is against you, for you have become a snare for a trap, and like a net spread for the fowler's catch.” You surely knew that it is written in the prophet Amos, when you gave the lesson, that is, the example of condemning the innocent: “He who did judgment on high and set righteousness on the earth.” Violator of God's justice, were you ignorant of what the prophet Micah said of the rulers of the Jews: “They have not lifted up their hands to God, and they coveted fields and plundered orphans and a man's house, a man and his inheritance. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I know evils against the people, from which you shall not lift your necks”? But on you, though you are pleased to proscribe, deport, send to prison, torture, and at last kill the worshippers of God, will no evil be repaid? We refused to be mixed up in your abominable acts, lest, condemned with you to eternal punishment, we should hear what God says in Micah: “Hear this, then, you heads of the house of Jacob and the remnant of the house of Israel, who abhor judgment and pervert all that is right, who have built Zion and Jerusalem with blood and with iniquities. Her judges judged for gifts, and her priests answered for pay, and her prophets divined for money, and they leaned upon the Lord, saying: The Lord is among us; no evil will come upon us.” Had you not further read in that most holy prophet, that you ordered a man dedicated to God to be condemned: “With what shall I lay hold of the Lord, approach my God most high? Shall I lay hold of him with burnt offerings, or with calves a year old? Or will the Lord accept me for thousands of rams or ten thousands of fat goats? Or shall I give my firstborn for ungodliness, the fruit of my womb for the sins of my soul? It has been told you, O man, what is good; or what does the Lord require of you but to do judgment and righteousness and to love mercy and be ready to walk with the Lord your God?” Nor had you found it written in Habakkuk, “The ungodly man has oppressed the righteous by his power,” so that you set about so wicked a work, one that could make you ungodly before God? Nor had you found it set down further on: “Why do you look upon the despisers? Will you be silent while the ungodly man devours the righteous?”

And therefore, seeing that you, an ungodly man, had tried to devour a righteous man, not only have we not kept silent that you act wickedly, but we will not keep silent. For you are no other than the one of whom it is said: “The self-pleasing and the despiser, the proud man, will achieve nothing, who has enlarged his soul like the underworld.” Nothing can be said of it that does not fit you, if you will deign to recall with me the crimes of your deeds and are not slow to review the deaths you have caused. For who else in our days can be found pleasing himself, a despiser, proud, achieving nothing, who has enlarged his soul like the underworld and can be reckoned like insatiable death, except you? But see that God tells you that you can achieve nothing. For though you are a despiser of God's commands, though, desiring to persecute his religion, you have so enlarged your soul to slaughter his worshippers that you will not cease harassing the Lord's flock in your whole kingdom, yet all your hostility achieves nothing. For all whom you persecute are and always will be servants of God. But you, unless you look out for yourself, will perish for ever, pleasing yourself, a despiser, proud, enlarging your soul like the underworld to devour and swallow us alike, because we resist you when you act wickedly; made like insatiable death, you are driven by furies to our slaughter. You are so wicked, Constantius, that when I find the prophet saying, “O you who lay an evil foundation for his house, to set his nest on high,” you and the inheritance of the Antichrist, whom you favour, come before my eyes, as I recognize those sacrilegious attempts of yours. For it cannot be doubted that you have tried and are trying to have your heresy founded in your whole kingdom and the catholic faith destroyed. And when I hear the prophet dedicated to God say, “Woe to those who build a city with blood and prepare a city with iniquities,” you seem to me to be the one building a den of robbers by the shedding of blood, by the slaughter of the servants of God. Or will you deny that your malignant council of Arians is a den of robbers? If you are not robbers, how are you found killing those dedicated to God? Woe belongs to those who build cities in blood; did you not see, most prudent emperor, that woe could be yours, since you thought your heresy must be rebuilt by shedding the blood of the men of God? The Holy Spirit says through the prophet Zephaniah: “Seek the Lord, all you lowly of the earth; do judgment and seek righteousness, and answer so that you may be sheltered on the day of the Lord's wrath.” You say: “Condemn an innocent man; be murderers and men of sacrilege with me.” Or are these not the things you order us to do? Did you order the priest of the Lord to be condemned, or not? Did you order that the Arian faithlessness be held and the faith written at Nicaea rejected? If you cannot deny that you commanded these things to be carried out, see that you wanted to make us both murderers and men of sacrilege. God says: “And it will come about on that day that I will search Jerusalem with a lamp and take vengeance on the men who are despisers, who do not keep the commandments”; and you say that your commandments and those of your fellow blasphemers must rather be kept. How could we have condemned unjustly a priest of the Lord full of the fruits of righteousness, when we see what threat arose against the rulers of the Jews and against all their accomplices, who are known to have done what you are doing? “O city that was splendid and redeemed, the dove! She has not listened to the voice, she has not received discipline; she has not trusted in the Lord, and has not drawn near to her God. Her princes roar like lions; her judges are like wolves of Arabia; they will leave nothing till morning. Her prophets are windy men, despisers; her priests defile themselves and act ungodly. But the Lord is righteous in her midst, and he will do no injustice.”

Since this is so, and it is in no way lawful for us to pronounce unjust judgment, it remains either for you to make yourself one of his servants and learn to pronounce judgment, or, if you always want to be among God's adversaries, to pronounce your unjust judgment alone, and to stop compelling us to do what you see God forbids. Stop now accusing Athanasius, or us, of destroying the house of God, when you find in Zechariah that you and your fellow tyrants have been described as future persecutors of God's inheritance, you who, he says, have usurped power beyond measure. For the Lord, telling of your cruelty, says: “I am jealous for Jerusalem and Zion with great jealousy, and with great anger I am angry at the nations that set themselves over you, because I was angry a little, but they made themselves helpers to evil.” Do you dare, lover of darkness and curser of light, to say, “Condemn an innocent man,” when God deigns to command us through Zechariah, saying: “Judge just judgment, and show piety and mercy each to his brother; and do not oppress by power the widow and the orphan and the proselyte and the poor; and let none of you remember in his heart his brother's malice”? Since these are the heavenly commands, by whose authority did you say, “Tear your fellow servant to pieces”? If you say you put forward this authority from God's commands, you will not be able to prove it, since no command of God that the innocent be condemned can be found in the sacred Scriptures. Since, then, you have done what the law of God forbids, it is clear that you put forward this authority from the will of him who is known to be God's enemy; and so you must be compared to those of whom it is said through the prophet: “And they refused to heed, and turned their back in folly, and made their ears and their heart unpersuadable, so as not to obey; they made them heavy so as not to obey my law”; and further on: “They did not listen; if they cry out, I will not hear them, says the Lord almighty. Be at peace, souls: these are the words that you shall do: speak the truth each to his neighbour, and judge peaceable and just judgment in your gates, and let none of you devise his neighbour's malice in your hearts, and do not love a false oath; for all these things I hate, says the Lord almighty.” Why do you compel me to do what the Lord almighty says he hates? And teaching about fasting the Lord says, “Love peace and truth.” How could we have been lovers of peace and truth if we had punished as guilty an innocent man weighed down with false charges by you and yours? Or what peace would there have been, when by doing these things we could have been cast out even from the Lord's peace? For the peace of the Lord, who says, “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give you,” would not have been left by him in us, if we ourselves had unjustly taken it from another. Who does not know that when discipline departs, grace departs too? In Malachi God says: “A son honours his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honour? says the Lord almighty.”