On Saint Athanasius (two books) 1.9–1.14

You called us together to slaughter a priest of God, to destroy the one through whom God has ordained that you should hear his commands. “And Moses wrote the words of this law in a book and gave it to the priests and Levites who carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord and to the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them on that day, saying: After seven years, at the time of the year of release, at the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel comes together to appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses, you shall read this law before Israel in their hearing, when men and women and children and the proselyte who is in your cities have been called together into the assembly, so that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and listen to do all the words of this law. And their children, who do not know, will hear and learn the Lord your God all the days that they live on the earth.” You persecute the one through whom the Lord commanded you to hear; and while he is still among the living you send your fellow heretic George as his successor, though, even if Athanasius had already been freed from the body, it would not have been lawful for you to send one; it was and is in the hand of God whom he would deign to appoint as bishop for his people, that is, through his servants, the catholic bishops. For no one could be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to govern the people of God except him whom God had chosen and on whom hands had been laid by catholic bishops; just as we find that when Moses died his successor Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the Holy Spirit. Holy Scripture says: “And Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of understanding, for Moses had laid his hand upon him; and the children of Israel listened to him and did as the Lord commanded Moses.” You see that you have gone against God's ordination by acting against God's will, that you have slaughtered yourself with the point of your own sword, since no one could be ordained unless Athanasius had died, and if Athanasius had died, a catholic ought to have been ordained by catholic bishops. Holy Scripture says that God said to Joshua the son of Nun: “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land which I will give them. Every place on which you set the sole of your foot I will give you, as I said to Moses. From the desert and before Lebanon as far as the great river Euphrates and as far as the great sea, to the setting of the sun, shall be the borders of your territory. No man shall stand before you all the days of your life; and as I was with Moses, so I will be with you, and I will not forsake you nor despise you.” Can God be with his enemy George? Can he be gracious to one whom he did not ordain, whom he did not choose? George is such as Arius was, and as Valens and Ursacius are, or Eudoxius of Germanicia, to whom you sent me; for from thorns nothing but thorns can come. You can gather that this is so from George's own acts, by reading the protests of the Alexandrians; and though it pleases you that this blasphemer is a criminal (for he would not otherwise be so very dear to you, unless he were a criminal), yet I have set this down so that you may see your excellent work. Since, then, you know that God is not with George, but observe that he is with Athanasius, whom he appointed bishop for his people, you can at last recognize that you have tried to destroy God's ordination, that you have persecuted God in Athanasius. For you hear God say to Moses' successor: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you, and I will not forsake you nor despise you”; and see, in another place: “Be strong and act manfully, to keep and do as Moses my servant commanded you; and you shall not turn aside from it to the right or to the left, that you may understand in all that you do. And the book of this law shall not depart from your mouth, and you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may keep to do all that is written. Then I will direct your ways, and then you will understand. Behold, I have commanded you: be strong and act manfully; there is nothing for you to dread or fear, for the Lord your God is with you in every place.”

It remains now for you to prove whether what you and George are doing comes from God's commandments. For you hear God promise that he will be with Moses' successor as he was with Moses, provided he keeps what is written in the book of the law. If, then, you do not find it written that you should do these things, it will be for your fairness at last to observe that God is not with you Arians, but that the one who dwelt in Cain dwells in you. What cause drove you to do these things, Constantius, that, led by the power of your reign into such pride, you decided that the man whom God has chosen for himself in the honour of the priesthood should be killed? Had you not found it written in the first book of Kingdoms: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the mighty man glory in his strength, nor the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, to know and understand God and to do judgment and righteousness in the midst of the earth”? Why did you pass over this, you who ought at all times to have done just judgment, and compel us to do injustice with you? You had decreed that a catholic be deposed by us and a heretic established; but when would men of sound mind have done that? For if Eli the priest heard what he suffered from the Lord because he had placed unworthy sons in the honour of the priesthood, what would we deserve to hear and suffer, if we condemned a catholic bishop, and that unheard, and allowed George, an Arian, to be made bishop for the Alexandrians? “And there came,” it says, “a man of God and said: Thus says the Lord: I plainly revealed myself to your father's house out of all the tribes of Israel for the priesthood to me, to go up to my sacrifice and burn incense and wear the ephod; and I gave in your father's house all the grain of the children of Israel for food. And why have you looked on my incense and my sacrifice with a shameless eye, and honoured your