On Not Agreeing with Heretics 14–15

But perhaps you will dare to say: “Do I deny that the Son of God has come in the flesh, that I should be named one of the antichrists?” You indeed, emperor Constantius, do not deny that the Son of God has come in the flesh; but you say that he whom we confess to have come in the flesh is a creature, you say that he was made from nothing, asserting that he is not the true Son of God. We, on the contrary, who hold the tradition of this blessed apostle, believe in the true Son of God; we believe that the Father and this his only Son have one Godhead. The Lord shows that this is so in his holy Gospels, saying: “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and: “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” and: “I and the Father are one.” We have often said that, since the Father and the Son are two persons and yet he says, “I and the Father are one,” and, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and, “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” he wished us to grasp nothing else than that there is one eternity of the Father and the Son, one glory, one power, one greatness. That is why the apostle too says in this second letter: “Everyone who withdraws and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God; but he who abides in his teaching has both the Father and the Son”: so that, gathering from the teaching of the holy Gospels, we might believe in one Godhead of God the Father and his only Son, and that he who believes thus has God; but whoever has withdrawn from this teaching, that is, “I and the Father are one” (which, being plural, shows both two persons and one power of these two persons, that is, of the Father and the Son) — therefore the apostle says: “He who withdraws and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God; but he who abides in his teaching has both the Father and the Son,” so that we might believe the Son of God when he says, “I and the Father are one,” namely, that the Godhead of the Father and the Son is one. It is clear, then, that you, who do not hold it as the Lord handed it down to the apostles and the apostles to the bishops, do not have God; for the apostle too, wishing to show the single divinity of the Father and the Son, said: “He who withdraws from his teaching does not have God; but he who abides in his teaching has the Father and the Son.” You, I say, who stand without God, who have neither the Son nor the Father, we know we have most rightly fled, since it would not have been fitting for those who have God to stay with the enemies of the divine greatness. But recognize how hateful you are to God, that we were not even allowed to say “greeting” to you. How could we Christians have been with you Arians, when the apostle Paul says: “Avoid foolish questions and genealogies and strife and quarrels about the law; for they are useless and vain. Avoid a heretical man after one correction, knowing that such a one is perverted and sins, being condemned by himself”? We could not be gathered with heretics condemned by themselves, lest that voice strike us too, as it strikes the Galatians of blessed Paul: “You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?” Knowing that you are enemies of the only Son of God, we have fled your wicked counsels, obeying the voice of the apostle, who says: “Agree with no one; your persuasion is from God, who calls you. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?” We servants of Christ refused to receive you, the worms of Arius, into fellowship, so as not to be consumed by the devil's poison by which you have been consumed. We refused to go with you, that is, with men who are seen to be still outside the knowledge of God, who are still placed under the power of the devil. We refused, the living, to be joined to the dead, because you are known to be such as we ourselves were before we believed in the only Son of God. The apostle shows that this is so when he writes to the Ephesians: “And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit that now works in the sons of distrust; among whom we too all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and of its counsels; and we were by nature children of wrath, as the rest were too.” Since you are still such as the most holy apostle reports we were before we believed, you certainly had to be avoided, men in whom the princes of the power of this air, the spirits, work, and through whom they carry out their every desire; you had to be fled, sons of distrust, children of wrath by nature, lest by clinging to you we be brought back to what we were before. We refused to be with you, because you have not yet obtained the mercy of God which we have already received. We refused to have fellowship with you, who were led by the counsel of the flesh, as this most blessed Paul was led before he believed, whom we remember saying: “Let no one seduce you with empty words; for because of this the wrath of God comes upon the sons of distrust. Do not, then, become partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light; for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable to God; and do not share in the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Since we have received these commands, we refused to stay with you, led by your empty words, lest the wrath come upon us as it has come and will come upon you, upon you and yours, upon you sons of distrust. We refused to be made partakers of darkness, since, believing now in the only Son of God and desiring to obey the commands of his majesty, we escaped from that darkness and became light in the Lord; and so we have not obeyed your dark commands, because it would have been wicked for children of light to do your work of darkness, since the fruit of the light is to walk in righteousness and truth and in all goodness.

You say that we act wickedly because we refuse to accept your heresy, because no lasting friendship has been fixed between us and you and yours. Hear what Moses did with the foreigners at the time when God deigned to order him to send a certain number of Israelites to destroy with the edge of the sword five kings of Midian and Moab. When those who had been sent to battle had killed all the males but spared the women who came out to meet them, Moses rebuked the children of Israel for not destroying the women too, and ordered them to be killed before him, declaring that they could entice the minds of the people to worship idols. If, then, we too detest your heresy as Moses detested idolatry; if we long that the heresies of all of you who err be slain with the sword of God, as Moses wished those women who were enslaved to idols to be slain; if we flee you, the adversaries of God's religion, as he fled the worshippers of idols, judge that we act rightly in withdrawing ourselves from you. For how could we have come together with you, when he said to the Philippians: “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evil workers”? Who among the servants of God would not flee you dogs, you evil workers, unless he had forgotten that he was a Christian? Could we servants of Christ have been joined to you, adversaries of the religion of God, when the glorious apostle Jude, brother of the apostle James, exhorts us to avoid you and those like you and to remain in the faith we have received until our death? “Jude, servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept in Jesus Christ: may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I beg you to labour hard for the fellowship once handed down. For certain men have crept in, long ago marked out for this judgment, ungodly men, who turn the grace of God into indecency and deny the one who is our Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” It was an abomination to come together with you blasphemous deniers, since he goes on to set before us the examples of those who transgressed the Lord's commands and so urges our hearts to remain in that faith in which he himself is seen to have remained. “I wish, therefore, to remind you, though you know all things, that God saved his people from the land of Egypt, but afterwards destroyed those who did not believe; and the angels who did not keep their rank but abandoned their dwelling he has kept under darkness in chains of the holy angels for the judgment of the great God. And Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in like manner committed adultery and went after flesh, have been set forth as an example in ashes, undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. In the same way these men too, dreaming, defile the flesh and despise lordship.” And further on: “Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain and have poured themselves out for pay in the error of Balaam and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are blemishes in your love feasts, ruling themselves without fear, waterless clouds carried about by every wind, autumn trees without fruit, dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, seducing storms, for whom the season of darkness has been kept for ever.” And further on: “But you, brothers, remember the words spoken beforehand by the apostles of Jesus Christ, for they said: In the last days there will be mockers, going after their own ungodly desires. These are those who make divisions, natural men, not having the Spirit.” Since you, Constantius, have been seen to be in all these evils, we have avoided your friendship, which labours to kill, so that we might not be hurled headlong with you into those places of torment to which, he relates, all those whose path you are holding have been cast down.