sons more than me, so as to bless them first in all the sacrifices of Israel before me? Therefore thus says the Lord of Israel: I said, Your house and your father's house shall go in before me for ever; and now it is not so. Thus says the Lord: Far be it from me; it shall not be so from me; for those who honour me I will honour, and he who despises me shall be brought to nothing. And behold, the days are coming, and I will destroy your seed and the seed of your father's house, and there shall not be an old man in my house in all your days; and I will destroy your man from my altar, so that his eyes fail and his soul wastes away; and all the multitude of your house that remains shall fall by the sword of men. And this shall be the sign to you, which shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: on one day they shall both die by the sword of men.” If he received this rebuke from God on account of his sons, what rebuke would we deserve to receive on account of you, Constantius? I believe it would have been said to us: “You honoured Constantius more than me,” as it was said to him that he had honoured his sons more than God. For what reason, you say? Because if we had done your commands, we would have been found to have despised the Lord's, since George, whom you had decided should be placed by us in the place of the man of God Athanasius, is a son of pestilence, as the sons of Eli were. Then, since God says, “He who honours me shall be honoured, and he who despises me shall be brought to nothing,” would we have honoured God if we had listened to your sacrilegious voice uttered against his divine commands? Or rather if, judging you to be nothing, we strove to obey only his sacred statutes? Meanwhile, rejoice, since you are dishonouring God; for you hear him say that all who despise him will come to nothing. Or will you deny that you dishonoured God by removing from their peoples the priests whom he ordained? Will you deny that you dishonoured the Lord when, against his decrees, you compelled his priests to condemn a man absent and unheard? Did you not dishonour God, then, when you took away the apostolic and evangelical tradition, and decreed that the idolatry which the devil built in Arius's heart should be held by all the worshippers of God?

Since this is so, it will now be for your prudence to weigh what it is expedient for you to do: whether to correct your errors here, obtain pardon for such great crimes, and decide to be found among the household of God; or, brought to nothing as the Lord promises those who despise him, to begin to pay for ever the penalties which those pay whose paths you have chosen to follow. And so that you may see fully what dangers await you because you dishonour the Godhead, hear what was said to Samuel too on account of the sons of Eli: “And the Lord said to Samuel: Behold, I am doing my words in Israel, and everyone who hears them, both his ears shall ring, on that day when I raise up against Eli all that I have spoken against his house; and I will accomplish what I foretold to him, for I am taking vengeance on his house for ever because of the iniquities of his sons, which I know, since his sons, despising the Lord, spoke evil, and he did not admonish them nor chastise them. And now I have so sworn to the house of Eli: the iniquity of the house of Eli shall not be atoned for with incense or with sacrifices for ever.” If these things were promised to Eli because of the sin of his sons, what is promised to you for your sacrilege? If these were promised to him for ever, what to you, who do such things? If God said that the sons of Eli had spoken ill of him, how much more does he say it of you, who have taken up the blasphemy of Arius in order to attack the faith which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and all the martyrs held? We ask you, meanwhile, to repent of your deeds, considering at least what befell the sons of Eli who dishonoured God. “Eli,” says Scripture, “was very old, and his sons went on, and their way was evil before the Lord. And it came about in those days that the foreigners gathered for battle against Israel”; and further on: “And the battle turned, and the men of Israel fell before the foreigners, and about four thousand men were wounded in the battle line in the field. And the people came into the camp, and the elders of Israel said: Why has the Lord made us fail today before the foreigners? Let us take the ark of the Lord our God from Shiloh, and let it go out in our midst, and it will deliver us from the hands of our enemies. And the people sent to Shiloh, and they took from there the ark of the Lord, where he sat upon the cherubim; and both sons of Eli went with the ark of God, Hophni and Phinehas”; and further on: “They fought against them, and the men of Israel failed before the foreigners, and each fled to his tent; and there was a very great slaughter, and thirty thousand men of Israel fell. And the ark of God was taken, and both sons of Eli died”; and further on: “And a man came hurrying to Eli and said to him: I am the one who came from the camp, fleeing from the battle today. And Eli said: What has happened, my son? And the man answered and said: The men of Israel fled before the foreigners, and there was a great slaughter among the people, and both your sons are dead, and the ark of God has been taken. And it came about, when he heard that the ark of God was taken, that he fell backwards from his seat beside the gate, and his back was broken, and he died, for he was old and heavy; and he had judged Israel twenty years.” If these evils came in one day upon Eli, priest and judge of the Israelites, because he had not chastised his sons as was fitting, I have thought it right to put to you to consider at this point what you see will come upon you, the destroyer of God's religion. For you will not deny that you have said that it comes from God's will that we his servants are subjected to you our persecutors: “Unless our faith, that is, the one Lucifer calls Arian, were catholic, I would never have received power over all the peoples.” If so, then the faith of those foreigners who had captured the ark of God could also have been better than that of the worshippers of God.

You say that your faith, which we know to be heretical, has granted you this; but Maxentius, Nero and all those persecutors of the house of God also said that it was done by the power of their gods that we Christians came under their rule. Run through what happened to those who rejoiced that they had captured the ark of God, who said they had defeated the Israelites by the power of their gods, and you will find that you are one of those who have persecuted the house of God. “And the foreigners took the ark of God from Ebenezer and brought it into Ashdod. And the foreigners took the ark and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it beside Dagon. And the people of Ashdod rose early in the morning and went into the house of Dagon and looked; and behold, Dagon had fallen on his face before the ark of God. And they took Dagon and set him in his place. And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the people of Ashdod and tormented them, and struck them in their houses, Ashdod and its territory. And it came about, when they rose before dawn, that Dagon had fallen on his face before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both the soles of his feet had been cut off, each apart, and both the wrists of his hands had fallen on the threshold”; and further on: “And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon Ashdod, and he brought mice upon them, and there was a great confusion of death in the city. And the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, and said: The ark of the Lord God of Israel shall not stay with us, for his hand is hard upon us and upon Dagon our god. And they sent and called together the lords of the foreigners to them and said: What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? And the men of Gath said: Let the ark of the God of Israel pass over to Gath. And it came about, after the ark of God had been moved, that the hand of the Lord came upon the city, and there was a very great disturbance; and he struck the men of the city from the least to the greatest, and mice swarmed among them in their seats, and the men of Gath made themselves seats of skin. And they sent the ark of God to Ashkelon. And it came about, when the ark of the God of Israel came into Ashkelon, that the people of Ashkelon cried out, saying: Why have you sent the ark of the God of Israel to us, to put us and our people to death? And they sent and called together the lords of the foreigners and said: Send back the ark of the God of Israel, and let it be returned to its place, and it will not put us and our people to death; for a heavy confusion has come upon the whole city, very heavy, since the ark of God came in there. And those who lived and did not die were struck in their seats, and the cry of the cities went up to heaven.” You see, Constantius, how our God allows his religion to be seen humbled by you foreigners, and humbled to the point at which even you persecutors of the true religion see that there is no other God besides our God.

But to return again to the case of Athanasius: did you not know that it is written in the first book of Kingdoms, “And Samuel judged the people of Israel in all holiness,” that you thought you should order an innocent man to be condemned by the priests of the Lord? You have read that Samuel judged the people of God in all holiness; and because we refuse to depart from this just way of judging, we suffer persecution from you. It is nothing new, since Saul persecuted the righteous Samuel because he told him the truth, though it was by him that he had been anointed king, through him that the Lord had raised him to such glory. Saul persecuted the prophet and priest of the Lord because he was not in his right mind; otherwise how would Saul, if sane, persecute one whom he knew to be the minister of God, full of the Spirit of God? He persecuted one whom he did not know to have groaned constantly for the salvation of his persecutor. Scripture says in the first book of Kingdoms that the Lord said to Samuel: “How long will you mourn over Saul? Behold, I am driving him out, so that he does not reign over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and come; I will send you to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem, for I have seen among the sons of Jesse a king for me. And Samuel said: How shall I go? Saul will hear and kill me.” He sought to destroy one whom he remembered had already in many ways proved to be a man of God. The man of God does not cease to beg pardon for his persecutor; the persecutor, on the contrary, made a son of pestilence, seeks his life. For Saul became so great a persecutor of Samuel the priest of the Lord that, when the Lord said, “Come, I will send you,” he said, “How shall I go? Saul will hear and kill me.” You see, Constantius, that when you withdraw from God you are reckoned not men but wild beasts, monsters and robbers. Or will you not be comparable to Saul in this, that you persecute Athanasius unjustly? For you so long to slaughter the innocent Athanasius as he longed to kill not only Samuel but David too; Saul, of course, threatened to kill those with whom he knew God to be. “And Saul saw,” says Scripture, “that the Lord was with David, and that all Israel loved him. And Saul was still more afraid of David. And Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants, to kill David.” Answer, most shameless emperor: can one who has the Spirit of God do these things? At what time did Saul begin to do them? Surely when he was cursed and rejected through Samuel; for at that very time it is written that God departed from him and was with David. By this it is proved that you Arians, who persecute Athanasius, a man full of the Holy Spirit, are without the Spirit of God. “And David,” it says, “was wise in all his ways, and the Lord was with him, and all Israel and Judah loved David.” So that you may recognize that you are doing to Athanasius what Saul did to David, hear what is written: “And Jonathan the son of Saul loved David greatly, and Jonathan told David, saying: Saul seeks to kill you”; and further on: “And Jonathan spoke to his father, saying: Do not sin, O king, against your servant David, for he has not sinned against you, and his deeds are very good. And he put his life in his hands and killed the foreigner, and the Lord wrought salvation in Israel, and all Israel saw and rejoiced. Why then do you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without cause? And Saul heard the voice of Jonathan his son, and Saul swore, saying: As the Lord lives, he shall not die”; and further on: “And war broke out again, and David prevailed and fought the foreigners and struck them with a great slaughter, and they fled before David. And an evil spirit came upon Saul, and he was sleeping in his house, and there was a spear in his hand, and behold, David was playing with his hands. And Saul sought to strike David with the spear, and he struck, and David turned aside from before Saul; and he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled and was saved. And it came about that night that Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, so that he might kill him in the morning. And David fled and was saved, and came to Samuel at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done”; and further on: “And Saul became very angry with Jonathan”; and further on: “and he said: Let this be; take the young man, for he is a son of death. And Jonathan answered his father: Why should he die? What has he done? And Saul raised his spear against Jonathan to kill him.” Whom would Saul spare who told him the truth, when he did not spare even his son? So you pass over the commandments of God and set up your own. In short, we do not wonder that, because it is said, “An absent man cannot be condemned,” you persecute the priests of the Lord, when we see that Saul persecuted in the same way those who served God. Scripture says: “And the king said: You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's house”; and further on: “And the king said to the runners and those who stood by him: Bring them and kill the priests of the Lord, for their hand is with David, for they knew that David was fleeing and did not uncover my ear. And the king's servants would not put forth their hands against the priests of the Lord.”

What do you say, most fair king? If those servants of the king are reported to have refused to obey the king's order, if they are shown to have despised Saul's commands so as not to act against the commandments of God, would it have been fitting for us bishops to trample on the Lord's commands and fulfil yours, the commands of a sacrilegious murderer? That, then, is why you are pleased to persecute us: because we do not put your commands before the Lord's. Saul did the same, as holy Scripture proves, saying: “And Saul said to Doeg: Turn and fall upon the priests of the Lord. And Doeg the Syrian turned and himself put the priests of the Lord to death, and he killed that day three hundred and five men, all who wore the ephod; and Nob, the city of the priests, he struck with the edge of the sword, from man to suckling.” In the same way you have now tried and are trying to tear the bodies of those whom you see resisting your command because they are mindful of God's commands. We cannot wonder, then, that you persecute us, when we see that Saul, because they had not handed David the servant of the Lord into his hands, destroyed not only three hundred and five priests but the whole city as well. Saul persecuted David, though, when he was in David's power, David often pardoned him. “And it came about,” says Scripture, “when Saul had returned from pursuing the foreigners, that they told him, saying: Behold, David is in the desert of Engedi. And he took with him three thousand chosen men from all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the place where the deer are hunted. And he came to the flocks of sheep that were by the road, and there was a cave there, and Saul went in to relieve himself; and David and his men were sitting in the inner part of the cave. And David's men said to him: Behold, this is the day of which the Lord said, I will give your enemy into your hands, and you shall do to him what is pleasing in your eyes. And David arose and secretly cut off the edge of Saul's cloak. And it came about after this that David's heart struck him because he had cut off the edge of the cloak. And David said to his servants: Far be it from me, by the Lord, that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to lay my hand on him, for he is the Lord's anointed. And David persuaded his men with words and did not allow them to rise up and kill Saul. And Saul arose and went down to the road, and David went out after Saul, saying: My lord the king. And Saul looked behind him, and David bowed with his face to the ground and did obeisance to him. And David said to Saul: Why do you listen to the words of the people who say, Behold, David seeks your life? Behold, this day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you today into my hands in the cave, and I would not kill you, and I spared you, and said: I will not lay my hand on my lord, for he is the Lord's anointed. I took the edge of your cloak in my hand; I cut off the fringe of your cloak and did not kill you. Know and see today that there is no malice or injustice in my hand, and I have not sinned against you, and you seek to take my life. May the Lord judge between me and you, and may he avenge me on you; but my hand shall not be upon you. As the ancient proverb says, From the wicked comes wickedness; but my hand shall not be upon you. After whom do you pursue? After a dead dog and after a single flea? May the Lord be judge and avenger between me and you; may the Lord see and judge my cause and justify me from your hand.” Such is the custom of the worshippers of God: to reserve everything to God, knowing that it is a great thing to be avenged by him.